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THE LITERARY REMAINS
OF SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
COLLECTED AND EDITED BY
HENRY NELSON COLERIDGE, ESQ. M.A.
VOLUME THE SECOND
CONTENTS
VOL. II.
LITERARY REMAINS.
Extract from a Letter written by Mr. Coleridge, in February, 1818, to a
Gentleman who attended the Course of Lectures given in the Spring of
that Year.
Extract from a Letter to J. Britton, Esq.
SHAKSPEARE, WITH INTRODUCTORY MATTER ON POETRY, THE DRAMA, AND THE STAGE
Definition of Poetry
Greek Drama
Progress of the Drama
The Drama generally, and Public Taste
Shakspeare, a Poet generally
Shakspeare's Judgment equal to his Genius
Recapitulation, and Summary of the Characteristics of Shakspeare's Dramas
Order of Shakspeare's Plays
Notes on the Tempest
Love's Labour's Lost
Midsummer Night's Dream
Comedy of Errors
As You Like It
Twelfth Night
All's Well that Ends Well
Merry Wives of Windsor
Measure for Measure
Cymbeline
Titus Andronicus
Troilus and Cressida
Coriolanus
Julius Cæsar
Antony and Cleopatra
Timon of Athens
Romeo and Juliet
Shakspeare's English Historical Plays
King John
Richard II.
Henry IV. Part I.
Henry IV. Part II.
Henry V.
Henry VI. Part I.
Richard III.
Lear
Hamlet
Notes on Macbeth
Notes on the Winter's Tale
Notes on Othello
NOTES ON BEN JONSON
Whalley's Preface
Whalley's Life of Jonson
Every Man out of His Humour
Poetaster
Fall of Sejanus
Volpone
Epicène
The Alchemist
Catiline's Conspiracy
Bartholomew Fair
The Devil is an Ass
The Staple of News
The New Inn
NOTES ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER
Harris's Commendatory Poem on Fletcher
Life of Fletcher in Stockdale's Edition. 1811
Maid's Tragedy
A King and no King
The Scornful Lady
The Custom of the Country
The Elder Brother
The Spanish Curate
Wit Without Money
The Humorous Lieutenant
The Mad Lover
The Loyal Subject
Rule a Wife and have a Wife
The Laws of Candy
The Little French Lawyer
Valentinian
Rollo
The Wildgoose Chase
A Wife for a Month
The Pilgrim
The Queen of Corinth
The Noble Gentleman
The Coronation
Wit at Several Weapons
The Fair Maid of the Inn
The Two Noble Kinsmen
The Woman Hater
On the 'Prometheus' of Æschylus
Note on Chalmers's 'Life of Daniel'
Bishop Corbet Notes on Selden's 'Table Talk'
Note on Theological Lectures of Benjamin Wheeler, D.D.
Note on a Sermon on the Prevalence of Infidelity and Enthusiasm, by
Walter Birch, B. D.
Fénélon on Charity
Change of the Climates
Wonderfulness of Prose
Notes on Tom Jones
Jonathan Wild
Barry Cornwall
The Primitive Christian's Address to the Cross
Fuller's Holy State
Fuller's Profane State
Fuller's Appeal of Injured Innocence
Fuller's Church History
Asgill's Argument
Introduction to Asgill's Defence upon his Expulsion from the House of
Commons.
Notes on Sir Thomas Browne's 'Religio Medici'
Notes on Sir Thomas Browne's Garden of Cyrus
Notes on Sir Thomas Browne's Vulgar Errors
LITERARY REMAINS
Extract from a Letter written by Mr. Coleridge, in February, 1818, to a
gentleman who attended the course of Lectures given in the spring of
that year.
See the 'Canterbury Magazine', September, 1834. Ed.
My next Friday's lecture will, if I do not grossly flatter-blind myself,
be interesting, and the points of view not only original, but new to the
audience. I make this distinction, because sixteen or rather seventeen
years ago, I delivered eighteen lectures on Shakspeare, at the Royal
Institution; three-fourths of which appeared at that time startling
paradoxes, although they have since been adopted even by men, who then
made use of them as proofs of my flighty and paradoxical turn of mind;
all tending to prove that Shakspeare's judgment was, if possible, still
more wonderful than his genius; or rather, that the contradistinction
itself between judgment and genius rested on an utterly false theory.
This, and its proofs and grounds have been--I should not have said
adopted, but produced as their own legitimate children by some, and by
others the merit of them attributed to a foreign writer, whose lectures
were not given orally till two years after mine, rather than to their
countryman; though I dare appeal to the most adequate judges, as Sir
George Beaumont, the Bishop of Durham, Mr. Sotheby, and afterwards to
Mr. Rogers and Lord Byron, whether there is one single principle in
Schlegel's work (which is not an admitted drawback from its merits),
that was not established and applied in detail by me. Plutarch tells us,
that egotism is a venial fault in the unfortunate, and justifiable in
the calumniated, &c. ...
Extract from a Letter to J. Britton, Esq.
28th Feb., 1819, Highgate.
Dear Sir,
--First permit me to remove a very natural, indeed almost inevitable,
mistake, relative to my lectures; namely, that I 'have' them, or that
the lectures of one place or season are in any way repeated in another.
So far from it, that on any point that I had ever studied (and on no
other should I dare discourse--I mean, that I would not lecture on any
subject for which I had to 'acquire' the main knowledge, even though a
month's or three months' previous time were allowed me; on no subject
that had not employed my thoughts for a large portion of my life since
earliest manhood, free of all outward and particular purpose)--on any
point within my habit of thought, I should greatly prefer a subject I
had never lectured on, to one which I had repeatedly given; and those
who have attended me for any two seasons successively will bear witness,
that the lecture given at the London Philosophical Society, on the
'Romeo and Juliet', for instance, was as different from that given at
the Crown and Anchor, as if they had been by two individuals who,
without any communication with each other, had only mastered the same
principles of philosophic criticism. This was most strikingly evidenced
in the coincidence between my lectures and those of Schlegel; such, and
so close, that it was fortunate for my moral reputation that I had not
only from five to seven hundred ear witnesses that the passages had been
given by me at the Royal Institution two years before Schlegel commenced
his lectures at Vienna, but that notes had been taken of these by
several men and ladies of high rank. The fact is this; during a course
of lectures, I faithfully employ all the intervening days in collecting
and digesting the materials, whether I have or have not lectured on the
same subject before, making no difference. The day of the lecture, till
the hour of commencement, I devote to the consideration, what of the
mass before me is best fitted to answer the purposes of a lecture, that
is, to keep the audience awake and interested during the delivery, and
to leave a sting behind, that is, a disposition to study the subject
anew, under the light of a new principle. Several times, however, partly
from apprehension respecting my health and animal spirits, partly from
the wish to possess copies that might afterwards be marketable among the
publishers, I have previously written the lecture; but before I had
proceeded twenty minutes, I have been obliged to push the MS. away, and
give the subject a new turn. Nay, this was so notorious, that many of my
auditors used to threaten me, when they saw any number of written papers
on my desk, to steal them away; declaring they never felt so secure of a
good lecture as when they perceived that I had not a single scrap of
writing before me. I take far, far more pains than would go to the set
composition of a lecture, both by varied reading and by meditation; but
for the words, illustrations, &c., I know almost as little as any one of
the audience (that is, those of anything like the same education with
myself) what they will be five minutes before the lecture begins. Such
is my way, for such is my nature; and in attempting any other, I should
only torment myself in order to disappoint my auditors--torment myself
during the delivery, I mean; for in all other respects it would be a
much shorter and easier task to deliver them from writing. I am anxious
to preclude any semblance of affectation; and have therefore troubled
you with this lengthy preface before I have the hardihood to assure you,
that you might as well ask me what my dreams were in the year 1814, as
what my course of lectures was at the Surrey Institution.
'Fuimus Troes.'
SHAKSPEARE,
WITH INTRODUCTORY MATTER ON POETRY, THE DRAMA, AND THE STAGE.
DEFINITION OF POETRY.
Poetry is not the proper antithesis to prose, but to science. Poetry is
opposed to science, and prose to metre. The proper and immediate object
of science is the acquirement, or communication, of truth; the proper
and immediate object of poetry is the communication of immediate
pleasure. This definition is useful; but as it would include novels and
other works of fiction, which yet we do not call poems, there must be
some additional character by which poetry is not only divided from
opposites, but likewise distinguished from disparate, though similar,
modes of composition. Now how is this to be effected? In animated prose,
the beauties of nature, and the passions and accidents of human nature,
are often expressed in that natural language which the contemplation of
them would suggest to a pure and benevolent mind; yet still neither we
nor the writers call such a work a poem, though no work could deserve
that name which did not include all this, together with something else.
What is this? It is that pleasurable emotion, that peculiar state and
degree of excitement, which arises in the poet himself in the act of
composition;--and in order to understand this, we must combine a more
than ordinary sympathy with the objects, emotions, or incidents
contemplated by the poet, consequent on a more than common sensibility,
with a more than ordinary activity of the mind in respect of the fancy
and the imagination. Hence is produced a more vivid reflection of the
truths of nature and of the human heart, united with a constant activity
modifying and correcting these truths by that sort of pleasurable
emotion, which the exertion of all our faculties gives in a certain
degree; but which can only be felt in perfection under the full play of
those powers of mind, which are spontaneous rather than voluntary, and
in which the effort required bears no proportion to the activity
enjoyed. This is the state which permits the production of a highly
pleasurable whole, of which each part shall also communicate for itself
a distinct and conscious pleasure; and hence arises the definition,
which I trust is now intelligible, that poetry, or rather a poem, is a
species of composition, opposed to science, as having intellectual
pleasure for its object, and as attaining its end by the use of language
natural to us in a state of excitement,--but distinguished from other
species of composition, not excluded by the former criterion, by
permitting a pleasure from the whole consistent with a consciousness of
pleasure from the component parts;--and the perfection of which is, to
communicate from each part the greatest immediate pleasure compatible
with the largest sum of pleasure on the whole. This, of course, will
vary with the different modes of poetry;--and that splendour of
particular lines, which would be worthy of admiration in an impassioned
elegy, or a short indignant satire, would be a blemish and proof of vile
taste in a tragedy or an epic poem.
It is remarkable, by the way, that Milton in three incidental words has
implied all which for the purposes of more distinct apprehension, which
at first must be slow-paced in order to be distinct, I have endeavoured
to develope in a precise and strictly adequate definition. Speaking of
poetry, he says, as in a parenthesis, "which is simple, sensuous,
passionate." How awful is the power of words!--fearful often in their
consequences when merely felt, not understood; but most awful when both
felt and understood!--Had these three words only been properly
understood by, and present in the minds of, general readers, not only
almost a library of false poetry would have been either precluded or
still-born, but, what is of more consequence, works truly excellent and
capable of enlarging the understanding, warming and purifying the heart,
and placing in the centre of the whole being the germs of noble and
manlike actions, would have been the common diet of the intellect
instead. For the first condition, simplicity,--while, on the one hand,
it distinguishes poetry from the arduous processes of science, labouring
towards an end not yet arrived at, and supposes a smooth and finished
road, on which the reader is to walk onward easily, with streams
murmuring by his side, and trees and flowers and human dwellings to make
his journey as delightful as the object of it is desirable, instead of
having to toil, with the pioneers and painfully make the road on which
others are to travel,--precludes, on the other hand, every affectation
and morbid peculiarity;--the second condition, sensuousness, insures
that framework of objectivity, that definiteness and articulation of
imagery, and that modification of the images themselves, without which
poetry becomes flattened into mere didactics of practice, or evaporated
into a hazy, unthoughtful, daydreaming; and the third condition,
passion, provides that neither thought nor imagery shall be simply
objective, but that the _passio vera_ of humanity shall warm and animate
both.
To return, however, to the previous definition, this most general and
distinctive character of a poem originates in the poetic genius itself;
and though it comprises whatever can with any propriety be called a
poem, (unless that word be a mere lazy synonyme for a composition in
metre,) it yet becomes a just, and not merely discriminative, but full
and adequate, definition of poetry in its highest and most peculiar
sense, only so far as the distinction still results from the poetic
genius, which sustains and modifies the emotions, thoughts, and vivid
representations of the poem by the energy without effort of the poet's
own mind,--by the spontaneous activity of his imagination and fancy, and
by whatever else with these reveals itself in the balancing and
reconciling of opposite or discordant qualities, sameness with
difference, a sense of novelty and freshness with old or customary
objects, a more than usual state of emotion with more than usual order,
self-possession and judgment with enthusiasm and vehement feeling,--and
which, while it blends and harmonizes the natural and the artificial,
still subordinates art to nature, the manner to the matter, and our
admiration of the poet to our sympathy with the images, passions,
characters, and incidents of the poem:--
Doubtless, this could not be, but that she turns
Bodies to _spirit_ by sublimation strange,
As fire converts to fire the things it burns--
As we our food into our nature change!
From their gross matter she abstracts _their_ forms,
And draws a kind of quintessence from things,
Which to her proper nature she transforms
To bear them light on her celestial wings!
_Thus_ doth she, when from _individual states_
She doth abstract the universal kinds,
_Which then reclothed in diverse names and fates
Steal access thro' our senses to our minds._ [1]
[Footnote 1: Sir John Davies on the Immortality of the Soul, sect. iv.
The words and lines in italics (_between_) are substituted to apply
these verses to the poetic genius. The greater part of this latter
paragraph may be found adopted, with some alterations, in the 'Biographia
Literaria', vol. ii. c. 14; but I have thought it better in this
instance and some others, to run the chance of bringing a few passages
twice over to the recollection of the reader, than to weaken the force
of the original argument by breaking the connection. Ed.]
GREEK DRAMA.
It is truly singular that Plato,--whose philosophy and religion were but
exotic at home, and a mere opposition to the finite in all things,
genuine prophet and anticipator as he was of the Protestant Christian
aera,--should have given in his Dialogue of the Banquet, a justification
of our Shakspeare. For he relates that, when all the other guests had
either dispersed or fallen asleep, Socrates only, together with
Aristophanes and Agathon, remained awake, and that, while he continued
to drink with them out of a large goblet, he compelled them, though most
reluctantly, to admit that it was the business of one and the same
genius to excel in tragic and comic poetry, or that the tragic poet
ought, at the same time, to contain within himself the powers of comedy.
[1] Now, as this was directly repugnant to the entire theory of the
ancient critics, and contrary to all their experience, it is evident
that Plato must have fixed the eye of his contemplation on the innermost
essentials of the drama, abstracted from the forms of age or country. In
another passage he even adds the reason, namely, that opposites
illustrate each other's nature, and in their struggle draw forth the
strength of the combatants, and display the conqueror as sovereign even
on the territories of the rival power.
Nothing can more forcibly exemplify the separative spirit of the Greek
arts than their comedy as opposed to their tragedy. But as the immediate
struggle of contraries supposes an arena common to both, so both were
alike ideal; that is, the comedy of Aristophanes rose to as great a
distance above the ludicrous of real life, as the tragedy of Sophocles
above its tragic events and passions;--and it is in this one point, of
absolute ideality, that the comedy of Shakspeare and the old comedy of
Athens coincide. In this also alone did the Greek tragedy and comedy
unite; in every thing else they were exactly opposed to each other.
Tragedy is poetry in its deepest earnest; comedy is poetry in unlimited
jest. Earnestness consists in the direction and convergence of all the
powers of the soul to one aim, and in the voluntary restraint of its
activity in consequence; the opposite, therefore, lies in the apparent
abandonment of all definite aim or end, and in the removal of all bounds
in the exercise of the mind,--attaining its real end, as an entire
contrast, most perfectly, the greater the display is of intellectual
wealth squandered in the wantonness of sport without an object, and the
more abundant the life and vivacity in the creations of the arbitrary
will.
The later comedy, even where it was really comic, was doubtless likewise
more comic, the more free it appeared from any fixed aim.
Misunderstandings of intention, fruitless struggles of absurd passion,
contradictions of temper, and laughable situations there were; but still
the form of the representation itself was serious; it proceeded as much
according to settled laws, and used as much the same means of art,
though to a different purpose, as the regular tragedy itself. But in the
old comedy the very form itself is whimsical; the whole work is one
great jest, comprehending a world of jests within it, among which each
maintains its own place without seeming to concern itself as to the
relation in which it may stand to its fellows. In short, in Sophocles,
the constitution of tragedy is monarchical, but such as it existed in
elder Greece, limited by laws, and therefore the more venerable,--all
the parts adapting and submitting themselves to the majesty of the
heroic sceptre:--in Aristophanes, comedy, on the contrary, is poetry in
its most democratic form, and it is a fundamental principle with it,
rather to risk all the confusion of anarchy, than to destroy the
independence and privileges of its individual constituents,--place,
verse, characters, even single thoughts, conceits, and allusions, each
turning on the pivot of its own free will.
The tragic poet idealizes his characters by giving to the spiritual part
of our nature a more decided preponderance over the animal cravings and
impulses, than is met with in real life: the comic poet idealizes his
characters by making the animal the governing power, and the
intellectual the mere instrument. But as tragedy is not a collection of
virtues and perfections, but takes care only that the vices and
imperfections shall spring from the passions, errors, and prejudices
which arise out of the soul;--so neither is comedy a mere crowd of vices
and follies, but whatever qualities it represents, even though they are
in a certain sense amiable, it still displays them as having their
origin in some dependence on our lower nature, accompanied with a defect
in true freedom of spirit and self-subsistence, and subject to that
unconnection by contradictions of the inward being, to which all folly
is owing.
The ideal of earnest poetry consists in the union and harmonious melting
down, and fusion of the sensual into the spiritual,--of man as an animal
into man as a power of reason and self-government. And this we have
represented to us most clearly in the plastic art, or statuary; where
the perfection of outward form is a symbol of the perfection of an
inward idea; where the body is wholly penetrated by the soul, and
spiritualized even to a state of glory, and like a transparent
substance, the matter, in its own nature darkness, becomes altogether a
vehicle and fixure of light, a mean of developing its beauties, and
unfolding its wealth of various colors without disturbing its unity, or
causing a division of the parts. The sportive ideal, on the contrary,
consists in the perfect harmony and concord of the higher nature with
the animal, as with its ruling principle and its acknowledged regent.
The understanding and practical reason are represented as the willing
slaves of the senses and appetites, and of the passions arising out of
them. Hence we may admit the appropriateness to the old comedy, as a
work of defined art, of allusions and descriptions, which morality can
never justify, and, only with reference to the author himself, and only
as being the effect or rather the cause of the circumstances in which he
wrote, can consent even to palliate.
The old comedy rose to its perfection in Aristophanes, and in him also
it died with the freedom of Greece. Then arose a species of drama, more
fitly called, dramatic entertainment than comedy, but of which,
nevertheless, our modern comedy (Shakspeare's altogether excepted) is
the genuine descendant. Euripides had already brought tragedy lower down
and by many steps nearer to the real world than his predecessors had
ever done, and the passionate admiration which Menander and Philemon
expressed for him, and their open avowals that he was their great
master, entitle us to consider their dramas as of a middle species,
between tragedy and comedy,--not the tragi-comedy, or thing of
heterogeneous parts, but a complete whole, founded on principles of its
own. Throughout we find the drama of Menander distinguishing itself from
tragedy, but not, as the genuine old comedy, contrasting with, and
opposing, it. Tragedy, indeed, carried the thoughts into the mythologic
world, in order to raise the emotions, the fears, and the hopes, which
convince the inmost heart that their final cause is not to be discovered
in the limits of mere mortal life, and force us into a presentiment,
however dim, of a state in which those struggles of inward free will
with outward necessity, which form the true subject of the tragedian,
shall be reconciled and solved;--the entertainment or new comedy, on the
other hand, remained within the circle of experience. Instead of the
tragic destiny, it introduced the power of chance; even in the few
fragments of Menander and Philemon now remaining to us, we find many
exclamations and reflections concerning chance and fortune, as in the
tragic poets concerning destiny. In tragedy, the moral law, either as
obeyed or violated, above all consequences--its own maintenance or
violation constituting the most important of all consequences--forms the
ground; the new comedy, and our modern comedy in general, (Shakspeare
excepted as before) lies in prudence or imprudence, enlightened or
misled self-love. The whole moral system of the entertainment exactly
like that of fable, consists in rules of prudence, with an exquisite
conciseness, and at the same time an exhaustive fulness of sense. An old
critic said that tragedy was the flight or elevation of life, comedy
(that of Menander) its arrangement or ordonnance.
Add to these features a portrait-like truth of character,--not so far
indeed as that a 'bona fide' individual should be described or imagined,
but yet so that the features which give interest and permanence to the
class should be individualized. The old tragedy moved in an ideal
world,--the old comedy in a fantastic world. As the entertainment, or
new comedy, restrained the creative activity both of the fancy and the
imagination, it indemnified the understanding in appealing to the
judgment for the probability of the scenes represented. The ancients
themselves acknowledged the new comedy as an exact copy of real life.
The grammarian, Aristophanes, somewhat affectedly exclaimed:--"O Life
and Menander! which of you two imitated the other?" In short the form of
this species of drama was poetry; the stuff or matter was prose. It was
prose rendered delightful by the blandishments and measured motions of
the muse. Yet even this was not universal. The mimes of Sophron, so
passionately admired by Plato, were written in prose, and were scenes
out of real life conducted in dialogue. The exquisite Feast of Adonis
([Greek (transliterated): Surakousiai ae Ad'oniazousai]) in Theocritus,
we are told, with some others of his eclogues, were close imitations of
certain mimes of Sophron--free translations of the prose into
hexameters.
It will not be improper, in this place, to make a few remarks on the
remarkable character and functions of the chorus in the Greek tragic
drama.
The chorus entered from below, close by the orchestra, and there, pacing
to and fro during the choral odes, performed their solemn measured
dance. In the centre of the 'orchestra', directly over against the
middle of the 'scene', there stood an elevation with steps in the shape
of a large altar, as high as the boards of the 'logeion' or moveable
stage. This elevation was named the 'thymele', ([Greek (transliterated):
thumelae]) and served to recall the origin and original purpose of the
chorus, as an altar-song in honour of the presiding deity. Here, and on
these steps, the persons of the chorus sate collectively, when they were
not singing; attending to the dialogue as spectators, and acting as
(what in truth they were) the ideal representatives of the real
audience, and of the poet himself in his own character, assuming the
supposed impressions made by the drama, in order to direct and rule
them. But when the chorus itself formed part of the dialogue, then the
leader of the band, the foreman or 'coryphaeus', ascended, as some
think, the level summit of the 'thymele' in order to command the stage,
or, perhaps, the whole chorus advanced to the front of the orchestra,
and thus put themselves in ideal connection, as it were, with the
'dramatis personæ' there acting. This 'thymele' was in the centre of the
whole edifice, all the measurements were calculated, and the semi-circle
of the amphitheatre was drawn, from this point. It had a double use, a
twofold purpose; it constantly reminded the spectators of the origin of
tragedy as a religious service, and declared itself as the ideal
representative of the audience by having its place exactly in the point,
to which all the radii from the different seats or benches converged. In
this double character, as constituent parts, and yet at the same time as
spectators, of the drama, the chorus could not but tend to enforce the
unity of place;--not on the score of any supposed improbability, which
the understanding or common sense might detect in a change of
place;--but because the senses themselves put it out of the power of any
imagination to conceive a place coming to, and going away from the
persons, instead of the persons changing their place. Yet there are
instances, in which, during the silence of the chorus, the poets have
hazarded this by a change in that part of the scenery which represented
the more distant objects to the eye of the spectator--a demonstrative
proof, that this alternately extolled and ridiculed unity (as ignorantly
ridiculed as extolled) was grounded on no essential principle of reason,
but arose out of circumstances which the poet could not remove, and
therefore took up into the form of the drama, and co-organized it with
all the other parts into a living whole.
The Greek tragedy may rather be compared to our serious opera than to
the tragedies of Shakspeare; nevertheless, the difference is far greater
than the likeness. In the opera all is subordinated to the music, the
dresses and the scenery;--the poetry is a mere vehicle for articulation,
and as little pleasure is lost by ignorance of the Italian language, so
is little gained by the knowledge of it. But in the Greek drama all was
but as instruments and accessaries to the poetry; and hence we should
form a better notion of the choral music from the solemn hymns and
psalms of austere church music than from any species of theatrical
singing. A single flute or pipe was the ordinary accompaniment; and it
is not to be supposed, that any display of musical power was allowed to
obscure the distinct hearing of the words. On the contrary, the evident
purpose was to render the words more audible, and to secure by the
elevations and pauses greater facility of understanding the poetry. For
the choral songs are, and ever must have been, the most difficult part
of the tragedy; there occur in them the most involved verbal compounds,
the newest expressions, the boldest images, the most recondite
allusions. Is it credible that the poets would, one and all, have been
thus prodigal of the stores of art and genius, if they had known that in
the representation the whole must have been lost to the audience,--at a
time too, when the means of after publication were so difficult, and
expensive, and the copies of their works so slowly and narrowly
circulated?
The masks also must be considered--their vast variety and admirable
workmanship. Of this we retain proof by the marble masks which
represented them; but to this in the real mask we must add the thinness
of the substance and the exquisite fitting on to the head of the actor;
so that not only were the very eyes painted with a single opening left
for the pupil of the actor's eye, but in some instances, even the iris
itself was painted, when the colour was a known characteristic of the
divine or heroic personage represented.
Finally, I will note down those fundamental characteristics which
contradistinguish the ancient literature from the modern generally, but
which more especially appear in prominence in the tragic drama. The
ancient was allied to statuary, the modern refers to painting. In the
first there is a predominance of rhythm and melody, in the second of
harmony and counterpoint. The Greeks idolized the finite, and therefore
were the masters of all grace, elegance, proportion, fancy, dignity,
majesty--of whatever, in short, is capable of being definitely conveyed
by defined forms or thoughts: the moderns revere the infinite, and
affect the indefinite as a vehicle of the infinite;--hence their
passions, their obscure hopes and fears, their wandering through the
unknown, their grander moral feelings, their more august conception of
man as man, their future rather than their past--in a word, their
sublimity.
[Footnote 1: Greek (transliterated): exegromenos de idein tous men
allous katheudontas kai oichomenous, Agath'ona de kai Aristophanaen kai
S'okratae eti monous egraegorenai, kai pinein ek phialaes megalaes
epidexia ton oun S'okratae autois dialegesthai kai ta men alla ho
Aristodaemos ouk ephae memnaesthai ton logon (oute gar ex archaes
paragenesthai, uponustazein te) to mentoi kethalaion ethae,
prosanagkazein ton S'okratae omologein autous tou autou andros einai
k'om'odian kai trag'odian epistasthai poiein, kai ton technae
trag'odopoion onta, kai k'om'odopoion einai. Symp. sub fine.]
PROGRESS OF THE DRAMA.
Let two persons join in the same scheme to ridicule a third, and either
take advantage of, or invent, some story for that purpose, and mimicry
will have already produced a sort of rude comedy. It becomes an inviting
treat to the populace, and gains an additional zest and burlesque by
following the already established plan of tragedy; and the first man of
genius who seizes the idea, and reduces it into form,--into a work of
art,--by metre and music, is the Aristophanes of the country.
How just this account is will appear from the fact that in the first or
old comedy of the Athenians, most of the 'dramatis personæ' were living
characters introduced under their own names; and no doubt, their
ordinary dress, manner, person and voice were closely mimicked. In less
favourable states of society, as that of England in the middle ages, the
beginnings of comedy would be constantly taking place from the mimics
and satirical minstrels; but from want of fixed abode, popular
government, and the successive attendance of the same auditors, it would
still remain in embryo. I shall, perhaps, have occasion to observe that
this remark is not without importance in explaining the essential
differences of the modern and ancient theatres.
Phænomena, similar to those which accompanied the origin of tragedy and
comedy among the Greeks, would take place among the Romans much more
slowly, and the drama would, in any case, have much longer remained in
its first irregular form from the character of the people, their
continual engagements in wars of conquest, the nature of their
government, and their rapidly increasing empire. But, however this might
have been, the conquest of Greece precluded both the process and the
necessity of it; and the Roman stage at once presented imitations or
translations of the Greek drama. This continued till the perfect
establishment of Christianity. Some attempts, indeed, were made to adapt
the persons of Scriptural or ecclesiastical history to the drama; and
sacred plays, it is probable, were not unknown in Constantinople under
the emperors of the East. The first of the kind is, I believe, the only
one preserved,--namely, the [Greek (transliterated): Christos Paschon],
or "Christ in his sufferings," by Gregory Nazianzen,--possibly written
in consequence of the prohibition of profane literature to the
Christians by the apostate Julian. [1] In the West, however, the
enslaved and debauched Roman world became too barbarous for any
theatrical exhibitions more refined than those of pageants and
chariot-races; while the spirit of Christianity, which in its most
corrupt form still breathed general humanity, whenever controversies of
faith were not concerned, had done away the cruel combats of the
gladiators, and the loss of the distant provinces prevented the
possibility of exhibiting the engagements of wild beasts.
I pass, therefore, at once to the feudal ages which soon succeeded,
confining my observation to this country; though, indeed, the same
remark with very few alterations will apply to all the other states,
into which the great empire was broken. Ages of darkness
succeeded;--not, indeed, the darkness of Russia or of the barbarous
lands unconquered by Rome; for from the time of Honorius to the
destruction of Constantinople and the consequent introduction of ancient
literature into Europe, there was a continued succession of individual
intellects;--the golden chain was never wholly broken, though the
connecting links were often of baser metal. A dark cloud, like another
sky, covered the entire cope of heaven,--but in this place it thinned
away, and white stains of light showed a half eclipsed star behind
it,--in that place it was rent asunder, and a star passed across the
opening in all its brightness, and then vanished. Such stars exhibited
themselves only; surrounding objects did not partake of their light.
There were deep wells of knowledge, but no fertilizing rills and
rivulets. For the drama, society was altogether a state of chaos, out of
which it was, for a while at least, to proceed anew, as if there had
been none before it.
And yet it is not undelightful to contemplate the eduction of good from
evil. The ignorance of the great mass of our countrymen, was the
efficient cause of the reproduction of the drama; and the preceding
darkness and the returning light were alike necessary in order to the
creation of a Shakspeare.
The drama re-commenced in England, as it first began in Greece, in
religion. The people were not able to read,--the priesthood were
unwilling that they should read; and yet their own interest compelled
them not to leave the people wholly ignorant of the great events of
sacred history. They did that, therefore, by scenic representations,
which in after ages it has been attempted to do in Roman Catholic
countries by pictures. They presented Mysteries, and often at great
expense; and reliques of this system still remain in the south of
Europe, and indeed throughout Italy, where at Christmas the convents and
the great nobles rival each other in the scenic representation of the
birth of Christ and its circumstances. I heard two instances mentioned
to me at different times, one in Sicily and the other in Rome, of noble
devotees, the ruin of whose fortunes was said to have commenced in the
extravagant expense which had been incurred in presenting the 'præsepe'
or manger. But these Mysteries, in order to answer their design, must
not only be instructive, but entertaining; and as, when they became so,
the people began to take pleasure in acting them themselves--in
interloping,--(against which the priests seem to have fought hard and
yet in vain) the most ludicrous images were mixed with the most awful
personations; and whatever the subject might be, however sublime,
however pathetic, yet the Vice and the Devil, who are the genuine
antecessors of Harlequin and the Clown, were necessary component parts.
I have myself a piece of this kind, which I transcribed a few years ago
at Helmstadt, in Germany, on the education of Eve's children, in which
after the fall and repentance of Adam, the offended Maker, as in proof
of his reconciliation, condescends to visit them, and to catechise the
children,--who with a noble contempt of chronology are all brought
together from Abel to Noah. The good children say the ten Commandments,
the Belief and the Lord's Prayer; but Cain and his rout, after he had
received a box on the ear for not taking off his hat, and afterwards
offering his left hand, is prompted by the devil so to blunder in the
Lord's Prayer as to reverse the petitions and say it backward! [2]
Unaffectedly I declare I feel pain at repetitions like these, however
innocent. As historical documents they are valuable; but I am sensible
that what I can read with my eye with perfect innocence, I cannot
without inward fear and misgivings pronounce with my tongue.
Let me, however, be acquitted of presumption if I say that I cannot
agree with Mr. Malone, that our ancestors did not perceive the ludicrous
in these things, or that they paid no separate attention to the serious
and comic parts. Indeed his own statement contradicts it. For what
purpose should the Vice leap upon the Devil's back and belabour him, but
to produce this separate attention? The people laughed heartily, no
doubt. Nor can I conceive any meaning attached to the words "separate
attention," that is not fully answered by one part of an exhibition
exciting seriousness or pity, and the other raising mirth and loud
laughter. That they felt no impiety in the affair is most true. For it
is the very essence of that system of Christian polytheism, which in all
its essentials is now fully as gross in Spain, in Sicily and the south
of Italy, as it ever was in England in the days of Henry VI.--(nay, more
so; for a Wicliffe had then not appeared only, but scattered the good
seed widely,) it is an essential part, I say, of that system to draw the
mind wholly from its own inward whispers and quiet discriminations, and
to habituate the conscience to pronounce sentence in every case
according to the established verdicts of the church and the casuists. I
have looked through volume after volume of the most approved
casuists,--and still I find disquisitions whether this or that act is
right, and under what circumstances, to a minuteness that makes
reasoning ridiculous, and of a callous and unnatural immodesty, to which
none but a monk could harden himself, who has been stripped of all the
tender charities of life, yet is goaded on to make war against them by
the unsubdued hauntings of our meaner nature, even as dogs are said to
get the 'hydrophobia' from excessive thirst. I fully believe that our
ancestors laughed as heartily, as their posterity do at Grimaldi;--and
not having been told that they would be punished for laughing, they
thought it very innocent;--and if their priests had left out murder in
the catalogue of their prohibitions (as indeed they did under certain
circumstances of heresy,) the greater part of them,--the moral instincts
common to all men having been smothered and kept from
development,--would have thought as little of murder. However this may
be, the necessity of at once instructing and gratifying the people
produced the great distinction between the Greek and the English
theatres;--for to this we must attribute the origin of tragi-comedy, or
a representation of human events more lively, nearer the truth, and
permitting a larger field of moral instruction, a more ample exhibition
of the recesses of the human heart, under all the trials and
circumstances that most concern us, than was known or guessed at by
Æschylus, Sophocles, or Euripides;--and at the same time we learn to
account for, and--relatively to the author--perceive the necessity of,
the Fool or Clown or both, as the substitutes of the Vice and the Devil,
which our ancestors had been so accustomed to see in every exhibition of
the stage, that they could not feel any performance perfect without
them. Even to this day in Italy, every opera--(even Metastasio obeyed
the claim throughout)--must have six characters, generally two pairs of
cross lovers, a tyrant and a confidant, or a father and two confidants,
themselves lovers;--and when a new opera appears, it is the universal
fashion to ask--which is the tyrant, which the lover? &c.
It is the especial honour of Christianity, that in its worst and most
corrupted form it cannot wholly separate itself from morality;--whereas
the other religions in their best form (I do not include Mohammedanism,
which is only an anomalous corruption of Christianity, like
Swedenborgianism,) have no connection with it. The very impersonation of
moral evil under the name of Vice, facilitated all other impersonations;
and hence we see that the Mysteries were succeeded by Moralities, or
dialogues and plots of allegorical personages. Again, some character in
real history had become so famous, so proverbial, as Nero for instance,
that they were introduced instead of the moral quality, for which they
were so noted;--and in this manner the stage was moving on to the
absolute production of heroic and comic real characters, when the
restoration of literature, followed by the ever-blessed Reformation, let
in upon the kingdom not only new knowledge, but new motive. A useful
rivalry commenced between the metropolis on the one hand, the residence,
independently of the court and nobles, of the most active and stirring
spirits who had not been regularly educated, or who, from mischance or
otherwise, had forsaken the beaten track of preferment,--and the
universities on the other. The latter prided themselves on their closer
approximation to the ancient rules and ancient regularity--taking the
theatre of Greece, or rather its dim reflection, the rhetorical
tragedies of the poet Seneca, as a perfect ideal, without any critical
collation of the times, origin, or circumstances;--whilst, in the mean
time, the popular writers, who could not and would not abandon what they
had found to delight their countrymen sincerely, and not merely from
inquiries first put to the recollection of rules, and answered in the
affirmative, as if it had been an arithmetical sum, did yet borrow from
the scholars whatever they advantageously could, consistently with their
own peculiar means of pleasing.
And here let me pause for a moment's contemplation of this interesting
subject.
We call, for we see and feel, the swan and the dove both transcendantly
beautiful. As absurd as it would be to institute a comparison between
their separate claims to beauty from any abstract rule common to both,
without reference to the life and being of the animals themselves,--or
as if, having first seen the dove, we abstracted its outlines, gave them
a false generalization, called them the principles or ideal of
bird-beauty, and then proceeded to criticise the swan or the eagle;--not
less absurd is it to pass judgment on the works of a poet on the mere
ground that they have been called by the same class-name with the works
of other poets in other times and circumstances, or on any ground,
indeed, save that of their inappropriateness to their own end and being,
their want of significance, as symbols or physiognomy.
O! few have there been among critics, who have followed with the eye of
the imagination the imperishable yet ever wandering spirit of poetry
through its various metempsychoses, and consequent metamorphoses;--or
who have rejoiced in the light of clear perception at beholding with
each new birth, with each rare 'avatar', the human race frame to itself
a new body, by assimilating materials of nourishment out of its new
circumstances, and work for itself new organs of power appropriate to
the new sphere of its motion and activity!
I have before spoken of the Romance, or the language formed out of the
decayed Roman and the Northern tongues; and comparing it with the Latin,
we find it less perfect in simplicity and relation--the privileges of a
language formed by the mere attraction of homogeneous parts;--but yet
more rich, more expressive and various, as one formed by more obscure
affinities out of a chaos of apparently heterogeneous atoms. As more
than a metaphor,--as an analogy of this, I have named the true genuine
modern poetry the romantic; and the works of Shakspeare are romantic
poetry revealing itself in the drama. If the tragedies of Sophocles are
in the strict sense of the word tragedies, and the comedies of
Aristophanes comedies, we must emancipate ourselves from a false
association arising from misapplied names, and find a new word for the
plays of Shakspeare. For they are, in the ancient sense, neither
tragedies nor comedies, nor both in one,--but a different 'genus',
diverse in kind, and not merely different in degree. They may be called
romantic dramas, or dramatic romances.
A deviation from the simple forms and unities of the ancient stage is an
essential principle, and, of course, an appropriate excellence, of the
romantic drama. For these unities were to a great extent the natural
form of that which in its elements was homogeneous, and the
representation of which was addressed pre-eminently to the outward
senses;--and though the fable, the language and the characters appealed
to the reason rather than to the mere understanding, inasmuch as they
supposed an ideal state rather than referred to an existing
reality,--yet it was a reason which was obliged to accommodate itself to
the senses, and so far became a sort of more elevated understanding. On
the other hand, the romantic poetry--the Shakspearian drama--appealed to
the imagination rather than to the senses, and to the reason as
contemplating our inward nature, and the workings of the passions in
their most retired recesses. But the reason, as reason, is independent
of time and space; it has nothing to do with them; and hence the
certainties of reason have been called eternal truths. As for
example--the endless properties of the circle:--what connection have
they with this or that age, with this or that country?--The reason is
aloof from time and space;--the imagination is an arbitrary controller
over both;--and if only the poet have such power of exciting our
internal emotions as to make us present to the scene in imagination
chiefly, he acquires the right and privilege of using time and space as
they exist in imagination, and obedient only to the laws by which the
imagination itself acts. These laws it will be my object and aim to
point out as the examples occur, which illustrate them. But here let me
remark what can never be too often reflected on by all who would
intelligently study the works either of the Athenian dramatists, or of
Shakspeare, that the very essence of the former consists in the sternest
separation of the diverse in kind and the disparate in the degree,
whilst the latter delights in interlacing by a rainbow-like transfusion
of hues the one with the other.
And here it will be necessary to say a few words on the stage and on
stage-illusion.
A theatre, in the widest sense of the word, is the general term for all
places of amusement through the ear or eye, in which men assemble in
order to be amused by some entertainment presented to all at the same
time and in common. Thus, an old Puritan divine says:--"Those who attend
public worship and sermons only to amuse themselves, make a theatre of
the church, and turn God's house into the devil's. 'Theatra ædes
diabololatricæ'." The most important and dignified species of this genus
is, doubtless, the stage, ('res theatralis histrionica'), which, in
addition to the generic definition above given, may be characterized in
its idea, or according to what it does, or ought to, aim at, as a
combination of several or of all the fine arts in an harmonious whole,
having a distinct end of its own, to which the peculiar end of each of
the component arts, taken separately, is made subordinate and
subservient,--that, namely, of imitating reality--whether external
things, actions, or passions--under a semblance of reality. Thus, Claude
imitates a landscape at sunset, but only as a picture; while a
forest-scene is not presented to the spectators as a picture, but as a
forest; and though, in the full sense of the word, we are no more
deceived by the one than by the other, yet are our feelings very
differently affected; and the pleasure derived from the one is not
composed of the same elements as that afforded by the other, even on the
supposition that the 'quantum' of both were equal. In the former, a
picture, it is a condition of all genuine delight that we should not be
deceived; in the latter, stage-scenery, (inasmuch as its principal end
is not in or for itself, as is the case in a picture, but to be an
assistance and means to an end out of itself) its very purpose is to
produce as much illusion as its nature permits. These, and all other
stage presentations, are to produce a sort of temporary half-faith,
which the spectator encourages in himself and supports by a voluntary
contribution on his own part, because he knows that it is at all times
in his power to see the thing as it really is. I have often observed
that little children are actually deceived by stage-scenery, never by
pictures; though even these produce an effect on their impressible
minds, which they do not on the minds of adults. The child, if strongly
impressed, does not indeed positively think the picture to be the
reality; but yet he does not think the contrary. As Sir George Beaumont
was shewing me a very fine engraving from Rubens, representing a storm
at sea without any vessel or boat introduced, my litte boy, then about
five years old, came dancing and singing into the room, and all at once
(if I may so say) 'tumbled in' upon the print. He instantly started,
stood silent and motionless, with the strongest expression, first of
wonder and then of grief in his eyes and countenance, and at length
said, "And where is the ship? But that is sunk, and the men are all
drowned!" still keeping his eyes fixed on the print. Now what pictures
are to little children, stage-illusion is to men, provided they retain
any part of the child's sensibility; except, that in the latter
instance, the suspension of the act of comparison, which permits this
sort of negative belief, is somewhat more assisted by the will, than in
that of a child respecting a picture.
The true stage-illusion in this and in all other things consists--not in
the mind's judging it to be a forest, but, in its remission of the
judgment that it is not a forest. And this subject of stage-illusion is
so important, and so many practical errors and false criticisms may
arise, and indeed have arisen, either from reasoning on it as actual
delusion, (the strange notion, on which the French critics built up
their theory, and on which the French poets justify the construction of
their tragedies), or from denying it altogether, (which seems the end of
Dr. Johnson's reasoning, and which, as extremes meet, would lead to the
very same consequences, by excluding whatever would not be judged
probable by us in our coolest state of feeling, with all our faculties
in even balance), that these few remarks will, I hope, be pardoned, if
they should serve either to explain or to illustrate the point. For not
only are we never absolutely deluded--or any thing like it, but the
attempt to cause the highest delusion possible to beings in their senses
sitting in a theatre, is a gross fault, incident only to low minds,
which, feeling that they cannot affect the heart or head permanently,
endeavour to call forth the momentary affections. There ought never to
be more pain than is compatible with co-existing pleasure, and to be
amply repaid by thought.
Shakspeare found the infant stage demanding an intermixture of ludicrous
character as imperiously as that of Greece did the chorus, and high
language accordant. And there are many advantages in this;--a greater
assimilation to nature, a greater scope of power, more truths, and more
feelings;-the effects of contrast, as in Lear and the Fool; and
especially this, that the true language of passion becomes sufficiently
elevated by your having previously heard, in the same piece, the lighter
conversation of men under no strong emotion. The very nakedness of the
stage, too, was advantageous,--for the drama thence became something
between recitation and a re-presentation; and the absence or paucity of
scenes allowed a freedom from the laws of unity of place and unity of
time, the observance of which must either confine the drama to as few
subjects as may be counted on the fingers, or involve gross
improbabilities, far more striking than the violation would have caused.
Thence, also, was precluded the danger of a false ideal,--of aiming at
more than what is possible on the whole. What play of the ancients, with
reference to their ideal, does not hold out more glaring absurdities
than any in Shakspeare? On the Greek plan a man could more easily be a
poet than a dramatist; upon our plan more easily a dramatist than a
poet.
[Footnote 1: A. D. 363. But I believe the prevailing opinion amongst
scholars now is, that the [Greek: Christos Paschon] is not genuine. Ed.]
[Footnote 2: See vol. i. p. 76, where this is told more at length and
attributed to Hans Sachs. Ed.]
THE DRAMA GENERALLY, AND PUBLIC TASTE.
Unaccustomed to address such an audience, and having lost by a long
interval of confinement the advantages of my former short schooling, I
had miscalculated in my last Lecture the proportion of my matter to my
time, and by bad economy and unskilful management, the several heads of
my discourse failed in making the entire performance correspond with the
promise publicly circulated in the weekly annunciation of the subjects,
to be treated. It would indeed have been wiser in me, and perhaps better
on the whole, if I had caused my Lectures to be announced only as
continuations of the main subject. But if I be, as perforce I must be,
gratified by the recollection of whatever has appeared to give you
pleasure, I am conscious of something better, though less flattering, a
sense of unfeigned gratitude for your forbearance with my defects. Like
affectionate guardians, you see without disgust the awkwardness, and
witness with sympathy the growing pains, of a youthful endeavour, and
look forward with a hope, which is its own reward, to the contingent
results of practice--to its intellectual maturity.
In my last address I defined poetry to be the art, or whatever better
term our language may afford, of representing external nature and human
thoughts, both relatively to human affections, so as to cause the
production of as great immediate pleasure in each part, as is compatible
with the largest possible sum of pleasure on the whole. Now this
definition applies equally to painting and music as to poetry; and in
truth the term poetry is alike applicable to all three. The vehicle
alone constitutes the difference; and the term 'poetry' is rightly
applied by eminence to measured words, only because the sphere of their
action is far wider, the power of giving permanence to them much more
certain, and incomparably greater the facility, by which men, not
defective by nature or disease, may be enabled to derive habitual
pleasure and instruction from them. On my mentioning these
considerations to a painter of great genius, who had been, from a most
honourable enthusiasm, extolling his own art, he was so struck with
their truth, that he exclaimed, "I want no other arguments;--poetry,
that is, verbal poetry, must be the greatest; all that proves final
causes in the world, proves this; it would be shocking to think
otherwise!"--And in truth, deeply, O! far more than words can express,
as I venerate the Last Judgment and the Prophets of Michel Angelo
Buonaroti,--yet the very pain which I repeatedly felt as I lost myself
in gazing upon them, the painful consideration that their having been
painted in 'fresco' was the sole cause that they had not been
abandoned to all the accidents of a dangerous transportation to a
distant capital, and that the same caprice, which made the Neapolitan
soldiery destroy all the exquisite master-pieces on the walls of the
church of the 'Trinitado Monte', after the retreat of their
antagonist barbarians, might as easily have made vanish the rooms and
open gallery of Raffael, and the yet more unapproachable wonders of the
sublime Florentine in the Sixtine Chapel, forced upon my mind the
reflection; How grateful the human race ought to be that the works of
Euclid, Newton, Plato, Milton, Shakspeare, are not subjected to similar
contingencies,--that they and their fellows, and the great, though
inferior, peerage of undying intellect, are secured;--secured even from
a second irruption of Goths and Vandals, in addition to many other
safeguards, by the vast empire of English language, laws, and religion
founded in America, through the overflow of the power and the virtue of
my country;-and that now the great and certain works of genuine fame can
only cease to act for mankind, when men themselves cease to be men, or
when the planet on which they exist, shall have altered its relations,
or have ceased to be. Lord Bacon, in the language of the gods, if I may
use an Homeric phrase, has expressed a similar thought:--
Lastly, leaving the vulgar arguments, that by learning man excelleth man
in that wherein man excelleth beasts; that by learning man ascendeth to
the heavens and their motions, where in body he cannot come, and the
like; let us conclude with the dignity and excellency of knowledge and
learning in that whereunto man's nature doth most aspire, which is,
immortality or continuance: for to this tendeth generation, and raising
of houses and families; to this tend buildings, foundations, and
monuments; to this tendeth the desire of memory, fame, and celebration,
and in effect the strength of all other human desires. We see then how
far the monuments of wit and learning are more durable than the
monuments of power, or of the hands. For have not the verses of Homer
continued twenty-five hundred years, or more, without the loss of a
syllable or letter; during which time infinite palaces, temples,
castles, cities, have been decayed and demolished? It is not possible to
have the true pictures or statues of Cyrus, Alexander, Caesar; no, nor
of the kings or great personages of much later years; for the originals
cannot last, and the copies cannot but lose of the life and truth. But
the images of men's wits and knowledges remain in books, exempted from
the wrong of time, and capable of perpetual renovation. Neither are they
fitly to be called images, because they generate still, and cast their
seeds in the minds of others, provoking and causing infinite actions and
opinions in succeeding ages: so that, if the invention of the ship was
thought so noble, which carrieth riches and commodities from place to
place, and consociateth the most remote regions in participation of
their fruits; how much more are letters to be magnified, which, as ships
pass through the vast seas of time, and make ages so distant to
participate of the wisdom, illuminations, and inventions, the one of the
other? [1]
But let us now consider what the drama should be. And first, it is not a
copy, but an imitation, of nature. This is the universal principle of
the fine arts. In all well laid out grounds what delight do we feel from
that balance and antithesis of feelings and thoughts! How natural! we
say;--but the very wonder that caused the exclamation, implies that we
perceived art at the same moment. We catch the hint from nature itself.
Whenever in mountains or cataracts we discover a likeness to any thing
artificial which yet we know is not artificial--what pleasure! And so
it is in appearances known to be artificial, which appear to be natural.
This applies in due degrees, regulated by steady good sense, from a
clump of trees to the Paradise Lost or Othello. It would be easy to
apply it to painting and even, though with greater abstraction of
thought, and by more subtle yet equally just analogies--to music. But
this belongs to others;--suffice it that one great principle is common
to all the fine arts,--a principle which probably is the condition of
all consciousness, without which we should feel and imagine only by
discontinuous moments, and be plants or brute animals instead of men;--I
mean that ever-varying balance, or balancing, of images, notions, or
feelings, conceived as in opposition to each other;--in short, the
perception of identity and contrariety; the least degree of which
constitutes likeness, the greatest absolute difference; but the infinite
gradations between these two form all the play and all the interest of
our intellectual and moral being, till it leads us to a feeling and an
object more awful than it seems to me compatible with even the present
subject to utter aloud, though I am most desirous to suggest it. For
there alone are all things at once different and the same; there alone,
as the principle of all things, does distinction exist unaided by
division; there are will and reason, succession of time and unmoving
eternity, infinite change and ineffable rest!--
Return Alpheus! the dread voice is past
Which shrunk thy streams!--Thou honour'd flood,
Smooth-'flowing' Avon, crown'd with vocal reeds,
That strain I heard, was of a higher mood!--
But now my 'voice' proceeds.
We may divide a dramatic poet's characteristics before we enter into the
component merits of any one work, and with reference only to those
things which are to be the materials of all, into language, passion, and
character; always bearing in mind that these must act and react on each
other,--the language inspired by the passion, and the language and the
passion modified and differenced by the character. To the production of
the highest excellencies in these three, there are requisite in the mind
of the author;--good sense; talent; sensibility; imagination;--and to
the perfection of a work we should add two faculties of lesser
importance, yet necessary for the ornaments and foliage of the column
and the roof--fancy and a quick sense of beauty.
As to language;--it cannot be supposed that the poet should make his
characters say all that they would, or that, his whole drama considered,
each scene, or paragraph should be such as, on cool examination, we can
conceive it likely that men in such situations would say, in that order,
or with that perfection. And yet, according to my feelings, it is a very
inferior kind of poetry, in which, as in the French tragedies, men are
made to talk in a style which few indeed even of the wittiest can be
supposed to converse in, and which both is, and on a moment's reflection
appears to be, the natural produce of the hot-bed of vanity, namely, the
closet of an author, who is actuated originally by a desire to excite
surprise and wonderment at his own superiority to other men,--instead of
having felt so deeply on certain subjects, or in consequence of certain
imaginations, as to make it almost a necessity of his nature to seek for
sympathy,--no doubt, with that honorable desire of permanent action
which distinguishes genius.--Where then is the difference?--In this that
each part should be proportionate, though the whole may be perhaps
impossible. At all events, it should be compatible with sound sense and
logic in the mind of the poet himself.
It is to be lamented that we judge of books by books, instead of
referring what we read to our own experience. One great use of books is
to make their contents a motive for observation. The German tragedies
have in some respects been justly ridiculed. In them the dramatist often
becomes a novelist in his directions to the actors, and thus degrades
tragedy into pantomime. Yet still the consciousness of the poet's mind
must be diffused over that of the reader or spectator; but he himself,
according to his genius, elevates us, and by being always in keeping,
prevents us from perceiving any strangeness, though we feel great
exultation. Many different kinds of style may be admirable, both in
different men, and in different parts of the same poem.
See the different language which strong feelings may justify in Shylock,
and learn from Shakspeare's conduct of that character the terrible force
of very plain and calm diction, when known to proceed from a resolved
and impassioned man.
It is especially with reference to the drama, and its characteristics in
any given nation, or at any particular period, that the dependence of
genius on the public taste becomes a matter of the deepest importance. I
do not mean that taste which springs merely from caprice or fashionable
imitation, and which, in fact, genius can, and by degrees will, create
for itself; but that which arises out of wide-grasping and
heart-enrooted causes, which is epidemic, and in the very air that all
breathe. This it is which kills, or withers, or corrupts. Socrates,
indeed, might walk arm and arm with Hygeia, whilst pestilence, with a
thousand furies running to and fro, and clashing against each other in a
complexity and agglomeration of horrors, was shooting her darts of fire
and venom all around him. Even such was Milton; yea, and such, in spite
of all that has been babbled by his critics in pretended excuse for his
damning, because for them too profound, excellencies,--such was
Shakspeare. But alas! the exceptions prove the rule. For who will dare
to force his way out of the crowd,--not of the mere vulgar,--but of the
vain and banded aristocracy of intellect, and presume to join the almost
supernatural beings that stand by themselves aloof?
Of this diseased epidemic influence there are two forms especially
preclusive of tragic worth. The first is the necessary growth of a sense
and love of the ludicrous, and a morbid sensibility of the assimilative
power,--an inflammation produced by cold and weakness,--which in the
boldest bursts of passion will lie in wait for a jeer at any phrase,
that may have an accidental coincidence in the mere words with something
base or trivial. For instance,--to express woods, not on a plain, but
clothing a hill, which overlooks a valley, or dell, or river, or the
sea,--the trees rising one above another, as the spectators in an
ancient theatre,--I know no other word in our language, (bookish and
pedantic terms out of the question,) but 'hanging' woods, the 'sylvæ
superimpendentes' of Catullus [2]; yet let some wit call out in a slang
tone,--"the gallows!" and a peal of laughter would damn the play. Hence
it is that so many dull pieces have had a decent run, only because
nothing unusual above, or absurd below, mediocrity furnished an
occasion,--a spark for the explosive materials collected behind the
orchestra. But it would take a volume of no ordinary size, however
laconically the sense were expressed, if it were meant to instance the
effects, and unfold all the causes, of this disposition upon the moral,
intellectual, and even physical character of a people, with its
influences on domestic life and individual deportment. A good document
upon this subject would be the history of Paris society and of French,
that is, Parisian, literature from the commencement of the latter half
of the reign of Louis XIV. to that of Buonaparte, compared with the
preceding philosophy and poetry even of Frenchmen themselves.
The second form, or more properly, perhaps, another distinct cause, of
this diseased disposition is matter of exultation to the philanthropist
and philosopher, and of regret to the poet, the painter, and the
statuary alone, and to them only as poets, painters, and
statuaries;--namely, the security, the comparative equability, and ever
increasing sameness of human life. Men are now so seldom thrown into
wild circumstances, and violences of excitement, that the language of
such states, the laws of association of feeling with thought, the starts
and strange far-flights of the assimilative power on the slightest and
least obvious likeness presented by thoughts, words, or objects,--these
are all judged of by authority, not by actual experience,--by what men
have been accustomed to regard as symbols of these states, and not the
natural symbols, or self-manifestations of them.
Even so it is in the language of man, and in that of nature. The sound
'sun', or the figures 's', 'u', 'n', are purely arbitrary modes of
recalling the object, and for visual mere objects they are not only
sufficient, but have infinite advantages from their very nothingness
'per se'. But the language of nature is a subordinate 'Logos', that was
in the beginning, and was with the thing it represented, and was the
thing it represented.
Now the language of Shakspeare, in his Lear for instance, is a something
intermediate between these two; or rather it is the former blended with
the latter,--the arbitrary, not merely recalling the cold notion of the
thing, but expressing the reality of it, and, as arbitrary language is
an heir-loom of the human race, being itself a part of that which it
manifests. What shall I deduce from the preceding positions? Even
this,--the appropriate, the never to be too much valued advantage of the
theatre, if only the actors were what we know they have been,--a
delightful, yet most effectual, remedy for this dead palsy of the public
mind. What would appear mad or ludicrous in a book, when presented to
the senses under the form of reality, and with the truth of nature,
supplies a species of actual experience. This is indeed the special
privilege of a great actor over a great poet. No part was ever played in
perfection, but nature justified herself in the hearts of all her
children, in what state soever they were, short of absolute moral
exhaustion, or downright stupidity. There is no time given to ask
questions or to pass judgments; we are taken by storm, and, though in
the histrionic art many a clumsy counterfeit, by caricature of one or
two features, may gain applause as a fine likeness, yet never was the
very thing rejected as a counterfeit. O! when I think of the
inexhaustible mine of virgin treasure in our Shakspeare, that I have
been almost daily reading him since I was ten years old,--that the
thirty intervening years have been unintermittingly and not fruitlessly
employed in the study of the Greek, Latin, English, Italian, Spanish and
German 'belle lettrists', and the last fifteen years in addition, far
more intensely in the analysis of the laws of life and reason as they
exist in man,--and that upon every step I have made forward in taste, in
acquisition of facts from history or my own observation, and in
knowledge of the different laws of being and their apparent exceptions,
from accidental collision of disturbing forces,--that at every new
accession of information, after every successful exercise of meditation,
and every fresh presentation of experience, I have unfailingly
discovered a proportionate increase of wisdom and intuition in
Shakspeare;--when I know this, and know too, that by a conceivable and
possible, though hardly to be expected, arrangement of the British
theatres, not all, indeed, but a large, a very large, proportion of this
indefinite all--(round which no comprehension has yet drawn the line of
circumscription, so as to say to itself, 'I have seen the whole')--might
be sent into the heads and hearts--into the very souls of the mass of
mankind, to whom, except by this living comment and interpretation, it
must remain for ever a sealed volume, a deep well without a wheel or a
windlass;--it seems to me a pardonable enthusiasm to steal away from
sober likelihood, and share in so rich a feast in the faery world of
possibility! Yet even in the grave cheerfulness of a circumspect hope,
much, very much, might be done; enough, assuredly, to furnish a kind and
strenuous nature with ample motives for the attempt to effect what may
be effected.
[Footnote: 'Advancement of Learning, book 1. 'sub fine.']
[Footnote 2: Confestim Peneos adest, viridantia Tempe, Tempe, quae
cingunt sylvae superimpendentes. 'Epith. Pel. et. Th.' 286.]
SHAKSPEARE, A POET GENERALLY.
Clothed in radiant armour, and authorized by titles sure and manifold,
as a poet, Shakspeare came forward to demand the throne of fame, as the
dramatic poet of England. His excellencies compelled even his
contemporaries to seat him on that throne, although there were giants in
those days contending for the same honor. Hereafter I would fain
endeavour to make out the title of the English drama as created by, and
existing in, Shakspeare, and its right to the supremacy of dramatic
excellence in general. But he had shown himself a poet, previously to
his appearance as a dramatic poet; and had no Lear, no Othello, no Henry
IV., no Twelfth Night ever appeared, we must have admitted that
Shakspeare possessed the chief, if not every, requisite of a poet,--deep
feeling and exquisite sense of beauty, both as exhibited to the eye in
the combinations of form, and to the ear in sweet and appropriate
melody; that these feelings were under the command of his own will; that
in his very first productions he projected his mind out of his own
particular being, and felt, and made others feel, on subjects no way
connected with himself, except by force of contemplation and that
sublime faculty by which a great mind becomes that, on which it
meditates. To this must be added that affectionate love of nature and
natural objects, without which no man could have observed so steadily,
or painted so truly and passionately, the very minutest beauties of the
external world:--
When them hast on foot the purblind hare,
Mark the poor wretch; to overshoot his troubles,
How he outruns the wind, and with what care,
He cranks and crosses with a thousand doubles;
The many musits through the which he goes
Are like a labyrinth to amaze his foes.
Sometimes he runs among the flock of sheep,
To make the cunning hounds mistake their smell;
And sometime where earth-delving conies keep,
To stop the loud pursuers in their yell;
And sometime sorteth with a herd of deer:
Danger deviseth shifts, wit waits on fear.
For there his smell with others' being mingled,
The hot scent-snuffing hounds are driven to doubt,
Ceasing their clamorous cry, till they have singled,
With much ado, the cold fault cleanly out,
Then do they spend their mouths; echo replies,
As if another chase were in the skies.
By this poor Wat far off, upon a hill,
Stands on his hinder legs with listening ear,
To hearken if his foes pursue him still:
Anon their loud alarums he doth hear,
And now his grief may be compared well
To one sore-sick, that hears the passing bell.
Then shalt thou see the dew-bedabbled wretch
Turn, and return, indenting with the way:
Each envious briar his weary legs doth scratch.
Each shadow makes him stop, each murmur stay.
For misery is trodden on by many,
And being low, never relieved by any.
'Venus and Adonis'.
And the preceding description:--
But, lo! from forth a copse that neighbours by,
A breeding jennet, lusty, young and proud, &c.
is much more admirable, but in parts less fitted for quotation.
Moreover Shakspeare had shown that he possessed fancy, considered as the
faculty of bringing together images dissimilar in the main by some one
point or more of likeness, as in such a passage as this:--
Full gently now she takes him by the hand,
A lily prisoned in a jail of snow,
Or ivory in an alabaster band:
So white a friend ingirts so white a foe!
'Ib.'
And still mounting the intellectual ladder, he had as unequivocally
proved the indwelling in his mind of imagination, or the power by which
one image or feeling is made to modify many others, and by a sort of
fusion to force many into one;--that which afterwards showed itself in
such might and energy in Lear, where the deep anguish of a father
spreads the feeling of ingratitude and cruelty over the very elements of
heaven;--and which, combining many circumstances into one moment of
consciousness, tends to produce that ultimate end of all human thought
and human feeling, unity, and thereby the reduction of the spirit to its
principle and fountain, who is alone truly one. Various are the workings
of this the greatest faculty of the human mind, both passionate and
tranquil. In its tranquil and purely pleasurable operation, it acts
chiefly by creating out of many things, as they would have appeared in
the description of an ordinary mind, detailed in unimpassioned
succession, a oneness, even as nature, the greatest of poets, acts upon
us, when we open our eyes upon an extended prospect. Thus the flight of
Adonis in the dusk of the evening:--
Look! how a bright star shooteth from the sky;
So glides he in the night from Venus' eye!
How many images and feelings are here brought together without effort
and without discord, in the beauty of Adonis, the rapidity of his
flight, the yearning, yet hopelessness, of the enamored gazer, while a
shadowy ideal character is thrown over the whole! Or this power acts by
impressing the stamp of humanity, and of human feelings, on inanimate or
mere natural objects:--
Lo! here the gentle lark, weary of rest,
From his moist cabinet mounts up on high,
And wakes the morning, from whose silver breast
The sun ariseth in his majesty,
Who doth the world so gloriously behold,
The cedar-tops and hills seem burnish'd gold.
Or again, it acts by so carrying on the eye of the reader as to make him
almost lose the consciousness of words,--to make him see every thing
flashed, as Wordsworth has grandly and appropriately said,--
_Flashed_ upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude;--
and this without exciting any painful or laborious attention, without
any anatomy of description, (a fault not uncommon in descriptive
poetry)-but with the sweetness and easy movement of nature. This energy
is an absolute essential of poetry, and of itself would constitute a
poet, though not one of the highest class;--it is, however, a most
hopeful symptom, and the Venus and Adonis is one continued specimen of
it.
In this beautiful poem there is an endless activity of thought in all
the possible associations of thought with thought, thought with feeling,
or with words, of feelings with feelings, and of words with words.
Even as the sun, with purple-colour'd face,
Had ta'en his last leave of the weeping morn,
Rose-cheek'd Adonis hied him to the chase:
Hunting he loved, but love he laughed to scorn.
Sick-thoughted Venus makes amain unto him,
And like a bold-faced suitor 'gins to woo him.
Remark the humanizing imagery and circumstances of the first two lines,
and the activity of thought in the play of words in the fourth line. The
whole stanza presents at once the time, the appearance of the morning,
and the two persons distinctly characterized, and in six simple verses
puts the reader in possession of the whole argument of the poem.
Over one arm the lusty courser's rein,
Under the other was the tender boy,
Who blush'd and pouted in a dull disdain,
With leaden appetite, unapt to toy,
She red and hot, as coals of glowing fire,
He red for shame, but frosty to desire:--
This stanza and the two following afford good instances of that poetic
power, which I mentioned above, of making every thing present to the
imagination--both the forms, and the passions which modify those forms,
either actually, as in the representations of love, or anger, or other
human affections; or imaginatively, by the different manner in which
inanimate objects, or objects unimpassioned themselves, are caused to be
seen by the mind in moments of strong excitement, and according to the
kind of the excitement,--whether of jealousy, or rage, or love, in the
only appropriate sense of the word, or of the lower impulses of our
nature, or finally of the poetic feeling itself. It is, perhaps, chiefly
in the power of producing and reproducing the latter that the poet
stands distinct.
The subject of the Venus and Adonis is unpleasing; but the poem itself
is for that very reason the more illustrative of Shakspeare. There are
men who can write passages of deepest pathos and even sublimity on
circumstances personal to themselves and stimulative of their own
passions; but they are not, therefore, on this account poets. Read that
magnificent burst of woman's patriotism and exultation, Deborah's song
of victory; it is glorious, but nature is the poet there. It is quite
another matter to become all things and yet remain the same,--to make
the changeful god be felt in the river, the lion and the flame;--this it
is, that is the true imagination. Shakspeare writes in this poem, as if
he were of another planet, charming you to gaze on the movements of
Venus and Adonis, as you would on the twinkling dances of two vernal
butterflies.
Finally, in this poem and the Rape of Lucrece, Shakspeare gave ample
proof of his possession of a most profound, energetic, and philosophical
mind, without which he might have pleased, but could not have been a
great dramatic poet. Chance and the necessity of his genius combined to
lead him to the drama his proper province; in his conquest of which we
should consider both the difficulties which opposed him, and the
advantages by which he was assisted.
SHAKSPEARE'S JUDGMENT EQUAL TO HIS GENIUS.
Thus then Shakspeare appears, from his Venus and Adonis and Rape of
Lucrece alone, apart from all his great works, to have possessed all the
conditions of the true poet. Let me now proceed to destroy, as far as
may be in my power, the popular notion that he was a great dramatist by
mere instinct, that he grew immortal in his own despite, and sank below
men of second or third-rate power, when he attempted aught beside the
drama--even as bees construct their cells and manufacture their honey
to admirable perfection; but would in vain attempt to build a nest. Now
this mode of reconciling a compelled sense of inferiority with a feeling
of pride, began in a few pedants, who having read that Sophocles was the
great model of tragedy, and Aristotle the infallible dictator of its
rules, and finding that the Lear, Hamlet, Othello and other
master-pieces were neither in imitation of Sophocles, nor in obedience
to Aristotle,--and not having (with one or two exceptions) the courage
to affirm, that the delight which their country received from generation
to generation, in defiance of the alterations of circumstances and
habits, was wholly groundless,--took upon them, as a happy medium and
refuge, to talk of Shakspeare as a sort of beautiful 'lusus naturæ', a
delightful monster,--wild, indeed, and without taste or judgment, but
like the inspired idiots so much venerated in the East, uttering, amid
the strangest follies, the sublimest truths. In nine places out of ten
in which I find his awful name mentioned, it is with some epithet of
'wild', 'irregular,' 'pure child of nature,' &c. If all this be true, we
must submit to it; though to a thinking mind it cannot but be painful to
find any excellence, merely human, thrown out of all human analogy, and
thereby leaving us neither rules for imitation, nor motives to
imitate;--but if false, it is a dangerous falsehood;--for it affords a
refuge to secret self-conceit,--enables a vain man at once to escape his
reader's indignation by general swoln panegyrics, and merely by his
'ipse dixit' to treat, as contemptible, what he has not intellect enough
to comprehend, or soul to feel, without assigning any reason, or
referring his opinion to any demonstrative principle;--thus leaving
Shakspeare as a sort of grand Lama, adored indeed, arid his very
excrements prized as relics, but with no authority or real influence. I
grieve that every late voluminous edition of his works would enable me
to substantiate the present charge with a variety of facts one tenth of
which would of themselves exhaust the time allotted to me. Every critic,
who has or has not made a collection of black letter books--in itself a
useful and respectable amusement,--puts on the seven-league boots of
self-opinion, and strides at once from an illustrator into a supreme
judge, and blind and deaf, fills his three-ounce phial at the waters of
Niagara; and determines positively the greatness of the cataract to be
neither more nor less than his three-ounce phial has been able to
receive.
I think this a very serious subject. It is my earnest desire--my
passionate endeavour,--to enforce at various times and by various
arguments and instances the close and reciprocal connexion of just taste
with pure morality. Without that acquaintance with the heart of man, or
that docility and childlike gladness to be made acquainted with it,
which those only can have, who dare look at their own hearts--and that
with a steadiness which religion only has the power of reconciling with
sincere humility;--without this, and the modesty produced by it, I am
deeply convinced that no man, however wide his erudition, however
patient his antiquarian researches, can possibly understand, or be
worthy of understanding, the writings of Shakspeare.
Assuredly that criticism of Shakspeare will alone be genial which is
reverential. The Englishman, who without reverence, a proud and
affectionate reverence, can utter the name of William Shakspeare, stands
disqualified for the office of critic. He wants one at least of the very
senses, the language of which he is to employ, and will discourse at
best, but as a blind man, while the whole harmonious creation of light
and shade with all its subtle interchange of deepening and dissolving
colours rises in silence to the silent 'fiat' of the uprising Apollo.
However inferior in ability I may be to some who have followed me, I own
I am proud that I was the first in time who publicly demonstrated to the
full extent of the position, that the supposed irregularity and
extravagancies of Shakspeare were the mere dreams of a pedantry that
arraigned the eagle because it had not the dimensions of the swan. In
all the successive courses of lectures delivered by me, since my first
attempt at the Royal Institution, it has been, and it still remains, my
object, to prove that in all points from the most important to the most
minute, the judgment of Shakspeare is commensurate with his
genius,--nay, that his genius reveals itself in his judgment, as in its
most exalted form. And the more gladly do I recur to this subject from
the clear conviction, that to judge aright, and with distinct
consciousness of the grounds of our judgment, concerning the works of
Shakspeare, implies the power and the means of judging rightly of all
other works of intellect, those of abstract science alone excepted.
It is a painful truth that not only individuals, but even whole nations,
are ofttimes so enslaved to the habits of their education and immediate
circumstances, as not to judge disinterestedly even on those subjects,
the very pleasure arising from which consists in its disinterestedness,
namely, on subjects of taste and polite literature. Instead of deciding
concerning their own modes and customs by any rule of reason, nothing
appears rational, becoming, or beautiful to them, but what coincides
with the peculiarities of their education. In this narrow circle,
individuals may attain to exquisite discrimination, as the French
critics have done in their own literature; but a true critic can no more
be such without placing himself on some central point, from which he may
command the whole, that is, some general rule, which, founded in reason,
or the faculties common to all men, must therefore apply to each,--than
an astronomer can explain the movements of the solar system without
taking his stand in the sun. And let me remark, that this will not tend
to produce despotism, but, on the contrary, true tolerance, in the
critic. He will, indeed, require, as the spirit and substance of a work,
something true in human nature itself, and independent of all
circumstances; but in the mode of applying it, he will estimate genius
and judgment according to the felicity with which the imperishable soul
of intellect shall have adapted itself to the age, the place, and the
existing manners. The error he will expose, lies in reversing this, and
holding up the mere circumstances as perpetual to the utter neglect of
the power which can alone animate them. For art cannot exist without, or
apart from, nature; and what has man of his own to give to his
fellow-man, but his own thoughts and feelings, and his observations so
far as they are modified by his own thoughts or feelings?
Let me, then, once more submit this question to minds emancipated alike
from national, or party, or sectarian prejudice:--Are the plays of
Shakspeare works of rude uncultivated genius, in which the splendour of
the parts compensates, if aught can compensate, for the barbarous
shapelessness and irregularity of the whole?--Or is the form equally
admirable with the matter, and the judgment of the great poet, not less
deserving our wonder than his genius?--Or, again, to repeat the question
in other words:--Is Shakspeare a great dramatic poet on account only of
those beauties and excellencies which he possesses in common with the
ancients, but with diminished claims to our love and honour to the full
extent of his differences from them?--Or are these very differences
additional proofs of poetic wisdom, at once results and symbols of
living power as contrasted with lifeless mechanism--of free and rival
originality as contradistinguished from servile imitation, or, more
accurately, a blind copying of effects, instead of a true imitation of
the essential principles?--Imagine not that I am about to oppose genius
to rules. No! the comparative value of these rules is the very cause to
be tried. The spirit of poetry, like all other living powers, must of
necessity circumscribe itself by rules, were it only to unite power with
beauty. It must embody in order to reveal itself; but a living body is
of necessity an organized one; and what is organization but the
connection of parts in and for a whole, so that each part is at once end
and means?--This is no discovery of criticism;--it is a necessity of the
human mind; and all nations have felt and obeyed it, in the invention of
metre, and measured sounds, as the vehicle and 'involucrum' of
poetry--itself a fellow-growth from the same life,--even as the bark is
to the tree!
No work of true genius dares want its appropriate form, neither indeed
is there any danger of this. As it must not, so genius cannot, be
lawless; for it is even this that constitutes it genius--the power of
acting creatively under laws of its own origination. How then comes it
that not only single 'Zoili', but whole nations have combined in
unhesitating condemnation of our great dramatist, as a sort of African
nature, rich in beautiful monsters,--as a wild heath where islands of
fertility look the greener from the surrounding waste, where the
loveliest plants now shine out among unsightly weeds, and now are choked
by their parasitic growth, so intertwined that we cannot disentangle the
weed without snapping the flower?--In this statement. I have had no
reference to the vulgar abuse of Voltaire [1], save as far as his
charges are coincident with the decisions of Shakspeare's own
commentators and (so they would tell you) almost idolatrous admirers.
The true ground of the mistake lies in the confounding mechanical
regularity with organic form. The form is mechanic, when on any given
material we impress a pre-determined form, not necessarily arising out
of the properties of the material;--as when to a mass of wet clay we
give whatever shape we wish it to retain when hardened. The organic
form, on the other hand, is innate; it shapes, as it developes, itself
from within, and the fulness of its development is one and the same with
the perfection of its outward form. Such as the life is, such is the
form. Nature, the prime genial artist, inexhaustible in diverse powers,
is equally inexhaustible in forms;--each exterior is the physiognomy of
the being within,--its true image reflected and thrown out from the
concave mirror;--and even such is the appropriate excellence of her
chosen poet, of our own Shakspeare,--himself a nature humanized, a
genial understanding directing self-consciously a power and an implicit
wisdom deeper even than our consciousness.
I greatly dislike beauties and selections in general; but as proof
positive of his unrivalled excellence, I should like to try Shakspeare
by this criterion. Make out your amplest catalogue of all the human
faculties, as reason or the moral law, the will, the feeling of the
coincidence of the two (a feeling 'sui generis et demonstratio
clemontrationum') called the conscience, the understanding or prudence,
wit, fancy, imagination, judgment,--and then of the objects on which
these are to be employed, as the beauties, the terrors, and the seeming
caprices of nature, the realities and the capabilities, that is, the
actual and the ideal, of the human mind, conceived as an individual or
as a social being, as in innocence or in guilt, in a play-paradise, or
in a war-field of temptation;--and then compare with Shakspeare under
each of these heads all or any of the writers in prose and verse that
have ever lived! Who, that is competent to judge, doubts the
result?--And ask your own hearts,--ask your own common-sense--to
conceive the possibility of this man being--I say not, the drunken
savage of that wretched sciolist, whom Frenchmen, to their shame, have
honoured before their elder and better worthies,--but the anomalous, the
wild, the irregular, genius of our daily criticism! What! are we to have
miracles in sport?--Or, I speak reverently, does God choose idiots by
whom to convey divine truths to man?
[Footnote 1: Take a slight specimen of it.
Je suis bien loin assurément de justifier en tout la tragédie
d'Hamlet; _c'est une pièce grossière et barbare, qui ne serait pas
supportée par la plus vile populace de la France et de l'Italie._
Hamlet y devient fou au second acte, et sa maîtresse folle au
troisième; le prince tue le père de sa maîtresse, feignant de tuer un
rat, et I'heröine se jette dans la rivière. On fait sa fosse sur le
théâtre; des fossoyeurs disent des _quolibets_ dignes d'eux, en tenant
dans leurs mains des têtes de morts; le prince Hamlet répond à leurs
'grossièretés abominables par des folies non moins dégoûtantes._
Pendant ce temps-là, un des acteurs fait la conquête de la Pologne.
_Hamlet, sa mère, et son beau-père boivent ensemble sur le théâtre; on
chante à table, on s'y querelle, on se bat, on se tue: on croirait que
cet ouvrage est le fruit de I'imagination d'un sauvage ivre._
(Dissertation before Semiramis.) This is not, perhaps, very like Hamlet;
but nothing can be more like Voltaire. Ed.]
RECAPITULATION, AND SUMMARY OF THE CHARACTERISTICS OF SHAKSPEARE's
DRAMAS. [1]
In lectures, of which amusement forms a large part of the object, there
are some peculiar difficulties. The architect places his foundation out
of sight, and the musician tunes his instrument before he makes his
appearance; but the lecturer has to try his chords in the presence of
the assembly; an operation not likely, indeed, to produce much pleasure,
but yet indispensably necessary to a right understanding of the subject
to be developed.
Poetry in essence is as familiar to barbarous as to civilized nations.
The Laplander and the savage Indian are cheered by it as well as the
inhabitants of London and Paris;--its spirit takes up and incorporates
surrounding materials, as a plant clothes itself with soil and climate,
whilst it exhibits the working of a vital principle within independent
of all accidental circumstances. And to judge with fairness of an
author's works, we ought to distinguish what is inward and essential
from what is outward and circumstantial. It is essential to poetry that
it be "simple" and appeal to the elements and primary laws of our
nature; that it be "sensuous" and by its imagery elicit truth at a
flash; that it be "impassioned," and be able to move our feelings and
awaken our affections. In comparing different poets with each other, we
should inquire which have brought into the fullest play our imagination
and our reason, or have created the greatest excitement and produced the
completest harmony. If we consider great exquisiteness of language and
sweetness of metre alone, it is impossible to deny to Pope the character
of a delightful writer; but whether he be a poet, must depend upon our
definition of the word; and, doubtless, if every thing that pleases be
poetry, Pope's satires and epistles must be poetry. This, I must say,
that poetry, as distinguished from other modes of composition, does not
rest in metre, and that it is not poetry, if it make no appeal to our
passions or our imagination. One character belongs to all true poets,
that they write from a principle within, not originating in any thing
without; and that the true poet's work in its form, its shapings, and
its modifications, is distinguished from all other works that assume to
belong to the class of poetry, as a natural from an artificial flower,
or as the mimic garden of a child from an enamelled meadow. In the
former the flowers are broken from their stems and stuck into the
ground; they are beautiful to the eye and fragrant to the sense, but
their colours soon fade, and their odour is transient as the smile of
the planter;--while the meadow may be visited again and again with
renewed delight, its beauty is innate in the soil, and its bloom is of
the freshness of nature.
The next ground of critical judgment, and point of comparison, will be
as to how far a given poet has been influenced by accidental
circumstances. As a living poet must surely write, not for the ages
past, but for that in which he lives, and those which are to follow, it
is, on the one hand, natural that he should not violate, and on the
other, necessary that he should not depend on, the mere manners and
modes of his day. See how little does Shakspeare leave us to regret that
he was born in his particular age! The great aera in modern times was
what is called the Restoration of Letters;-the ages preceding it are
called the dark ages; but it would be more wise, perhaps, to call them
the ages in which we were in the dark. It is usually overlooked that the
supposed dark period was not universal, but partial and successive, or
alternate; that the dark age of England was not the dark age of Italy,
but that one country was in its light and vigour, whilst another was in
its gloom and bondage. But no sooner had the Reformation sounded through
Europe like the blast of an archangel's trumpet, than from king to
peasant there arose an enthusiasm for knowledge; the discovery of a
manuscript became the subject of an embassy; Erasmus read by moonlight,
because he could not afford a torch, and begged a penny, not for the
love of charity, but for the love of learning. The three great points of
attention were religion, morals, and taste; men of genius as well as men
of learning, who in this age need to be so widely distinguished, then
alike became copyists of the ancients; and this, indeed, was the only
way by which the taste of mankind could be improved, or their
understandings informed. Whilst Dante imagined himself a humble follower
of Virgil, and Ariosto of Homer, they were both unconscious of that
greater power working within them, which in many points carried them
beyond their supposed originals. All great discoveries bear the stamp of
the age in which they are made;--hence we perceive the effects of the
purer religion of the moderns, visible for the most part in their lives;
and in reading their works we should not content ourselves with the mere
narratives of events long since passed, but should learn to apply their
maxims and conduct to ourselves.
Having intimated that times and manners lend their form and pressure to
genius, let me once more draw a slight parallel between the ancient and
modern stage, the stages of Greece and of England. The Greeks were
polytheists; their religion was local; almost the only object of all
their knowledge, art and taste, was their gods; and, accordingly, their
productions were, if the expression may be allowed, statuesque, whilst
those of the moderns are picturesque. The Greeks reared a structure,
which in its parts, and as a whole, fitted the mind with the calm and
elevated impression of perfect beauty and symmetrical proportion. The
moderns also produced a whole, a more striking whole; but it was by
blending materials and fusing the parts together. And as the Pantheon is
to York Minster or Westminster Abbey, so is Sophocles compared with
Shakspeare; in the one a completeness, a satisfaction, an excellence, on
which the mind rests with complacency; in the other a multitude of
interlaced materials, great and little, magnificent and mean,
accompanied, indeed, with the sense of a falling short of perfection,
and yet, at the same time, so promising of our social and individual
progression, that we would not, if we could, exchange it for that repose
of the mind which dwells on the forms of symmetry in the acquiescent
admiration of grace.
This general characteristic of the ancient and modern drama might be
illustrated by a parallel of the ancient and modern music;--the one
consisting of melody arising from a succession only of pleasing
sounds,--the modern embracing harmony also, the result of combination
and the effect of a whole.
I have said, and I say it again, that great as was the genius of
Shakspeare, his judgment was at least equal to it. Of this any one will
be convinced, who attentively considers those points in which the dramas
of Greece and England differ, from the dissimilitude of circumstances by
which each was modified and influenced. The Greek stage had its origin
in the ceremonies of a sacrifice, such as of the goat to Bacchus, whom
we most erroneously regard as merely the jolly god of wine;--for among
the ancients he was venerable, as the symbol of that power which acts
without our consciousness in the vital energies of nature,--the 'vinum
mundi',--as Apollo was that of the conscious agency of our intellectual
being. The heroes of old under the influence of this Bacchic enthusiasm
performed more than human actions;--hence tales of the favorite
champions soon passed into dialogue. On the Greek stage the chorus was
always before the audience; the curtain was never dropped, as we should
say; and change of place being therefore, in general, impossible, the
absurd notion of condemning it merely as improbable in itself was never
entertained by any one. If we can believe ourselves at Thebes in one
act, we may believe ourselves at Athens in the next. If a story lasts
twenty-four hours or twenty-four years, it is equally improbable. There
seems to be no just boundary but what the feelings prescribe. But on the
Greek stage where the same persons were perpetually before the audience,
great judgment was necessary in venturing on any such change. The poets
never, therefore, attempted to impose on the senses by bringing places
to men, but they did bring men to places, as in the well known instance
in the 'Eumenides', where during an evident retirement of the chorus
from the orchestra, the scene is changed to Athens, and Orestes is first
introduced in the temple of Minerva, and the chorus of Furies come in
afterwards in pursuit of him. [2]
In the Greek drama there were no formal divisions into scenes and acts;
there were no means, therefore, of allowing for the necessary lapse of
time between one part of the dialogue and another, and unity of time in
a strict sense was, of course, impossible. To overcome that difficulty
of accounting for time, which is effected on the modern stage by
dropping a curtain, the judgment and great genius of the ancients
supplied music and measured motion, and with the lyric ode filled up the
vacuity. In the story of the Agamemnon of Æschylus, the capture of Troy
is supposed to be announced by a fire lighted on the Asiatic shore, and
the transmission of the signal by successive beacons to Mycené. The
signal is first seen at the 2lst line, and the herald from Troy itself
enters at the 486th, and Agamemnon himself at the 783rd line. But the
practical absurdity of this was not felt by the audience, who, in
imagination stretched minutes into hours, while they listened to the
lofty narrative odes of the chorus which almost entirely fill up the
interspace. Another fact deserves attention here, namely, that regularly
on the Greek stage a drama, or acted story, consisted in reality of
three dramas, called together a trilogy, and performed consecutively in
the course of one day. Now you may conceive a tragedy of Shakspeare's as
a trilogy connected in one single representation. Divide Lear into three
parts, and each would be a play with the ancients; or take the three
Æschylean dramas of Agamemnon, and divide them into, or call them, as
many acts, and they together would be one play. The first act would
comprise the usurpation of Ægisthus, and the murder of Agamemnon; the
second, the revenge of Orestes, and the murder of his mother; and the
third, the penance and absolution of Orestes;--occupying a period of
twenty-two years.
The stage in Shakspeare's time was a naked room with a blanket for a
curtain; but he made it a field for monarchs. That law of unity, which
has its foundations, not in the factitious necessity of custom, but in
nature itself, the unity of feeling, is every where and at all times
observed by Shakspeare in his plays. Read 'Romeo and Juliet';--all is
youth and spring;--youth with its follies, its virtues, its
precipitancies;--spring with its odours, its flowers, and its
transiency; it is one and the same feeling that commences, goes through,
and ends the play. The old men, the Capulets and the Montagues, are not
common old men; they have an eagerness, a heartiness, a vehemence, the
effect of spring; with Romeo, his change of passion, his sudden
marriage, and his rash death, are all the effects of youth;--whilst in
Juliet love has all that is tender and melancholy in the nightingale,
all that is voluptuous in the rose, with whatever is sweet in the
freshness of spring; but it ends with a long deep sigh like the last
breeze of the Italian evening. This unity of feeling and character
pervades every drama of Shakspeare.
It seems to me that his plays are distinguished from those of all other
dramatic poets by the following characteristics:
1. Expectation in preference to surprise. It is like the true reading of
the passage;--'God said, Let there be light, and there was
_light_;'--not there _was_ light. As the feeling with which we startle
at a shooting star, compared with that of watching the sunrise at the
pre-established moment, such and so low is surprise compared with
expectation.
2. Signal adherence to the great law of nature, that all opposites tend
to attract and temper each other. Passion in Shakspeare generally
displays libertinism, but involves morality; and if there are exceptions
to this, they are, independently of their intrinsic value, all of them
indicative of individual character, and, like the farewell admonitions
of a parent, have an end beyond the parental relation. Thus the
Countess's beautiful precepts to Bertram, by elevating her character,
raise that of Helena her favorite, and soften down the point in her
which Shakspeare does not mean us not to see, but to see and to forgive,
and at length to justify. And so it is in Polonius, who is the
personified memory of wisdom no longer actually possessed. This
admirable character is always misrepresented on the stage. Shakspeare
never intended to exhibit him as a buffoon; for although it was natural
that Hamlet,--a young man of fire and genius, detesting formality, and
disliking Polonius on political grounds, as imagining that he had
assisted his uncle in his usurpation,--should express himself
satirically,--yet this must not be taken as exactly the poet's
conception of him. In Polonius a certain induration of character had
arisen from long habits of business; but take his advice to Laertes, and
Ophelia's reverence for his memory, and we shall see that he was meant
to be represented as a statesman somewhat past his faculties,--his
recollections of life all full of wisdom, and showing a knowledge of
human nature, whilst what immediately takes place before him, and
escapes from him, is indicative of weakness.
But as in Homer all the deities are in armour, even Venus; so in
Shakspeare all the characters are strong. Hence real folly and dullness
are made by him the vehicles of wisdom. There is no difficulty for one
being a fool to imitate a fool; but to be, remain, and speak like a wise
man and a great wit, and yet so as to give a vivid representation of a
veritable fool,--'hic labor, hoc opus est'. A drunken constable is not
uncommon, nor hard to draw; but see and examine what goes to make up a
Dogberry.
3. Keeping at all times in the high road of life. Shakspeare has no
innocent adulteries, no interesting incests, no virtuous vice;--he never
renders that amiable which religion and reason alike teach us to detest,
or clothes impurity in the garb of virtue, like Beaumont and Fletcher,
the Kotzebues of the day. Shakspeare's fathers are roused by
ingratitude, his husbands stung by unfaithfulness; in him, in short, the
affections are wounded in those points in which all may, nay, must,
feel. Let the morality of Shakspeare be contrasted with that of the
writers of his own, or the succeeding, age, or of those of the present
day, who boast their superiority in this respect. No one can dispute
that the result of such a comparison is altogether in favour of
Shakspeare;--even the letters of women of high rank in his age were
often coarser than his writings. If he occasionally disgusts a keen
sense of delicacy, he never injures the mind; he neither excites, nor
flatters, passion, in order to degrade the subject of it; he does not
use the faulty thing for a faulty purpose, nor carries on warfare
against virtue, by causing wickedness to appear as no wickedness,
through the medium of a morbid sympathy with the unfortunate. In
Shakspeare vice never walks as in twilight; nothing is purposely out of
its place;--he inverts not the order of nature and propriety,--does not
make every magistrate a drunkard or glutton, nor every poor man meek,
humane, and temperate; he has no benevolent butchers, nor any
sentimental rat-catchers.
4. Independence of the dramatic interest on the plot. The interest in
the plot is always in fact on account of the characters, not 'vice
versa', as in almost all other writers; the plot is a mere canvass and
no more. Hence arises the true justification of the same stratagem being
used in regard to Benedict and Beatrice,--the vanity in each being
alike. Take away from the Much Ado About Nothing all that which is not
indispensable to the plot, either as having little to do with it, or, at
best, like Dogberry and his comrades, forced into the service, when any
other less ingeniously absurd watchmen and night-constables would have
answered the mere necessities of the action;--take away Benedict,
Beatrice, Dogberry, and the reaction of the former on the character of
Hero,--and what will remain? In other writers the main agent of the plot
is always the prominent character; in Shakspeare it is so, or is not so,
as the character is in itself calculated, or not calculated, to form the
plot. Don John is the main-spring of the plot of this play; but he is
merely shown and then withdrawn.
5. Independence of the interest on the story as the ground-work of the
plot. Hence Shakspeare never took the trouble of inventing stories. It
was enough for him to select from those that had been already invented
or recorded such as had one or other, or both, of two recommendations,
namely, suitableness to his particular purpose, and their being parts of
popular tradition,--names of which we had often heard, and of their
fortunes, and as to which all we wanted was, to see the man himself. So
it is just the man himself, the Lear, the Shylock, the Richard, that
Shakspeare makes us for the first time acquainted with. Omit the first
scene in Lear, and yet every thing will remain; so the first and second
scenes in the Merchant of Venice. Indeed it is universally true.
6. Interfusion of the lyrical--that which in its very essence is
poetical--not only with the dramatic, as in the plays of Metastasio,
where at the end of the scene comes the 'aria' as the 'exit' speech of
the character, but also in and through the dramatic. Songs in Shakspeare
are introduced as songs only, just as songs are in real life,
beautifully as some of them are characteristic of the person who has
sung or called for them, as Desdemona's 'Willow,' and Ophelia's wild
snatches, and the sweet carollings in As You Like It. But the whole of
the Midsummer Night's Dream is one continued specimen of the dramatized
lyrical. And observe how exquisitely the dramatic of Hotspur;--
Marry, and I'm glad on't with all my heart;
I had rather be a kitten and cry--mew, &c.
melts away into the lyric of Mortimer;--
I understand thy looks: that pretty Welsh
Which thou pourest down from these swelling heavens,
I am too perfect in, &c.
Henry IV. part i. act iii. sc. i.
7. The characters of the 'dramatis personæ', like those in real life,
are to be inferred by the reader;--they are not told to him. And it is
well worth remarking that Shakspeare's characters, like those in real
life, are very commonly misunderstood, and almost always understood by
different persons in different ways. The causes are the same in either
case. If you take only what the friends of the character say, you may be
deceived, and still more so, if that which his enemies say; nay, even
the character himself sees himself through the medium of his character,
and not exactly as he is. Take all together, not omitting a shrewd hint
from the clown or the fool, and perhaps your impression will be right;
and you may know whether you have in fact discovered the poet's own
idea, by all the speeches receiving light from it, and attesting its
reality by reflecting it.
Lastly, in Shakspeare the heterogeneous is united, as it is in nature.
You must not suppose a pressure or passion always acting on or in the
character;--passion in Shakspeare is that by which the individual is
distinguished from others, not that which makes a different kind of him.
Shakspeare followed the main march of the human affections. He entered
into no analysis of the passions or faiths of men, but assured himself
that such and such passions and faiths were grounded in our common
nature, and not in the mere accidents of ignorance or disease. This is
an important consideration, and constitutes our Shakspeare the morning
star, the guide and the pioneer, of true philosophy.
[Footnote 1: For the most part communicated by Mr. Justice Coleridge.
Ed.]
[Footnote 2: Æsch. Eumen. v. 230-239. 'Notandum est, scenam jam Athenas
translatam sic institui, ut primo Orestes solus conspiciatur in templo
Minerva: supplex ejus simulacrum venerans; paulo post autem eum
consequantur Eumenides, &c.' Schiitz's note. The recessions of the
chorus were termed 'peravaoraneu'. There is another instance in the
Ajax, v. 814. Ed.]
ORDER OF SHAKSPEARE'S PLAYS.
Various attempts have been made to arrange the plays of Shakspeare, each
according to its priority in time, by proofs derived from external
documents. How unsuccessful these attempts have been might easily be
shown, not only from the widely different results arrived at by men, all
deeply versed in the black-letter books, old plays, pamphlets,
manuscript records and catalogues of that age, but also from the
fallacious and unsatisfactory nature of the facts and assumptions on
which the evidence rests. In that age, when the press was chiefly
occupied with controversial or practical divinity,--when the law, the
church and the state engrossed all honour and respectability,--when a
degree of disgrace, 'levior quædam infamiæ macula', was attached to the
publication of poetry, and even to have sported with the Muse, as a
private relaxation, was supposed to be--a venial fault, indeed,
yet--something beneath the gravity of a wise man,--when the professed
poets were so poor, that the very expenses of the press demanded the
liberality of some wealthy individual, so that two thirds of Spenser's
poetic works, and those most highly praised by his learned admirers and
friends, remained for many years in manuscript, and in manuscript
perished,--when the amateurs of the stage were comparatively few, and
therefore for the greater part more or less known to each other,--when
we know that the plays of Shakspeare, both during and after his life,
were the property of the stage, and published by the players, doubtless
according to their notions of acceptability with the visitants of the
theatre,--in such an age, and under such circumstances, can an allusion
or reference to any drama or poem in the publication of a contemporary
be received as conclusive evidence, that such drama or poem had at that
time been published? Or, further, can the priority of publication itself
prove any thing in favour of actually prior composition.
We are tolerably certain, indeed, that the Venus and Adonis, and the
Rape of Lucrece, were his two earliest poems, and though not printed
until 1593, in the twenty ninth year of his age, yet there can be little
doubt that they had remained by him in manuscript many years. For Mr.
Malone has made it highly probable, that he had commenced a writer for
the stage in 1591, when he was twenty seven years old, and Shakspeare
himself assures us that the Venus and Adonis was the first heir of his
invention.[1]
Baffled, then, in the attempt to derive any satisfaction from outward
documents, we may easily stand excused if we turn our researches towards
the internal evidences furnished by the writings themselves, with no
other positive 'data' than the known facts, that the Venus and Adonis
was printed in 1593, the Rape of Lucrece in 1594, and that the Romeo and
Juliet had appeared in 1595,--and with no other presumptions than that
the poems, his very first productions, were written many years
earlier,--(for who can believe that Shakspeare could have remained to
his twenty-ninth or thirtieth year without attempting poetic composition
of any kind?)--and that between these and Romeo and Juliet there had
intervened one or two other dramas, or the chief materials, at least, of
them, although they may very possibly have appeared after the success of
the Romeo and Juliet and some other circumstances had given the poet an
authority with the proprietors, and created a prepossession in his
favour with the theatrical audiences.
[Footnote 1: But if the first heir of my invention prove deformed, I
shall be sorry it had so noble a godfather, &c.
Dedication of the V. and A. to Lord Southampton.]
CLASSIFICATION ATTEMPTED, 1802.
First Epoch.
The London Prodigal.
Cromwell.
Henry VI., three parts, first edition.
The old King John.
Edward III.
The old Taming of the Shrew.
Pericles.
All these are transition-works, 'Uebergangs-werke'; not his, yet of him.
Second Epoch.
All's Well That Ends Well;--but afterwards worked up afresh,
(umgearbeitet) especially Parolles.
The Two Gentlemen of Verona; a sketch.
Romeo and Juliet; first draft of it.
Third Epoch
rises into the full, although youthful, Shakspeare; it was the negative
period of his perfection.
Love's Labour's Lost.
Twelfth Night.
As You Like It.
Midsummer Night's Dream.
Richard II.
Henry IV. and V.
Henry VIII.; 'Gelegenheitsgedicht'.
Romeo and Juliet, as at present.
Merchant of Venice.
Fourth Epoch.
Much Ado About Nothing.
Merry Wives of Windsor; first edition.
Henry VI.; 'rifacimento'.
Fifth Epoch.
The period of beauty was now past; and that of [GREEK (transliterated):
deinotaes] and grandeur succeeds.
Lear.
Macbeth.
Hamlet.
Timon of Athens; an after vibration of Hamlet.
Troilus and Cressida; 'Uebergang in die Ironie'.
The Roman Plays.
King John, as at present.
Merry Wives of Windsor. }'umgearbeitet'
Taming of the Shrew. }
Measure for Measure.
Othello.
Tempest.
Winter's Tale.
Cymbeline.
CLASSIFICATION ATTEMPTED, 1810.
Shakspeare's earliest dramas I take to be,
Love's Labour's Lost.
All's Well That Ends Well.
Comedy of Errors.
Romeo and Juliet.
In the second class I reckon
Midsummer Night's Dream.
As You Like It.
Tempest.
Twelfth Night.
In the third, as indicating a greater energy--not merely of poetry,
but--of all the world of thought, yet still with some of the growing
pains, and the awkwardness of growth, I place
Troilus and Cressida.
Cymbeline.
Merchant of Venice.
Much Ado About Nothing.
Taming of the Shrew.
In the fourth, I place the plays containing the greatest characters;
Macbeth.
Lear.
Hamlet.
Othello.
And lastly, the historic dramas, in order to be able to show my reasons
for rejecting some whole plays, and very many scenes in others.
CLASSIFICATION ATTEMPTED, 1819.
I think Shakspeare's earliest dramatic attempt--perhaps even prior in
conception to the Venus and Adonis, and planned before he left
Stratford--was Love's Labour's Lost. Shortly afterwards I suppose
Pericles and certain scenes in Jeronymo to have been produced; and in
the same epoch, I place the Winter's Tale and Cymbeline, differing from
the Pericles by the entire 'rifacimento' of it, when Shakspeare's
celebrity as poet, and his interest, no less than his influence as
manager, enabled him to bring forward the laid-by labours of his youth.
The example of Titus Andronicus, which, as well as Jeronymo, was most
popular in Shakspeare's first epoch, had led the young dramatist to the
lawless mixture of dates and manners. In this same epoch I should place
the Comedy of Errors, remarkable as being the only specimen of poetical
farce in our language, that is, intentionally such; so that all the
distinct kinds of drama, which might be educed 'a priori', have their
representatives in Shakspeare's works. I say intentionally such; for
many of Beaumont and Fletcher's plays, and the greater part of Ben
Jonson's comedies are farce-plots. I add All's Well that Ends Well,
originally intended as the counterpart of Love's Labour's Lost, Taming
of the Shrew, Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, and Romeo
and Juliet.
Second Epoch.
Richard II.
King John.
Henry VI.,--'rifacimento' only.
Richard III.
Third Epoch.
Henry IV.
Henry V.
Merry Wives of Windsor.
Henry VIII.,--a sort of historical masque, or show play.
Fourth Epoch
gives all the graces and facilities of a genius in full possession and
habitual exercise of power, and peculiarly of the feminine, the _lady's_
character.
Tempest.
As You Like It.
Merchant of Venice.
Twelfth Night.
and, finally, at its very point of culmination,--
Lear.
Hamlet.
Macbeth.
Othello.
Last Epoch,
when the energies of intellect in the cycle of genius were, though in a
rich and more potentiated form, becoming predominant over passion and
creative self-manifestation.
Measure for Measure.
Timon of Athens.
Coriolanus.
Julius Cæsar.
Antony and Cleopatra.
Troilus and Cressida.
Merciful, wonder-making Heaven! what a man was this Shakspeare!
Myriad-minded, indeed, he was.
NOTES ON THE TEMPEST.
There is a sort of improbability with which we are shocked in dramatic
representation, not less than in a narrative of real life. Consequently,
there must be rules respecting it; and as rules are nothing but means to
an end previously ascertained--(inattention to which simple truth has
been the occasion of all the pedantry of the French school),--we must
first determine what the immediate end or object of the drama is. And
here, as I have previously remarked, I find two extremes of critical
decision;--the French, which evidently presupposes that a perfect
delusion is to be aimed at,--an opinion which needs no fresh
confutation; and the exact opposite to it, brought forward by Dr.
Johnson, who supposes the auditors throughout in the full reflective
knowledge of the contrary. In evincing the impossibility of delusion, he
makes no sufficient allowance for an intermediate state, which I have
before distinguished by the term, illusion, and have attempted to
illustrate its quality and character by reference to our mental state,
when dreaming. In both cases we simply do not judge the imagery to be
unreal; there is a negative reality, and no more. Whatever, therefore,
tends to prevent the mind from placing itself, or being placed,
gradually in that state in which the images have such negative reality
for the auditor, destroys this illusion, and is dramatically improbable.
Now the production of this effect--a sense of improbability--will depend
on the degree of excitement in which the mind is supposed to be. Many
things would be intolerable in the first scene of a play, that would not
at all interrupt our enjoyment in the height of the interest, when the
narrow cockpit may be made to hold
The vasty field of France, or we may cram
Within its wooden O, the very casques,
That did affright the air at Agincourt.
Again, on the other hand, many obvious improbabilities will be endured,
as belonging to the ground-work of the story rather than to the drama
itself, in the first scenes, which would disturb or disentrance us from
all illusion in the acme of our excitement; as for instance, Lear's
division of his kingdom, and the banishment of Cordelia.
But, although the other excellencies of the drama besides this dramatic
probability, as unity of interest, with distinctness and subordination
of the characters, and appropriateness of style, are all, so far as they
tend to increase the inward excitement, means towards accomplishing the
chief end, that of producing and supporting this willing illusion,--yet
they do not on that account cease to be ends themselves; and we must
remember that, as such, they carry their own justification with them, as
long as they do not contravene or interrupt the total illusion. It is
not even always, or of necessity, an objection to them, that they
prevent the illusion from rising to as great a height as it might
otherwise have attained;--it is enough that they are simply compatible
with as high a degree of it as is requisite for the purpose. Nay, upon
particular occasions, a palpable improbability may be hazarded by a
great genius for the express purpose of keeping down the interest of a
merely instrumental scene, which would otherwise make too great an
impression for the harmony of the entire illusion. Had the panorama been
invented in the time of Pope Leo X., Raffael would still, I doubt not,
have smiled in contempt at the regret, that the broom-twigs and scrubby
bushes at the back of some of his grand pictures were not as probable
trees as those in the exhibition.
The Tempest is a specimen of the purely romantic drama, in which the
interest is not historical, or dependent upon fidelity of portraiture,
or the natural connexion of events,--but is a birth of the imagination,
and rests only on the coaptation and union of the elements granted to,
or assumed by, the poet. It is a species of drama which owes no
allegiance to time or space, and in which, therefore, errors of
chronology and geography--no mortal sins in any species--are venial
faults, and count for nothing. It addresses itself entirely to the
imaginative faculty; and although the illusion may be assisted by the
effect on the senses of the complicated scenery and decorations of
modern times, yet this sort of assistance is dangerous. For the
principal and only genuine excitement ought to come from within,--from
the moved and sympathetic imagination; whereas, where so much is
addressed to the mere external senses of seeing and hearing, the
spiritual vision is apt to languish, and the attraction from without
will withdraw the mind from the proper and only legitimate interest
which is intended to spring from within.
The romance opens with a busy scene admirably appropriate to the kind of
drama, and giving, as it were, the key-note to the whole harmony. It
prepares and initiates the excitement required for the entire piece, and
yet does not demand any thing from the spectators, which their previous
habits had not fitted them to understand. It is the bustle of a tempest,
from which the real horrors are abstracted;--therefore it is poetical,
though not in strictness natural--(the distinction to which I have so
often alluded)--and is purposely restrained from concentering the
interest on itself, but used merely as an induction or tuning for what
is to follow.
In the second scene, Prospero's speeches, till the entrance of Ariel,
contain the finest example, I remember, of retrospective narration for
the purpose of exciting immediate interest, and putting the audience in
possession of all the information necessary for the understanding of the
plot.[1] Observe, too, the perfect probability of the moment chosen by
Prospero (the very Shakspeare himself, as it were, of the tempest) to
open out the truth to his daughter, his own romantic bearing, and how
completely any thing that might have been disagreeable to us in the
magician, is reconciled and shaded in the humanity and natural feelings
of the father. In the very first speech of Miranda the simplicity and
tenderness of her character are at once laid open;--it would have been
lost in direct contact with the agitation of the first scene. The
opinion once prevailed, but, happily, is now abandoned, that Fletcher
alone wrote for women;--the truth is, that with very few, and those
partial, exceptions, the female characters in the plays of Beaumont and
Fletcher are, when of the light kind, not decent; when heroic, complete
viragos. But in Shakspeare all the elements of womanhood are holy, and
there is the sweet, yet dignified feeling of all that 'continuates'
society, as sense of ancestry and of sex, with a purity unassailable by
sophistry, because it rests not in the analytic processes, but in that
sane equipoise of the faculties, during which the feelings are
representative of all past experience,--not of the individual only, but
of all those by whom she has been educated, and their predecessors even
up to the first mother that lived. Shakspeare saw that the want of
prominence, which Pope notices for sarcasm, was the blessed beauty of
the woman's character, and knew that it arose not from any deficiency,
but from the more exquisite harmony of all the parts of the moral being
constituting one living total of head and heart. He has drawn it,
indeed, in all its distinctive energies of faith, patience, constancy,
fortitude,--shown in all of them as following the heart, which gives its
results by a nice tact and happy intuition, without the intervention of
the discursive faculty,--sees all things in and by the light of the
affections, and errs, if it ever err, in the exaggerations of love
alone. In all the Shakspearian women there is essentially the same
foundation and principle; the distinct individuality and variety are
merely the result of the modification of circumstances, whether in
Miranda the maiden, in Imogen the wife, or in Katharine the queen.
But to return. The appearance and characters of the super- or
ultra-natural servants are finely contrasted. Ariel has in every thing
the airy tint which gives the name; and it is worthy of remark that
Miranda is never directly brought into comparison with Ariel, lest the
natural and human of the one and the supernatural of the other should
tend to neutralize each other; Caliban, on the other hand, is all earth,
all condensed and gross in feelings and images; he has the dawnings of
understanding without reason or the moral sense, and in him, as in some
brute animals, this advance to the intellectual faculties, without the
moral sense, is marked by the appearance of vice. For it is in the
primacy of the moral being only that man is truly human; in his
intellectual powers he is certainly approached by the brutes, and, man's
whole system duly considered, those powers cannot be considered other
than means to an end, that is, to morality.
In this scene, as it proceeds, is displayed the impression made by
Ferdinand and Miranda on each other; it is love at first sight;--
at the first sight They have chang'd eyes:--
and it appears to me, that in all cases of real love, it is at one
moment that it takes place. That moment may have been prepared by
previous esteem, admiration, or even affection,--yet love seems to
require a momentary act of volition, by which a tacit bond of devotion
is imposed,--a bond not to be thereafter broken without violating what
should be sacred in our nature. How finely is the true Shakspearian
scene contrasted with Dryden's vulgar alteration of it, in which a mere
ludicrous psychological experiment, as it were, is tried--displaying
nothing but indelicacy without passion. Prospero's interruption of the
courtship has often seemed to me to have no sufficient motive; still his
alleged reason--
lest too light winning Make the prize light--
is enough for the ethereal connexions of the romantic imagination,
although it would not be so for the historical. [2] The whole courting
scene, indeed, in the beginning of the third act, between the lovers is
a masterpiece; and the first dawn of disobedience in the mind of Miranda
to the command of her father is very finely drawn, so as to seem the
working of the Scriptural command, 'Thou shall leave father and mother',
&c. O! with what exquisite purity this scene is conceived and executed!
Shakspeare may sometimes be gross, but I boldly say that he is always
moral and modest. Alas! in this our day decency of manners is preserved
at the expense of morality of heart, and delicacies for vice are
allowed, whilst grossness against it is hypocritically, or at least
morbidly, condemned.
In this play are admirably sketched the vices generally accompanying a
low degree of civilization; and in the first scene of the second act
Shakspeare has, as in many other places, shown the tendency in bad men
to indulge in scorn and contemptuous expressions, as a mode of getting
rid of their own uneasy feelings of inferiority to the good, and also,
by making the good ridiculous, of rendering the transition of others to
wickedness easy. Shakspeare never puts habitual scorn into the mouths of
other than bad men, as here in the instances of Antonio and Sebastian.
The scene of the intended assassination of Alonzo and Gonzalo is an
exact counterpart of the scene between Macbeth and his lady, only
pitched in a lower key throughout, as designed to be frustrated and
concealed, and exhibiting the same profound management in the manner of
familiarizing a mind, not immediately recipient, to the suggestion of
guilt, by associating the proposed crime with something ludicrous or out
of place,--something not habitually matter of reverence. By this kind of
sophistry the imagination and fancy are first bribed to contemplate the
suggested act, and at length to become acquainted with it. Observe how
the effect of this scene is heightened by contrast with another
counterpart of it in low life,--that between the conspirators Stephano,
Caliban, and Trinculo in the second scene of the third act, in which
there are the same essential characteristics.
In this play and in this scene of it are also shown the springs of the
vulgar in politics,--of that kind of politics which is inwoven with
human nature. In his treatment of this subject, wherever it occurs,
Shakspeare is quite peculiar. In other writers we find the particular
opinions of the individual; in Massinger it is rank republicanism; in
Beaumont and Fletcher even 'jure divino' principles are carried to
excess;--but Shakspeare never promulgates any party tenets. He is always
the philosopher and the moralist, but at the same time with a profound
veneration for all the established institutions of society, and for
those classes which form the permanent elements of the state--especially
never introducing a professional character, as such, otherwise than as
respectable. If he must have any name, he should be styled a
philosophical aristocrat, delighting in those hereditary institutions
which have a tendency to bind one age to another, and in that
distinction of ranks, of which, although few may be in possession, all
enjoy the advantages. Hence, again, you will observe the good nature
with which he seems always to make sport with the passions and follies
of a mob, as with an irrational animal. He is never angry with it, but
hugely content with holding up its absurdities to its face; and
sometimes you may trace a tone of almost affectionate superiority,
something like that in which a father speaks of the rogueries of a
child. See the good-humoured way in which he describes Stephano passing
from the most licentious freedom to absolute despotism over Trinculo and
Caliban. The truth is, Shakspeare's characters are all 'genera'
intensely individualized; the results of meditation, of which
observation supplied the drapery and the colors necessary to combine
them with each other. He had virtually surveyed all the great component
powers and impulses of human nature,--had seen that their different
combinations and subordinations were in fact the individualizers of men,
and showed how their harmony was produced by reciprocal disproportions
of excess or deficiency. The language in which these truths are
expressed was not drawn from any set fashion, but from the profoundest
depths of his moral being, and is therefore for all ages.
[Footnote 1:
'Pro'. Mark his condition, and th' event; then tell me, If this might
be a brother.
'Mira'. I should sin, To think but nobly of my grandmother; Good wombs
have bore bad sons.
'Pro'. Now the condition, &c.
Theobald has a note upon this passage, and suggests that Shakspeare
placed it thus:--
'Pro'. Good wombs have bore bad sons,--Now the condition.
Mr. Coleridge writes in the margin: 'I cannot but believe that Theobald
is quite right.'--Ed.]
[Footnote 2:
'Fer'. Yes, faith, and all his Lords, the duke of Milan, And his brave
son, being twain.
Theobald remarks that no body was lost in the wreck; and yet that no
such character is introduced in the fable, as the Duke of Milan's son.
Mr. C. notes: 'Must not Ferdinand have believed he was lost in the fleet
that the tempest scattered?--Ed.]
LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST.
The characters in this play are either impersonated out of Shakspeare's
own multiformity by imaginative self-position, or out of such as a
country town and a schoolboy's observation might supply,--the curate,
the schoolmaster, the Armado, (who even in my time was not extinct in
the cheaper inns of North Wales) and so on. The satire is chiefly on
follies of words. Biron and Rosaline are evidently the pre-existent
state of Benedict and Beatrice, and so, perhaps, is Boyet of Lafeu, and
Costard of the Tapster in Measure for Measure; and the frequency of the
rhymes, the sweetness as well as the smoothness of the metre, and the
number of acute and fancifully illustrated aphorisms, are all as they
ought to be in a poet's youth. True genius begins by generalizing and
condensing; it ends in realizing and expanding. It first collects the
seeds.
Yet if this juvenile drama had been the only one extant of our
Shakspeare, and we possessed the tradition only of his riper works, or
accounts of them in writers who had not even mentioned this play,--how
many of Shakspeare's characteristic features might we not still have
discovered in Love's Labour's Lost, though as in a portrait taken of him
in his boyhood.
I can never sufficiently admire the wonderful activity of thought
throughout the whole of the first scene of the play, rendered natural,
as it is, by the choice of the characters, and the whimsical
determination on which the drama is founded. A whimsical determination
certainly;--yet not altogether so very improbable to those who are
conversant in the history of the middle ages, with their Courts of Love,
and all that lighter drapery of chivalry, which engaged even mighty
kings with a sort of serio-comic interest, and may well be supposed to
have occupied more completely the smaller princes, at a time when the
noble's or prince's court contained the only theatre of the domain or
principality. This sort of story, too, was admirably suited to
Shakspeare's times, when the English court was still the foster-mother
of the state and the muses; and when, in consequence, the courtiers, and
men of rank and fashion, affected a display of wit, point, and
sententious observation, that would be deemed intolerable at
present,--but in which a hundred years of controversy, involving every
great political, and every dear domestic, interest, had trained all but
the lowest classes to participate. Add to this the very style of the
sermons of the time, and the eagerness of the Protestants to distinguish
themselves by long and frequent preaching, and it will be found that,
from the reign of Henry VIII. to the abdication of James II. no country
ever received such a national education as England.
Hence the comic matter chosen in the first instance is a ridiculous
imitation or apery of this constant striving after logical precision,
and subtle opposition of thoughts, together with a making the most of
every conception or image, by expressing it under the least expected
property belonging to it, and this, again, rendered specially absurd by
being applied to the most current subjects and occurrences. The phrases
and modes of combination in argument were caught by the most ignorant
from the custom of the age, and their ridiculous misapplication of them
is most amusingly exhibited in Costard; whilst examples suited only to
the gravest propositions and impersonations, or apostrophes to abstract
thoughts impersonated, which are in fact the natural language only of
the most vehement agitations of the mind, are adopted by the coxcombry
of Armado as mere artifices of ornament.
The same kind of intellectual action is exhibited in a more serious and
elevated strain in many other parts of this play. Biron's speech at the
end of the fourth act is an excellent specimen of it. It is logic
clothed in rhetoric;--but observe how Shakspeare, in his two-fold being
of poet and philosopher, avails himself of it to convey profound truths
in the most lively images,--the whole remaining faithful to the
character supposed to utter the lines, and the expressions themselves
constituting a further developement of that character:--
Other slow arts entirely keep the brain: And therefore finding barren
practisers, Scarce shew a harvest of their heavy toil: But love, first
learned in a lady's eyes, Lives not alone immured in the brain; But,
with the motion of all elements, Courses as swift as thought in every
power; And gives to every power a double power, Above their functions
and their offices. It adds a precious seeing to the eye, A lover's eyes
will gaze an eagle blind; A lover's ear will hear the lowest sound, When
the suspicious tread of theft is stopp'd: Love's feeling is more soft
and sensible, Than are the tender horns of cockled snails; Love's tongue
proves dainty Bacchus gross in taste; For valour, is not love a
Hercules, Still climbing trees in the Hesperides? Subtle as Sphinx; as
sweet and musical, As bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair; And
when love speaks, the voice of all the gods Makes heaven drowsy with the
harmony. Never durst poet touch a pen to write, Until his ink were
temper'd with love's sighs; O, then his lines would ravish savage ears,
And plant in tyrants mild humility. From women's eyes this doctrine I
derive: They sparkle still the right Promethean fire; They are the
books, the arts, the academes, That shew, contain, and nourish all the
world; Else, none at all in aught proves excellent; Then fools you were
these women to forswear; Or, keeping what is sworn, you will prove
fools. For wisdom's sake, a word that all men love; Or for love's sake,
a word that loves all men; Or for men's sake, the authors of these
women; Or women's sake, by whom we men are men; Let us once lose our
oaths, to find ourselves, Or else we lose ourselves to keep our oaths:
It is religion, to be thus forsworn: For charity itself fulfills the
law: And who can sever love from charity?--
This is quite a study;--sometimes you see this youthful god of poetry
connecting disparate thoughts purely by means of resemblances in the
words expressing them,--a thing in character in lighter comedy,
especially of that kind in which Shakspeare delights, namely, the
purposed display of wit, though sometimes, too, disfiguring his graver
scenes;--but more often you may see him doubling the natural connection
or order of logical consequence in the thoughts by the introduction of
an artificial and sought for resemblance in the words, as, for instance,
in the third line of the play,--
And then grace us in the disgrace of death;--
this being a figure often having its force and propriety, as justified
by the law of passion, which, inducing in the mind an unusual activity,
seeks for means to waste its superfluity,--when in the highest
degree--in lyric repetitions and sublime tautology--'(at her feet he
bowed, he fell, he lay down; at her feet he bowed, he fell; where he
bowed, there he fell down dead)',--and, in lower degrees, in making the
words themselves the subjects and materials of that surplus action, and
for the same cause that agitates our limbs, and forces our very gestures
into a tempest in states of high excitement.
The mere style of narration in Love's Labour's Lost, like that of Ægeon
in the first scene of the Comedy of Errors, and of the Captain in the
second scene of Macbeth, seems imitated with its defects and its
beauties from Sir Philip Sidney; whose Arcadia, though not then
published, was already well known in manuscript copies, and could hardly
have escaped the notice and admiration of Shakspeare as the friend and
client of the Earl of Southampton. The chief defect consists in the
parentheses and parenthetic thoughts and descriptions, suited neither to
the passion of the speaker, nor the purpose of the person to whom the
information is to be given, but manifestly betraying the author
himself,--not by way of continuous undersong, but--palpably, and so as
to show themselves addressed to the general reader. However, it is not
unimportant to notice how strong a presumption the diction and allusions
of this play afford, that, though Shakspeare's acquirements in the dead
languages might not be such as we suppose in a learned education, his
habits had, nevertheless, been scholastic, and those of a student. For a
young author's first work almost always bespeaks his recent pursuits,
and his first observations of life are either drawn from the immediate
employments of his youth, and from the characters and images most deeply
impressed on his mind in the situations in which those employments had
placed him;--or else they are fixed on such objects and occurrences in
the world, as are easily connected with, and seem to bear upon, his
studies and the hitherto exclusive subjects of his meditation. Just as
Ben Jonson, who applied himself to the drama after having served in
Flanders, fills his earliest plays with true or pretended soldiers, the
wrongs and neglects of the former, and the absurd boasts and knavery of
their counterfeits. So Lessing's first comedies are placed in the
universities, and consist of events and characters conceivable in an
academic life.
I will only further remark the sweet and tempered gravity, with which
Shakspeare in the end draws the only fitting moral which such a drama
afforded. Here Rosaline rises up to the full height of Beatrice:--
'Ros'. Oft have I heard of you, my lord Biron, Before I saw you, and the
world's large tongue Proclaims you for a man replete with mocks; Full of
comparisons, and wounding flouts, Which you on all estates will execute
That lie within the mercy of your wit: To weed this wormwood from your
fruitful brain, And therewithal, to win me, if you please, (Without the
which I am not to be won,) You shall this twelvemonth term from day to
day Visit the speechless sick, and still converse With groaning
wretches; and your talk shall be, With all the fierce endeavour of your
wit, To enforce the pained impotent to smile.
'Biron'. To move wild laughter in the throat of death?
It cannot be; it is impossible;
Mirth cannot move a soul in agony.
'Ros'. Why, that's the way to choke a gibing spirit,
Whose influence is begot of that loose grace,
Which shallow laughing hearers give to fools:
A jest's prosperity lies in the ear
Of him that hears it, never in the tongue
Of him that makes it: then, if sickly ears,
Deaf'd with the clamors of their own dear groans,
Will hear your idle scorns, continue then,
And I will have you, and that fault withal;
But, if they will not, throw away that spirit,
And I shall find you empty of that fault,
Right joyful of your reformation.
Act v. sc. 2. In Biron's speech to the Princess:
--and, therefore, like the eye,
Full of _straying_ shapes, of habits, and of forms.
Either read _stray_, which I prefer; or throw _full_ back to the
preceding lines,--
like the eye, full
Of straying shapes, &c.
In the same scene:
'Biron'. And what to me, my love? and what to me?
'Ros'. You must be purged too, your sins are rank;
You are attaint with fault and perjury:
Therefore, if you my favour mean to get,
A twelvemonth shall you spend, and never rest,
But seek the weary beds of people sick.
There can be no doubt, indeed, about the propriety of expunging this
speech of Rosaline's; it soils the very page that retains it. But I do
not agree with Warburton and others in striking out the preceding line
also. It is quite in Biron's character; and Rosaline not answering it
immediately, Dumain takes up the question for him, and, after he and
Longaville are answered, Biron, with evident propriety, says;--
_Studies_ my mistress? &c.
MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM.
Act i. sc. 1.
'Her'. O cross! too high to be enthrall'd to low--
'Lys'. Or else misgraffed, in respect of years;
'Her'. O spite! too old to be engag'd to young--
'Lys'. Or else it stood upon the choice of friends;
'Her'. O hell! to chuse love by another's eye!
There is no authority for any alteration;--but I never can help feeling
how great an improvement it would be, if the two former of Hermia's
exclamations were omitted;--the third and only appropriate one would
then become a beauty, and most natural.
'Ib.' Helena's speech:--
I wilt go tell him of fair Hermia's flight, &c.
I am convinced that Shakspeare availed himself of the title of this play
in his own mind, and worked upon it as a dream throughout, but
especially, and, perhaps, unpleasingly, in this broad determination of
ungrateful treachery in Helena, so undisguisedly avowed to herself, and
this, too, after the witty cool philosophizing that precedes. The act
itself is natural, and the resolve so to act is, I fear, likewise too
true a picture of the lax hold which principles have on a woman's heart,
when opposed to, or even separated from, passion and inclination. For
women are less hypocrites to their own minds than men are, because in
general they feel less proportionate abhorrence of moral evil in and for
itself, and more of its outward consequences, as detection, and loss of
character than men,--their natures being almost wholly extroitive.
Still, however just in itself, the representation of this is not
poetical; we shrink from it, and cannot harmonize it with the ideal.
Act ii. sc. 1. Theobald's edition.
_Through_ bush, _through_ briar--... _Through_ flood, _through_ fire--
What a noble pair of ears this worthy Theobald must have had! The eight
amphimacers or cretics,--
Ovër hîll, ôvër dâle,
Thôrö' bûsh, thôrö' brîar,
Ovër pârk, ôvër pâle,
Thôrö' flôôd, thôrö' fîre--
have a delightful effect on the ear in their sweet transition to the
trochaic,--
Î dô wândër êv'ry whêrë
Swîftër thân thë môônës sphêrë, &c.--
The last words as sustaining the rhyme, must be considered, as in fact
they are, trochees in time.
It may be worth while to give some correct examples in English of the
principal metrical feet:--
Pyrrhic or Dibrach, u u =_body, spirit_.
Tribrach, u u u =_nobody_, (hastily pronounced).
Iambus u ' =_deli'ght_.
Trochee, ' u =_li'ghtly_.
Spondee, ' ' =_Go'd spa'ke_.
The paucity of spondees in single words in English and, indeed, in the
modern languages in general, makes, perhaps, the greatest distinction,
metrically considered, between them and the Greek and Latin.
Dactyl, ' u u = _me'rrily._
Anapæst, u u ' = _a propo's,_ or the first three syllables
of _ceremo'ny_.
Amphibrachys, u ' u = _deli'ghtful_.
Amphimacer, ' u ' = _o'ver hi'll_.
Antibacchius, u ' ' = _the Lo'rd Go'd_.
Bacchius, ' ' u = _He'lve'llyn_.
Molossus, ' ' ' = _Jo'hn Ja'mes Jo'nes._
These simple feet may suffice for understanding the metres of
Shakspeare, for the greater part at least;--but Milton cannot be made
harmoniously intelligible without the composite feet, the Ionics, Pæons,
and Epitrites.
'Ib.' sc. 2. Titania's speech:--(Theobald adopting Warburton's reading.)
Which she, with pretty and with swimming gate
_Follying_ (her womb then rich with my young squire)
Would imitate, &c.
Oh! oh! Heaven have mercy on poor Shakspeare, and also on Mr.
Warburton's mind's eye!
Act v. sc. 1. Theseus' speech:--(Theobald.)
And what poor [_willing_] duty cannot do,
Noble respect takes it in might, not merit.
To my ears it would read far more Shakspearian thus:--
And what poor duty cannot do, _yet would_, Noble respect, &c.
'Ib.' sc. 2.
'Puck.' Now the hungry lion roars,
And the wolf behowls the moon;
Whilst the heavy ploughman snores
All with weary task foredone, &c.
Very Anacreon in perfectness, proportion, grace, and spontaneity! So far
it is Greek;--but then add, O! what wealth, what wild ranging, and yet
what compression and condensation of, English fancy! In truth, there is
nothing in Anacreon more perfect than these thirty lines, or half so
rich and imaginative. They form a speckless diamond.
COMEDY OF ERRORS.
The myriad-minded man, our, and all men's, Shakspeare, has in this piece
presented us with a legitimate farce in exactest consonance with the
philosophical principles and character of farce, as distinguished from
comedy and from entertainments. A proper farce is mainly distinguished
from comedy by the license allowed, and even required, in the fable, in
order to produce strange and laughable situations. The story need not be
probable, it is enough that it is possible. A comedy would scarcely
allow even the two Antipholises; because, although there have been
instances of almost indistinguishable likeness in two persons, yet these
are mere individual accidents, 'casus ludentis naturæ', and the 'verum'
will not excuse the 'inverisimile'. But farce dares add the two Dromios,
and is justified in so doing by the laws of its end and constitution. In
a word, farces commence in a postulate, which must be granted.
AS YOU LIKE IT.
Act I. sc. 1.
'Oli'. What, boy!
'Orla'. Come, come, elder brother, you are too young in this.
'Oli'. Wilt thou lay hands on me, villain?
There is a beauty here. The word 'boy' naturally provokes and awakens in
Orlando the sense of his manly powers; and with the retort of 'elder
brother,' he grasps him with firm hands, and makes him feel he is no
boy.
Ib.
'Oli'. Farewell, good Charles.--Now will I stir this gamester: I
hope, I shall see an end of him; for my soul, yet I know not why,
hates nothing more than him. Yet he's gentle; never school'd, and yet
learn'd; full of noble device; of all sorts enchantingly beloved! and,
indeed, so much in the heart of the world, and especially of my own
people, who best know him, that I am altogether misprized: but it
shall not be so long; this wrestler shall clear all.
This has always appeared to me one of the most un-Shakspearian speeches
in all the genuine works of our poet; yet I should be nothing surprized,
and greatly pleased, to find it hereafter a fresh beauty, as has so
often happened to me with other supposed defects of great men. (1810).
It is too venturous to charge a passage in Shakspeare with want of truth
to nature; and yet at first sight this speech of Oliver's expresses
truths, which it seems almost impossible that any mind should so
distinctly, so livelily, and so voluntarily, have presented to itself,
in connection with feelings and intentions so malignant, and so contrary
to those which the qualities expressed would naturally have called
forth. But I dare not say that this seeming unnaturalness is not in the
nature of an abused wilfulness, when united with a strong intellect. In
such characters there is sometimes a gloomy self-gratification in making
the absoluteness of the will ('sit pro ratione voluntas!') evident to
themselves by setting the reason and the conscience in full array
against it. (1818).
Ib. sc. 2.
'Celia'. If you saw yourself with _your_ eyes, or knew yourself with
_your_ judgment, the fear of your adventure would counsel you to a
more equal enterprise.
Surely it should be '_our_ eyes' and '_our_ judgment.'
'Ib.' sc. 3.
'Cel'. But is all this for your father?
'Ros'. No, some of it is for _my child's father_.
Theobald restores this as the reading of the older editions. It may be
so; but who can doubt that it is a mistake for 'my father's child,'
meaning herself? According to Theobald's note, a most indelicate
anticipation is put into the mouth of Rosalind without reason;--and
besides, what a strange thought, and how out of place, and
unintelligible!
Act iv. sc. 2.
Take thou no scorn
To wear the horn, the lusty horn;
It was a crest ere thou wast born.
I question whether there exists a parallel instance of a phrase, that
like this of 'horns' is universal in all languages, and yet for which no
one has discovered even a plausible origin.
TWELFTH NIGHT.
Act I. sc. 1. Duke's speech:--
--so full of shapes _is_ fancy, That it alone is high fantastical.
Warburton's alteration of _is_ into _in_ is needless. 'Fancy' may very
well be interpreted 'exclusive affection,' or 'passionate preference.'
Thus, bird-fanciers, gentlemen of the fancy, that is, amateurs of
boxing, &c. The play of assimilation,--the meaning one sense chiefly,
and yet keeping both senses in view, is perfectly Shakspearian.
Act ii. sc. 3. Sir Andrew's speech:--
An explanatory note on _Pigrogromilus_ would have been more acceptable
than Theobald's grand discovery that 'lemon' ought to be 'leman.'
Ib. Sir Toby's speech: (Warburton's note on the Peripatetic philosophy.)
Shall we rouse the night-owl in a catch, that will draw three souls
out of one weaver?
O genuine, and inimitable (at least I hope so) Warburton! This note of
thine, if but one in five millions, would be half a one too much.
'Ib.' sc. 4.
'Duke'. My life upon't, young though thou art, thine eye
Hath stay'd upon some favour that it loves;
Hath it not, boy?
'Vio'. A little, by your favour.
'Duke'. What kind of woman is't?
And yet Viola was to have been presented to Orsino as a eunuch!--Act i.
sc. 2. Viola's speech. Either she forgot this, or else she had altered
her plan.
Ib.
'Vio'. A blank, my lord: she never told her love!--
But let concealment, &c.
After the first line, (of which the last five words should be spoken
with, and drop down in, a deep sigh) the actress ought to make a pause;
and then start afresh, from the activity of thought, born of suppressed
feelings, and which thought had accumulated during the brief interval,
as vital heat under the skin during a dip in cold water.
Ib. sc. 5.
'Fabian'. Though our silence be drawn from us by _cars_, yet peace.
Perhaps, 'cables.'
Act iii. sc. 1.
'Clown'. A sentence is but a _cheveril_ glove to a good wit.
(Theobald's note.)
Theobald's etymology of 'cheveril' is, of course quite right;--but he is
mistaken in supposing that there were no such things as gloves of
chicken-skin. They were at one time a main article in chirocosmetics.
Act v. sc. 1. Clown's speech:--
So that, _conclusions to be as kisses_, if your four negatives make
your two affirmatives, why, then, the worse for my friends, and the
better for my foes.
(Warburton reads 'conclusion to be asked, is.')
Surely Warburton could never have wooed by kisses and won, or he would
not have flounder-flatted so just and humorous, nor less pleasing than
humorous, an image into so profound a nihility. In the name of love and
wonder, do not four kisses make a double affirmative? The humour lies in
the whispered 'No!' and the inviting 'Don't!' with which the maiden's
kisses are accompanied, and thence compared to negatives, which by
repetition constitute an affirmative.
ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL.
Act I. sc. 1.
'Count'. If the living be enemy to the grief, the excess makes it soon
mortal.
'Bert'. Madam, I desire your holy wishes--.
'Laf'. How understand we that--?
Bertram and Lafeu, I imagine, both speak together,--Lafeu referring to
the Countess's rather obscure remark.
Act. ii. sc. 1. (Warburton's note.)
'King'. --let _higher_ Italy
(Those _'bated_, that inherit but the fall
Of the last monarchy) see, that you come
Not to woo honor, but to wed it.
It would be, I own, an audacious and unjustifiable change of the text;
but yet, as a mere conjecture, I venture to suggest 'bastards,' for
''bated.' As it stands, in spite of Warburton's note I can make little
or nothing of it. Why should the king except the then most illustrious
states, which, as being republics, were the more truly inheritors of the
Roman grandeur?--With my conjecture, the sense would be;--'let higher,
or the more northern part of Italy--(unless 'higher' be a corruption
for 'hir'd,'--the metre seeming to demand a monosyllable) (those
bastards that inherit the infamy only of their fathers) see, &c.' The
following 'woo' and 'wed' are so far confirmative as they indicate
Shakspeare's manner of connexion by unmarked influences of association
from some preceding metaphor. This it is which makes his style so
peculiarly vital and organic. Likewise 'those girls of Italy' strengthen
the guess. The absurdity of Warburton's gloss, which represents the king
calling Italy superior, and then excepting the only part the lords were
going to visit, must strike every one.
Ib. sc. 3.
'Laf'. They say, miracles are past; and we have our philosophical
persons to make modern and familiar, things supernatural and
_causeless_.
Shakspeare, inspired, as it might seem, with all knowledge, here uses
the word 'causeless' in its strict philosophical sense;--cause being
truly predicable only of 'phenomena', that is, things natural, and not
of 'noumena', or things supernatural.
Act iii. sc. 5.
'Dia'. The Count Rousillon:--know you such a one?
'Hel'. But by the ear that hears most nobly of him;
His face I know not.
Shall we say here, that Shakspeare has unnecessarily made his loveliest
character utter a lie?--Or shall we dare think that, where to deceive
was necessary, he thought a pretended verbal verity a double crime,
equally with the other a lie to the hearer, and at the same time an
attempt to lie to one's own conscience?
MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR.
Act I. sc. 1.
'Shal'. The luce is the fresh fish, the salt fish is an old coat.
I cannot understand this. Perhaps there is a corruption both of words
and speakers. Shallow no sooner corrects one mistake of Sir Hugh's,
namely, 'louse' for 'luce,' a pike, but the honest Welchman falls into
another, namely, 'cod' ('baccalà') 'Cambrice' 'cot' for coat.
'Shal'. The luce is the fresh fish--
'Evans'. The salt fish is an old cot.
'Luce is a fresh fish, and not a louse;' says Shallow. 'Aye, aye,' quoth
Sir Hugh; 'the _fresh_ fish is the luce; it is an old cod that is the
salt fish.' At all events, as the text stands, there is no sense at all
in the words.
'Ib.' sc. 3.
'Fal'. Now, the report goes, she has all the rule of her husband's
purse; she hath a legion of angels.
'Pist'. As many devils entertain; and 'To her, boy', say I.
Perhaps it is--
As many devils enter (or enter'd) swine; and _to her, boy_, say I:--
a somewhat profane, but not un-Shakspearian, allusion to the 'legion' in
St. Luke's 'gospel.'
MEASURE FOR MEASURE.
This play, which is Shakspeare's throughout, is to me the most
painful--say rather, the only painful--part of his genuine works. The
comic and tragic parts equally border on the [Greek (transliterated):
misaeteon],--the one being disgusting, the other horrible; and the
pardon and marriage of Angelo not merely baffles the strong indignant
claim of justice--(for cruelty, with lust and damnable baseness, cannot
be forgiven, because we cannot conceive them as being morally repented
of;) but it is likewise degrading to the character of woman. Beaumont
and Fletcher, who can follow Shakspeare in his errors only, have
presented a still worse, because more loathsome and contradictory,
instance of the same kind in the Night-Walker, in the marriage of Alathe
to Algripe. Of the counterbalancing beauties of Measure for Measure, I
need say nothing; for I have already remarked that the play is
Shakspeare's throughout.
Act iii. sc. 1.
Ay, but to die, and go we know not where, &c.
This natural fear of Claudio, from the antipathy we have to death, seems
very little varied from that infamous wish of Mæcenas, recorded in the
101st epistle of Seneca:
_Debilem facito manu, Debilem pede, coxa, &c._
Warburton's note.
I cannot but think this rather an heroic resolve, than an infamous wish.
It appears to me to be the grandest symptom of an immortal spirit, when
even that bedimmed and overwhelmed spirit recked not of its own
immortality, still to seek to be,--to be a mind, a will.
As fame is to reputation, so heaven is to an estate, or immediate
advantage. The difference is, that the self-love of the former cannot
exist but by a complete suppression and habitual supplantation of
immediate selfishness. In one point of view, the miser is more estimable
than the spendthrift;--only that the miser's present feelings are as
much of the present as the spendthrift's. But 'caeteris paribus', that
is, upon the supposition that whatever is good or lovely in the one
coexists equally in the other, then, doubtless, the master of the
present is less a selfish being, an animal, than he who lives for the
moment with no inheritance in the future. Whatever can degrade man, is
supposed in the latter case, whatever can elevate him, in the former.
And as to self;--strange and generous self! that can only be such a self
by a complete divestment of all that men call self,--of all that can
make it either practically to others, or consciously to the individual
himself, different from the human race in its ideal. Such self is but a
perpetual religion, an inalienable acknowledgment of God, the sole basis
and ground of being. In this sense, how can I love God, and not love
myself, as far as it is of God?
'Ib.' sc. 2.
Pattern in himself to know, Grace to stand, and virtue go.
Worse metre, indeed, but better English would be,--
Grace to stand, virtue to go.
CYMBELINE.
Act I. sc. 1.
You do not meet a man, but frowns: our bloods
No more obey the heavens, than our courtiers'
Still seem, as does the king's.
There can be little doubt of Mr. Tyrwhitt's emendations of 'courtiers'
and 'king,' as to the sense;--only it is not impossible that
Shakspeare's dramatic language may allow of the word, 'brows' or 'faces'
being understood after the word 'courtiers',' which might then remain in
the genitive case plural. But the nominative plural makes excellent
sense, and is sufficiently elegant, and sounds to my ear Shakspearian.
What, however, is meant by 'our bloods no more obey the heavens?'--Dr.
Johnson's assertion that 'bloods' signify 'countenances,' is, I think,
mistaken both in the thought conveyed--(for it was never a popular
belief that the stars governed men's countenances,) and in the usage,
which requires an antithesis of the blood,--or the temperament of the
four humours, choler, melancholy, phlegm, and the red globules, or the
sanguine portion, which was supposed not to be in our own power, but, to
be dependent on the influences of the heavenly bodies,--and the
countenances which are in our power really, though from flattery we
bring them into a no less apparent dependence on the sovereign, than the
former are in actual dependence on the constellations.
I have sometimes thought that the word 'courtiers' was a misprint for
'countenances,' arising from an anticipation, by foreglance of the
compositor's eye, of the word 'courtier' a few lines below. The written
'r' is easily and often confounded with the written 'n'. The compositor
read the first syllable 'court', and--his eye at the same time catching
the word 'courtier' lower down--he completed the word without
reconsulting the copy. It is not unlikely that Shakspeare intended first
to express, generally the same thought, which a little afterwards he
repeats with a particular application to the persons meant;--a common
usage of the pronominal 'our,' where the speaker does not really mean to
include himself; and the word 'you' is an additional confirmation of the
'our' being used in this place, for men generally and indefinitely, just
as 'you do not meet,' is the same as, 'one does not meet.'
Act i. sc. 2. Imogen's speech:--
--My dearest husband,
I something fear my father's wrath; but nothing
(Always reserv'd my holy duty) what
His rage can do on me.
Place the emphasis on 'me;' for 'rage' is a mere repetition of 'wrath.'
'Cym'. O disloyal thing,
That should'st repair my youth, thou heapest
A year's age on me.
How is it that the commentators take no notice of the un-Shakspearian
defect in the metre of the second line, and what in Shakspeare is the
same, in the harmony with the sense and feeling? Some word or words must
have slipped out after 'youth,'--possibly 'and see':--
That should'st repair my youth!--and see, thou heap'st, &c.
'Ib.' sc. 4. Pisanio's speech:--
--For so long
As he could make me with _this_ eye or ear
Distinguish him from others, &c.
But '_this_ eye,' in spite of the supposition of its being used [Greek
(transliterated): deiktik_os], is very awkward. I should think that
either 'or'--or 'the' was Shakspeare's word;--
As he could make me or with eye or ear.
'Ib.' sc. 7. Iachimo's speech:--
Hath nature given them eyes
To see this vaulted arch, and the rich crop
Of sea and land, which can distinguish 'twixt
The fiery orbs above, and the twinn'd stones
Upon the number'd beach.
I would suggest 'cope' for 'crop.' As to 'twinn'd stones'--may it not be
a bold _catachresis_ for muscles, cockles, and other empty shells with
hinges, which are truly twinned? I would take Dr. Farmer's 'umber'd,'
which I had proposed before I ever heard of its having been already
offered by him: but I do not adopt his interpretation of the word, which
I think is not derived from _umbra_, a shade, but from _umber_, a dingy
yellow-brown soil, which most commonly forms the mass of the sludge on
the sea shore, and on the banks of tide-rivers at low water. One other
possible interpretation of this sentence has occurred to me, just barely
worth mentioning;--that the 'twinn'd stones' are the _augrim_ stones
upon the number'd beech, that is, the astronomical tables of beech-wood.
Act v. sc. 5.
'Sooth'. When as a lion's whelp, &c.
It is not easy to conjecture why Shakspeare should have introduced this
ludicrous scroll, which answers no one purpose, either propulsive, or
explicatory, unless as a joke on etymology.
TITUS ANDRONICUS.
Act I. sc. 1. Theobald's note:
I never heard it so much as intimated, that he (Shakspeare) had turned
his genius to stage-writing, before he associated with the players, and
became one of their body.
That Shakspeare never 'turned his genius to stage writing,' as Theobald
most 'Theobaldice' phrases it, before he became an actor, is an
assertion of about as much authority, as the precious story that he left
Stratford for deerstealing, and that he lived by holding gentlemen's
horses at the doors of the theatre, and other trash of that arch-gossip,
old Aubrey. The metre is an argument against Titus Andronicus being
Shakspeare's, worth a score such chronological surmises. Yet I incline
to think that both in this play and in Jeronymo, Shakspeare wrote some
passages, and that they are the earliest of his compositions.
Act v. sc. 2.
I think it not improbable that the lines from--
I am not mad; I know thee well enough;--
...
So thou destroy Rapine, and
Murder there.
were written by Shakspeare in his earliest period. But instead of the
text--
Revenge, _which makes the foul offender quake.
'Tit.' Art thou_ Revenge? and art thou sent to me?--
the words in italics [between underscores] ought to be omitted.
TROILUS AND CRESSIDA.
Mr. Pope (after Dryden) informs us, that the story of Troilus and
Cressida was originally the work of one Lollius, a Lombard: but Dryden
goes yet further; he declares it to have been written in Latin verse,
and that Chaucer translated it.--_Lollius was a historiographer of
Urbino in Italy_. (Note in Stockdale's edition, 1807.)
'Lollius was a historiographer of Urbino in Italy.' So affirms the
notary, to whom the Sieur Stockdale committed the _disfacimento_ of
Ayscough's excellent edition of Shakspeare. Pity that the researchful
notary has not either told us in what century, and of what history, he
was a writer, or been simply content to depose, that Lollius, if a
writer of that name existed at all, was a somewhat somewhere. The notary
speaks of the _Troy Boke_ or Lydgate, printed in 1513. I have never seen
it; but I deeply regret that Chalmers did not substitute the whole of
Lydgate's works from the MSS. extant, for the almost worthless Gower.
The Troilus and Cressida of Shakspeare can scarcely be classed with his
dramas of Greek and Roman history; but it forms an intermediate link
between the fictitious Greek and Roman histories, which we may call
legendary dramas, and the proper ancient histories; that is, between the
Pericles or Titus Andronicus, and the Coriolanus, or Julius Caesar.
Cymbeline is a _congener_ with Pericles, and distinguished from Lear by
not having any declared prominent object. But where shall we class the
Timon of Athens? Perhaps immediately below Lear. It is a Lear of the
satirical drama; a Lear of domestic or ordinary life;--a local eddy of
passion on the high road of society, while all around is the week-day
goings on of wind and weather; a Lear, therefore, without its
soul-searching flashes, its ear-cleaving thunderclaps, its meteoric
splendors,--without the contagion and the fearful sympathies of nature,
the fates, the furies, the frenzied elements, dancing in and out, now
breaking through, and scattering,--now hand in hand with,--the fierce or
fantastic group of human passions, crimes, and anguishes, reeling on the
unsteady ground, in a wild harmony to the shock and the swell of an
earthquake. But my present subject was Troilus and Cressida; and I
suppose that, scarcely knowing what to say of it, I by a cunning of
instinct ran off to subjects on which I should find it difficult not to
say too much, though certain after all that I should still leave the
better part unsaid, and the gleaning for others richer than my own
harvest.
Indeed, there is no one of Shakspeare's plays harder to characterize.
The name and the remembrances connected with it, prepare us for the
representation of attachment no less faithful than fervent on the side
of the youth, and of sudden and shameless inconstancy on the part of the
lady. And this is, indeed, as the gold thread on which the scenes are
strung, though often kept out of sight and out of mind by gems of
greater value than itself. But as Shakspeare calls forth nothing from
the mausoleum of history, or the catacombs of tradition, without giving,
or eliciting, some permanent and general interest, and brings forward no
subject which he does not moralize or intellectualize,--so here he has
drawn in Cressida the portrait of a vehement passion, that, having its
true origin and proper cause in warmth of temperament, fastens on,
rather than fixes to, some one object by liking and temporary
preference.
There's language in her eye, her cheek, her lip,
Nay, her foot speaks; her wanton spirits look out
At every joint and motive of her body.
This Shakspeare has contrasted with the profound affection represented
in Troilus, and alone worthy the name of love;--affection, passionate
indeed,--swoln with the confluence of youthful instincts and youthful
fancy, and growing in the radiance of hope newly risen, in short
enlarged by the collective sympathies of nature;--but still having a
depth of calmer element in a will stronger than desire, more entire than
choice, and which gives permanence to its own act by converting it into
faith and duty. Hence with excellent judgment, and with an excellence
higher than mere judgment can give, at the close of the play, when
Cressida has sunk into infamy below retrieval and beneath hope, the same
will, which had been the substance and the basis of his love, while the
restless pleasures and passionate longings, like sea-waves, had tossed
but on its surface,--this same moral energy is represented as snatching
him aloof from all neighbourhood with her dishonour, from all lingering
fondness and languishing regrets, whilst it rushes with him into other
and nobler duties, and deepens the channel, which his heroic brother's
death had left empty for its collected flood. Yet another secondary and
subordinate purpose Shakspeare has inwoven with his delineation of these
two characters,--that of opposing the inferior civilization, but purer
morals, of the Trojans to the refinements, deep policy, but duplicity
and sensual corruptions, of the Greeks.
To all this, however, so little comparative projection is given,--nay,
the masterly group of Agamemnon, Nestor, and Ulysses, and, still more in
advance, that of Achilles, Ajax, and Thersites, so manifestly occupy the
foreground, that the subservience and vassalage of strength and animal
courage to intellect and policy seems to be the lesson most often in our
poet's view, and which he has taken little pains to connect with the
former more interesting moral impersonated in the titular hero and
heroine of the drama. But I am half inclined to believe, that
Shakspeare's main object, or shall I rather say, his ruling impulse, was
to translate the poetic heroes of paganism into the not less rude, but
more intellectually vigorous, and more _featurely_, warriors of
Christian chivalry,--and to substantiate the distinct and graceful
profiles or outlines of the Homeric epic into the flesh and blood of the
romantic drama,--in short, to give a grand history-piece in the robust
style of Albert Durer.
The character of Thersites, in particular, well deserves a more careful
examination, as the Caliban of demagogic life;--the admirable portrait
of intellectual power deserted by all grace, all moral principle, all
not momentary impulse;--just wise enough to detect the weak head, and
fool enough to provoke the armed fist of his betters;--one whom
malcontent Achilles can inveigle from malcontent Ajax, under the one
condition, that he shall be called on to do nothing but abuse and
slander, and that he shall be allowed to abuse as much and as purulently
as he likes, that is, as he can;--in short, a mule,--quarrelsome by the
original discord of his nature,--a slave by tenure of his own
baseness,--made to bray and be brayed at, to despise and be despicable.
'Aye, Sir, but say what you will, he is a very clever fellow, though the
best friends will fall out. There was a time when Ajax thought he
deserved to have a statue of gold erected to him, and handsome Achilles,
at the head of the Myrmidons, gave no little credit to his _friend
Thersites_!'
Act iv. sc. 5. Speech of Ulysses:--
O, these encounterers, so glib of tongue,
That give a _coasting_ welcome ere it comes--
Should it be 'accosting?' 'Accost her, knight, accost!' in the Twelfth
Night. Yet there sounds a something so Shakspearian in the phrase--'give
a coasting welcome,' ('coasting' being taken as the epithet and
adjective of 'welcome,') that had the following words been, 'ere _they
land_,' instead of 'ere it comes,' I should have preferred the
interpretation. The sense now is, 'that give welcome to a salute ere it
comes.'
CORIOLANUS.
This play illustrates the wonderfully philosophic impartiality of
Shakspeare's politics. His own country's history furnished him with no
matter, but what was too recent to be devoted to patriotism. Besides, he
knew that the instruction of ancient history would seem more
dispassionate. In Coriolanus and Julius Caesar, you see Shakspeare's
good-natured laugh at mobs. Compare this with Sir Thomas Brown's
aristocracy of spirit.
Act i. sc. 1. Coriolanus' speech:--
He that depends Upon your favours, swims with fins of lead,
And hews down oaks with rushes. Hang ye! Trust ye?
I suspect that Shakspeare wrote it transposed;
Trust ye? Hang ye!
Ib. sc. 10. Speech of Aufidius:--
Mine emulation
Hath not that honor in't, it had; for where
I thought to crush him in an equal force,
True sword to sword; I'll potch at him some way,
Or wrath, or craft may get him.--My valor (poison'd
With only suffering stain by him) for him
Shall fly out of itself: not sleep, nor sanctuary,
Being naked, sick, nor fane, nor capitol,
The prayers of priests, nor times of sacrifices,
Embankments all of fury, shall lift up
Their rotten privilege and custom 'gainst
My hate to Marcius.
I have such deep faith in Shakspeare's heart-lore, that I take for
granted that this is in nature, and not as a mere anomaly; although I
cannot in myself discover any germ of possible feeling, which could wax
and unfold itself into such sentiment as this. However, I perceive that
in this speech is meant to be contained a prevention of shock at the
after-change in Aufidius' character.
Act ii. sc, 1. Speech of Menenius:--
The most sovereign prescription in _Galen_, &c.
Was it without, or in contempt of, historical information that
Shakspeare made the contemporaries of Coriolanus quote Cato and Galen? I
cannot decide to my own satisfaction.
Ib. sc. 3. Speech of Coriolanus:--
Why in this wolvish gown should I stand here--
That the gown of the candidate was of whitened wool, we know. Does
'wolvish' or 'woolvish' mean 'made of wool?' If it means 'wolfish,' what
is the sense?
Act iv. sc. 7. Speech of Aufidius:--
All places yield to him ere he sits down, &c.
I have always thought this in itself so beautiful speech, the least
explicable from the mood and full intention of the speaker, of any in
the whole works of Shakspeare. I cherish the hope that I am mistaken,
and that, becoming wiser, I shall discover some profound excellence in
that, in which I now appear to detect an imperfection.
JULIUS CÆSAR.
Act I. sc. 1.
'Mar.' What meanest _thou_ by that? Mend me, thou saucy fellow!
The speeches of Flavius and Marullus are in blank verse. Wherever
regular metre can be rendered truly imitative of character, passion, or
personal rank, Shakspeare seldom, if ever, neglects it. Hence this line
should be read:--
What mean'st by that? mend me, thou saucy fellow!
I say regular metre: for even the prose has in the highest and lowest
dramatic personage, a Cobbler or a Hamlet, a rhythm so felicitous and so
severally appropriate, as to be a virtual metre.
Ib. sc. 2.
'Bru.' A soothsayer bids you beware the Ides of March.
If my ear does not deceive me, the metre of this line was meant to
express that sort of mild philosophic contempt, characterizing Brutus
even in his first casual speech. The line is a trimeter,--each _dipodia_
containing two accented and two unaccented syllables, but variously
arranged, as thus;--
^ -- -- ^ | -- ^ ^ -- | ^ -- ^ --
A soothsayer | bids you beware | the Ides of March.
Ib. Speech of Brutus:
Set honor in one eye, and death i' the other,
And I will look on _both_ indifferently.
Warburton would read 'death' for 'both;' but I prefer the old text.
There are here three things, the public good, the individual Brutus'
honor, and his death. The latter two so balanced each other, that he
could decide for the first by equipoise; nay--the thought growing--that
honor had more weight than death. That Cassius understood it as
Warburton, is the beauty of Cassius as contrasted with Brutus.
Ib. Caesar's speech:--
He loves no plays,
As thou dost, Antony; he hears no music, &c.
This is not a trivial observation, nor does our poet mean barely by it,
that Cassius was not a merry, sprightly man; but that he had not a due
temperament of harmony in his disposition. (Theobald's Note).
O Theobald! what a commentator wast thou, when thou would'st affect to
understand Shakspeare, instead of contenting thyself with collating the
text! The meaning here is too deep for a line ten-fold the length of
thine to fathom.
Ib. sc. 3. Caesar's speech:--
Be _factious_ for redress of all these griefs;
And I will set this foot of mine as far,
As who goes farthest.
I understand it thus: 'You have spoken as a conspirator; be so in
_fact_, and I will join you. Act on your principles, and realize them in
a fact.'
Act ii. sc. 1. Speech of Brutus:--
It must be by his death; and, for my part,
I know no personal cause to spurn at him,
But for the general. He would be crown'd:--
How that might change his nature, there's the question.
--And, to speak truth of Cæsar,
I have not known when his affections sway'd
More than his reason.--So Cæsar may;
Then, lest he may, prevent.
This speech is singular;--at least, I do not at present see into
Shakspeare's motive, his _rationale_, or in what point of view he meant
Brutus' character to appear. For surely--(this I mean is what I say to
myself, with my present _quantum_ of insight, only modified by my
experience in how many instances I have ripened into a perception of
beauties, where I had before descried faults;) surely, nothing can seem
more discordant with our historical preconceptions of Brutus, or more
lowering to the intellect of the Stoico-Platonic tyrannicide, than the
tenets here attributed to him--to him, the stern Roman republican;
namely,--that he would have no objection to a king, or to Cæsar, a
monarch in Rome, would Cæsar but be as good a monarch as he now seems
disposed to be! How, too, could Brutus say that he found no personal
cause--none in Cæsar's past conduct as a man? Had he not passed the
Rubicon? Had he not entered Rome as a conqueror? Had he not placed his
Gauls in the Senate?--Shakspeare, it may be said, has not brought these
things forwards.--True;--and this is just the ground of my perplexity.
What character did Shakspeare mean his Brutus to be?
Ib. Speech of Brutus:--
For if thou _path_, thy native semblance on--
Surely, there need be no scruple in treating this 'path' as a mere
misprint or mis-script for 'put.' In what place does Shakspeare,--where
does any other writer of the same age--use 'path' as a verb for 'walk?'
Ib. sc. 2. Caesar's speech:--
She dreamt last night, she saw my _statue_--
No doubt, it should be _statua_, as in the same age, they more often
pronounced 'heroes' as a trisyllable than dissyllable. A modern tragic
poet would have written,--
Last night she dreamt, that she my statue saw--
But Shakspeare never avails himself of the supposed license of
transposition, merely for the metre. There is always some logic either
of thought or passion to justify it.
Act iii. sc. 1. Antony's speech:--
Pardon me, Julius--here wast thou bay'd, brave hart;
Here didst thou fall, and here thy hunters stand
Sign'd in thy spoil, and crimson'd in thy death.
_O world! thou wast the forest to this hart,
And this, indeed, O world! the heart of thee._
I doubt the genuineness of the last two lines;--not because they are
vile; but first, on account of the rhythm, which is not Shakspearian,
but just the very tune of some old play, from which the actor might have
interpolated them;--and secondly, because they interrupt, not only the
sense and connection, but likewise the flow both of the passion, and,
(what is with me still more decisive) of the Shakspearian link of
association. As with many another parenthesis or gloss slipt into the
text, we have only to read the passage without it, to see that it never
was in it. I venture to say there is no instance in Shakspeare fairly
like this. Conceits he has; but they not only rise out of some word in
the lines before, but also lead to the thought in the lines following.
Here the conceit is a mere alien: Antony forgets an image, when he is
even touching it, and then recollects it, when the thought last in his
mind must have led him away from it.
Act iv. sc. 3. Speech of Brutus:--
----What, shall one of us,
That struck the foremost man of all this world,
But for _supporting robbers_.
This seemingly strange assertion of Brutus is unhappily verified in the
present day. What is an immense army, in which the lust of plunder has
quenched all the duties of the citizen, other than a horde of robbers,
or differenced only as fiends are from ordinarily reprobate men? Caesar
supported, and was supported by, such as these;--and even so Buonaparte
in our days.
I know no part of Shakspeare that more impresses on me the belief of his
genius being superhuman, than this scene between Brutus and Cassius. In
the Gnostic heresy, it might have been credited with less absurdity than
most of their dogmas, that the Supreme had employed him to create,
previously to his function of representing, characters.
ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA.
Shakspeare can be complimented only by comparison with himself: all
other eulogies are either heterogeneous, as when they are in reference
to Spenser or Milton; or they are flat truisms, as when he is gravely
preferred to Corneille, Racine, or even his own immediate successors,
Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger and the rest. The highest praise, or
rather form of praise, of this play, which I can offer in my own mind,
is the doubt which the perusal always occasions in me, whether the
Antony and Cleopatra is not, in all exhibitions of a giant power in its
strength and vigour of maturity, a formidable rival of Macbeth, Lear,
Hamlet, and Othello. 'Feliciter audax' is the motto for its style
comparatively with that of Shakspeare's other works, even as it is the
general motto of all his works compared with those of other poets. Be it
remembered, too, that this happy valiancy of style is but the
representative and result of all the material excellencies so expressed.
This play should be perused in mental contrast with Romeo and
Juliet;--as the love of passion and appetite opposed to the love of
affection and instinct. But the art displayed in the character of
Cleopatra is profound; in this, especially, that the sense of
criminality in her passion is lessened by our insight into its depth and
energy, at the very moment that we cannot but perceive that the passion
itself springs out of the habitual craving of a licentious nature, and
that it is supported and reinforced by voluntary stimulus and sought-for
associations, instead of blossoming out of spontaneous emotion.
Of all Shakspeare's historical plays, Antony and Cleopatra is by far the
most wonderful. There is not one in which he has followed history so
minutely, and yet there are few in which he impresses the notion of
angelic strength so much;--perhaps none in which he impresses it more
strongly. This is greatly owing to the manner in which the fiery force
is sustained throughout, and to the numerous momentary flashes of nature
counteracting the historic abstraction. As a wonderful specimen of the
way in which Shakspeare lives up to the very end of this play, read the
last part of the concluding scene. And if you would feel the judgment as
well as the genius of Shakspeare in your heart's core, compare this
astonishing drama with Dryden's All For Love.
Act i. sc. 1. Philo's speech:--
His captain's heart,
Which in the scuffles of great fights hath burst
The buckles on his breast, _reneges_ all temper--
It should be 'reneagues,' or 'reniegues,' as 'fatigues,' &c.
'Ib.'
Take but good note, and you shall see in him
The triple pillar of the world transform'd
Into a strumpet's _fool_.
Warburton's conjecture of 'stool' is ingenious, and would be a probable
reading, if the scene opening had discovered Antony with Cleopatra on
his lap. But, represented as he is walking and jesting with her, 'fool'
must be the word. Warburton's objection is shallow, and implies that he
confounded the dramatic with the epic style. The 'pillar' of a state is
so common a metaphor as to have lost the image in the thing meant to be
imaged.
Ib. sc. 2.
Much is breeding;
Which, like the courser's hair, hath yet but life,
And not a serpent's poison.
This is so far true to appearance, that a horse-hair, 'laid,' as
Hollinshed says, 'in a pail of water' will become the supporter of
seemingly one worm, though probably of an immense number of small slimy
water-lice. The hair will twirl round a finger, and sensibly compress
it. It is a common experiment with school boys in Cumberland and
Westmorland.
Act ii. sc. 2. Speech of Enobarbus:--
Her gentlewomen, like the Nereids,
So many _mermaids_, tended her i' th' eyes,
And made their bends adornings. At the helm
A seeming mermaid steers.
I have the greatest difficulty in believing that Shakspeare wrote the
first 'mermaids.' He never, I think, would have so weakened by useless
anticipation the fine image immediately following. The epithet 'seeming'
becomes so extremely improper after the whole number had been positively
called 'so many mermaids.'
TIMON OF ATHENS,
Act I. sc. 1.
'Tim'. _The man is honest.
'Old Ath.' Therefore he will be_, Timon. His honesty rewards him in
itself.--
Warburton's comment--'If the man be honest, for that reason he will be
so in this, and not endeavour at the injustice of gaining my daughter
without my consent'--is, like almost all his comments, ingenious in
blunder: he can never see any other writer's thoughts for the
mist-working swarm of his own. The meaning of the first line the poet
himself explains, or rather unfolds, in the second. 'The man is
honest!'--'True;--and for that very cause, and with no additional or
extrinsic motive, he will be so. No man can be justly called honest, who
is not so for honesty's sake, itself including its own reward.' Note,
that 'honesty' in Shakspeare's age retained much of its old dignity, and
that contradistinction of the 'honestum' from the 'utile', in which its
very essence and definition consist. If it be 'honestum', it cannot
depend on the 'utile'.
'Ib.' Speech of Apemantus, printed as prose in Theobald's edition:--
So, so! aches contract, and starve your supple joints!
I may remark here the fineness of Shakspeare's sense of musical period,
which would almost by itself have suggested (if the hundred positive
proofs had not been extant,) that the word 'aches' was then 'ad
libitum', a dissyllable--'aitches'. For read it, 'aches,' in
this sentence, and I would challenge you to find any period in
Shakspeare's writings with the same musical or, rather dissonant,
notation. Try the one, and then the other, by your ear, reading the
sentence aloud, first with the word as a dissyllable and then as a
monosyllable, and you will feel what I mean. [1]
Ib. sc. 2. Cupid's speech: Warburton's correction of--
There taste, touch, all pleas'd from thy table rise--
into
Th' ear, taste, touch, smell, etc.
This is indeed an excellent emendation.
Act ii. sc. 1. Senator's speech:--
--nor then silenc'd with
'Commend me to your master'--and the cap
Plays in the right hand, thus:--
Either, methinks, 'plays' should be 'play'd,' or 'and' should be changed
to 'while.' I can certainly understand it as a parenthesis, an
interadditive of scorn; but it does not sound to my ear as in
Shakspeare's manner.
Ib. sc. 2. Timon's speech: (Theobald.)
And that unaptness made _you_ minister,
Thus to excuse yourself.
Read 'your';--at least I cannot otherwise understand the line. You made
my chance indisposition and occasional unaptness your minister--that is,
the ground on which you now excuse yourself. Or, perhaps, no correction
is necessary, if we construe 'made you' as 'did you make;' 'and that
unaptness did you make help you thus to excuse yourself.' But the former
seems more in Shakspeare's manner, and is less liable to be
misunderstood. [2]
Act iii. sc. 3. Servant's speech:--
How fairly this lord strives to appear foul!--takes virtuous copies to
be wicked; _like those that under hot, ardent, zeal would set whole
realms on fire. Of such a nature is his politic love._
This latter clause I grievously suspect to have been an addition of the
players, which had hit, and, being constantly applauded, procured a
settled occupancy in the prompter's copy. Not that Shakspeare does not
elsewhere sneer at the Puritans; but here it is introduced so _nolenter
volenter_ (excuse the phrase) by the head and shoulders!--and is besides
so much more likely to have been conceived in the age of Charles I.
Act iv. sc. 2. Timon's speech:--
Raise me this beggar, and _deny't_ that lord.--
Warburton reads 'denude.'
I cannot see the necessity of this alteration. The editors and
commentators are, all of them, ready enough to cry out against
Shakspeare's laxities and licenses of style, forgetting that he is not
merely a poet, but a dramatic poet; that, when the head and the heart
are swelling with fullness, a man does not ask himself whether he has
grammatically arranged, but only whether (the context taken in) he has
conveyed, his meaning. 'Deny' is here clearly equal to 'withhold;' and
the 'it,' quite in the genius of vehement conversation, which a
syntaxist explains by ellipses and _subauditurs_ in a Greek or Latin
classic, yet triumphs over as ignorances in a contemporary, refers to
accidental and artificial rank or elevation, implied in the verb
'raise.' Besides, does the word 'denude' occur in any writer before, or
of, Shakspeare's age?
[Footnote 1: It is, of course, a verse,--
Achès contract, and starve your supple joints,--
and is so printed in all later editions. But Mr. C. was reading it in
prose in Theobald; and it is curious to see how his ear detected the
rhythmical necessity for pronouncing 'aches' as a dissyllable, although
the metrical necessity seems for the moment to have escaped him. Ed.]
[Footnote 2: 'Your' is the received reading now. Ed.]
ROMEO AND JULIET.
I have previously had occasion to speak at large on the subject of the
three unities of time, place, and action, as applied to the drama in the
abstract, and to the particular stage for which Shakspeare wrote, as far
as he can be said to have written for any stage but that of the
universal mind. I hope I have in some measure succeeded in demonstrating
that the former two, instead of being rules, were mere inconveniences
attached to the local peculiarities of the Athenian drama; that the last
alone deserved the name of a principle, and that in the preservation of
this unity Shakspeare stood preeminent. Yet, instead of unity of action,
I should greatly prefer the more appropriate, though scholastic and
uncouth, words homogeneity, proportionateness, and totality of
interest,--expressions, which involve the distinction, or rather the
essential difference, betwixt the shaping skill of mechanical talent,
and the creative, productive, life-power of inspired genius. In the
former each part is separately conceived, and then by a succeeding act
put together;--not as watches are made for wholesale,--(for there each
part supposes a pre-conception of the whole in some mind)--but more like
pictures on a motley screen. Whence arises the harmony that strikes us
in the wildest natural landscapes,--in the relative shapes of rocks, the
harmony of colours in the heaths, ferns, and lichens, the leaves of the
beech and the oak, the stems and rich brown branches of the birch and
other mountain trees, varying from verging autumn to returning
spring,--compared with the visual effect from the greater number of
artificial plantations?--From this, that the natural landscape is
effected, as it were, by a single energy modified 'ab intra' in each
component part. And as this is the particular excellence of the
Shakspearian drama generally, so is it especially characteristic of the
Romeo and Juliet.
The groundwork of the tale is altogether in family life, and the events
of the play have their first origin in family feuds. Filmy as are the
eyes of party-spirit, at once dim and truculent, still there is commonly
some real or supposed object in view, or principle to be maintained; and
though but the twisted wires on the plate of rosin in the preparation
for electrical pictures, it is still a guide in some degree, an
assimilation to an outline. But in family quarrels, which have proved
scarcely less injurious to states, wilfulness, and precipitancy, and
passion from mere habit and custom, can alone be expected. With his
accustomed judgment, Shakspeare has begun by placing before us a lively
picture of all the impulses of the play; and, as nature ever presents
two sides, one for Heraclitus, and one for Democritus, he has, by way of
prelude, shown the laughable absurdity of the evil by the contagion of
it reaching the servants, who have so little to do with it, but who are
under the necessity of letting the superfluity of sensoreal power fly
off through the escape-valve of wit-combats, and of quarrelling with
weapons of sharper edge, all in humble imitation of their masters. Yet
there is a sort of unhired fidelity, an 'ourishness' about all this that
makes it rest pleasant on one's feelings. All the first scene, down to
the conclusion of the Prince's speech, is a motley dance of all ranks
and ages to one tune, as if the horn of Huon had been playing behind the
scenes.
Benvolio's speech--
Madam, an hour before the worshipp'd sun
Peer'd forth the golden window of the east--
and, far more strikingly, the following speech of old Montague--
Many a morning hath he there been seen
With tears augmenting the fresh morning dew--
prove that Shakspeare meant the Romeo and Juliet to approach to a poem,
which, and indeed its early date, may be also inferred from the
multitude of rhyming couplets throughout. And if we are right, from the
internal evidence, in pronouncing this one of Shakspeare's early dramas,
it affords a strong instance of the fineness of his insight into the
nature of the passions, that Romeo is introduced already
love-bewildered. The necessity of loving creates an object for itself in
man and woman; and yet there is a difference in this respect between the
sexes, though only to be known by a perception of it. It would have
displeased us if Juliet had been represented as already in love, or as
fancying herself so;--but no one, I believe, ever experiences any shock
at Romeo's forgetting his Rosaline, who had been a mere name for the
yearning of his youthful imagination, and rushing into his passion for
Juliet. Rosaline was a mere creation of his fancy; and we should remark
the boastful positiveness of Romeo in a love of his own making, which is
never shown where love is really near the heart.
When the devout religion of mine eye
Maintains such falsehood, then turn tears to fires!
...
One fairer than my love! the all-seeing sun
Ne'er saw her match, since first the world begun.
The character of the Nurse is the nearest of any thing in Shakspeare to
a direct borrowing from mere observation; and the reason is, that as in
infancy and childhood the individual in nature is a representative of a
class, just as in describing one larch tree, you generalize a grove of
them,--so it is nearly as much so in old age. The generalization is done
to the poet's hand. Here you have the garrulity of age strengthened by
the feelings of a long-trusted servant, whose sympathy with the mother's
affections gives her privileges and rank in the household; and observe
the mode of connection by accidents of time and place, and the childlike
fondness of repetition in a second childhood, and also that happy,
humble, ducking under, yet constant resurgence against, the check of her
superiors!--
Yes, madam!--Yet I cannot choose but laugh, &c.
In the fourth scene we have Mercutio introduced to us. O! how shall I
describe that exquisite ebullience and overflow of youthful life, wafted
on over the laughing waves of pleasure and prosperity, as a wanton
beauty that distorts the face on which she knows her lover is gazing
enraptured, and wrinkles her forehead in the triumph of its smoothness!
Wit ever wakeful, fancy busy and procreative as an insect, courage, an
easy mind that, without cares of its own, is at once disposed to laugh
away those of others, and yet to be interested in them,--these and all
congenial qualities, melting into the common 'copula' of them all, the
man of rank and the gentleman, with all its excellencies and all its
weaknesses, constitute the character of Mercutio!
Act i. sc. 5.
'Tyb'. It fits when such a villain is a guest; I'll not endure him.
'Cap'. He shall be endur'd.
What, goodman boy!--I say, he shall:--Go to;--
Am I the master here, or you?--Go to.
You'll not endure him!--God shall mend my soul--
You'll make a mutiny among my guests!
You will set cock-a-hoop! you'll be the man!
'Tyb'. Why, uncle, 'tis a shame.
'Cap'. Go to, go to, You are a saucy boy! &c.--
How admirable is the old man's impetuosity at once contrasting, yet
harmonized, with young Tybalt's quarrelsome violence! But it would be
endless to repeat observations of this sort. Every leaf is different on
an oak tree; but still we can only say--our tongues defrauding our
eyes--'This is another oak-leaf!'
Act ii. sc. 2. The garden scene:
Take notice in this enchanting scene of the contrast of Romeo's love
with his former fancy; and weigh the skill shown in justifying him from
his inconstancy by making us feel the difference of his passion. Yet
this, too, is a love in, although not merely of, the imagination.
Ib.
'Jul'. Well, do not swear; although I joy in thee,
I have no joy in this contract to-night:
It is too rash, too unadvis'd, too sudden, &c.
With love, pure love, there is always an anxiety for the safety of the
object, a disinterestedness, by which it is distinguished from the
counterfeits of its name. Compare this scene with Act iii. sc. 1. of the
Tempest. I do not know a more wonderful instance of Shakspeare's mastery
in playing a distinctly rememberable variety on the same remembered air,
than in the transporting love-confessions of Romeo and Juliet and
Ferdinand and Miranda. There seems more passion in the one, and more
dignity in the other; yet you feel that the sweet girlish lingering and
busy movement of Juliet, and the calmer and more maidenly fondness of
Miranda, might easily pass into each other.
'Ib.' sc. 3. The Friar's speech:--
The reverend character of the Friar, like all Shakspeare's
representations of the great professions, is very delightful and
tranquillizing, yet it is no digression, but immediately necessary to
the carrying on of the plot.
'Ib.' sc. 4.
'Rom.' Good morrow to you both. What counterfeit did I give you? &c.--
Compare again, Romeo's half-exerted, and half real, ease of mind with
his first manner when in love with Rosaline! His will had come to the
clenching point.
'Ib.' sc. 6.
'Rom.' Do thou but close our hands with holy words,
Then love-devouring death do what he dare,
It is enough I may but call her mine.
The precipitancy, which is the character of the play, is well marked in
this short scene of waiting for Juliet's arrival.
Act iii. sc. 1.
'Mer.' No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door;
but 'tis enough: 'twill serve: ask for me to-morrow, and you shall
find me a grave man, &c.
How fine an effect the wit and raillery habitual to Mercutio, even
struggling with his pain, give to Romeo's following speech, and at the
same time so completely justifying his passionate revenge on Tybalt!
'Ib.' Benvolio's speech:
But that he tilts
With piercing steel at bold Mercutio's breast.--
This small portion of untruth in Benvolio's narrative is finely
conceived.
'Ib.' sc. 2. Juliet's speech:
For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night
Whiter than new snow on a raven's back.--
Indeed the whole of this speech is imagination strained to the highest;
and observe the blessed effect on the purity of the mind. What would
Dryden have made of it?--
'Ib.'
'Nurse'. Shame come to Romeo.
'Jul'. Blister'd be thy tongue For such a wish!
Note the Nurse's mistake of the mind's audible struggles with itself for
its decision 'in toto'.
'Ib.' sc. 3. Romeo's speech:--
'Tis torture, and not mercy: heaven's here,
Where Juliet lives, &c.
All deep passions are a sort of atheists, that believe no future.
'Ib.' sc. 5.
'Cap'. Soft, take me with you, take me with you, wife--
How! will she none? &c.
A noble scene! Don't I see it with my own eyes?--Yes! but not with
Juliet's. And observe in Capulet's last speech in this scene his
mistake, as if love's causes were capable of being generalized.
Act iv. sc. 3. Juliet's speech:--
O, look! methinks I see my cousin's ghost
Seeking out Romeo, that did spit his body
Upon a rapier's point:--Stay, Tybalt, stay!--
Romeo, I come! this do I drink to thee.
Shakspeare provides for the finest decencies. It would have been too
bold a thing for a girl of fifteen;--but she swallows the draught in a
fit of fright.
Ib. sc. 5.
As the audience know that Juliet is not dead, this scene is, perhaps,
excusable. But it is a strong warning to minor dramatists not to
introduce at one time many separate characters agitated by one and the
same circumstance. It is difficult to understand what effect, whether
that of pity or of laughter, Shakspeare meant to produce;--the occasion
and the characteristic speeches are so little in harmony! For example,
what the Nurse says is excellently suited to the Nurse's character, but
grotesquely unsuited to the occasion.
Act. v. sc. 1. Romeo's speech:--
O mischief! thou are swift
To enter in the thoughts of desperate men!
I do remember an apothecary, &c.
This famous passage is so beautiful as to be self-justified; yet, in
addition, what a fine preparation it is for the tomb scene!
'Ib.' sc. 3. Romeo's speech:--
Good gentle youth, tempt not a desperate man,
Fly hence and leave me.
The gentleness of Romeo was shown before, as softened by love; and now
it is doubled by love and sorrow and awe of the place where he is.
'Ib.' Romeo's speech:--
How oft when men are at the point of death
Have they been merry! which their keepers call
A lightning before death. O, how may I
Call this a lightning?--O, my love, my wife! &c.
Here, here, is the master example how beauty can at once increase and
modify passion!
'Ib.' Last scene.
How beautiful is the close! The spring and the winter meet;--winter
assumes the character of spring, and spring the sadness of winter.
SHAKSPEARE'S ENGLISH HISTORICAL PLAYS.
The first form of poetry is the epic, the essence of which may be stated
as the successive in events and characters. This must be distinguished
from narration, in which there must always be a narrator, from whom the
objects represented receive a coloring and a manner;--whereas in the
epic, as in the so called poems of Homer, the whole is completely
objective, and the representation is a pure reflection. The next form
into which poetry passed was the dramatic;--both forms having a common
basis with a certain difference, and that difference not consisting in
the dialogue alone. Both are founded on the relation of providence to
the human will; and this relation is the universal element, expressed
under different points of view according to the difference of religions,
and the moral and intellectual cultivation of different nations. In the
epic poem fate is represented as overruling the will, and making it
instrumental to the accomplishment of its designs:--
[Greek (transliterated):--------Dios de teleieto boulae.]
In the drama, the will is exhibited as struggling with fate, a great and
beautiful instance and illustration of which is the Prometheus of
Æschylus; and the deepest effect is produced, when the fate is
represented as a higher and intelligent will, and the opposition of the
individual as springing from a defect.
In order that a drama may be properly historical, it is necessary that
it should be the history of the people to whom it is addressed. In the
composition, care must be taken that there appear no dramatic
improbability, as the reality is taken for granted. It must, likewise,
be poetical;--that only, I mean, must be taken which is the permanent in
our nature, which is common, and therefore deeply interesting to all
ages. The events themselves are immaterial, otherwise than as the
clothing and manifestation of the spirit that is working within. In this
mode, the unity resulting from succession is destroyed, but is supplied
by a unity of a higher order, which connects the events by reference to
the workers, gives a reason for them in the motives, and presents men in
their causative character. It takes, therefore, that part of real
history which is the least known, and infuses a principle of life and
organization into the naked facts, and makes them all the framework of
an animated whole.
In my happier days, while I had yet hope and onward-looking thoughts, I
planned an historical drama of King Stephen, in the manner of
Shakspeare. Indeed it would be desirable that some man of dramatic
genius should dramatize all those omitted by Shakspeare, as far down as
Henry VII. Perkin Warbeck would make a most interesting drama. A few
scenes of Marlow's Edward II. might be preserved. After Henry VIII., the
events are too well and distinctly known, to be, without plump
inverisimilitude, crowded together in one night's exhibition. Whereas,
the history of our ancient kings--the events of their reigns, I
mean,--are like stars in the sky;--whatever the real interspaces may be,
and however great, they seem close to each other. The stars--the
events--strike us and remain in our eye, little modified by the
difference of dates. An historic drama is, therefore, a collection of
events borrowed from history, but connected together in respect of cause
and time, poetically and by dramatic fiction. It would be a fine
national custom to act such a series of dramatic histories in orderly
succession, in the yearly Christmas holidays, and could not but tend to
counteract that mock cosmopolitism, which under a positive term really
implies nothing but a negation of, or indifference to, the particular
love of our country. By its nationality must every nation retain its
independence;--I mean a nationality 'quoad' the nation. Better
thus;--nationality in each individual, 'quoad' his country, is equal to
the sense of individuality 'quoad' himself; but himself as subsensuous,
and central. Patriotism is equal to the sense of individuality reflected
from every other individual. There may come a higher virtue in
both--just cosmopolitism. But this latter is not possible but by
antecedence of the former.
Shakspeare has included the most important part of nine reigns in his
historical dramas--namely--King John, Richard II.--Henry IV.
(two)--Henry V.--Henry VI. (three) including Edward V. and Henry VIII.,
in all ten plays. There remain, therefore, to be done, with exception of
a single scene or two that should be adopted from Marlow--eleven
reigns--of which the first two appear the only unpromising
subjects;--and those two dramas must be formed wholly or mainly of
invented private stories, which, however, could not have happened except
in consequence of the events and measures of these reigns, and which
should furnish opportunity both of exhibiting the manners and
oppressions of the times, and of narrating dramatically the great
events;--if possible--the death of the two sovereigns, at least of the
latter, should be made to have some influence on the finale of the
story. All the rest are glorious subjects; especially Henry 1st. (being
the struggle between the men of arms and of letters, in the persons of
Henry and Becket,) Stephen, Richard I., Edward II., and Henry VII.
KING JOHN.
Act. I. sc. 1.
'Bast'. James Gurney, wilt thou give us leave awhile?
'Gur'. Good leave, good Philip.
'Bast'. Philip? _sparrow_! James, &c.
Theobald adopts Warburton's conjecture of '_spare me_.'
O true Warburton! and the 'sancta simplicitas' of honest dull Theobald's
faith in him! Nothing can be more lively or characteristic than 'Philip!
Sparrow!' Had Warburton read old Skelton's 'Philip Sparrow,' an
exquisite and original poem, and, no doubt, popular in Shakspeare's
time, even Warburton would scarcely have made so deep a plunge into the
_bathetic_ as to have deathified 'sparrow' into 'spare me!'
Act iii. sc. 2. Speech of Faulconbridge:--
Now, by my life, this day grows wondrous hot;
Some _airy_ devil hovers in the sky, &c.
Theobald adopts Warburton's conjecture of 'fiery.'
I prefer the old text; the word 'devil' implies 'fiery.' You need only
read the line, laying a full and strong emphasis on 'devil,' to perceive
the uselessness and tastelessness of Warburton's alteration.
RICHARD II.
I have stated that the transitional link between the epic poem and the
drama is the historic drama; that in the epic poem a pre-announced fate
gradually adjusts and employs the will and the events as its
instruments, whilst the drama, on the other hand, places fate and will
in opposition to each other, and is then most perfect, when the victory
of fate is obtained in consequence of imperfections in the opposing
will, so as to leave a final impression that the fate itself is but a
higher and a more intelligent will.
From the length of the speeches, and the circumstance that, with one
exception, the events are all historical, and presented in their
results, not produced by acts seen by, or taking place before, the
audience, this tragedy is ill suited to our present large theatres. But
in itself, and for the closet, I feel no hesitation in placing it as the
first and most admirable of all Shakspeare's purely historical plays.
For the two parts of Henry IV. form a species of themselves, which may
be named the mixed drama. The distinction does not depend on the mere
quantity of historical events in the play compared with the fictions;
for there is as much history in Macbeth as in Richard, but in the
relation of the history to the plot.
In the purely historical plays, the history forms the plot; in the
mixed, it directs it; in the rest, as Macbeth, Hamlet, Cymbeline, Lear,
it subserves it. But, however unsuited to the stage this drama may be,
God forbid that even there it should fall dead on the hearts of
Jacobinized Englishmen! Then, indeed, we might say--'præteriit gloria
mundi'! For the spirit of patriotic reminiscence is the all-permeating
soul of this noble work. It is, perhaps, the most purely historical of
Shakspeare's dramas. There are not in it, as in the others, characters
introduced merely for the purpose of giving a greater individuality and
realness, as in the comic parts of Henry IV., by presenting, as it were,
our very selves. Shakspeare avails himself of every opportunity to
effect the great object of the historic drama, that, namely, of
familiarizing the people to the great names of their country, and
thereby of exciting a steady patriotism, a love of just liberty, and a
respect for all those fundamental institutions of social life, which
bind men together:--
This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise;
This fortress, built by nature for herself,
Against infection, and the hand of war;
This happy breed of men, this little world;
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a home,
Against the envy of less happier lands;
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,
Fear'd by their breed, and famous by their birth, &c.
Add the famous passage in King John:--
This England never did, nor ever shall,
Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror,
But when it first did help to wound itself.
Now these her princes are come home again,
Come the three corners of the world in arms,
And we shall shock them: nought shall make us rue,
If England to itself do rest but true.
And it certainly seems that Shakspeare's historic dramas produced a very
deep effect on the minds of the English people, and in earlier times
they were familiar even to the least informed of all ranks, according to
the relation of Bishop Corbett. Marlborough, we know, was not ashamed to
confess that his principal acquaintance with English history was derived
from them; and I believe that a large part of the information as to our
old names and achievements even now abroad is due, directly or
indirectly, to Shakspeare.
Admirable is the judgment with which Shakspeare always in the first
scenes prepares, yet how naturally, and with what concealment of art,
for the catastrophe. Observe how he here presents the germ of all the
after events in Richard's insincerity, partiality, arbitrariness, and
favoritism, and in the proud, tempestuous, temperament of his barons. In
the very beginning, also, is displayed that feature in Richard's
character, which is never forgotten throughout the play--his attention
to decorum, and high feeling of the kingly dignity. These anticipations
show with what judgment Shakspeare wrote, and illustrate his care to
connect the past and future, and unify them with the present by forecast
and reminiscence.
It is interesting to a critical ear to compare the six opening lines of
the play--
Old John of Gaunt, time-honor'd Lancaster,
Hast thou, according to thy oath and band, &c.
each closing at the tenth syllable, with the rhythmless metre of the
verse in Henry VI. and Titus Andronicus, in order that the difference,
indeed, the heterogeneity, of the two may be felt 'etiam in simillimis
prima superficie'. Here the weight of the single words supplies all the
relief afforded by intercurrent verse, while the whole represents the
mood. And compare the apparently defective metre of Bolingbroke's first
line,--
Many years of happy days befall--
with Prospero's,
Twelve years since, Miranda! twelve years since--
The actor should supply the time by emphasis, and pause on the first
syllable of each of these verses.
Act i. sc. 1. Bolingbroke's speech:--
First, (heaven be the record to my speech!)
In the devotion of a subject's love, &c.
I remember in the Sophoclean drama no more striking example of the
[Greek (transliterated): To prepon kai semnon] than this speech; and the
rhymes in the last six lines well express the preconcertedness of
Bolingbroke's scheme so beautifully contrasted with the vehemence and
sincere irritation of Mowbray.
'Ib.' Bolingbroke's speech:--
Which blood, like sacrificing Abel's, cries,
Even from the tongueless caverns of the earth,
To _me_, for justice and rough chastisement.
Note the [Greek (transliterated): deinhon] of this 'to me,' which is
evidently felt by Richard:--
How high a pitch his resolution soars!
and the affected depreciation afterwards;--
As he is but my father's brother's son.
'Ib.' Mowbray's speech:--
In haste whereof, most heartily I pray
Your highness to assign our trial day.
The occasional interspersion of rhymes, and the more frequent winding up
of a speech therewith--what purpose was this designed to answer? In the
earnest drama, I mean. Deliberateness? An attempt, as in Mowbray, to
collect himself and be cool at the close?--I can see that in the
following speeches the rhyme answers the end of the Greek chorus, and
distinguishes the general truths from the passions of the dialogue; but
this does not exactly justify the practice, which is unfrequent in
proportion to the excellence of Shakspeare's plays. One thing, however,
is to be observed,--that the speakers are historical, known, and so far
formal, characters, and their reality is already a fact. This should be
borne in mind. The whole of this scene of the quarrel between Mowbray
and Bolingbroke seems introduced for the purpose of showing by
anticipation the characters of Richard and Bolingbroke. In the latter
there is observable a decorous and courtly checking of his anger in
subservience to a predetermined plan, especially in his calm speech
after receiving sentence of banishment compared with Mowbray's
unaffected lamentation. In the one, all is ambitious hope of something
yet to come; in the other it is desolation and a looking backward of the
heart.
'Ib.' sc. 2.
'Gaunt'. Heaven's is the quarrel; for heaven's substitute,
His deputy anointed in his right,
Hath caus'd his death: the which, if wrongfully,
Let heaven revenge; for I may never lift
An angry arm against his minister.
Without the hollow extravagance of Beaumont and Fletcher's
ultra-royalism, how carefully does Shakspeare acknowledge and reverence
the eternal distinction between the mere individual, and the symbolic or
representative, on which all genial law, no less than patriotism,
depends. The whole of this second scene commences, and is anticipative
of, the tone and character of the play at large.
'Ib.' sc. 3. In none of Shakspeare's fictitious dramas, or in those
founded on a history as unknown to his auditors generally as fiction, is
this violent rupture of the succession of time found:--a proof, I think,
that the pure historic drama, like Richard II. and King John, had its
own laws.
'Ib.' Mowbray's speech:--
A dearer _merit_ Have I deserved at your highness' hand.
O, the instinctive propriety of Shakspeare in the choice of words!
'Ib.' Richard's speech:
Nor never by advised purpose meet,
To plot, contrive, or complot any ill,
'Gainst us, our state, our subjects, or our land.
Already the selfish weakness of Richard's character opens. Nothing will
such minds so readily embrace, as indirect ways softened down to their
'quasi'-consciences by policy, expedience, &c.
'Ib.' Mowbray's speech:--
...All the world's my way.
'The world was all before him.'--'Milt'.
'Ib.'
'Boling'. How long a time lies in one little word!
Four lagging winters, and four wanton springs,
End in a word: such is the breath of kings.
Admirable anticipation!
'Ib.' sc. 4. This is a striking conclusion of a first act,--letting the
reader into the secret;--having before impressed us with the dignified
and kingly manners of Richard, yet by well managed anticipations leading
us on to the full gratification of pleasure in our own penetration. In
this scene a new light is thrown on Richard's character. Until now he
has appeared in all the beauty of royalty; but here, as soon as he is
left to himself, the inherent weakness of his character is immediately
shown. It is a weakness, however, of a peculiar kind, not arising from
want of personal courage, or any specific defect of faculty, but rather
an intellectual feminineness, which feels a necessity of ever leaning on
the breast of others, and of reclining on those who are all the while
known to be inferiors. To this must be attributed as its consequences
all Richard's vices, his tendency to concealment, and his cunning, the
whole operation of which is directed to the getting rid of present
difficulties. Richard is not meant to be a debauchee; but we see in him
that sophistry which is common to man, by which we can deceive our own
hearts, and at one and the same time apologize for, and yet commit, the
error. Shakspeare has represented this character in a very peculiar
manner. He has not made him amiable with counterbalancing faults; but
has openly and broadly drawn those faults without reserve, relying on
Richard's disproportionate sufferings and gradually emergent good
qualities for our sympathy; and this was possible, because his faults
are not positive vices, but spring entirely from defect of character.
Act. ii. sc. 1.
'K. Rich'. Can sick men play so nicely with their names?
Yes! on a death-bed there is a feeling which may make all things appear
but as puns and equivocations. And a passion there is that carries off
its own excess by plays on words as naturally, and, therefore, as
appropriately to drama, as by gesticulations, looks, or tones. This
belongs to human nature as such, independently of associations and
habits from any particular rank of life or mode of employment; and in
this consist Shakspeare's vulgarisms, as in Macbeth's--
The devil damn thee black, thou cream-fac'd loon! &c.
This is (to equivocate on Dante's words) in truth the _nobile volgare
eloquenza_. Indeed it is profoundly true that there is a natural, an
almost irresistible, tendency in the mind, when immersed in one strong
feeling, to connect that feeling with every sight and object around it;
especially if there be opposition, and the words addressed to it are in
any way repugnant to the feeling itself, as here in the instance of
Richard's unkind language:
Misery makes sport to mock itself.
No doubt, something of Shakspeare's punning must be attributed to his
age, in which direct and formal combats of wit were a favourite pastime
of the courtly and accomplished. It was an age more favourable, upon the
whole, to vigour of intellect than the present, in which a dread of
being thought pedantic dispirits and flattens the energies of original
minds. But independently of this, I have no hesitation in saying that a
pun, if it be congruous with the feeling of the scene, is not only
allowable in the dramatic dialogue, but oftentimes one of the most
effectual intensives of passion.
'Ib.'
'K. Rich'. Right; you say true: as Hereford's love, so his;
As theirs, so mine; and all be as it is.
The depth of this compared with the first scene;--
How high a pitch, &c.
There is scarcely anything in Shakspeare in its degree, more admirably
drawn than York's character;--his religious loyalty struggling with a
deep grief and indignation at the king's follies; his adherence to his
word and faith, once given in spite of all, even the most natural,
feelings. You see in him the weakness of old age, and the
overwhelmingness of circumstances, for a time surmounting his sense of
duty,--the junction of both exhibited in his boldness in words and
feebleness in immediate act; and then again his effort to retrieve
himself in abstract loyalty, even at the heavy price of the loss of his
son. This species of accidental and adventitious weakness is brought
into parallel with Richard's continually increasing energy of thought,
and as constantly diminishing power of acting;--and thus it is Richard
that breathes a harmony and a relation into all the characters of the
play.
'Ib.' sc. 2.
'Queen'. To please the king I did; to please myself
I cannot do it; yet I know no cause
Why I should welcome such a guest as grief,
Save bidding farewell to so sweet a guest
As my sweet Richard: yet again, methinks,
Some unborn sorrow, ripe in sorrow's womb,
Is coming toward me; and my inward soul
With nothing trembles: at something it grieves,
More than with parting from my lord the king.
It is clear that Shakspeare never meant to represent Richard as a vulgar
debauchee, but a man with a wantonness of spirit in external show, a
feminine _friendism_, an intensity of woman-like love of those
immediately about him, and a mistaking of the delight of being loved by
him for a love of him. And mark in this scene Shakspeare's gentleness in
touching the tender superstitions, the 'terræ incognitæ' of
presentiments, in the human mind; and how sharp a line of distinction he
commonly draws between these obscure forecastings of general experience
in each individual, and the vulgar errors of mere tradition. Indeed, it
may be taken once for all as the truth, that Shakspeare, in the absolute
universality of his genius, always reverences whatever arises out of our
moral nature; he never profanes his muse with a contemptuous reasoning
away of the genuine and general, however unaccountable, feelings of
mankind.
The amiable part of Richard's character is brought full upon us by his
queen's few words--
... so sweet a guest
As my sweet Richard;--
and Shakspeare has carefully shown in him an intense love of his
country, well-knowing how that feeling would, in a pure historic drama,
redeem him in the hearts of the audience. Yet even in this love there is
something feminine and personal:--
Dear earth, I do salute thee with my hand,
--As a long parted mother with her child
Plays fondly with her tears, and smiles in meeting;
So weeping, smiling, greet I thee, my earth,
And do thee favour with my royal hands.
With this is combined a constant overflow of emotions from a total
incapability of controlling them, and thence a waste of that energy,
which should have been reserved for actions, in the passion and effort
of mere resolves and menaces. The consequence is moral exhaustion, and
rapid alternations of unmanly despair and ungrounded hope,--every
feeling being abandoned for its direct opposite upon the pressure of
external accident. And yet when Richard's inward weakness appears to
seek refuge in his despair, and his exhaustion counterfeits repose, the
old habit of kingliness, the effect of flatterers from his infancy, is
ever and anon producing in him a sort of wordy courage which only serves
to betray more clearly his internal impotence. The second and third
scenes of the third act combine and illustrate all this:--
'Aumerle'. He means, my lord, that we are too remiss;
Whilst Bolingbroke, through our security,
Grows strong and great, in substance, and in friends.
'K. Rich'. Discomfortable cousin! know'st thou not,
That when the searching eye of heaven is hid
Behind the globe, and lights the lower world,
Then thieves and robbers range abroad unseen,
In murders and in outrage, bloody here;
But when, from under this terrestrial ball,
He fires the proud tops of the eastern pines,
And darts his light through every guilty hole,
Then murders, treasons, and detested sins,
The cloke of night being pluckt from off their backs,
Stand bare and naked, trembling at themselves?
So when this thief, this traitor, Bolingbroke, &c. ...
'Aumerle'. Where is the Duke my father with his power?
'K. Rich'. No matter where; of comfort no man speak:
Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs,
Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth, &c.
...
'Aumerle'. My father hath a power, enquire of him;
And learn to make a body of a limb.
'K. Rich'. Thou chid'st me well: proud Bolingbroke, I come
To change blows with thee for our day of doom.
This ague-fit of fear is over-blown;
An easy task it is to win our own.
...
'Scroop'. Your uncle York hath join'd with Bolingbroke.--
...
'K. Rich'. Thou hast said enough,
Beshrew thee, cousin, which didst lead me forth
Of that sweet way I was in to despair!
What say you now? what comfort have we now?
By heaven, I'll hate him everlastingly,
That bids me be of comfort any more. ...
Act iii. sc. 3. Bolingbroke's speech:--
Noble lord,
Go to the rude ribs of that ancient castle, &c.
Observe the fine struggle of a haughty sense of power and ambition in
Bolingbroke with the necessity for dissimulation.
'Ib.' sc. 4. See here the skill and judgment of our poet in giving
reality and individual life, by the introduction of accidents in his
historic plays, and thereby making them dramas, and not histories. How
beautiful an islet of repose--a melancholy repose, indeed--is this scene
with the Gardener and his Servant. And how truly affecting and realizing
is the incident of the very horse Barbary, in the scene with the Groom
in the last act!--
'Groom'. I was a poor groom of thy stable, King,
When thou wert King; who, travelling towards York,
With much ado, at length have gotten leave
To look upon my sometime master's face.
O, how it yearn'd my heart, when I beheld,
In London streets, that coronation day,
When Bolingbroke rode on roan Barbary!
That horse, that thou so often hast bestrid;
That horse, that I so carefully have dress'd!
'K. Rich'. Rode he on Barbary?
Bolingbroke's character, in general, is an instance how Shakspeare makes
one play introductory to another; for it is evidently a preparation for
Henry IV., as Gloster in the third part of Henry VI. is for Richard III.
I would once more remark upon the exalted idea of the only true loyalty
developed in this noble and impressive play. We have neither the rants
of Beaumont and Fletcher, nor the sneers of Massinger;--the vast
importance of the personal character of the sovereign is distinctly
enounced, whilst, at the same time, the genuine sanctity which surrounds
him is attributed to, and grounded on, the position in which he stands
as the convergence and exponent of the life and power of the state.
The great end of the body politic appears to be to humanize, and assist
in the progressiveness of, the animal man;--but the problem is so
complicated with contingencies as to render it nearly impossible to lay
down rules for the formation of a state. And should we be able to form a
system of government, which should so balance its different powers as to
form a check upon each, and so continually remedy and correct itself, it
would, nevertheless, defeat its own aim;--for man is destined to be
guided by higher principles, by universal views, which can never be
fulfilled in this state of existence,--by a spirit of progressiveness
which can never be accomplished, for then it would cease to be. Plato's
Republic is like Bunyan's Town of Man-Soul,--a description of an
individual, all of whose faculties are in their proper subordination and
inter-dependence; and this it is assumed may be the prototype of the
state as one great individual. But there is this sophism in it, that it
is forgotten that the human faculties, indeed, are parts and not
separate things; but that you could never get chiefs who were wholly
reason, ministers who were wholly understanding, soldiers all wrath,
labourers all concupiscence, and so on through the rest. Each of these
partakes of, and interferes with, all the others.
HENRY IV. PART I.
Act I. sc. 1. King Henry's speech:
No more the thirsty entrance of this soil
Shall daub her lips with her own children's blood.
A most obscure passage: but I think Theobalds' interpretation right,
namely, that 'thirsty entrance' means the dry penetrability, or bibulous
drought, of the soil. The obscurity of this passage is of the
Shakspearian sort.
'Ib.' sc. 2. In this, the first introduction of Falstaff, observe the
consciousness and the intentionality of his wit, so that when it does
not flow of its own accord, its absence is felt, and an effort visibly
made to recall it. Note also throughout how Falstaff's pride is
gratified in the power of influencing a prince of the blood, the heir
apparent, by means of it. Hence his dislike to Prince John of Lancaster,
and his mortification when he finds his wit fail on him:--
'P. John.' Fare you well, Falstaff: I, in my condition,
Shall better speak of you than you deserve.
'Fal.' I would you had but the wit; 'twere better than your
dukedom.--Good faith, this same young sober-blooded boy doth not love
me;--nor a man cannot make him laugh.
Act ii. sc. 1. Second Carrier's speech:--
... breeds fleas like a _loach_.
Perhaps it is a misprint, or a provincial pronunciation, for 'leach,'
that is, blood-suckers. Had it been gnats, instead of fleas, there might
have been some sense, though small probability, in Warburton's
suggestion of the Scottish 'loch.' Possibly 'loach,' or 'lutch,' may be
some lost word for dovecote, or poultry-lodge, notorious for breeding
fleas. In Stevens's or my reading, it should properly be 'loaches,' or
'leeches,' in the plural; except that I think I have heard anglers speak
of trouts like _a_ salmon.
Act iii. sc. 1.
'Glend.' Nay, if you melt, then will she run mad.
This 'nay' so to be dwelt on in speaking, as to be equivalent to a
dissyllable--[Symbol: written as a U-shape, below the line], is
characteristic of the solemn Glendower: but the imperfect line
_She bids you_ Upon the wanton rushes lay you down, &c.
is one of those fine hair-strokes of exquisite judgment peculiar to
Shakspeare;--thus detaching the Lady's speech, and giving it the
individuality and entireness of a little poem, while he draws attention
to it.
HENRY IV. PART II.
Act ii. sc. 2.
'P. Hen'. Sup any women with him?
'Page'. None, my lord, but old mistress Quickly, and mistress Doll
Tear-sheet.
'P. Hen'. This Doll Tear-sheet should be some road.
I am sometimes disposed to think that this respectable young lady's name
is a very old corruption for Tear-street--street-walker, 'terere stratum
(viam.)' Does not the Prince's question rather show this?--
'This Doll Tear-street should be some road?'
Act iii. sc. 1. King Henry's speech:
...Then, _happy low, lie down_;
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.
I know no argument by which to persuade any one to be of my opinion, or
rather of my feeling; but yet I cannot help feeling that 'Happy
low-lie-down!' is either a proverbial expression, or the burthen of some
old song, and means, 'Happy the man, who lays himself down on his straw
bed or chaff pallet on the ground or floor!'
'Ib.' sc. 2. Shallow's speech:--
_Rah, tah, tah_, would 'a say; _bounce_, would 'a say, &c
That Beaumont and Fletcher have more than once been guilty of sneering
at their great master, cannot, I fear, be denied; but the passage quoted
by Theobald from the Knight of the Burning Pestle is an imitation. If it
be chargeable with any fault, it is with plagiarism, not with sarcasm.
HENRY V.
Act I. sc. 2. Westmoreland's speech:--
They know your _grace_ hath cause, and means, and might;
So hath your _highness_; never King of England
Had nobles richer, &c.
Does 'grace' mean the king's own peculiar domains and legal revenue, and
'highness' his feudal rights in the military service of his nobles?--I
have sometimes thought it possible that the words 'grace' and 'cause'
may have been transposed in the copying or printing;--
They know your cause hath grace, &c.
What Theobald meant, I cannot guess. To me his pointing makes the
passage still more obscure. Perhaps the lines ought to be recited
dramatically thus:--
They know your Grace hath cause, and means, and might:--
So _hath_ your Highness--never King of England
_Had_ nobles richer, &c.
He breaks off from the grammar and natural order from earnestness, and
in order to give the meaning more passionately.
'Ib.' Exeter's speech:--
Yet that is but a _crush'd_ necessity.
Perhaps it may be 'crash' for 'crass' from 'crassus', clumsy; or it may
be 'curt,' defective, imperfect: anything would be better than
Warburton's ''scus'd,' which honest Theobald, of course, adopts. By the
by, it seems clear to me that this speech of Exeter's properly belongs
to Canterbury, and was altered by the actors for convenience.
Act iv. sc. 3. K. Henry's speech:--
We would not _die_ in that man's company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
Should it not be 'live' in the first line?
'Ib.' sc. 5.
'Const.' O diable!
'Orl.' O seigneur! le jour est perdu, tout est perdu!
'Dan.' Mort de ma vie!_ all is confounded, all!
Reproach and everlasting shame
Sit mocking in our plumes!--'O meschante fortune!'
Do not run away!
Ludicrous as these introductory scraps of French appear, so instantly
followed by good, nervous mother-English, yet they are judicious, and
produce the impression which Shakspeare intended,--a sudden feeling
struck at once on the ears, as well as the eyes, of the audience, that
'here come the French, the baffled French braggards!'--And this will
appear still more judicious, when we reflect on the scanty apparatus of
distinguishing dresses in Shakspeare's tyring-room.
HENRY VI. PART I.
Act I. sc. 1. Bedford's speech:--
Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night!
Comets, importing change of times and states,
Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky;
And with them scourge the bad revolting stars
That have consented unto Henry's death!
Henry the fifth, too famous to live long!
England ne'er lost a king of so much worth.
Read aloud any two or three passages in blank verse even from
Shakspeare's earliest dramas, as Love's Labour's Lost, or Romeo and
Juliet; and then read in the same way this speech, with especial
attention to the metre; and if you do not feel the impossibility of the
latter having been written by Shakspeare, all I dare suggest is, that
you may have ears,--for so has another animal,--but an ear you cannot
have, 'me judice'.
RICHARD III.
This play should be contrasted with Richard II. Pride of intellect is
the characteristic of Richard, carried to the extent of even boasting to
his own mind of his villany, whilst others are present to feed his pride
of superiority; as in his first speech, act II. sc. 1. Shakspeare here,
as in all his great parts, developes in a tone of sublime morality the
dreadful consequences of placing the moral, in subordination to the mere
intellectual, being. In Richard there is a predominance of irony,
accompanied with apparently blunt manners to those immediately about
him, but formalized into a more set hypocrisy towards the people as
represented by their magistrates.
LEAR.
Of all Shakspeare's plays Macbeth is the most rapid, Hamlet the slowest,
in movement. Lear combines length with rapidity,--like the hurricane and
the whirlpool, absorbing while it advances. It begins as a stormy day in
summer, with brightness; but that brightness is lurid, and anticipates
the tempest.
It was not without forethought, nor is it without its due significance,
that the division of Lear's kingdom is in the first six lines of the
play stated as a thing already determined in all its particulars,
previously to the trial of professions, as the relative rewards of which
the daughters were to be made to consider their several portions. The
strange, yet by no means unnatural, mixture of selfishness, sensibility,
and habit of feeling derived from, and fostered by, the particular rank
and usages of the individual;--the intense desire of being intensely
beloved,--selfish, and yet characteristic of the selfishness of a loving
and kindly nature alone;--the self-supportless leaning for all pleasure
on another's breast;--the craving after sympathy with a prodigal
disinterestedness, frustrated by its own ostentation, and the mode and
nature of its claims;--the anxiety, the distrust, the jealousy, which
more or less accompany all selfish affections, and are amongst the
surest contradistinctions of mere fondness from true love, and which
originate Lear's eager wish to enjoy his daughter's violent professions,
whilst the inveterate habits of sovereignty convert the wish into claim
and positive right, and an incompliance with it into crime and
treason;--these facts, these passions, these moral verities, on which
the whole tragedy is founded, are all prepared for, and will to the
retrospect be found implied, in these first four or five lines of the
play. They let us know that the trial is but a trick; and that the
grossness of the old king's rage is in part the natural result of a
silly trick suddenly and most unexpectedly baffled and disappointed.
It may here be worthy of notice, that Lear is the only serious
performance of Shakspeare, the interest and situations of which are
derived from the assumption of a gross improbability; whereas Beaumont
and Fletcher's tragedies are, almost all of them, founded on some out of
the way accident or exception to the general experience of mankind. But
observe the matchless judgment of our Shakspeare. First, improbable as
the conduct of Lear is in the first scene, yet it was an old story
rooted in the popular faith,--a thing taken for granted already, and
consequently without any of the effects of improbability. Secondly, it
is merely the canvass for the characters and passions,--a mere occasion
for,--and not, in the manner of Beaumont and Fletcher, perpetually
recurring as the cause, and 'sine qua non' of,--the incidents and
emotions. Let the first scene of this play have been lost, and let it
only be understood that a fond father had been duped by hypocritical
professions of love and duty on the part of two daughters to disinherit
the third, previously, and deservedly, more dear to him;--and all the
rest of the tragedy would retain its interest undiminished, and be
perfectly intelligible. The accidental is nowhere the groundwork of the
passions, but that which is catholic, which in all ages has been, and
ever will be, close and native to the heart of man,--parental anguish
from filial ingratitude, the genuineness of worth, though coffined in
bluntness, and the execrable vileness of a smooth iniquity. Perhaps I
ought to have added the Merchant of Venice; but here too the same
remarks apply. It was an old tale; and substitute any other danger than
that of the pound of flesh (the circumstance in which the improbability
lies), yet all the situations and the emotions appertaining to them
remain equally excellent and appropriate. Whereas take away from the Mad
Lover of Beaumont and Fletcher the fantastic hypothesis of his
engagement to cut out his own heart, and have it presented to his
mistress, and all the main scenes must go with it.
Kotzebue is the German Beaumont and Fletcher, without their poetic
powers, and without their 'vis comica'. But, like them, he always
deduces his situations and passions from marvellous accidents, and the
trick of bringing one part of our moral nature to counteract another; as
our pity for misfortune and admiration of generosity and courage to
combat our condemnation of guilt, as in adultery, robbery, and other
heinous crimes;--and, like them too, he excels in his mode of telling a
story clearly and interestingly, in a series of dramatic dialogues. Only
the trick of making tragedy-heroes and heroines out of shopkeepers and
barmaids was too low for the age, and too unpoetic for the genius, of
Beaumont and Fletcher, inferior in every respect as they are to their
great predecessor and contemporary. How inferior would they have
appeared, had not Shakspeare existed for them to imitate;--which in
every play, more or less, they do, and in their tragedies most
glaringly:--and yet--(O shame! shame!)--they miss no opportunity of
sneering at the divine man, and sub-detracting from his merits!
To return to Lear. Having thus in the fewest words, and in a natural
reply to as natural a question,--which yet answers the secondary purpose
of attracting our attention to the difference or diversity between the
characters of Cornwall and Albany,--provided the premisses and 'data',
as it were, for our after insight into the mind and mood of the person,
whose character, passions, and sufferings are the main subject-matter of
the play;--from Lear, the 'persona patiens' of his drama, Shakspeare
passes without delay to the second in importance, the chief agent and
prime mover, and introduces Edmund to our acquaintance, preparing us
with the same felicity of judgment, and in the same easy and natural
way, for his character in the seemingly casual communication of its
origin and occasion. From the first drawing up of the curtain Edmund has
stood before us in the united strength and beauty of earliest manhood.
Our eyes have been questioning him. Gifted as he is with high advantages
of person, and further endowed by nature with a powerful intellect and a
strong energetic will, even without any concurrence of circumstances and
accident, pride will necessarily be the sin that most easily besets him.
But Edmund is also the known and acknowledged son of the princely
Gloster: he, therefore, has both the germ of pride, and the conditions
best fitted to evolve and ripen it into a predominant feeling. Yet
hitherto no reason appears why it should be other than the not unusual
pride of person, talent, and birth,--a pride auxiliary, if not akin, to
many virtues, and the natural ally of honorable impulses. But alas! in
his own presence his own father takes shame to himself for the frank
avowal that he is his father,--he has 'blushed so often to acknowledge
him that he is now brazed to it!' Edmund hears the circumstances of his
birth spoken of with a most degrading and licentious levity,--his mother
described as a wanton by her own paramour, and the remembrance of the
animal sting, the low criminal gratifications connected with her
wantonness and prostituted beauty, assigned as the reason, why 'the
whoreson must be acknowledged!' This, and the consciousness of its
notoriety; the gnawing conviction that every show of respect is an
effort of courtesy, which recalls, while it represses, a contrary
feeling;--this is the ever trickling flow of wormwood and gall into the
wounds of pride,--the corrosive 'virus' which inoculates pride with a
venom not its own, with envy, hatred, and a lust for that power which in
its blaze of radiance would hide the dark spots on his disc,--with pangs
of shame personally undeserved, and therefore felt as wrongs, and with a
blind ferment of vindictive working towards the occasions and causes,
especially towards a brother, whose stainless birth and lawful honours
were the constant remembrancers of his own debasement, and were ever in
the way to prevent all chance of its being unknown, or overlooked and
forgotten. Add to this, that with excellent judgment, and provident for
the claims of the moral sense,--for that which, relatively to the drama,
is called poetic justice, and as the fittest means for reconciling the
feelings of the spectators to the horrors of Gloster's after
sufferings,--at least, of rendering them somewhat less unendurable;
--(for I will not disguise my conviction, that in this one point the
tragic in this play has been urged beyond the outermost mark and 'ne
plus ultra' of the dramatic)--Shakspeare has precluded all excuse and
palliation of the guilt incurred by both the parents of the base-born
Edmund, by Gloster's confession that he was at the time a married man,
and already blest with a lawful heir of his fortunes. The mournful
alienation of brotherly love, occasioned by the law of primogeniture in
noble families, or rather by the unnecessary distinctions engrafted
thereon, and this in children of the same stock, is still almost
proverbial on the continent,--especially, as I know from my own
observation, in the south of Europe,--and appears to have been scarcely
less common in our own island before the Revolution of 1688, if we may
judge from the characters and sentiments so frequent in our elder
comedies. There is the younger brother, for instance, in Beaumont and
Fletcher's play of the Scornful Lady, on the one side, and Oliver in
Shakspeare's As You Like It, on the other. Need it be said how heavy an
aggravation, in such a case, the stain of bastardy must have been, were
it only that the younger brother was liable to hear his own dishonour
and his mother's infamy related by his father with an excusing shrug of
the shoulders, and in a tone betwixt waggery and shame!
By the circumstances here enumerated as so many predisposing causes,
Edmund's character might well be deemed already sufficiently explained;
and our minds prepared for it. But in this tragedy the story or fable
constrained Shakspeare to introduce wickedness in an outrageous form in
the persons of Regan and Goneril. He had read nature too heedfully not
to know, that courage, intellect, and strength of character, are the
most impressive forms of power, and that to power in itself, without
reference to any moral end, an inevitable admiration and complacency
appertains, whether it be displayed in the conquests of a Buonaparte or
Tamerlane, or in the foam and the thunder of a cataract. But in the
exhibition of such a character it was of the highest importance to
prevent the guilt from passing into utter monstrosity,--which again
depends on the presence or absence of causes and temptations sufficient
to account for the wickedness, without the necessity of recurring to a
thorough fiendishness of nature for its origination. For such are the
appointed relations of intellectual power to truth, and of truth to
goodness, that it becomes both morally and poetically unsafe to present
what is admirable,--what our nature compels us to admire--in the mind,
and what is most detestable in the heart, as co-existing in the same
individual without any apparent connection, or any modification of the
one by the other. That Shakspeare has in one instance, that of Iago,
approached to this, and that he has done it successfully, is, perhaps,
the most astonishing proof of his genius, and the opulence of its
resources. But in the present tragedy, in which he was compelled to
present a Goneril and a Regan, it was most carefully to be avoided;--and
therefore the only one conceivable addition to the inauspicious
influences on the preformation of Edmund's character is given, in the
information that all the kindly counteractions to the mischievous
feelings of shame, which might have been derived from co-domestication
with Edgar and their common father, had been cut off by his absence from
home, and foreign education from boyhood to the present time, and a
prospect of its continuance, as if to preclude all risk of his
interference with the father's views for the elder and legitimate son:--
He hath been out nine years, and away he shall again.
Act i. sc. 1.
'Cor.' Nothing, my lord.
'Lear.' Nothing?
'Cor.' Nothing.
'Lear.' Nothing can come of nothing: speak again.
'Cor.' Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave
My heart into my mouth: I love your majesty
According to my bond; nor more, nor less.
There is something of disgust at the ruthless hypocrisy of her sisters,
and some little faulty admixture of pride and sullenness in Cordelia's
'Nothing;' and her tone is well contrived, indeed, to lessen the glaring
absurdity of Lear's conduct, but answers the yet more important purpose
of forcing away the attention from the nursery-tale, the moment it has
served its end, that of supplying the canvass for the picture. This is
also materially furthered by Kent's opposition, which displays Lear's
moral incapability of resigning the sovereign power in the very act of
disposing of it. Kent is, perhaps, the nearest to perfect goodness in
all Shakspeare's characters, and yet the most individualized. There is
an extraordinary charm in his bluntness, which is that only of a
nobleman arising from a contempt of overstrained courtesy; and combined
with easy placability where goodness of heart is apparent. His
passionate affection for, and fidelity to, Lear act on our feelings in
Lear's own favour: virtue itself seems to be in company with him.
'Ib.' sc. 2. Edmund's speech:--
Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take
More composition and fierce quality
Than doth, &c.
Warburton's note upon a quotation from Vanini.
Poor Vanini!--Any one but Warburton would have thought this precious
passage more characteristic of Mr. Shandy than of atheism. If the fact
really were so, (which it is not, but almost the contrary,) I do not see
why the most confirmed theist might not very naturally utter the same
wish. But it is proverbial that the youngest son in a large family is
commonly the man of the greatest talents in it; and as good an authority
as Vanini has said--'incalescere in venerem ardentius, spei sobolis
injuriosum esse'.
In this speech of Edmund you see, as soon as a man cannot reconcile
himself to reason, how his conscience flies off by way of appeal to
nature, who is sure upon such occasions never to find fault, and also
how shame sharpens a predisposition in the heart to evil. For it is a
profound moral, that shame will naturally generate guilt; the oppressed
will be vindictive, like Shylock, and in the anguish of undeserved
ignominy the delusion secretly springs up, of getting over the moral
quality of an action by fixing the mind on the mere physical act alone.
'Ib.' Edmund's speech:--
This is the excellent foppery of the world! that, when we are sick in
fortune, (often the surfeit of our own behaviour,) we make guilty of
our disasters, the sun, the moon, and the stars, &c.
Thus scorn and misanthropy are often the anticipations and mouth-pieces
of wisdom in the detection of superstitions. Both individuals and
nations may be free from such prejudices by being below them, as well as
by rising above them.
'Ib.' sc. 3. The Steward should be placed in exact antithesis to Kent,
as the only character of utter irredeemable baseness in Shakspeare. Even
in this the judgment and invention of the poet are very observable;--for
what else could the willing tool of a Goneril be? Not a vice but this of
baseness was left open to him.
'Ib.' sc. 4. In Lear old age is itself a character,--its natural
imperfections being increased by life-long habits of receiving a prompt
obedience. Any addition of individuality would have been unnecessary and
painful; for the relations of others to him, of wondrous fidelity and of
frightful ingratitude, alone sufficiently distinguish him. Thus Lear
becomes the open and ample play-room of nature's passions.
Ib.
'Knight'. Since my young lady's going into France, Sir; the fool hath
much pin'd away.
The Fool is no comic buffoon to make the groundlings laugh,--no forced
condescension of Shakspeare's genius to the taste of his audience.
Accordingly the poet prepares for his introduction, which he never does
with any of his common clowns and fools, by bringing him into living
connection with the pathos of the play. He is as wonderful a creation as
Caliban;--his wild babblings, and inspired idiocy, articulate and gauge
the horrors of the scene.
The monster Goneril prepares what is necessary, while the character of
Albany renders a still more maddening grievance possible, namely, Regan
and Cornwall in perfect sympathy of monstrosity. Not a sentiment, not an
image, which can give pleasure on its own account, is admitted; whenever
these creatures are introduced, and they are brought forward as little
as possible, pure horror reigns throughout. In this scene and in all the
early speeches of Lear, the one general sentiment of filial ingratitude
prevails as the main spring of the feelings;--in this early stage the
outward object causing the pressure on the mind, which is not yet
sufficiently familiarized with the anguish for the imagination to work
upon it.
Ib.
'Gon.' Do you mark that, my lord?
'Alb.' I cannot be so partial, Goneril,
To the great love I bear you.
'Gon'. Pray you content, &c.
Observe the baffled endeavour of Goneril to act on the fears of Albany,
and yet his passiveness, his 'inertia'; he is not convinced, and yet he
is afraid of looking into the thing. Such characters always yield to
those who will take the trouble of governing them, or for them. Perhaps,
the influence of a princess, whose choice of him had royalized his
state, may be some little excuse for Albany's weakness. 'Ib.' sc. 5.
'Lear'. O let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven!
Keep me in temper! I would not be mad!--
The mind's own anticipation of madness! The deepest tragic notes are
often struck by a half sense of an impending blow. The Fool's conclusion
of this act by a grotesque prattling seems to indicate the dislocation
of feeling that has begun and is to be continued. Act ii. sc. 1.
Edmund's speech:--
He replied, Thou unpossessing bastard! &c.
Thus the secret poison in Edmund's own heart steals forth; and then
observe poor Gloster's--
Loyal and _natural_ boy!
as if praising the crime of Edmund's birth!
'Ib.' Compare Regan's--
What, did _my father's_ godson seek your life?
He whom _my father_ named?
with the unfeminine violence of her--
All vengeance comes too short, &c.
and yet no reference to the guilt, but only to the accident, which she
uses as an occasion for sneering at her father. Regan is not, in fact, a
greater monster than Goneril, but she has the power of casting more
venom. 'Ib.' sc. 2. Cornwall's speech:--
This is some fellow,
Who, having been praised for bluntness, doth affect
A saucy roughness, &c.
In thus placing these profound general truths in the mouths of such men
as Cornwall, Edmund, Iago, &c. Shakspeare at once gives them utterance,
and yet shews how indefinite their application is.
'Ib.' sc. 3. Edgar's assumed madness serves the great purpose of taking
off part of the shock which would otherwise be caused by the true
madness of Lear, and further displays the profound difference between
the two. In every attempt at representing madness throughout the whole
range of dramatic literature, with the single exception of Lear, it is
mere light-headedness, as especially in Otway. In Edgar's ravings
Shakspeare all the while lets you see a fixed purpose, a practical end
in view;--
in Lear's, there is only the brooding of the one anguish, an eddy
without progression. 'Ib.' sc. 4. Lear's speech:--
The king would speak with Cornwall; the dear father
Would with his daughter speak, &c.
...
No, but not yet: may be he is not well, &c.
The strong interest now felt by Lear to try to find excuses for his
daughter is most pathetic. 'Ib.' Lear's speech:--
--Beloved Regan,
Thy sister's naught;--O Regan, she hath tied
Sharp-tooth'd unkindness, like a vulture, here.
I can scarce speak to thee;--thou'lt not believe
Of how deprav'd a quality--O Regan!
'Reg'. I pray you, Sir, take patience; I have hope,
You less know how to value her desert,
Than she to scant her duty.
'Lear' Say, how is that?
Nothing is so heart-cutting as a cold unexpected defence or palliation
of a cruelty passionately complained of, or so expressive of thorough
hard-heartedness. And feel the excessive horror of Regan's 'O, Sir, you
are old!'--and then her drawing from that universal object of reverence
and indulgence the very reason for her frightful conclusion--
Say, you have wrong'd her!
All Lear's faults increase our pity for him. We refuse to know them
otherwise than as means of his sufferings, and aggravations of his
daughters' ingratitude.
'Ib.' Lear's speech:--
O, reason not the need: our basest beggars
Are in the poorest thing superfluous, &c.
Observe that the tranquillity which follows the first stunning of the
blow permits Lear to reason.
Act iii. sc. 4. O, what a world's convention of agonies is here! All
external nature in a storm, all moral nature convulsed,--the real
madness of Lear, the feigned madness of Edgar, the babbling of the Fool,
the desperate fidelity of Kent--surely such a scene was never conceived
before or since! Take it but as a picture for the eye only, it is more
terrific than any which a Michel Angelo, inspired by a Dante, could have
conceived, and which none but a Michel Angelo could have executed. Or
let it have been uttered to the blind, the howlings of nature would seem
converted into the voice of conscious humanity. This scene ends with the
first symptoms of positive derangement; and the intervention of the
fifth scene is particularly judicious,--the interruption allowing an
interval for Lear to appear in full madness in the sixth scene.
'Ib.' sc. 7. Gloster's blinding:--
What can I say of this scene?--There is my reluctance to think
Shakspeare wrong, and yet--
Act iv. sc. 6. Lear's speech:--
Ha! Goneril!--with a white beard!--They flattered me like a dog; and
told me, I had white hairs in my beard, ere the black ones were there.
To say _Ay_ and _No_ to every thing I said!--Ay and No too was no good
divinity. When the rain came to wet me once, &c.
The thunder recurs, but still at a greater distance from our feelings.
'Ib.' sc. 7. Lear's speech:--
Where have I been? Where am I?--Fair daylight?--
I am mightily abused.--I should even die with pity
To see another thus, &c.
How beautifully the affecting return of Lear to reason, and the mild
pathos of these speeches prepare the mind for the last sad, yet sweet,
consolation of the aged sufferer's death!
HAMLET.
Hamlet was the play, or rather Hamlet himself was the character, in the
intuition and exposition of which I first made my turn for philosophical
criticism, and especially for insight into the genius of Shakspeare,
noticed. This happened first amongst my acquaintances, as Sir George
Beaumont will bear witness; and subsequently, long before Schlegel had
delivered at Vienna the lectures on Shakspeare, which he afterwards
published, I had given on the same subject eighteen lectures
substantially the same, proceeding from the very same point of view, and
deducing the same conclusions, so far as I either then agreed, or now
agree, with him. I gave these lectures at the Royal Institution, before
six or seven hundred auditors of rank and eminence, in the spring of the
same year, in which Sir Humphry Davy, a fellow-lecturer, made his great
revolutionary discoveries in chemistry. Even in detail the coincidence
of Schlegel with my lectures was so extraordinary, that all who at a
later period heard the same words, taken by me from my notes of the
lectures at the Royal Institution, concluded a borrowing on my part from
Schlegel. Mr. Hazlitt, whose hatred of me is in such an inverse ratio to
my zealous kindness towards him, as to be defended by his warmest
admirer, Charles Lamb--(who, God bless him! besides his characteristic
obstinacy of adherence to old friends, as long at least as they are at
all down in the world, is linked as by a charm to Hazlitt's
conversation)--only as 'frantic;'--Mr. Hazlitt, I say, himself replied
to an assertion of my plagiarism from Schlegel in these words;--"That is
a lie; for I myself heard the very same character of Hamlet from
Coleridge before he went to Germany, and when he had neither read nor
could read a page of German!" Now Hazlitt was on a visit to me at my
cottage at Nether Stowey, Somerset, in the summer of the year 1798, in
the September of which year I first was out of sight of the shores of
Great Britain. Recorded by me, S. T. Coleridge, 7th January, 1819.
The seeming inconsistencies in the conduct and character of Hamlet have
long exercised the conjectural ingenuity of critics; and, as we are
always both to suppose that the cause of defective apprehension is in
ourselves, the mystery has been too commonly explained by the very easy
process of setting it down as in fact inexplicable, and by resolving the
phenomenon into a misgrowth or 'lusus' of the capricious and irregular
genius of Shakspeare. The shallow and stupid arrogance of these vulgar
and indolent decisions I would fain do my best to expose. I believe the
character of Hamlet may be traced to Shakspeare's deep and accurate
science in mental philosophy. Indeed, that this character must have some
connection with the common fundamental laws of our nature may be assumed
from the fact, that Hamlet has been the darling of every country in
which the literature of England has been fostered. In order to
understand him, it is essential that we should reflect on the
constitution of our own minds. Man is distinguished from the brute
animals in proportion as thought prevails over sense: but in the healthy
processes of the mind, a balance is constantly maintained between the
impressions from outward objects and the inward operations of the
intellect;--for if there be an overbalance in the contemplative faculty,
man thereby becomes the creature of mere meditation, and loses his
natural power of action. Now one of Shakspeare's modes of creating
characters is, to conceive any one intellectual or moral faculty in
morbid excess, and then to place himself, Shakspeare, thus mutilated or
diseased, under given circumstances. In Hamlet he seems to have wished
to exemplify the moral necessity of a due balance between our attention
to the objects of our senses, and our meditation on the workings of our
minds,--an 'equilibrium' between the real and the imaginary worlds. In
Hamlet this balance is disturbed: his thoughts, and the images of his
fancy, are far more vivid than his actual perceptions, and his very
perceptions, instantly passing through the 'medium' of his
contemplations, acquire, as they pass, a form and a colour not naturally
their own. Hence we see a great, an almost enormous, intellectual
activity, and a proportionate aversion to real action consequent upon
it, with all its symptoms and accompanying qualities. This character
Shakspeare places in circumstances, under which it is obliged to act on
the spur of the moment:--Hamlet is brave and careless of death; but he
vacillates from sensibility, and procrastinates from thought, and loses
the power of action in the energy of resolve. Thus it is that this
tragedy presents a direct contrast to that of Macbeth; the one proceeds
with the utmost slowness, the other with a crowded and breathless
rapidity.
The effect of this overbalance of the imaginative power is beautifully
illustrated in the everlasting broodings and superfluous activities of
Hamlet's mind, which, unseated from its healthy relation, is constantly
occupied with the world within, and abstracted from the world
without,--giving substance to shadows, and throwing a mist over all
common-place actualities. It is the nature of thought to be
indefinite;--definiteness belongs to external imagery alone. Hence it is
that the sense of sublimity arises, not from the sight of an outward
object, but from the beholder's reflection upon it;--not from the
sensuous impression, but from the imaginative reflex. Few have seen a
celebrated waterfall without feeling something akin to disappointment:
it is only subsequently that the image comes back full into the mind,
and brings with it a train of grand or beautiful associations. Hamlet
feels this; his senses are in a state of trance, and he looks upon
external things as hieroglyphics. His soliloquy--
O! that this too too solid flesh would melt, &c.
springs from that craving after the indefinite--for that which is
not--which most easily besets men of genius; and the self-delusion
common to this temper of mind is finely exemplified in the character
which Hamlet gives of himself:--
--It cannot be
But I am pigeon-livered, and lack gall
To make oppression bitter.
He mistakes the seeing his chains for the breaking them, delays action
till action is of no use, and dies the victim of mere circumstance and
accident.
There is a great significancy in the names of Shakspeare's plays. In the
Twelfth Night, Midsummer Night's Dream, As You Like It, and Winter's
Tale, the total effect is produced by a co-ordination of the characters
as in a wreath of flowers. But in Coriolanus, Lear, Romeo and Juliet,
Hamlet, Othello, &c. the effect arises from the subordination of all to
one, either as the prominent person, or the principal object. Cymbeline
is the only exception; and even that has its advantages in preparing the
audience for the chaos of time, place, and costume, by throwing the date
back into a fabulous king's reign.
But as of more importance, so more striking, is the judgment displayed
by our truly dramatic poet, as well as poet of the drama, in the
management of his first scenes. With the single exception of Cymbeline,
they either place before us at one glance both the past and the future
in some effect, which implies the continuance and full agency of its
cause, as in the feuds and party-spirit of the servants of the two
houses in the first scene of Romeo and Juliet; or in the degrading
passion for shews and public spectacles, and the overwhelming attachment
for the newest successful war-chief in the Roman people, already become
a populace, contrasted with the jealousy of the nobles in Julius
Caesar;--or they at once commence the action so as to excite a curiosity
for the explanation in the following scenes, as in the storm of wind and
waves, and the boatswain in the Tempest, instead of anticipating our
curiosity, as in most other first scenes, and in too many other first
acts;--or they act, by contrast of diction suited to the characters, at
once to heighten the effect, and yet to give a naturalness to the
language and rhythm of the principal personages, either as that of
Prospero and Miranda by the appropriate lowness of the style,--or as in
King John, by the equally appropriate stateliness of official harangues
or narratives, so that the after blank verse seems to belong to the rank
and quality of the speakers, and not to the poet;--or they strike at
once the key-note, and give the predominant spirit of the play, as in
the Twelfth Night and in Macbeth;--or finally, the first scene comprises
all these advantages at once, as in Hamlet.
Compare the easy language of common life, in which this drama commences,
with the direful music and wild wayward rhythm and abrupt lyrics of the
opening of Macbeth. The tone is quite familiar;--there is no poetic
description of night, no elaborate information conveyed by one speaker
to another of what both had immediately before their senses--(such as
the first distich in Addison's Cato, which is a translation into poetry
of 'Past four o'clock and a dark morning!');--and yet nothing bordering
on the comic on the one hand, nor any striving of the intellect on the
other. It is precisely the language of sensation among men who feared no
charge of effeminacy for feeling, what they had no want of resolution to
bear. Yet the armour, the dead silence, the watchfulness that first
interrupts it, the welcome relief of the guard, the cold, the broken
expressions of compelled attention to bodily feelings still under
control--all excellently accord with, and prepare for, the after gradual
rise into tragedy;--but, above all, into a tragedy, the interest of
which is as eminently 'ad et apud infra', as that of Macbeth is directly
'ad extra'.
In all the best attested stories of ghosts and visions, as in that of
Brutus, of Archbishop Cranmer, that of Benvenuto Cellini recorded by
himself, and the vision of Galileo communicated by him to his favourite
pupil Torricelli, the ghost-seers were in a state of cold or chilling
damp from without, and of anxiety inwardly. It has been with all of them
as with Francisco on his guard,--alone, in the depth and silence of the
night;--''twas bitter cold, and they were sick at heart, and _not a
mouse stirring_.' The attention to minute sounds,--naturally associated
with the recollection of minute objects, and the more familiar and
trifling, the more impressive from the unusualness of their producing
any impression at all--gives a philosophic pertinency to this last
image; but it has likewise its dramatic use and purpose. For its
commonness in ordinary conversation tends to produce the sense of
reality, and at once hides the poet, and yet approximates the reader or
spectator to that state in which the highest poetry will appear, and in
its component parts, though not in the whole composition, really is, the
language of nature. If I should not speak it, I feel that I should be
thinking it;--the voice only is the poet's,--the words are my own. That
Shakspeare meant to put an effect in the actor's power in the very first
words--"Who's there?"--is evident from the impatience expressed by the
startled Francisco in the words that follow--"Nay, answer me: stand and
unfold yourself." A brave man is never so peremptory, as when he fears
that he is afraid. Observe the gradual transition from the silence and
the still recent habit of listening in Francisco's--"I think I hear
them"--to the more cheerful call out, which a good actor would observe,
in the--"Stand ho! Who is there?" Bernardo's inquiry after Horatio, and
the repetition of his name and in his own presence indicate a respect or
an eagerness that implies him as one of the persons who are in the
foreground; and the scepticism attributed to him,--
Horatio says,'tis but our fantasy; And will not let belief take hold of
him--
prepares us for Hamlet's after eulogy on him as one whose blood and
judgment were happily commingled. The actor should also be careful to
distinguish the expectation and gladness of Bernardo's 'Welcome,
Horatio!' from the mere courtesy of his 'Welcome, good Marcellus!'
Now observe the admirable indefiniteness of the first opening out of the
occasion of all this anxiety. The preparation informative of the
audience is just as much as was precisely necessary, and no more;--it
begins with the uncertainty appertaining to a question:--
'Mar'. What, has _this thing_ appear'd again to-night?--
Even the word 'again' has its 'credibilizing' effect. Then Horatio, the
representative of the ignorance of the audience, not himself, but by
Marcellus to Bernardo, anticipates the common solution--''tis but our
fantasy!' upon which Marcellus rises into
This dreaded sight, twice seen of us--
which immediately afterwards becomes 'this apparition,' and that, too,
an intelligent spirit, that is, to be spoken to! Then comes the
confirmation of Horatio's disbelief;--
Tush! tush! 'twill not appear!--
and the silence, with which the scene opened, is again restored in the
shivering feeling of Horatio sitting down, at such a time, and with the
two eye-witnesses, to hear a story of a ghost, and that, too, of a ghost
which had appeared twice before at the very same hour. In the deep
feeling which Bernardo has of the solemn nature of what he is about to
relate, he makes an effort to master his own imaginative terrors by an
elevation of style,--itself a continuation of the effort,--and by
turning off from the apparition, as from something which would force him
too deeply into himself, to the outward objects, the realities of
nature, which had accompanied it:--
'Ber'. Last night of all,
When yon same star, that's westward from the pole,
Had made his course to illume that part of heaven
Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself,
The bell then beating one--
This passage seems to contradict the critical law that what is told,
makes a faint impression compared with what is beholden; for it does
indeed convey to the mind more than the eye can see; whilst the
interruption of the narrative at the very moment, when we are most
intensely listening for the sequel, and have our thoughts diverted from
the dreaded sight in expectation of the desired, yet almost dreaded,
tale--this gives all the suddenness and surprise of the original
appearance;--
'Mar'. Peace, break thee off; look, where it comes again!--
Note the judgment displayed in having the two persons present, who, as
having seen the Ghost before, are naturally eager in confirming their
former opinions,--whilst the sceptic is silent, and after having been
twice addressed by his friends, answers with two hasty syllables--'Most
like,'--and a confession of horror:
--It harrows me with fear and wonder.
O heaven! words are wasted on those who feel, and to those who do not
feel the exquisite judgment of Shakspeare in this scene, what can be
said?--Hume himself could not but have had faith in this Ghost
dramatically, let his anti-ghostism have been as strong as Samson
against other ghosts less powerfully raised.
Act i. sc. I.
'Mar'. Good now, sit down, and tell me, he that knows,
Why this same strict and most observant watch, &c.
How delightfully natural is the transition to the retrospective
narrative! And observe, upon the Ghost's reappearance, how much
Horatio's courage is increased by having translated the late individual
spectator into general thought and past experience,--and the sympathy of
Marcellus and Bernardo with his patriotic surmises in daring to strike
at the Ghost; whilst in a moment, upon its vanishing, the former solemn
awe-stricken feeling returns upon them:--
We do it wrong, being so majestical,
To offer it the show of violence.--
'Ib.' Horatio's speech:--
I have heard,
The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn,
Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat
Awake the god of day, &c.
No Addison could be more careful to be poetical in diction than
Shakspeare in providing the grounds and sources of its propriety. But
how to elevate a thing almost mean by its familiarity, young poets may
learn in this treatment of the cock-crow.
'Ib.' Horatio's speech:--
And, by my advice,
Let us impart what we have seen to-night
Unto young Hamlet; for, upon my life,
The spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him.
Note the inobtrusive and yet fully adequate mode of introducing the main
character, 'young Hamlet,' upon whom is transferred all the interest
excited for the acts and concerns of the king his father.
'Ib.' sc. 2. The audience are now relieved by a change of scene to the
royal court, in order that Hamlet may not have to take up the leavings
of exhaustion. In the king's speech, observe the set and pedantically
antithetic form of the sentences when touching that which galled the
heels of conscience,--the strain of undignified rhetoric,--and yet in
what follows concerning the public weal, a certain appropriate majesty.
Indeed was he not a royal brother?--
'Ib.' King's speech:--
And now, Laertes, what's the news with you? &c.
Thus with great art Shakspeare introduces a most important, but still
subordinate character first, Laertes, who is yet thus graciously treated
in consequence of the assistance given to the election of the late
king's brother instead of his son by Polonius.
Ib.
'Ham'. A little more than kin, and less than kind.
'King'. How is it that the clouds still hang on you?
'Ham'. Not so, my lord, I am too much i' the sun.
Hamlet opens his mouth with a playing on words, the complete absence of
which throughout characterizes Macbeth. This playing on words may be
attributed to many causes or motives, as either to an exuberant activity
of mind, as in the higher comedy of Shakspeare generally;--or to an
imitation of it as a mere fashion, as if it were said--'Is not this
better than groaning?'--or to a contemptuous exultation in minds
vulgarized and overset by their success, as in the poetic instance of
Milton's Devils in the battle;--or it is the language of resentment, as
is familiar to every one who has witnessed the quarrels of the lower
orders, where there is invariably a profusion of punning invective,
whence, perhaps, nicknames have in a considerable degree sprung up;--or
it is the language of suppressed passion, and especially of a hardly
smothered personal dislike. The first, and last of these combine in
Hamlet's case; and I have little doubt that Farmer is right in supposing
the equivocation carried on in the expression 'too much i' the sun,' or
son.
Ib.
'Ham'. Ay, madam, it is common.
Here observe Hamlet's delicacy to his mother, and how the suppression
prepares him for the overflow in the next speech, in which his character
is more developed by bringing forward his aversion to externals, and
which betrays his habit of brooding over the world within him, coupled
with a prodigality of beautiful words, which are the half embodyings of
thought, and are more than thought, and have an outness, a reality 'sui
generis', and yet retain their correspondence and shadowy affinity to
the images and movements within. Note also Hamlet's silence to the long
speech of the king which follows, and his respectful, but general,
answer to his mother.
'Ib.' Hamlet's first soliloquy:--
O, that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew! &c.
This 'tædium vitæ'; is a common oppression on minds cast in the Hamlet
mould, and is caused by disproportionate mental exertion, which
necessitates exhaustion of bodily feeling. Where there is a just
coincidence of external and internal action, pleasure is always the
result; but where the former is deficient, and the mind's appetency of
the ideal is unchecked, realities will seem cold and unmoving. In such
cases, passion combines itself with the indefinite alone. In this mood
of his mind the relation of the appearance of his father's spirit in
arms is made all at once to Hamlet:--it is--Horatio's speech, in
particular--a perfect model of the true style of dramatic
narrative;--the purest poetry, and yet in the most natural language,
equally remote from the ink-horn and the plough.
'Ib.' sc. 3. This scene must be regarded as one of Shakspeare's lyric
movements in the play, and the skill with which it is interwoven with
the dramatic parts is peculiarly an excellence of our poet. You
experience the sensation of a pause without the sense of a stop. You
will observe in Ophelia's short and general answer to the long speech of
Laertes the natural carelessness of innocence, which cannot think such a
code of cautions and prudences necessary to its own preservation.
'Ib.' Speech of Polonius:--(in Stockdale's edition.)
Or (not to crack the wind of the poor phrase,)
Wronging it thus, you'll tender me a fool.
I suspect this 'wronging' is here used much in the same sense as
'wringing' or 'wrenching;' and that the parenthesis should be extended
to 'thus.' [1]
'Ib.' Speech of Polonius:--
--How prodigal the soul
Lends the tongue vows:--these blazes, daughter, &c.
A spondee has, I doubt not, dropped out of the text. Either insert 'Go
to' after 'vows;'--
Lends the tongue vows:--Go to, these blazes, daughter--
or read
Lends the tongue vows:--These blazes, daughter, mark you--
Shakspeare never introduces a catalectic line without intending an
equivalent to the foot omitted in the pauses, or the dwelling emphasis,
or the diffused retardation. I do not, however, deny that a good actor
might by employing the last mentioned means, namely, the retardation, or
solemn knowing drawl, supply the missing spondee with good effect. But I
do not believe that in this or any other of the foregoing speeches of
Polonius, Shakspeare meant to bring out the senility or weakness of that
personage's mind. In the great ever-recurring dangers and duties of
life, where to distinguish the fit objects for the application of the
maxims collected by the experience of a long life, requires no fineness
of tact, as in the admonitions to his son and daughter, Polonius is
uniformly made respectable. But if an actor were even capable of
catching these shades in the character, the pit and the gallery would be
malcontent at their exhibition. It is to Hamlet that Polonius is, and is
meant to be, contemptible, because in inwardness and uncontrollable
activity of movement, Hamlet's mind is the logical contrary to that of
Polonius, and besides, as I have observed before, Hamlet dislikes the
man as false to his true allegiance in the matter of the succession to
the crown.
'Ib.' sc. 4. The unimportant conversation with which this scene opens is
a proof of Shakspeare's minute knowledge of human nature. It is a well
established fact, that on the brink of any serious enterprise, or event
of moment, men almost invariably endeavour to elude the pressure of
their own thoughts by turning aside to trivial objects and familiar
circumstances: thus this dialogue on the platform begins with remarks on
the coldness of the air, and inquiries, obliquely connected, indeed,
with the expected hour of the visitation, but thrown out in a seeming
vacuity of topics, as to the striking of the clock and so forth. The
same desire to escape from the impending thought is carried on in
Hamlet's account of, and moralizing on, the Danish custom of wassailing:
he runs off from the particular to the universal, and, in his repugnance
to personal and individual concerns, escapes, as it were, from himself
in generalizations, and smothers the impatience and uneasy feelings of
the moment in abstract reasoning. Besides this, another purpose is
answered;--for by thus entangling the attention of the audience in the
nice distinctions and parenthetical sentences of this speech of
Hamlet's, Shakspeare takes them completely by surprise on the appearance
of the Ghost, which comes upon them in all the suddenness of its
visionary character. Indeed, no modern writer would have dared, like
Shakspeare, to have preceded this last visitation by two distinct
appearances,--or could have contrived that the third should rise upon
the former two in impressiveness and solemnity of interest.
But in addition to all the other excellencies of Hamlet's speech
concerning the wassel-music--so finely revealing the predominant
idealism, the ratiocinative meditativeness, of his character--it has the
advantage of giving nature and probability to the impassioned continuity
of the speech instantly directed to the Ghost. The 'momentum' had been
given to his mental activity; the full current of the thoughts and words
had set in, and the very forgetfulness, in the fervour of his
argumentation, of the purpose for which he was there, aided in
preventing the appearance from benumbing the mind. Consequently, it
acted as a new impulse,--a sudden stroke which increased the velocity of
the body already in motion, whilst it altered the direction. The
co-presence of Horatio, Marcellus, and Bernardo is most judiciously
contrived; for it renders the courage of Hamlet and his impetuous
eloquence perfectly intelligible. The knowledge,--the unthought of
consciousness,--the sensation,--of human auditors,--of flesh and blood
sympathists--acts as a support and a stimulation 'a tergo', while the
front of the mind, the whole consciousness of the speaker, is filled,
yea, absorbed, by the apparition. Add too, that the apparition itself
has by its previous appearances been brought nearer to a thing of this
world. This accrescence of objectivity in a Ghost that yet retains all
its ghostly attributes and fearful subjectivity, is truly wonderful.
'Ib.' sc. 5. Hamlet's speech:--
O all you host of heaven! O earth! What else?
And shall I couple hell?--
I remember nothing equal to this burst unless it be the first speech of
Prometheus in the Greek drama, after the exit of Vulcan and the two
Afrites. But Shakspeare alone could have produced the vow of Hamlet to
make his memory a blank of all maxims and generalized truths, that
'observation had copied there,'--followed immediately by the speaker
noting down the generalized fact,
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain!
Ib.
'Mar'. Hillo, ho, ho, my lord!
'Ham'. Hillo, ho, ho, boy! come bird, come, &c.
This part of the scene after Hamlet's interview with the Ghost has been
charged with an improbable eccentricity. But the truth is, that after
the mind has been stretched beyond its usual pitch and tone, it must
either sink into exhaustion and inanity, or seek relief by change. It is
thus, well known that persons conversant in deeds of cruelty, contrive
to escape from conscience, by connecting something of the ludicrous with
them, and by inventing grotesque terms and a certain technical
phraseology to disguise the horror of their practices. Indeed,
paradoxical as it may appear, the terrible by a law of the human mind
always touches on the verge of the ludicrous. Both arise from the
perception of something out of the common order of things--something, in
fact, out of its place; and if from this we can abstract danger, the
uncommonness will alone remain, and the sense of the ridiculous be
excited. The close alliance of these opposites--they are not
contraries--appears from the circumstance, that laughter is equally the
expression of extreme anguish and horror as of joy: as there are tears
of sorrow and tears of joy, so is there a laugh of terror and a laugh of
merriment. These complex causes will naturally have produced in Hamlet
the disposition to escape from his own feelings of the overwhelming and
supernatural by a wild transition to the ludicrous,--a sort of cunning
bravado, bordering on the flights of delirium. For you may, perhaps,
observe that Hamlet's wildness is but half false; he plays that subtle
trick of pretending to act only when he is very near really being what
he acts.
The subterraneous speeches of the Ghost are hardly defensible:--but I
would call your attention to the characteristic difference between this
Ghost, as a superstition connected with the most mysterious truths of
revealed religion,--and Shakspeare's consequent reverence in his
treatment of it,--and the foul earthly witcheries and wild language in
Macbeth.
Act ii. sc. 1. Polonius and Reynaldo.
In all things dependent on, or rather made up of, fine address, the
manner is no more or otherwise rememberable than the light motions,
steps, and gestures of youth and health. But this is almost every
thing:--no wonder, therefore, if that which can be put down by rule in
the memory should appear to us as mere poring, maudlin,
cunning,--slyness blinking through the watery eye of superannuation. So
in this admirable scene, Polonius, who is throughout the skeleton of his
own former skill and statecraft, hunts the trail of policy at a dead
scent, supplied by the weak fever-smell in his own nostrils.
'Ib.' sc. 2. Speech of Polonius:--
My liege, and madam, to expostulate, &c.
Warburton's note:
Then as to the jingles, and play on words, let us but look into the
sermons of Dr. Donne, (the wittiest man of that age) and we shall find
them full of this vein.
I have, and that most carefully, read Dr. Donne's sermons, and find none
of these jingles. The great art of an orator--to make whatever he talks
of appear of importance--this, indeed, Donne has effected with
consummate skill.
Ib.
'Ham'. Excellent well; You are a fishmonger.
That is, you are sent to fish out this secret. This is Hamlet's own
meaning.
Ib.
'Ham'. For if the sun breeds maggots in a dead dog,
Being a god, kissing carrion--
These purposely obscure lines, I rather think, refer to some thought in
Hamlet's mind, contrasting the lovely daughter with such a tedious old
fool, her father, as he, Hamlet, represents Polonius to himself:--'Why,
fool as he is, he is some degrees in rank above a dead dog's carcase;
and if the sun, being a god that kisses carrion, can raise life out of a
dead dog,--why may not good fortune, that favours fools, have raised a
lovely girl out of this dead-alive old fool?' Warburton is often led
astray, in his interpretations, by his attention to general positions
without the due Shakspearian reference to what is probably passing in
the mind of his speaker, characteristic, and expository of his
particular character and present mood. The subsequent passage,--
O Jephtha, judge of Israel! what a treasure hadst thou!
is confirmatory of my view of these lines.
Ib.
'Ham'. You cannot, Sir, take from me any thing that I will more
willingly part withal; except my life, except my life, except my life.
This repetition strikes me as most admirable.
Ib.
'Ham'. Then are our beggars, bodies; and our monarchs, and
out-stretched heroes, the beggars' shadows.
I do not understand this; and Shakspeare seems to have intended the
meaning not to be more than snatched at:--'By my fay, I cannot reason!'
Ib.
The rugged Pyrrhus--he whose sable arms, &c.
This admirable substitution of the epic for the dramatic, giving such a
reality to the impassioned dramatic diction of Shakspeare's own
dialogue, and authorized, too, by the actual style of the tragedies
before his time (Porrex and Ferrex, Titus Andronicus, &c.)--is well
worthy of notice. The fancy, that a burlesque was intended, sinks below
criticism: the lines, as epic narrative, are superb.
In the thoughts, and even in the separate parts of the diction, this
description is highly poetical: in truth, taken by itself, this is its
fault that it is too poetical!--the language of lyric vehemence and epic
pomp, and not of the drama. But if Shakspeare had made the diction truly
dramatic, where would have been the contrast between Hamlet and the play
in Hamlet?
Ib.
--had seen the _mobled_ queen, &c.
A mob-cap is still a word in common use for a morning cap, which
conceals the whole head of hair, and passes under the chin. It is nearly
the same as the night-cap, that is, it is an imitation of it, so as to
answer the purpose ('I am not drest for company'), and yet reconciling
it with neatness and perfect purity.
'Ib.' Hamlet's soliloquy:
O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I! &c.
This is Shakspeare's own attestation to the truth of the idea of Hamlet
which I have before put forth.
Ib.
The spirit that I have seen, May be a devil: and the devil hath power To
assume a pleasing shape; yea, and, perhaps Out of my weakness, and my
melancholy, (As he is very potent with such spirits) Abuses me to damn
me.
See Sir Thomas Brown:
I believe----that those apparitions and ghosts of departed persons are
not the wandering souls of men, but the unquiet walks of devils,
prompting and suggesting us unto mischief, blood and villany,
instilling and stealing into our hearts, that the blessed spirits are
not at rest in their graves, but wander solicitous of the affairs of
the world.
'Relig. Med'. Pt. I. Sect. 37.
Act iii. sc. 1. Hamlet's soliloquy:
To be, or not to be, that is the question, &c.
This speech is of absolutely universal interest,--and yet to which of
all Shakspeare's characters could it have been appropriately given but
to Hamlet? For Jaques it would have been too deep, and for Iago too
habitual a communion with the heart; which in every man belongs, or
ought to belong, to all mankind.
Ib.
That undiscover'd country, from whose bourne
No traveller returns.--
Theobald's note in defence of the supposed contradiction of this in the
apparition of the Ghost.
O miserable defender! If it be necessary to remove the apparent
contradiction,--if it be not rather a great beauty,--surely, it were
easy to say, that no traveller returns to this world, as to his home, or
abiding-place.
Ib.
'Ham'. Ha, ha! are you honest?
'Oph'. My lord?
'Ham'. Are you fair?
Here it is evident that the penetrating Hamlet perceives, from the
strange and forced manner of Ophelia, that the sweet girl was not acting
a part of her own, but was a decoy; and his after speeches are not so
much directed to her as to the listeners and spies. Such a discovery in
a mood so anxious and irritable accounts for a certain harshness in
him;--and yet a wild up-working of love, sporting with opposites in a
wilful self-tormenting strain of irony, is perceptible throughout. 'I
did love you once:'--'I lov'd you not:'--and particularly in his
enumeration of the faults of the sex from which Ophelia is so free, that
the mere freedom therefrom constitutes her character. Note Shakspeare's
charm of composing the female character by the absence of characters,
that is, marks and out-juttings.
'Ib.' Hamlet's speech:--
I say, we will have no more marriages: those that are married already,
all but one, shall live: the rest shall keep as they are.
Observe this dallying with the inward purpose, characteristic of one who
had not brought his mind to the steady acting point. He would fain sting
the uncle's mind;--but to stab his body!--The soliloquy of Ophelia,
which follows, is the perfection of love--so exquisitely unselfish!
'Ib.' sc. 2. This dialogue of Hamlet with the players is one of the
happiest instances of Shakspeare's power of diversifying the scene while
he is carrying on the plot.
Ib.
'Ham'. My lord, you play'd once i' the university, you say?
(_To Polonius_.)
To have kept Hamlet's love for Ophelia before the audience in any direct
form, would have made a breach in the unity of the interest;--but yet to
the thoughtful reader it is suggested by his spite to poor Polonius,
whom he cannot let rest.
'Ib.' The style of the interlude here is distinguished from the real
dialogue by rhyme, as in the first interview with the players by epic
verse.
Ib.
'Ros'. My lord, you once did love me.
'Ham'. So I do still, by these pickers and stealers.
I never heard an actor give this word 'so' its proper emphasis.
Shakspeare's meaning is--'lov'd you? Hum!--_so_ I do still, &c.' There
has been no change in my opinion:--I think as ill of you as I did. Else
Hamlet tells an ignoble falsehood, and a useless one, as the last speech
to Guildenstern--'Why, look you now,' &c.--proves.
'Ib.' Hamlet's soliloquy:--
Now could I drink hot blood,
And do such business as the bitter day
Would quake to look on.
The utmost at which Hamlet arrives, is a disposition, a mood, to do
something:--but what to do, is still left undecided, while every word he
utters tends to betray his disguise. Yet observe how perfectly equal to
any call of the moment is Hamlet, let it only not be for the future.
'Ib.' sc. 4. Speech of Polonius. Polonius's volunteer obtrusion of
himself into this business, while it is appropriate to his character,
still itching after former importance, removes all likelihood that
Hamlet should suspect his presence, and prevents us from making his
death injure Hamlet in our opinion.
'Ib.' The king's speech:--
O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven, &c.
This speech well marks the difference between crime and guilt of habit.
The conscience here is still admitted to audience. Nay, even as an
audible soliloquy, it is far less improbable than is supposed by such as
have watched men only in the beaten road of their feelings. But the
final--'all may be well!' is remarkable;--the degree of merit attributed
by the self-flattering soul to its own struggle, though baffled, and to
the indefinite half-promise, half-command, to persevere in religious
duties. The solution is in the divine 'medium' of the Christian doctrine
of expiation:--not what you have done, but what you are, must determine.
'Ib.' Hamlet's speech:--
Now might I do it, pat, now he is praying:
And now I'll do it:--And so he goes to heaven:
And so am I revenged? That would be scann'd, &c.
Dr. Johnson's mistaking of the marks of reluctance and procrastination
for impetuous, horror-striking, fiendishness!--Of such importance is it
to understand the germ of a character. But the interval taken by
Hamlet's speech is truly awful! And then--
My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:
Words, without thoughts, never to heaven go,--
O what a lesson concerning the essential difference between wishing and
willing, and the folly of all motive-mongering, while the individual
self remains!
'Ib.' sc. 4.
'Ham'. A bloody deed;--almost as bad, good mother,
As kill a king, and marry with his brother.
'Queen'. As kill a king?
I confess that Shakspeare has left the character of the Queen in an
unpleasant perplexity. Was she, or was she not, conscious of the
fratricide?
Act iv. sc. 2.
'Ros'. Take you me for a spunge, my lord?
'Ham'. Ay, Sir; that soaks up the King's countenance, his rewards, his
authorities, &c.
Hamlet's madness is made to consist in the free utterance of all the
thoughts that had passed through his mind before;--in fact, in telling
home-truths.
Act. iv. sc. 5. Ophelia's singing. O, note the conjunction here of these
two thoughts that had never subsisted in disjunction, the love for
Hamlet, and her filial love, with the guileless floating on the surface
of her pure imagination of the cautions so lately expressed, and the
fears not too delicately avowed, by her father and brother concerning
the dangers to which her honour lay exposed. Thought, affliction,
passion, murder itself--she turns to favour and prettiness. This play of
association is instanced in the close:--
My brother shall know of it, and I thank you for your good counsel.
'Ib.' Gentleman's speech:--
And as the world were now but to begin,
Antiquity forgot, custom not known,
The ratifiers and props of every ward--
They cry, &c.
Fearful and self-suspicious as I always feel, when I seem to see an
error of judgment in Shakspeare, yet I cannot reconcile the cool, and,
as Warburton calls it, 'rational and consequential,' reflection in these
lines with the anonymousness, or the alarm, of this Gentleman or
Messenger, as he is called in other editions.
'Ib.' King's speech:--
There's such divinity doth hedge a king,
That treason can but peep to what it would,
Acts little of his will.
Proof, as indeed all else is, that Shakspeare never intended us to see
the King with Hamlet's eyes; though, I suspect, the managers have long
done so.
'Ib.' Speech of Laertes:--
To hell, allegiance! vows, to the blackest devil!
Laertes is a 'good' character, but, &c. (WARBURTON.)
Mercy on Warburton's notion of goodness! Please to refer to the seventh
scene of this act;--
I will do it;
And for this purpose I'll anoint my sword, &c.
uttered by Laertes after the King's description of Hamlet;--
He being remiss,
Most generous, and free from all contriving,
Will not peruse the foils.
Yet I acknowledge that Shakspeare evidently wishes, as much as possible,
to spare the character of Laertes,--to break the extreme turpitude of
his consent to become an agent and accomplice of the King's
treachery;--and to this end he re-introduces Ophelia at the close of
this scene to afford a probable stimulus of passion in her brother.
'Ib.' sc. 6. Hamlet's capture by the pirates. This is almost the only
play of Shakspeare, in which mere accidents, independent of all will,
form an essential part of the plot;--but here how judiciously in keeping
with the character of the over-meditative Hamlet, ever at last
determined by accident or by a fit of passion!
'Ib.' sc. 7. Note how the King first awakens Laertes's vanity by
praising the reporter, and then gratifies it by the report itself, and
finally points it by--
Sir, this report of his
Did Hamlet so envenom with his envy!--
'Ib.' King's speech:
For goodness, growing to a _pleurisy_,
Dies in his own too much.
Theobald's note from Warburton, who conjectures 'plethory.'
I rather think that Shakspeare meant 'pleurisy,' but involved in it the
thought of _plethora_, as supposing pleurisy to arise from too much
blood; otherwise I cannot explain the following line--
And then this _should_ is like a spendthrift sigh,
That hurts by easing.
In a stitch in the side every one must have heaved a sigh that 'hurt by
easing.'
Since writing the above I feel confirmed that 'pleurisy' is the right
word; for I find that in the old medical dictionaries the pleurisy is
often called the 'plethory.'
Ib.
'Queen'. Your sister's drown'd, Laertes.
'Laer'. Drown'd! O, where?
That Laertes might be excused in some degree for not cooling, the Act
concludes with the affecting death of Ophelia,--who in the beginning lay
like a little projection of land into a lake or stream, covered with
spray-flowers quietly reflected in the quiet waters, but at length is
undermined or loosened, and becomes a faery isle, and after a brief
vagrancy sinks almost without an eddy!
Act v. sc. 1. O, the rich contrast between the Clowns and Hamlet, as two
extremes! You see in the former the mockery of logic, and a traditional
wit valued, like truth, for its antiquity, and treasured up, like a
tune, for use.
'Ib.' sc. 1 and 2. Shakspeare seems to mean all Hamlet's character to be
brought together before his final disappearance from the scene;--his
meditative excess in the grave-digging, his yielding to passion with
Laertes, his love for Ophelia blazing out, his tendency to generalize on
all occasions in the dialogue with Horatio, his fine gentlemanly manners
with Osrick, and his and Shakspeare's own fondness for presentiment:
But thou would'st not think, how ill all's here about my heart: but it
is no matter.
[Footnote 1: It is so pointed in the modern editions.--Ed.]
NOTES ON MACBETH.
Macbeth stands in contrast throughout with Hamlet; in the manner of
opening more especially. In the latter, there is a gradual ascent from
the simplest forms of conversation to the language of impassioned
intellect,--yet the intellect still remaining the seat of passion: in
the former, the invocation is at once made to the imagination and the
emotions connected therewith. Hence the movement throughout is the most
rapid of all Shakspeare's plays; and hence also, with the exception of
the disgusting passage of the Porter (Act ii. sc. 3.), which I dare
pledge myself to demonstrate to be an interpolation of the actors, there
is not, to the best of my remembrance, a single pun or play on words in
the whole drama. I have previously given an answer to the thousand times
repeated charge against Shakspeare upon the subject of his punning, and
I here merely mention the fact of the absence of any puns in Macbeth, as
justifying a candid doubt at least, whether even in these figures of
speech and fanciful modifications of language, Shakspeare may not have
followed rules and principles that merit and would stand the test of
philosophic examination. And hence, also, there is an entire absence of
comedy, nay, even of irony and philosophic contemplation in
Macbeth,--the play being wholly and purely tragic. For the same cause,
there are no reasonings of equivocal morality, which would have required
a more leisurely state and a consequently greater activity of mind;--no
sophistry of self-delusion,--except only that previously to the dreadful
act, Macbeth mistranslates the recoilings and ominous whispers of
conscience into prudential and selfish reasonings, and, after the deed
done, the terrors of remorse into fear from external dangers,--like
delirious men who run away from the phantoms of their own brains, or,
raised by terror to rage, stab the real object that is within their
reach:--whilst Lady Macbeth merely endeavours to reconcile his and her
own sinkings of heart by anticipations of the worst, and an affected
bravado in confronting them. In all the rest, Macbeth's language is the
grave utterance of the very heart, conscience-sick, even to the last
faintings of moral death. It is the same in all the other characters.
The variety arises from rage, caused ever and anon by disruption of
anxious thought, and the quick transition of fear into it.
In Hamlet and Macbeth the scene opens with superstition; but, in each it
is not merely different, but opposite. In the first it is connected with
the best and holiest feelings; in the second with the shadowy,
turbulent, and unsanctified cravings of the individual will. Nor is the
purpose the same; in the one the object is to excite, whilst in the
other it is to mark a mind already excited. Superstition, of one sort or
another, is natural to victorious generals; the instances are too
notorious to need mentioning. There is so much of chance in warfare, and
such vast events are connected with the acts of a single
individual,--the representative, in truth, of the efforts of myriads,
and yet to the public and, doubtless, to his own feelings, the aggregate
of all,--that the proper temperament for generating or receiving
superstitious impressions is naturally produced. Hope, the master
element of a commanding genius, meeting with an active and combining
intellect, and an imagination of just that degree of vividness which
disquiets and impels the soul to try to realize its images, greatly
increases the creative power of the mind; and hence the images become a
satisfying world of themselves, as is the case in every poet and
original philosopher:--but hope fully gratified, and yet the elementary
basis of the passion remaining, becomes fear; and, indeed, the general,
who must often feel, even though he may hide it from his own
consciousness, how large a share chance had in his successes, may very
naturally be irresolute in a new scene, where he knows that all will
depend on his own act and election.
The Wierd Sisters are as true a creation of Shakspeare's, as his Ariel
and Caliban,--fates, furies, and materializing witches being the
elements. They are wholly different from any representation of witches
in the contemporary writers, and yet presented a sufficient external
resemblance to the creatures of vulgar prejudice to act immediately on
the audience. Their character consists in the imaginative disconnected
from the good; they are the shadowy obscure and fearfully anomalous of
physical nature, the lawless of human nature,--elemental avengers
without sex or kin:
Fair is foul, and foul is fair; Hover thro' the fog and filthy air.
How much it were to be wished in playing Macbeth, that an attempt should
be made to introduce the flexile character-mask of the ancient
pantomime;--that Flaxman would contribute his genius to the embodying
and making sensuously perceptible that of Shakspeare!
The style and rhythm of the Captain's speeches in the second scene
should be illustrated by reference to the interlude in Hamlet, in which
the epic is substituted for the tragic, in order to make the latter be
felt as the real-life diction. In Macbeth, the poet's object was to
raise the mind at once to the high tragic tone, that the audience might
be ready for the precipitate consummation of guilt in the early part of
the play. The true reason for the first appearance of the Witches is to
strike the key-note of the character of the whole drama, as is proved by
their re-appearance in the third scene, after such an order of the
king's as establishes their supernatural power of information. I say
information,--for so it only is as to Glamis and Cawdor; the 'king
hereafter' was still contingent,--still in Macbeth's moral will;
although, if he should yield to the temptation, and thus forfeit his
free agency, the link of cause and effect 'more physico' would then
commence. I need not say, that the general idea is all that can be
required from the poet,--not a scholastic logical consistency in all the
parts so as to meet metaphysical objectors. But O! how truly
Shakspearian is the opening of Macbeth's character given in the
'unpossessedness' of Banquo's mind, wholly present to the present
object,--an unsullied, unscarified mirror!--And how strictly true to
nature it is, that Banquo, and not Macbeth himself, directs our notice
to the effect produced on Macbeth's mind, rendered temptible by previous
dalliance of the fancy with ambitious thoughts:
Good Sir, why do you start; and seem to fear
Things that do sound so fair?
And then, again, still unintroitive, addresses the Witches:--
I' the name of truth,
Are ye fantastical, or that indeed
Which outwardly ye show?
Banquo's questions are those of natural curiosity,--such as a girl would
put after hearing a gipsy tell her schoolfellow's fortune;--all
perfectly general, or rather planless. But Macbeth, lost in thought,
raises himself to speech only by the Witches being about to depart:--
Stay, you imperfect speakers, tell me more:--
and all that follows is reasoning on a problem already discussed in his
mind,--on a hope which he welcomes, and the doubts concerning the
attainment of which he wishes to have cleared up. Compare his
eagerness,--the keen eye with which he has pursued the Witches'
evanishing--
Speak, I charge you!
with the easily satisfied mind of the self-uninterested Banquo:--
The air hath bubbles, as the water has,
And these are of them:--Whither are they vanish'd?
and then Macbeth's earnest reply,--
Into the air; and what seem'd corporal, melted
As breath into the wind.--_'Would they had staid!_
Is it too minute to notice the appropriateness of the simile 'as
breath,' &c. in a cold climate?
Still again Banquo goes on wondering like any common spectator:
Were such things here as we do speak about?
whilst Macbeth persists in recurring to the self-concerning:--
Your children shall be kings.
'Ban'. You shall be king.
'Macb'. And thane of Cawdor too: went it not so?
So surely is the guilt in its germ anterior to the supposed cause, and
immediate temptation! Before he can cool, the confirmation of the
tempting half of the prophecy arrives, and the concatenating tendency of
the imagination is fostered by the sudden coincidence:--
Glamis, and thane of Cawdor: The greatest is behind.
Oppose this to Banquo's simple surprise:--
What, can the devil speak true?
'Ib.' Banquo's speech:--
That, trusted home,
Might yet enkindle you unto the crown,
Besides the thane of Cawdor.
I doubt whether 'enkindle' has not another sense than that of
'stimulating;' I mean of 'kind' and 'kin,' as when rabbits are said to
'kindle.' However Macbeth no longer hears any thing 'ab extra':--
Two truths are told,
As happy prologues to the swelling act
Of the imperial theme.
Then in the necessity of recollecting himself--
I thank you, gentlemen.
Then he relapses into himself again, and every word of his soliloquy
shows the early birthdate of his guilt. He is all-powerful without
strength; he wishes the end, but is irresolute as to the means;
conscience distinctly warns him, and he lulls it imperfectly:--
If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me
Without my stir.
Lost in the prospective of his guilt, he turns round alarmed lest others
may suspect what is passing in his own mind, and instantly vents the lie
of ambition:
My dull brain was wrought
With things _forgotten_;--
And immediately after pours forth the promising courtesies of a usurper
in intention:--
Kind gentlemen, your pains
Are register'd where every day I turn
The leaf to read them.
'Ib.' Macbeth's speech:
Presents _fears_ Are less than horrible imaginings.
Warburton's note, and substitution of 'feats' for 'fears.'
Mercy on this most wilful ingenuity of blundering, which, nevertheless,
was the very Warburton of Warburton--his inmost being! 'Fears,' here,
are present fear-striking objects, 'terribilia adstantia'.
'Ib.' sc. 4. O! the affecting beauty of the death of Cawdor, and the
presentimental speech of the king:
There's no art
To find the mind's construction in the face:
He was a gentleman on whom I built
An absolute trust--
Interrupted by--
O worthiest cousin!
on the entrance of the deeper traitor for whom Cawdor had made way! And
here in contrast with Duncan's 'plenteous joys,' Macbeth has nothing but
the common-places of loyalty, in which he hides himself with 'our
duties.' Note the exceeding effort of Macbeth's addresses to the king,
his reasoning on his allegiance, and then especially when a new
difficulty, the designation of a successor, suggests a new crime. This,
however, seems the first distinct notion, as to the plan of realizing
his wishes; and here, therefore, with great propriety, Macbeth's
cowardice of his own conscience discloses itself. I always think there
is something especially Shakspearian in Duncan's speeches throughout
this scene, such pourings forth, such abandonments, compared with the
language of vulgar dramatists, whose characters seem to have made their
speeches as the actors learn them.
'Ib.' Duncan's speech:--
Sons, kinsmen, thanes,
And you whose places are the nearest, know,
We will establish our estate upon
Our eldest Malcolm, whom we name hereafter
The Prince of Cumberland: which honour must
Not unaccompanied, invest him only;
But signs of nobleness, like stars, shall shine
On all deservers.
It is a fancy;--but I can never read this and the following speeches of
Macbeth, without involuntarily thinking of the Miltonic Messiah and
Satan.
'Ib.' sc. 5. Macbeth is described by Lady Macbeth so as at the same time
to reveal her own character. Could he have everything he wanted, he
would rather have it innocently;--ignorant, as alas! how many of us are,
that he who wishes a temporal end for itself, does in truth will the
means; and hence the danger of indulging fancies. Lady Macbeth, like all
in Shakspeare, is a class individualized:--of high rank, left much
alone, and feeding herself with day-dreams of ambition, she mistakes the
courage of fantasy for the power of bearing the consequences of the
realities of guilt. Hers is the mock fortitude of a mind deluded by
ambition; she shames her husband with a superhuman audacity of fancy
which she cannot support, but sinks in the season of remorse, and dies
in suicidal agony. Her speech:
Come, all you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, &c.
is that of one who had habitually familiarized her imagination to
dreadful conceptions, and was trying to do so still more. Her
invocations and requisitions are all the false efforts of a mind
accustomed only hitherto to the shadows of the imagination, vivid enough
to throw the every-day substances of life into shadow, but never as yet
brought into direct contact with their own correspondent realities. She
evinces no womanly life, no wifely joy, at the return of her husband, no
pleased terror at the thought of his past dangers; whilst Macbeth bursts
forth naturally--
My dearest love--
and shrinks from the boldness with which she presents his own thoughts
to him. With consummate art she at first uses as incentives the very
circumstances, Duncan's coming to their house, &c. which Macbeth's
conscience would most probably have adduced to her as motives of
abhorrence or repulsion. Yet Macbeth is not prepared:
We will speak further.
'Ib.' sc. 6. The lyrical movement with which this scene opens, and the
free and unengaged mind of Banquo, loving nature, and rewarded in the
love itself, form a highly dramatic contrast with the laboured rhythm
and hypocritical over-much of Lady Macbeth's welcome, in which you
cannot detect a ray of personal feeling, but all is thrown upon the
'dignities,' the general duty.
'Ib.' sc. 7. Macbeth's speech:
We will proceed no further in this business:
He hath honor'd me of late; and I have bought
Golden opinions from all sorts of people,
Which would be worn now in their newest gloss,
Not cast aside so soon.
Note the inward pangs and warnings of conscience interpreted into
prudential reasonings.
Act ii. sc. 1. Banquo's speech:
A heavy summons lies like lead upon me,
And yet I would not sleep. Merciful powers!
Restrain in me the cursed thoughts, that nature
Gives way to in repose.
The disturbance of an innocent soul by painful suspicions of another's
guilty intentions and wishes, and fear of the cursed thoughts of sensual
nature.
'Ib.' sc. 2. Now that the deed is done or doing--now that the first
reality commences, Lady Macbeth shrinks. The most simple sound strikes
terror, the most natural consequences are horrible, whilst previously
every thing, however awful, appeared a mere trifle; conscience, which
before had been hidden to Macbeth in selfish and prudential fears, now
rushes in upon him in her own veritable person:
Methought I heard a voice cry--
Sleep no more! I could not say Amen,
When they did say, God bless us!
And see the novelty given to the most familiar images by a new state of
feeling.
'Ib.' sc. 3. This low soliloquy of the Porter and his few speeches
afterwards, I believe to have been written for the mob by some other
hand, perhaps with Shakspeare's consent; and that finding it take, he
with the remaining ink of a pen otherwise employed, just interpolated
the words--
I'll devil-porter it no further: I had thought to have let in some of
all professions, that go the primrose way to th' everlasting bonfire.
Of the rest not one syllable has the ever-present being of Shakspeare.
Act iii. sc. 1. Compare Macbeth's mode of working on the murderers in
this place with Schiller's mistaken scene between Butler, Devereux, and
Macdonald in Wallenstein. (Part II. act iv. sc. 2.) The comic was wholly
out of season. Shakspeare never introduces it, but when it may react on
the tragedy by harmonious contrast.
'Ib.' sc. 2. Macbeth's speech:
But let the frame of things disjoint, both the worlds suffer,
Ere we will eat our meal in fear, and sleep
In the affliction of these terrible dreams
That shake us nightly.
Ever and ever mistaking the anguish of conscience for fears of
selfishness, and thus as a punishment of that selfishness, plunging
still deeper in guilt and ruin.
'Ib.' Macbeth's speech:
Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck,
Till thou applaud the deed.
This is Macbeth's sympathy with his own feelings, and his mistaking his
wife's opposite state.
'Ib.' sc. 4.
'Macb'. It will have blood, they say; blood will have blood:
Stones have been known to move, and trees to speak;
Augurs, and understood relations, have
By magot-pies, and choughs, and rooks, brought forth
The secret'st man of blood.
The deed is done; but Macbeth receives no comfort,--no additional
security. He has by guilt torn himself live-asunder from nature, and is,
therefore, himself in a preter-natural state: no wonder, then, that he
is inclined to superstition, and faith in the unknown of signs and
tokens, and super-human agencies.
Act iv. sc. 1.
'Len'. 'Tis two or three, my lord, that bring you word,
Macduff is fled to England.
'Macb'. Fled to England?
The acme of the avenging conscience.
'Ib.' sc. 2. This scene, dreadful as it is, is still a relief, because a
variety, because domestic, and therefore soothing, as associated with
the only real pleasures of life. The conversation between Lady Macduff
and her child heightens the pathos, and is preparatory for the deep
tragedy of their assassination. Shakspeare's fondness for children is
every where shown;--in Prince Arthur, in King John; in the sweet scene
in the Winter's Tale between Hermione and her son; nay, even in honest
Evans's examination of Mrs. Page's schoolboy. To the objection that
Shakspeare wounds the moral sense by the unsubdued, undisguised
description of the most hateful atrocity--that he tears the feelings
without mercy, and even outrages the eye itself with scenes of
insupportable horror--I, omitting Titus Andronicus, as not genuine, and
excepting the scene of Gloster's blinding in Lear, answer boldly in the
name of Shakspeare, not guilty.
'Ib.' sc. 3. Malcolm's speech:
Better Macbeth,
Than such a one to reign.
The moral is--the dreadful effects even on the best minds of the
soul--sickening sense of insecurity.
'Ib.' How admirably Macduff's grief is in harmony with the whole play!
It rends, not dissolves, the heart. 'The tune of it goes manly.' Thus is
Shakspeare always master of himself and of his subject,--a genuine
Proteus:--we see all things in him, as images in a calm lake, most
distinct, most accurate,--only more splendid, more glorified. This is
correctness in the only philosophical sense. But he requires your
sympathy and your submission; you must have that recipiency of moral
impression without which the purposes and ends of the drama would be
frustrated, and the absence of which demonstrates an utter want of all
imagination, a deadness to that necessary pleasure of being
innocently--shall I say, deluded?--or rather, drawn away from ourselves
to the music of noblest thought in harmonious sounds. Happy he, who not
only in the public theatre, but in the labours of a profession, and
round the light of his own hearth, still carries a heart so
pleasure-fraught!
Alas for Macbeth! Now all is inward with him; he has no more prudential
prospective reasonings. His wife, the only being who could have had any
seat in his affections, dies; he puts on despondency, the final
heart-armour of the wretched, and would fain think every thing shadowy
and unsubstantial, as indeed all things are to those who cannot regard
them as symbols of goodness:--
Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
NOTES ON THE WINTER'S TALE.
Although, on the whole, this play is exquisitely respondent to its
title, and even in the fault I am about to mention, still a winter's
tale; yet it seems a mere indolence of the great bard not to have
provided in the oracular response (Act ii. sc. 2.) some ground for
Hermione's seeming death and fifteen years voluntary concealment. This
might have been easily effected by some obscure sentence of the oracle,
as for example:--
'Nor shall he ever recover an heir, if he have a wife before that
recovery.'
The idea of this delightful drama is a genuine jealousy of disposition,
and it should be immediately followed by the perusal of Othello, which
is the direct contrast of it in every particular. For jealousy is a vice
of the mind, a culpable tendency of the temper, having certain well
known and well defined effects and concomitants, all of which are
visible in Leontes, and, I boldly say, not one of which marks its
presence in Othello;--such as, first, an excitability by the most
inadequate causes, and an eagerness to snatch at proofs; secondly, a
grossness of conception, and a disposition to degrade the object of the
passion by sensual fancies and images; thirdly, a sense of shame of his
own feelings exhibited in a solitary moodiness of humour, and yet from
the violence of the passion forced to utter itself, and therefore
catching occasions to ease the mind by ambiguities, equivoques, by
talking to those who cannot, and who are known not to be able to,
understand what is said to them,--in short, by soliloquy in the form of
dialogue, and hence a confused, broken, and fragmentary, manner;
fourthly, a dread of vulgar ridicule, as distinct from a high sense of
honour, or a mistaken sense of duty; and lastly, and immediately,
consequent on this, a spirit of selfish vindictiveness.
Act i. sc. 1--2.
Observe the easy style of chitchat between Camillo and Archidamus as
contrasted with the elevated diction on the introduction of the kings
and Hermione in the second scene: and how admirably Polixenes' obstinate
refusal to Leontes to stay--
There is no tongue that moves; none, none i' the world
So soon as yours, could win me;--
prepares for the effect produced by his afterwards yielding to
Hermione;--which is, nevertheless, perfectly natural from mere courtesy
of sex, and the exhaustion of the will by former efforts of denial, and
well calculated to set in nascent action the jealousy of Leontes. This,
when once excited, is unconsciously increased by Hermione:--
Yet, good deed, Leontes, I love thee not a jar o' the clock behind
What lady she her lord;--
accompanied, as a good actress ought to represent it, by an expression
and recoil of apprehension that she had gone too far.
At my request, he would not:--
The first working of the jealous fit;--
Too hot, too hot:--
The morbid tendency of Leontes to lay hold of the merest trifles, and
his grossness immediately afterwards--
Padling palms and pinching fingers:--
followed by his strange loss of self-control in his dialogue with the
little boy.
Act iii. sc. 2. Paulina's speech:
That thou betray'dst Polixenes,'twas nothing;
That did but show thee, of a _fool_, inconstant,
And damnable ingrateful.--
Theobald reads 'soul.'
I think the original word is Shakspeare's.
1. My ear feels it to be Shakspearian;
2. The involved grammar is Shakspearian;--'show thee, being a fool
naturally, to have improved thy folly by inconstancy;'
3. The alteration is most flat, and un-Shakspearian. As to the grossness
of the abuse--she calls him 'gross and foolish' a few lines below.
Act iv. sc. 2. Speech of Autolycus:--
For the life to come, I sleep out the thought of it.
Fine as this is, and delicately characteristic of one who had lived and
been reared in the best society, and had been precipitated from it by
dice and drabbing; yet still it strikes against my feelings as a note
out of tune, and as not coalescing with that pastoral tint which gives
such a charm to this act. It is too Macbeth-like in the 'snapper up of
unconsidered trifles.'
'Ib.' sc. 3. Perdita's speech:--
From Dis's waggon! daffodils.
An epithet is wanted here, not merely or chiefly for the metre, but for
the balance, for the aesthetic logic. Perhaps, 'golden' was the word
which would set off the 'violets dim.'
Ib.
Pale primroses
That die unmarried.--
Milton's--
And the rathe primrose that forsaken dies.
'Ib.' Perdita's speech:--
Even here undone:
I was not much afraid; for once or twice
I was about to speak, and tell him plainly,
The self-same sun, that shines upon his court,
Hides not his visage from our cottage, but
Looks on alike. Wilt please you, Sir, be gone!
(_To Florizel._)
I told you, what would come of this. Beseech you,
Of your own state take care: this dream of mine,
Being awake, I'll queen it no inch farther,
But milk my ewes, and weep.
O how more than exquisite is this whole speech!--And that profound
nature of noble pride and grief venting themselves in a momentary
peevishness of resentment toward Florizel:--
--Wilt please you, Sir, be gone!
'Ib.' Speech of Autolycus:--
Let me have no lying; it becomes none but tradesmen, and they often
give us soldiers the lie; but we pay them for it in stamped coin, not
stabbing steel;--therefore they do not _give_ us the lie.
As we _pay_ them, they, therefore, do not _give_ it us.
NOTES ON OTHELLO
Act I. sc. 1. Admirable is the preparation, so truly and peculiarly
Shakspearian, in the introduction of Roderigo, as the dupe on whom Iago
shall first exercise his art, and in so doing display his own character.
Roderigo, without any fixed principle, but not without the moral notions
and sympathies with honor, which his rank and connections had hung upon
him, is already well fitted and predisposed for the purpose; for very
want of character and strength of passion, like wind loudest in an empty
house, constitute his character. The first three lines happily state the
nature and foundation of the friendship between him and Iago,--the
purse,--as also the contrast of Roderigo's intemperance of mind with
Iago's coolness,--the coolness of a preconceiving experimenter. The mere
language of protestation--
If ever I did dream of such a matter, abhor me,--
which falling in with the associative link, determines Roderigo's
continuation of complaint--
Thou told'st me, thou didst hold him in thy hate--
elicits at length a true feeling of Iago's mind, the dread of contempt
habitual to those, who encourage in themselves, and have their keenest
pleasure in, the expression of contempt for others. Observe Iago's high
self-opinion, and the moral, that a wicked man will employ real
feelings, as well as assume those most alien from his own, as
instruments of his purposes:--
--And, by the faith of man, I know my place,
I am worth no worse a place.
I think Tyrwhitt's reading of 'life' for 'wife'--
A fellow almost damn'd in a fair _wife_--
the true one, as fitting to Iago's contempt for whatever did not display
power, and that intellectual power. In what follows, let the reader feel
how by and through the glass of two passions, disappointed vanity and
envy, the very vices of which he is complaining, are made to act upon
him as if they were so many excellences, and the more appropriately,
because cunning is always admired and wished for by minds conscious of
inward weakness;--but they act only by half, like music on an
inattentive auditor, swelling the thoughts which prevent him from
listening to it.
Ib.
'Rod'. What a full fortune does the 'thick-lips' owe,
If he can carry't thus.
Roderigo turns off to Othello; and here comes one, if not the only,
seeming justification of our blackamoor or negro Othello. Even if we
supposed this an uninterrupted tradition of the theatre, and that
Shakspeare himself, from want of scenes, and the experience that nothing
could be made too marked for the senses of his audience, had practically
sanctioned it,--would this prove aught concerning his own intention as a
poet for all ages? Can we imagine him so utterly ignorant as to make a
barbarous negro plead royal birth,--at a time, too, when negros were not
known except as slaves?--As for Iago's language to Brabantio, it implies
merely that Othello was a Moor, that is, black. Though I think the
rivalry of Roderigo sufficient to account for his wilful confusion of
Moor and Negro,--yet, even if compelled to give this up, I should think
it only adapted for the acting of the day, and should complain of an
enormity built on a single word, in direct contradiction to Iago's
'Barbary horse.' Besides, if we could in good earnest believe Shakspeare
ignorant of the distinction, still why should we adopt one disagreeable
possibility instead of a ten times greater and more pleasing
probability? It is a common error to mistake the epithets applied by the
'dramatis personae' to each other, as truly descriptive of what the
audience ought to see or know. No doubt Desdemona saw Othello's visage
in his mind; yet, as we are constituted, and most surely as an English
audience was disposed in the beginning of the seventeenth century, it
would be something monstrous to conceive this beautiful Venetian girl
falling in love with a veritable negro. It would argue a
disproportionateness, a want of balance, in Desdemona, which Shakspeare
does not appear to have in the least contemplated.
'Ib.' Brabantio's speech:--
This accident is not unlike my dream:--
The old careful senator, being caught careless, transfers his caution to
his dreaming power at least.
'Ib.' Iago's speech:--
--For their souls,
Another of his fathom they have not,
To lead their business:--
The forced praise of Othello followed by the bitter hatred of him in
this speech! And observe how Brabantio's dream prepares for his
recurrence to the notion of philtres, and how both prepare for carrying
on the plot of the arraignment of Othello on this ground.
'Ib.' sc. 2.
'Oth'. 'Tis better as it is.
How well these few words impress at the outset the truth of Othello's
own character of himself at the end--'that he was not easily wrought!'
His self-government contradistinguishes him throughout from Leontes.
'Ib.' Othello's speech:--
--And my demerits
May speak, _unbonnetted_--
The argument in Theobald's note, where 'and bonnetted' is suggested,
goes on the assumption that Shakspeare could not use the same word
differently in different places; whereas I should conclude, that as in
the passage in Lear the word is employed in its direct meaning, so here
it is used metaphorically; and this is confirmed by what has escaped the
editors, that it is not 'I,' but 'my demerits' that may speak
unbonnetted,--without the symbol of a petitioning inferior.
'Ib.' Othello's speech:--
Please your grace, my ancient;
A man he is of honesty and trust:
To his conveyance I assign my wife.
Compare this with the behaviour of Leontes to his true friend Camillo.
'Ib.' sc. 3.
'Bra'. Look to her, Moor; have a quick eye to see;
She has deceiv'd her father, and may thee.
'Oth'. My life upon her faith.
In real life, how do we look back to little speeches as presentimental
of, or contrasted with, an affecting event! Even so, Shakspeare, as
secure of being read over and over, of becoming a family friend,
provides this passage for his readers, and leaves it to them.
'Ib.' Iago's speech:--
Virtue? a fig! 'tis in ourselves, that we are thus, or thus, &c.
This speech comprises the passionless character of Iago. It is all will
in intellect; and therefore he is here a bold partizan of a truth, but
yet of a truth converted into a falsehood by the absence of all the
necessary modifications caused by the frail nature of man. And then
comes the last sentiment,--
Our raging motions, our carnal stings, our unbitted lusts, whereof I
take this, that you call--love, to be a sect or scion!
Here is the true Iagoism of, alas! how many! Note Iago's pride of
mastery in the repetition of 'Go, make money!' to his anticipated dupe,
even stronger than his love of lucre: and when Roderigo is completely
won--
I am chang'd. I'll go sell all my land--
when the effect has been fully produced, the repetition of triumph--
Go to; farewell; put money enough in your purse!
The remainder--Iago's soliloquy--the motive-hunting of a motiveless
malignity--how awful it is! Yea, whilst he is still allowed to bear the
divine image, it is too fiendish for his own steady view,--for the
lonely gaze of a being next to devil, and only not quite devil,--and yet
a character which Shakspeare has attempted and executed, without disgust
and without scandal!
Dr. Johnson has remarked that little or nothing is wanting to render the
Othello a regular tragedy, but to have opened the play with the arrival
of Othello in Cyprus, and to have thrown the preceding act into the form
of narration. Here then is the place to determine, whether such a change
would or would not be an improvement;--nay, (to throw down the glove
with a full challenge) whether the tragedy would or not by such an
arrangement become more regular,--that is, more consonant with the rules
dictated by universal reason, on the true common-sense of mankind, in
its application to the particular case. For in all acts of judgment, it
can never be too often recollected, and scarcely too often repeated,
that rules are means to ends, and, consequently, that the end must be
determined and understood before it can be known what the rules are or
ought to be. Now, from a certain species of drama, proposing to itself
the accomplishment of certain ends,--these partly arising from the idea
of the species itself, but in part, likewise, forced upon the dramatist
by accidental circumstances beyond his power to remove or
control,--three rules have been abstracted;--in other words, the means
most conducive to the attainment of the proposed ends have been
generalized, and prescribed under the names of the three unities,--the
unity of time, the unity of place, and the unity of action,--which last
would, perhaps, have been as appropriately, as well as more
intelligibly, entitled the unity of interest. With this last the present
question has no immediate concern: in fact, its conjunction with the
former two is a mere delusion of words. It is not properly a rule, but
in itself the great end not only of the drama, but of the epic poem, the
lyric ode, of all poetry, down to the candle-flame cone of an
epigram,--nay of poesy in general, as the proper generic term inclusive
of all the fine arts as its species. But of the unities of time and
place, which alone are entitled to the name of rules, the history of
their origin will be their best criterion. You might take the Greek
chorus to a place, but you could not bring a place to them without as
palpable an equivoque as bringing Birnam wood to Macbeth at Dunsinane.
It was the same, though in a less degree, with regard to the unity of
time:--the positive fact, not for a moment removed from the senses, the
presence, I mean, of the same identical chorus, was a continued measure
of time;--and although the imagination may supersede perception, yet it
must be granted to be an imperfection--however easily tolerated--to
place the two in broad contradiction to each other. In truth, it is a
mere accident of terms; for the Trilogy of the Greek theatre was a drama
in three acts, and notwithstanding this, what strange contrivances as to
place there are in the Aristophanic Frogs. Besides, if the law of mere
actual perception is once violated--as it repeatedly is even in the
Greek tragedies--why is it more difficult to imagine three hours to be
three years than to be a whole day and night? Observe in how many ways
Othello is made, first, our acquaintance, then our friend, then the
object of our anxiety, before the deeper interest is to be approached!
Ib.
'Mont'. But, good lieutenant, is your general wiv'd?
'Cas'. Most fortunately: he hath achiev'd a maid
That paragons description, and wild fame;
One that excels the quirks of blazoning pens,
And, in the essential vesture of creation,
Does bear all excellency.
Here is Cassio's warm-hearted, yet perfectly disengaged, praise of
Desdemona, and sympathy with the 'most fortunately' wived Othello;--and
yet Cassio is an enthusiastic admirer, almost a worshipper, of
Desdemona. O, that detestable code that excellence cannot be loved in
any form that is female, but it must needs be selfish! Observe Othello's
'honest,' and Cassio's 'bold' Iago, and Cassio's full guileless-hearted
wishes for the safety and love-raptures of Othello and 'the divine
Desdemona.' And also note the exquisite circumstance of Cassio's kissing
Iago's wife, as if it ought to be impossible that the dullest auditor
should not feel Cassio's religious love of Desdemona's purity. Iago's
answers are the sneers which a proud bad intellect feels towards woman,
and expresses to a wife. Surely it ought to be considered a very exalted
compliment to women, that all the sarcasms on them in Shakspeare are put
in the mouths of villains.
Ib.
'Des'. I am not merry; but I do beguile, &c.
The struggle of courtesy in Desdemona to abstract her attention.
Ib.
('Iago aside'). He takes her by the palm: Ay, well said, whisper; with
as little a web as this, will I ensnare as great a fly as Cassio. Ay,
smile upon her, do, &c.
The importance given to trifles, and made fertile by the villainy of the
observer.
'Ib.' Iago's dialogue with Roderigo:
This is the rehearsal on the dupe of the traitor's intentions on
Othello.
'Ib.' Iago's soliloquy:
But partly led to diet my revenge,
For that I do suspect the lusty Moor
Hath leap'd into my seat.
This thought, originally by Iago's own confession a mere suspicion, is
now ripening, and gnaws his base nature as his own 'poisonous mineral'
is about to gnaw the noble heart of his general.
'Ib.' sc. 3. Othello's speech:
I know, Iago,
Thy honesty and love doth mince this matter,
Making it light to Cassio.
Honesty and love! Ay, and who but the reader of the play could think
otherwise?
'Ib.' Iago's soliloquy:
And what's he then that says--I play the villain?
When this advice is free I give, and honest,
Probable to thinking, and, indeed, the course
To win the Moor again.
He is not, you see, an absolute fiend; or, at least, he wishes to think
himself not so.
Act iii. sc. 3.
'Des.' Before Æmilia here, I give thee warrant of this place.
The over-zeal of innocence in Desdemona.
Ib.
'Enter Desdemona and Æmilia.'
'Oth.' If she be false, O, then, heaven mocks itself!
I'll not believe it.
Divine! The effect of innocence and the better genius!
Act iv. sc. 3.
'Æmil.' Why, the wrong is but a wrong i' the world; and having the
world for your labour,'tis a wrong in your own world, and you might
quickly make it right.
Warburton's note.
What any other man, who had learning enough, might have quoted as a
playful and witty illustration of his remarks against the Calvinistic
'thesis', Warburton gravely attributes to Shakspeare as intentional; and
this, too, in the mouth of a lady's woman!
Act v. last scene. Othello's speech:--
--Of one, whose hand,
Like the base _Indian_, threw a pearl away
Richer than all his tribe, &c.
Theobald's note from Warburton.
Thus it is for no-poets to comment on the greatest of poets! To make
Othello say that he, who had killed his wife, was like Herod who killed
Mariamne!--O, how many beauties, in this one line, were impenetrable to
the ever thought-swarming, but idealess, Warburton! Othello wishes to
excuse himself on the score of ignorance, and yet not to excuse
himself,--to excuse himself by accusing. This struggle of feeling is
finely conveyed in the word 'base,' which is applied to the rude Indian,
not in his own character, but as the momentary representative of
Othello's. 'Indian'--for I retain the old reading--means American, a
savage 'in genere'.
Finally, let me repeat that Othello does not kill Desdemona in jealousy,
but in a conviction forced upon him by the almost superhuman art of
Iago, such a conviction as any man would and must have entertained who
had believed Iago's honesty as Othello did. We, the audience, know that
Iago is a villain from the beginning; but in considering the essence of
the Shakspearian Othello, we must perseveringly place ourselves in his
situation, and under his circumstances. Then we shall immediately feel
the fundamental difference between the solemn agony of the noble Moor,
and the wretched fishing jealousies of Leontes, and the morbid
suspiciousness of Leonatus, who is, in other respects, a fine character.
Othello had no life but in Desdemona:--the belief that she, his angel,
had fallen from the heaven of her native innocence, wrought a civil war
in his heart. She is his counterpart; and, like him, is almost
sanctified in our eyes by her absolute unsuspiciousness, and holy
entireness of love. As the curtain drops, which do we pity the most?
...
'Extremum hunc'--.There are three powers:--
Wit, which discovers partial likeness hidden in general diversity;
subtlety, which discovers the diversity concealed in general apparent
sameness;--
and profundity, which discovers an essential unity under all the
semblances of difference.
Give to a subtle man fancy, and he is a wit; to a deep man imagination,
and he is a philosopher. Add, again, pleasurable sensibility in the
threefold form of sympathy with the interesting in morals, the
impressive in form, and the harmonious in sound,--and you have the poet.
But combine all,--wit, subtlety, and fancy, with profundity,
imagination, and moral and physical susceptibility of the pleasurable,--
and let the object of action be man universal; and we shall have--O,
rash prophecy! say, rather, we have--a SHAKSPEARE!
NOTES ON BEN JONSON.
It would be amusing to collect out of our dramatists from Elizabeth to
Charles I proofs of the manners of the times. One striking symptom of
general coarseness of manners, which may co-exist with great refinement
of morals, as, alas! 'vice versa', is to be seen in the very frequent
allusions to the olfactories with their most disgusting stimulants, and
these, too, in the conversation of virtuous ladies. This would not
appear so strange to one who had been on terms of familiarity with
Sicilian and Italian women of rank; and bad as they may, too many of
them, actually be, yet I doubt not that the extreme grossness of their
language has impressed many an Englishman of the present era with far
darker notions than the same language would have produced in the mind of
one of Elizabeth's, or James's courtiers. Those who have read Shakspeare
only, complain of occasional grossness in his plays; but compare him
with his contemporaries, and the inevitable conviction is, that of the
exquisite purity of his imagination.
The observation I have prefixed to the Volpone is the key to the faint
interest which these noble efforts of intellectual power excite, with
the exception of the fragment of the Sad Shepherd; because in that piece
only is there any character with whom you can morally sympathize. On the
other hand, Measure for Measure is the only play of Shakspeare's in
which there are not some one or more characters, generally many, whom
you follow with affectionate feeling. For I confess that Isabella, of
all Shakspeare's female characters, pleases me the least; and Measure
for Measure is, indeed, the only one of his genuine works, which is
painful to me.
Let me not conclude this remark, however, without a thankful
acknowledgment to the 'manes' of Ben Jonson, that the more I study his
writings, I the more admire them; and the more my study of him resembles
that of an ancient classic, in the 'minutiæ' of his rhythm, metre,
choice of words, forms of connection, and so forth, the more numerous
have the points of my admiration become. I may add, too, that both the
study and the admiration cannot but be disinterested, for to expect
therefrom any advantage to the present drama would be ignorance. The
latter is utterly heterogeneous from the drama of the Shakspearian age,
with a diverse object and contrary principle. The one was to present a
model by imitation of real life, taking from real life all that in it
which it ought to be, and supplying the rest;--the other is to copy what
is, and as it is,--at best a tolerable, but most frequently a
blundering, copy. In the former the difference was an essential element;
in the latter an involuntary defect. We should think it strange, if a
tale in dance were announced, and the actors did not dance at all;--and
yet such is modern comedy.
WHALLEY'S PREFACE.
But Jonson was soon sensible, how inconsistent this medley of names and
manners was in reason and nature; and with how little propriety it could
ever have a place in a legitimate and just picture of real life.
But did Jonson reflect that the very essence of a play, the very
language in which it is written, is a fiction to which all the parts
must conform? Surely, Greek manners in English should be a still grosser
improbability than a Greek name transferred to English manners. Ben's
'personæ' are too often not characters, but derangements;--the hopeless
patients of a mad-doctor rather,--exhibitions of folly betraying itself
in spite of existing reason and prudence. He not poetically, but
painfully exaggerates every trait; that is, not by the drollery of the
circumstance, but by the excess of the originating feeling.
But to this we might reply, that far from being thought to build his
characters upon abstract ideas, he was really accused of representing
particular persons then existing; and that even those characters which
appear to be the most exaggerated, are said to have had their respective
archetypes in nature and life.
This degrades Jonson into a libeller, instead of justifying him as a
dramatic poet. 'Non quod verum est, sed quod verisimile', is the
dramatist's rule. At all events, the poet who chooses transitory
manners, ought to content himself with transitory praise. If his object
be reputation, he ought not to expect fame. The utmost he can look
forwards to, is to be quoted by, and to enliven the writings of, an
antiquarian. Pistol, Nym and 'id genus omne', do not please us as
characters, but are endured as fantastic creations, foils to the native
wit of Falstaff.--I say wit emphatically; for this character so often
extolled as the masterpiece of humor, neither contains, nor was meant to
contain, any humor at all.
WHALLEY'S LIFE OF JONSON.
It is to the honor of Jonson's judgment, that 'the greatest poet of our
nation' had the same opinion of Donne's genius and wit; and hath
preserved part of him from perishing, by putting his thoughts and satire
into modern verse.
'Videlicet' Pope!
He said further to Drummond, Shakspeare wanted art, and sometimes sense;
for in one of his plays he brought in a number of men, saying they had
suffered shipwreck in Bohemia, where is no sea near by a hundred miles.
I have often thought Shakspeare justified in this seeming anachronism.
In Pagan times a single name of a German kingdom might well be supposed
to comprise a hundred miles more than at present. The truth is, these
notes of Drummond's are more disgraceful to himself than to Jonson. It
would be easy to conjecture how grossly Jonson must have been
misunderstood, and what he had said in jest, as of Hippocrates,
interpreted in earnest. But this is characteristic of a Scotchman; he
has no notion of a jest, unless you tell him--'This is a joke!'--and
still less of that finer shade of feeling, the half-and-half, in which
Englishmen naturally delight.
EVERY MAN OUT OF HIS HUMOUR.
Epilogue.
The throat of war be stopt within her land,
And _turtle-footed_ peace dance fairie rings
About her court.
'Turtle-footed' is a pretty word, a very pretty word: pray, what does it
mean? Doves, I presume, are not dancers; and the other sort of turtle,
land or sea, green-fat or hawksbill, would, I should suppose, succeed
better in slow minuets than in the brisk rondillo. In one sense, to be
sure, pigeons and ring-doves could not dance but with 'eclat'--'a claw?'
POETASTER.
Introduction.
Light! I salute thee, but with wounded nerves,
Wishing thy golden splendor pitchy darkness.
There is no reason to suppose Satan's address to the sun in the Paradise
Lost, more than a mere coincidence with these lines; but were it
otherwise, it would be a fine instance, what usurious interest a great
genius pays in borrowing. It would not be difficult to give a detailed
psychological proof from these constant outbursts of anxious
self-assertion, that Jonson was not a genius, a creative power. Subtract
that one thing, and you may safely accumulate on his name all other
excellencies of a capacious, vigorous, agile, and richly-stored
intellect.
Act i. sc. 1.
'Ovid'. While slaves be false, fathers hard, and bawds be whorish--
The roughness noticed by Theobald and Whalley, may be cured by a simple
transposition:--
While fathers hard, slaves false, and bawds be whorish.
Act iv. sc. 3.
'Crisp'. O--oblatrant--furibund--fatuate--strenuous. O--conscious.
It would form an interesting essay, or rather series of essays, in a
periodical work, were all the attempts to ridicule new phrases brought
together, the proportion observed of words ridiculed which have been
adopted, and are now common, such as 'strenuous', 'conscious', &c., and
a trial made how far any grounds can be detected, so that one might
determine beforehand whether a word was invented under the conditions of
assimilability to our language or not. Thus much is certain, that the
ridiculers were as often wrong as right; and Shakspeare himself could
not prevent the naturalization of 'accommodation', 'remuneration', &c.;
or Swift the gross abuse even of the word 'idea'.
FALL OF SEJANUS.
Act I.
'Arruntius'. The name Tiberius, I hope, will keep, howe'er he hath
foregone The dignity and power.
'Silius'. Sure, while he lives.
'Arr'. And dead, it comes to Drusus. Should he fail,
To the brave issue of Germanicus;
And they are three: too many (ha?) for him
To have a plot upon?
'Sil'. I do not know
The heart of his designs; but, sure, their face
Looks farther than the present.
'Arr'. By the gods,
If I could guess he had but such a thought,
My sword should cleave him down, &c.
The anachronic mixture in this Arruntius of the Roman republican, to
whom Tiberius must have appeared as much a tyrant as Sejanus, with his
James-and-Charles-the-First zeal for legitimacy of descent in this
passage, is amusing. Of our great names Milton was, I think, the first
who could properly be called a republican. My recollections of
Buchanan's works are too faint to enable me to judge whether the
historian is not a fair exception.
Act ii. Speech of Sejanus:--
Adultery! it is the lightest ill
I will commit. A race of wicked acts
Shall flow out of my anger, and o'erspread
The world's wide face, which no posterity
Shall e'er approve, nor yet keep silent, &c.
The more we reflect and examine, examine and reflect, the more
astonished shall we be at the immense superiority of Shakspeare over his
contemporaries:--and yet what contemporaries!--giant minds indeed! Think
of Jonson's erudition, and the force of learned authority in that age;
and yet in no genuine part of Shakspeare's works is there to be found
such an absurd rant and ventriloquism as this, and too, too many other
passages ferruminated by Jonson from Seneca's tragedies and the writings
of the later Romans. I call it ventriloquism, because Sejanus is a
puppet, out of which the poet makes his own voice appear to come.
Act v. Scene of the sacrifice to Fortune. This scene is unspeakably
irrational. To believe, and yet to scoff at, a present miracle is little
less than impossible. Sejanus should have been made to suspect
priestcraft and a secret conspiracy against him.
VOLPONE.
This admirable, indeed, but yet more wonderful than admirable, play is
from the fertility and vigour of invention, character, language, and
sentiment the strongest proof, how impossible it is to keep up any
pleasurable interest in a tale, in which there is no goodness of heart
in any of the prominent characters. After the third act, this play
becomes not a dead, but a painful, weight on the feelings. Zeluco is an
instance of the same truth. Bonario and Celia should have been made in
some way or other principals in the plot; which they might have been,
and the objects of interest, without having been made characters. In
novels, the person, in whose fate you are most interested, is often the
least marked character of the whole. If it were possible to lessen the
paramountcy of Volpone himself, a most delightful comedy might be
produced, by making Celia the ward or niece of Corvino, instead of his
wife, and Bonario her lover.
EPICÆNE.
This is to my feelings the most entertaining of old Ben's comedies, and,
more than any other, would admit of being brought out anew, if under the
management of a judicious and stage-understanding playwright; and an
actor, who had studied Morose, might make his fortune.
Act i. sc. 1. Clerimont's speech:--
He would have hanged a pewterer's 'prentice once on a Shrove Tuesday's
riot, for being 'o that trade, when the rest were _quiet_.
The old copies read 'quit', i. e. discharged from working, and gone to
divert themselves. (Whalley's note.)
It should be 'quit', no doubt; but not meaning 'discharged from
working,' &c.--but quit, that is, acquitted. The pewterer was at his
holiday diversion as well as the other apprentices, and they as forward
in the riot as he. But he alone was punished under pretext of the riot,
but in fact for his trade.
Act ii. sc. 1.
'Morose'. Cannot I, yet, find out a more compendious method, than by
this _trunk_, to save my servants the labour of speech, and mine ears
the discord of sounds?
What does 'trunk' mean here and in the 1st scene of the 1st act? Is it a
large ear-trumpet?--or rather a tube, such as passes from parlour to
kitchen, instead of a bell?
Whalley's note at the end.
Some critics of the last age imagined the character of Morose to be
wholly out of nature. But to vindicate our poet, Mr. Dryden tells us
from tradition, and we may venture to take his word, that Jonson was
really acquainted with a person of this whimsical turn of mind: and as
humor is a personal quality, the poet is acquitted from the charge of
exhibiting a monster, or an extravagant unnatural caricatura.
If Dryden had not made all additional proof superfluous by his own
plays, this very vindication would evince that he had formed a false and
vulgar conception of the nature and conditions of the drama and dramatic
personation. Ben Jonson would himself have rejected such a plea:--
For he knew, poet never credit gain'd
By writing _truths_, but things, like truths, well feign'd.
By 'truths' he means 'facts.' Caricatures are not less so, because they
are found existing in real life. Comedy demands characters, and leaves
caricatures to farce. The safest and truest defence of old Ben would be
to call the Epicæne the best of farces. The defect in Morose, as in
other of Jonson's 'dramatis personæ', lies in this;--that the accident
is not a prominence growing out of, and nourished by, the character
which still circulates in it, but that the character, such as it is,
rises out of, or, rather, consists in, the accident. Shakspeare's comic
personages have exquisitely characteristic features; however awry,
disproportionate, and laughable they may be, still, like Bardolph's
nose, they are features. But Jonson's are either a man with a huge wen,
having a circulation of its own, and which we might conceive amputated,
and the patient thereby losing all his character; or they are mere wens
themselves instead of men,--wens personified, or with eyes, nose, and
mouth cut out, mandrake-fashion.
'Nota bene'. All the above, and much more, will have been justly said,
if, and whenever, the drama of Jonson is brought into comparisons of
rivalry with the Shakspearian. But this should not be. Let its
inferiority to the Shakspearian be at once fairly owned,--but at the
same time as the inferiority of an altogether different 'genus' of the
drama. On this ground, old Ben would still maintain his proud height.
He, no less than Shakspeare, stands on the summit of his hill, and looks
round him like a master,--though his be Lattrig and Shakspeare's
Skiddaw.
THE ALCHEMIST.
Act I. sc. 2. Face's speech:--
Will take his oath o' the Greek _Xenophon_,
If need be, in his pocket.
Another reading is 'Testament.' Probably, the meaning is,--that
intending to give false evidence, he carried a Greek Xenophon to pass it
off for a Greek Testament, and so avoid perjury--as the Irish do, by
contriving to kiss their thumb-nails instead of the book.
Act ii. sc. 2. Mammon's speech:--
I will have all my beds blown up; not stuft:
Down is too hard.
Thus the air-cushions, though perhaps only lately brought into use, were
invented in idea in the seventeenth century!
CATILINE'S CONSPIRACY.
A fondness for judging one work by comparison with others, perhaps
altogether of a different class, argues a vulgar taste. Yet it is
chiefly on this principle that the Catiline has been rated so low. Take
it and Sejanus, as compositions of a particular kind, namely, as a mode
of relating great historical events in the liveliest and most
interesting manner, and I cannot help wishing that we had whole volumes
of such plays. We might as rationally expect the excitement of the Vicar
of Wakefield from Goldsmith's History of England, as that of Lear,
Othello, &c. from the Sejanus or Catiline.
Act i. sc. 4.
'Cat'. Sirrah, what ail you?
('He spies one of his boys not answer'.)
'Pag'. Nothing.
'Best'. Somewhat modest.
'Cat'. Slave, I will strike your soul out with my foot, &c.
This is either an unintelligible, or, in every sense, a most unnatural,
passage,--improbable, if not impossible, at the moment of signing and
swearing such a conspiracy, to the most libidinous satyr. The very
presence of the boys is an outrage to probability. I suspect that these
lines down to the words 'throat opens,' should be removed back so as to
follow the words 'on this part of the house,' in the speech of Catiline
soon after the entry of the conspirators. A total erasure, however,
would be the best, or, rather, the only possible, amendment.
Act ii. sc. 2. Sempronia's speech:--
--He is but a new fellow,
An _inmate_ here in Rome, as Catiline calls him--
A 'lodger' would have been a happier imitation of the 'inquilinus' of
Sallust.
Act iv. sc. 6. Speech of Cethegus:--
Can these or such be any aids to us, &c.
What a strange notion Ben must have formed of a determined, remorseless,
all-daring, fool-hardiness, to have represented it in such a mouthing
Tamburlane, and bombastic tongue-bully as this Cethegus of his!
BARTHOLOMEW FAIR.
Induction. Scrivener's speech:--
If there be never a _servant-monster_ i' the Fair, who can help it, he
says, nor a nest of antiques?
The best excuse that can be made for Jonson, and in a somewhat less
degree for Beaumont and Fletcher, in respect of these base and silly
sneers at Shakspeare, is, that his plays were present to men's minds
chiefly as acted. They had not a neat edition of them, as we have, so
as, by comparing the one with the other, to form a just notion of the
mighty mind that produced the whole. At all events, and in every point
of view, Jonson stands far higher in a moral light than Beaumont and
Fletcher. He was a fair contemporary, and in his way, and as far as
Shakspeare is concerned, an original. But Beaumont and Fletcher were
always imitators of, and often borrowers from, him, and yet sneer at him
with a spite far more malignant than Jonson, who, besides, has made
noble compensation by his praises.
Act ii. sc. 3.
'Just'. I mean a child of the horn-thumb, a babe _of booty_, boy, a
cutpurse.
Does not this confirm, what the passage itself cannot but suggest, the
propriety of substituting 'booty' for 'beauty' in Falstaff's speech,
Henry IV. Pt. I. act i. sc. 2. 'Let not us, &c.?'
It is not often that old Ben condescends to imitate a modern author; but
master Dan. Knockhum Jordan and his vapours are manifest reflexes of Nym
and Pistol.
Ib. sc. 5.
'Quarl'. She'll make excellent geer for the coachmakers here in
Smithfield, to anoint wheels and axletrees with.
Good! but yet it falls short of the speech of a Mr. Johnes, M. P., in
the Common Council, on the invasion intended by Buonaparte: 'Houses
plundered--then burnt;--sons conscribed--wives and daughters ravished,
&c. &c.--"But as for you, you luxurious Aldermen! with your fat will he
grease the wheels of his triumphal chariot!"
Ib. sc. 6.
'Cok'. Avoid i' your satin doublet, Numps.
This reminds me of Shakspeare's 'Aroint thee, witch!' I find in several
books of that age the words _aloigne_ and _eloigne_--that is,--'keep
your distance!' or 'off with you!' Perhaps 'aroint' was a corruption of
'aloigne' by the vulgar. The common etymology from _ronger_ to gnaw
seems unsatisfactory.
Act iii. sc. 4.
'Quarl', How now, Numps! almost tired i' your protectorship?
overparted, overparted?
An odd sort of prophetic ality in this Numps and old Noll!
Ib. sc. 6. Knockhum's speech:--
He eats with his eyes, as well as his teeth.
A good motto for the Parson in Hogarth's Election Dinner,--who shows how
easily he might be reconciled to the Church of Rome, for he worships
what he eats.
Act v. sc. 5.
'Pup. Di'. It is not prophane.
'Lan'. It is not prophane, he says.
'Boy'. It is prophane.
'Pup'. It is not prophane.
'Boy'. It is prophane.
'Pup'. It is not prophane.
'Lan'. Well said, confute him with Not, still.
An imitation of the quarrel between Bacchus and the Frogs in
Aristophanes:--
[Greek (transliterated):
Choros. alla maen kekraxomestha g', hoposon hae pharugx an aem_on
chandanae, di' aemeras, brekekekex, koax, koax.
Dionusos. touto gar ou nikaesete.
Choros. oude maen haemas su pant_os.
Dionusos. oude maen humeis ge dae m' oudepote.]
THE DEVIL IS AN ASS.
Act I. sc. 1.
'Pug'. Why any: Fraud, Or Covetousness, or lady Vanity,
Or old Iniquity, _I'll call him hither_.
The words in italics [between undescores] should probably be given to
the master-devil, Satan. (Whalley's note.)
That is, against all probability, and with a (for Jonson) impossible
violation of character. The words plainly belong to Pug, and mark at
once his simpleness and his impatience.
Ib. sc. 4. Fitz-dottrel's soliloquy:-
Compare this exquisite piece of sense, satire, and sound philosophy in
1616 with Sir M. Hale's speech from the bench in a trial of a witch many
years afterwards. [1]
Act ii. sc. 1. Meercraft's speech:--
Sir, money's a whore, a bawd, a drudge.--
I doubt not that 'money' was the first word of the line, and has dropped
out:--
Money! Sir, money's a, &c.
[Footnote 1: In 1664, at Bury St. Edmonds on the trial of Rose Cullender
and Amy Duny. Ed.]
THE STAPLE OF NEWS.
Act IV. sc. 3. Pecunia's speech:--
No, he would ha' done,
That lay not in his power: he had the use
Of your bodies, Band and Wax, and sometimes Statute's.
Read (1815),
--he had the use of
Your bodies, &c.
Now, however, I doubt the legitimacy of my transposition of the 'of'
from the beginning of this latter line to the end of the one
preceding;--for though it facilitates the metre and reading of the
latter line, and is frequent in Massinger, this disjunction of the
preposition from its case seems to have been disallowed by Jonson.
Perhaps the better reading is--
O' your bodies, &c.--
the two syllables being slurred into one, or rather snatched, or sucked,
up into the emphasized 'your.' In all points of view, therefore, Ben's
judgment is just; for in this way, the line cannot be read, as metre,
without that strong and quick emphasis on 'your' which the sense
requires;--and had not the sense required an emphasis on 'your,' the
_tmesis_ of the sign of its cases 'of,' 'to,' &c. would destroy almost
all boundary between the dramatic verse and prose in comedy:--a lesson
not to be rash in conjectural amendments. 1818.
Ib. sc. 4.
'P. jun.' I love all men of virtue, _frommy_ Princess.--
'Frommy,' 'fromme', pious, dutiful, &c.
Act v. sc. 4. Penny-boy sen. and Porter:--
I dare not, will not, think that honest Ben had Lear in his mind in this
mock mad scene.
THE NEW INN.
Act I. sc. 1. Host's speech:--
A heavy purse, and then two turtles, _makes_.--
'Makes', frequent in old books, and even now used in some counties for
mates, or pairs.
Ib. sc. 3. Host's speech:--
--And for a leap
O' the vaulting horse, to _play_ the vaulting _house_.--
Instead of reading with Whalley 'ply' for 'play,' I would suggest
'horse' for 'house.' The meaning would then be obvious and pertinent.
The punlet, or pun-maggot, or pun intentional, 'horse and house,' is
below Jonson. The 'jeu-de-mots' just below--
Read a lecture
Upon _Aquinas_ at St. Thomas à _Water_ings--
had a learned smack in it to season its insipidity.
Ib. sc. 6. Lovel's speech:--
Then shower'd his bounties on me, like the Hours,
That open-handed sit upon the clouds,
And press the liberality of heaven
Down to the laps of thankful men!
Like many other similar passages in Jonson, this is [Greek
(transliterated): eidos chalepon idein]--a sight which it is difficult
to make one's self see,--a picture my fancy cannot copy detached from
the words.
Act ii. sc. 5. Though it was hard upon old Ben, yet Felton, it must be
confessed, was in the right in considering the Fly, Tipto, Bat Burst,
&c. of this play mere dotages. Such a scene as this was enough to damn a
new play; and Nick Stuff is worse still,--most abominable stuff indeed!
Act in. sc. 2. Lovel's speech:--
So knowledge first begets benevolence,
Benevolence breeds friendship, friendship love.--
Jonson has elsewhere proceeded thus far; but the part most difficult and
delicate, yet, perhaps, not the least capable of being both morally and
poetically treated, is the union itself, and what, even in this life, it
can be.
NOTES ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.
Seward's Preface. 1750.
The King And No King, too, is extremely spirited in all its characters;
Arbaces holds up a mirror to all men of virtuous principles but violent
passions. Hence he is, as it were, at once magnanimity and pride,
patience and fury, gentleness and rigor, chastity and incest, and is one
of the finest mixtures of virtues and vices that any poet has drawn, &c.
These are among the endless instances of the abject state to which
psychology had sunk from the reign of Charles I. to the middle of the
present reign of George III.; and even now it is but just awaking.
Ib. Seward's comparison of Julia's speech in the Two Gentlemen of
Verona, act iv. last scene--
Madam, 'twas Ariadne passioning, &c.--
with Aspatia's speech in the Maid's Tragedy--
I stand upon the sea-beach now, &c. (Act ii.)
and preference of the latter.
It is strange to take an incidental passage of one writer, intended only
for a subordinate part, and compare it with the same thought in another
writer, who had chosen it for a prominent and principal figure.
Ib. Seward's preference of Alphonso's poisoning in A Wife for a Month,
act i. sc. 1, to the passage in King John, act v. sc. 7,--
Poison'd, ill fare! dead, forsook, cast off!
Mr. Seward! Mr. Seward! you may be, and I trust you are, an angel; but
you were an ass.
Ib.
Every reader of _taste_ will see how superior this is to the quotation
from Shakspeare.
Of what taste?
Ib. Seward's classification of the Plays:--
Surely Monsieur Thomas, The Chances, Beggar's Bush, and the Pilgrim,
should have been placed in the very first class! But the whole attempt
ends in a woeful failure.
HARRIS'S COMMENDATORY POEM ON FLETCHER.
I'd have a state of wit convok'd, which hath
A _power_ to take up on common faith:--
This is an instance of that modifying of quantity by emphasis, without
which our elder poets cannot be scanned. 'Power,' here, instead of being
one long syllable--pow'r--must be sounded, not indeed as a spondee, nor
yet as a trochee; but as--[Symbol: u-shape beneath line];--the first
syllable is 1 1/4.
We can, indeed, never expect an authentic edition of our elder dramatic
poets (for in those times a drama was a poem), until some man undertakes
the work, who has studied the philosophy of metre. This has been found
the main torch of sound restoration in the Greek dramatists by Bentley,
Porson, and their followers;--how much more, then, in writers in our own
language! It is true that quantity, an almost iron law with the Greek,
is in English rather a subject for a peculiarly fine ear, than any law
or even rule; but, then, instead of it, we have, first, accent;
secondly, emphasis; and lastly, retardation, and acceleration of the
times of syllables according to the meaning of the words, the passion
that accompanies them, and even the character of the person that uses
them. With due attention to these,--above all, to that, which requires
the most attention and the finest taste, the character, Massinger, for
example, might be reduced to a rich and yet regular metre. But then the
'regulæ' must be first known;--though I will venture to say, that he who
does not find a line (not corrupted) of Massinger's flow to the time
total of a trimeter catalectic iambic verse, has not read it aright. But
by virtue of the last principle--the retardation or acceleration of
time--we have the proceleusmatic foot * * * *, and the 'dispondaeus' --
-- -- --, not to mention the 'choriambus', the ionics, paeons, and
epitrites. Since Dryden, the metre of our poets leads to the sense: in
our elder and more genuine bards, the sense, including the passion,
leads to the metre. Read even Donne's satires as he meant them to be
read, and as the sense and passion demand, and you will find in the
lines a manly harmony.
LIFE OF FLETCHER IN STOCKDALE'S EDITION. 1811.
In general their plots are more regular than Shakspeare's.--
This is true, if true at all, only before a court of criticism, which
judges one scheme by the laws of another and a diverse one. Shakspeare's
plots have their own laws or regulæ, and according to these they are
regular.
MAID'S TRAGEDY.
Act I. The metrical arrangement is most slovenly throughout.
'Strat'. As well as masque can be, &c.
and all that follows to 'who is return'd'--is plainly blank verse, and
falls easily into it.
Ib. Speech of Melantius:--
These soft and silken wars are not for me:
The music must be shrill, and all confus'd,
That stirs my blood; and then I dance with arms.
What strange self-trumpeters and tongue-bullies all the brave soldiers
of Beaumont and Fletcher are! Yet I am inclined to think it was the
fashion of the age from the Soldier's speech in the Counter Scuffle; and
deeper than the fashion B. and F. did not fathom.
Ib. Speech of Lysippus:--
Yes, but this lady
Walks discontented, with her wat'ry eyes
Bent on the earth, &c.
Opulent as Shakspeare was, and of his opulence prodigal, he yet would
not have put this exquisite piece of poetry in the mouth of a
no-character, or as addressed to a Melantius. I wish that B. and F. had
written poems instead of tragedies.
Ib.
'Mel'. I might run fiercely, not more hastily, Upon my foe.
Read
I might run more fiercely, not more hastily.--
Ib. Speech of Calianax:--
Office! I would I could put it off! I am sure I sweat quite through my
office!
The syllable _off_ reminds the testy statesman of his robe, and he
carries on the image.
Ib. Speech of Melantius:--
--Would that blood,
That sea of blood, that I have lost in fight, &c.
All B. and F.'s generals are pugilists, or cudgel-fighters, that boast
of their bottom and of the _claret_ they have shed.
Ib. The Masque;--Cinthia's speech:--
But I will give a greater state and glory,
And raise to time a _noble_ memory
Of what these lovers are.
I suspect that 'nobler,' pronounced as 'nobiler'--[Symbol (metrical):
U-=shape below the line]--, was the poet's word, and that the accent is
to be placed on the penultimate of 'memory.' As to the passage--
Yet, while our reign lasts, let us stretch our power, &c.
removed from the text of Cinthia's speech by these foolish editors as
unworthy of B. and F.--the first eight lines are not worse, and the last
couplet incomparably better, than the stanza retained.
Act ii. Amintor's speech:--
Oh, thou hast nam'd a word, that wipes away
All thoughts revengeful! In that sacred name,
'The king,' there lies a terror.
It is worth noticing that of the three greatest tragedians, Massinger
was a democrat, Beaumont and Fletcher the most servile _jure divino_
royalist, and Shakspeare a philosopher;--if aught personal, an
aristocrat.
A KING AND NO KING.
Act IV. Speech of Tigranes:--
She, that forgat the greatness of her grief
And miseries, that must follow such mad passions,
Endless and wild _as_ women! &c.
Seward's note and suggestion of 'in.'
It would be amusing to learn from some existing friend of Mr. Seward
what he meant, or rather dreamed, in this note. It is certainly a
difficult passage, of which there are two solutions;--one, that the
writer was somewhat more injudicious than usual;--the other, that he was
very, very much more profound and Shakspearian than usual. Seward's
emendation, at all events, is right and obvious. Were it a passage of
Shakspeare, I should not hesitate to interpret it as characteristic of
Tigranes' state of mind,--disliking the very virtues, and therefore
half-consciously representing them as mere products of the violence, of
the sex in general in all their whims, and yet forced to admire, and to
feel and to express gratitude for, the exertion in his own instance. The
inconsistency of the passage would be the consistency of the author. But
this is above Beaumont and Fletcher.
THE SCORNFUL LADY.
Act II. Sir Roger's speech:--
Did I for this consume my _quarters_ in meditations, vows, and woo'd
her in heroical epistles? Did I expound the Owl, and undertake, with
labor and expense, the recollection of those thousand pieces, consum'd
in cellars and tobacco-shops, of that our honor'd Englishman, Nic.
Broughton? &c.
Strange, that neither Mr. Theobald, nor Mr. Seward, should have seen
that this mock heroic speech is in full-mouthed blank verse! Had they
seen this, they would have seen that 'quarters' is a substitution of the
players for 'quires' or 'squares,' (that is) of paper:--
Consume my quires in meditations, vows,
And woo'd her in heroical epistles.
They ought, likewise, to have seen that the abbreviated 'Ni. Br.' of the
text was properly 'Mi. Dr.'--and that Michael Drayton, not Nicholas
Broughton, is here ridiculed for his poem The Owl and his Heroical
Epistles.
Ib. Speech of Younger Loveless:--
Fill him some wine. Thou dost not see me mov'd, &c.
These Editors ought to have learnt, that scarce an instance occurs in B.
and F. of a long speech not in metre. This is plain staring blank verse.
THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY.
I cannot but think that in a country conquered by a nobler race than the
natives, and in which the latter became villeins and bondsmen, this
custom, 'lex merchetae', may have been introduced for wise purposes,--as
of improving the breed, lessening the antipathy of different races, and
producing a new bond of relationship between the lord and the tenant,
who, as the eldest born, would, at least, have a chance of being, and a
probability of being thought, the lord's child. In the West Indies it
cannot have these effects, because the mulatto is marked by nature
different from the father, and because there is no bond, no law, no
custom, but of mere debauchery. 1815.
Act i. sc. 1. Rutilio's speech:--
Yet if you play not fair play, &c.
Evidently to be transposed and read thus:--
Yet if you play not fair, above-board too, I'll tell you what--I've a
foolish engine here:--I say no more--But if your Honor's guts are not
enchanted--
Licentious as the comic metre of B. and F. is,--a far more lawless, and
yet far less happy, imitation of the rhythm of animated talk in real
life than Massinger's--still it is made worse than it really is by
ignorance of the halves, thirds, and two-thirds of a line which B. and
F. adopted from the Italian and Spanish dramatists. Thus in Rutilio's
speech:--
Though I confess
Any man would desire to have her, and by any means, &c.
Correct the whole passage--
Though I confess
Any man would Desire to have her, and by any means,
At any rate too, yet this common hangman
That hath whipt off a /THOUsand maids' HEADS/ already--
That he should glean the harvest, sticks in my stomach!
[Between the two /, upper-case syllables have the stress, written as a
horizontal line above them in the original text, and lower-case
syllables are unstressed, written as a u-shape (the u-symbol previously
described) above them. text Ed.]
In all comic metres the gulping of short syllables, and the abbreviation
of syllables ordinarily long by the rapid pronunciation of eagerness and
vehemence, are not so much a license, as a law,--a faithful copy of
nature, and let them be read characteristically, the times will be found
nearly equal. Thus the three words marked above make a 'choriambus'--u u
--, or perhaps a 'paeon primus'--u u u; a dactyl, by virtue of comic
rapidity, being only equal to an iambus when distinctly pronounced. I
have no doubt that all B. and F.'s works might be safely corrected by
attention to this rule, and that the editor is entitled to
transpositions of all kinds, and to not a few omissions. For the rule of
the metre once lost--what was to restrain the actors from interpolation?
THE ELDER BROTHER
Act I. sc. 2. Charles's speech:--
--For what concerns tillage,
Who better can deliver it than Virgil
In his Georgicks? and to cure your herds,
His Bucolicks is a master-piece.
Fletcher was too good a scholar to fall into so gross a blunder, as
Messrs. Sympson and Colman suppose. I read the passage thus:--
--For what concerns tillage,
Who better can deliver it than Virgil,
In his /GeORGicks/, _or_ to cure your herds;
(His Bucolicks are a master-piece.)
But when, &c.
Jealous of Virgil's honor, he is afraid lest, by referring to the
Georgics alone, he might be understood as undervaluing the preceding
work. 'Not that I do not admire the Bucolics, too, in their way:--But
when, &c.'
Act iii. sc. 3. Charles's speech:--
--She has a face looks like a _story_;
The _story_ of the heavens looks very like her.
Seward reads 'glory;' and Theobald quotes from Philaster--
That reads the story of a woman's face.--
I can make sense of this passage as little as Mr. Seward;--the passage
from Philaster is nothing to the purpose. Instead of 'a story,' I have
sometimes thought of proposing 'Astræa.'
Ib. Angellina's speech:--
--You're old and dim, Sir,
And the shadow of the earth eclips'd your judgment.
Inappropriate to Angellina, but one of the finest lines in our language.
Act iv. sc. 3. Charles's speech:--
And lets the serious part of life run by
As thin neglected sand, whiteness of name.
You must be mine, &c.
Seward's note, and reading--
--Whiteness of name,
You must be mine!
Nonsense! 'Whiteness of name,' is in apposition to 'the serious part of
life,' and means a deservedly pure reputation. The following line--'You
_must_ be mine!' means--'Though I do not enjoy you to-day, I shall
hereafter, and without reproach.'
THE SPANISH CURATE.
Act IV. sc. 7. Amaranta's speech:--
And still I push'd him on, as he had been _coming_.
Perhaps the true word is 'conning,' that is, learning, or reading, and
therefore inattentive.
WIT WITHOUT MONEY.
Act I. Valentine's speech:--
One without substance, &c.
The present text, and that proposed by Seward, are equally vile. I have
endeavoured to make the lines sense, though the whole is, I suspect,
incurable except by bold conjectural reformation. I would read thus:--
One without substance of herself, that's woman;
Without the pleasure of her life, that's wanton;
Tho' she be young, forgetting it; tho' fair,
Making her glass the eyes of honest men,
Not her own admiration.
'That's wanton,' or, 'that is to say, wantonness.'
Act ii. Valentine's speech:--
Of half-a-crown a week for pins and puppets--
As there is a syllable wanting in the measure here. (Seward.)
A syllable wanting! Had this Seward neither ears nor fingers? The line
is a more than usually regular iambic hendecasyllable.
Ib.
With one man satisfied, with one rein guided;
With one faith, one content, one bed;
_Aged_, she makes the wife, preserves the fame and issue;
A widow is, &c.
Is 'apaid'--contented--too obsolete for B. and F.? If not, we might read
it thus:--
Content with one faith, with one bed apaid,
She makes the wife, preserves the fame and issue;--
Or it may be--
--with one breed apaid--
that is, satisfied with one set of children, in opposition to--
A widow is a Christmas-box, &c.
Colman's note on Seward's attempt to put this play into metre.
The editors, and their contemporaries in general, were ignorant of any
but the regular iambic verse. A study of the Aristophanic and Plautine
metres would have enabled them to reduce B. and F. throughout into
metre, except where prose is really intended.
THE HUMOROUS LIEUTENANT.
Act I. sc. 1. Second Ambassador's speech:--
--When your angers, _Like_ so many brother billows, rose together,
And, curling up _your_ foaming crests, defied, &c.
This worse than superfluous 'like' is very like an interpolation of some
matter of fact critic--all 'pus, prose atque venenum'. The 'your' in the
next line, instead of 'their,' is likewise yours, Mr. Critic!
Act ii: sc. 1. Timon's speech:--
Another of a new _way_ will be look'd at.--
We much suspect the poets wrote, 'of a new _day_.' So, immediately
after,
--Time may For all his wisdom, yet give us a day.
(SEWARD'S NOTE.)
For this very reason I more than suspect the contrary.
Ib. sc. 3. Speech of Leucippe:--
I'll put her into action for a _wastcoat_.--
What we call a riding-habit,--some mannish dress.
THE MAD LOVER.
Act IV. Masque of beasts:--
--This goodly tree,
An usher that still grew before his lady,
Wither'd at root: this, for he could not wooe,
A grumbling lawyer: &c.
Here must have been omitted a line rhyming to 'tree;' and the words of
the next line have been transposed:--
--This goodly tree,
_Which leafless, and obscur'd with moss you see_,
An usher this, that 'fore his lady grew,
Wither'd at root: this, for he could not wooe, &c.
THE LOYAL SUBJECT.
It is well worthy of notice, and yet has not been, I believe, noticed
hitherto, what a marked difference there exists in the dramatic writers
of the Elizabetho-Jacobæan age--(Mercy on me! what a phrase for 'the
writers during the reigns of Elizabeth and James I.!')--in respect of
their political opinions. Shakspeare, in this as in all other things,
himself and alone, gives the permanent politics of human nature, and the
only predilection, which appears, shews itself in his contempt of mobs
and the populacy. Massinger is a decided Whig;--Beaumont and Fletcher
high-flying, passive-obedience, Tories. The Spanish dramatists furnished
them with this, as with many other ingredients. By the by, an accurate
and familiar acquaintance with all the productions of the Spanish stage
previously to 1620, is an indispensable qualification for an editor of
B. and F.;--and with this qualification a most interesting and
instructive edition might be given. This edition of Colman's Stockdale,
(1811,) is below criticism.
In metre, B. and F. are inferior to Shakspeare, on the one hand, as
expressing the poetic part of the drama, and to Massinger, on the other,
in the art of reconciling metre with the natural rhythm of
conversation,--in which, indeed, Massinger is unrivalled. Read him
aright, and measure by time, not syllables, and no lines can be more
legitimate,--none in which the substitution of equipollent feet, and the
modifications by emphasis, are managed with such exquisite judgment. B.
and F. are fond of the twelve syllable (not Alexandrine) line, as--
Too many fears' tis thought too: and to nourish those--
This has, often, a good effect, and is one of the varieties most common
in Shakspeare.
RULE A WIFE AND HAVE A WIFE.
Act III. Old Woman's speech:--
--I fear he will knock my Brains out for lying.
Mr. Seward discards the words 'for lying', because 'most of the things
spoke of Estifania are true, with only a little exaggeration, and
because they destroy all appearance of measure.' (Colman's note.)
Mr. Seward had his brains out. The humor lies in Estifania's having
ordered the Old Woman to tell these tales of her; for though an
intriguer, she is not represented as other than chaste; and as to the
metre, it is perfectly correct.
Ib.
'Marg'. As you love me, give way.
'Leon'. It shall be better, I will give none, madam, &c.
The meaning is: 'It shall be a better way, first;--as it is, I will not
give it, or any that you in your present mood would wish.'
THE LAWS OF CANDY.
Act I. Speech of Melitus:--
Whose insolence and never yet match'd pride
Can by no character be well express'd,
But in her only name, the proud Erota.
Colman's note.
The poet intended no allusion to the word 'Erota' itself; but says that
her very name, 'the proud Erota,' became a character and adage; as we
say, a Quixote or a Brutus: so to say an 'Erota,' expressed female pride
and insolence of beauty.
Ib. Speech of Antinous:--
Of my peculiar honors, not deriv'd
From 'successary', but purchas'd with my blood.--
The poet doubtless wrote 'successry,' which, though not adopted in our
language, would be, on many occasions, as here, a much more significant
phrase than ancestry.
THE LITTLE FRENCH LAWYER.
Act I. sc. 1. Dinant's speech:--
Are you become a patron too? 'Tis a new one,
No more on't, &c.
Seward reads:--
Are you become a patron too?
_How long Have you been conning this speech?_ 'Tis a new one, &c.
If conjectural emendation, like this, be allowed, we might venture to
read:--
Are you become a patron _to a new tune_?
or,
Are you become a patron? 'Tis a new _tune_.
Ib.
'Din'. Thou wouldst not willingly Live a protested coward, or be call'd
one?
'Cler'. Words are but words.
'Din'. Nor wouldst thou take a blow?
Seward's note.
O miserable! Dinant sees through Cleremont's gravity, and the actor is
to explain it. 'Words are but words,' is the last struggle of affected
morality.
VALENTINIAN.
Act I. sc. 3. It is a real trial of charity to read this scene with
tolerable temper towards Fletcher. So very slavish--so reptile--are the
feelings and sentiments represented as duties. And yet remember he was a
bishop's son, and the duty to God was the supposed basis.
Personals, including body, house, home, and religion;--property,
subordination, and inter-community;--these are the fundamentals of
society. I mean here, religion negatively taken,--so that the person be
not compelled to do or utter, in relation of the soul to God, what would
be, in that person, a lie;--such as to force a man to go to church, or
to swear that he believes what he does not believe. Religion, positively
taken, may be a great and useful privilege, but cannot be a right,--were
it for this only that it cannot be pre-defined. The ground of this
distinction between negative and positive religion, as a social right,
is plain. No one of my fellow-citizens is encroached on by my not
declaring to him what I believe respecting the super-sensual; but should
every man be entitled to preach against the preacher, who could hear any
preacher? Now it is different in respect of loyalty. There we have
positive rights, but not negative rights;--for every pretended negative
would be in effect a positive;--as if a soldier had a right to keep to
himself, whether he would, or would not, fight. Now, no one of these
fundamentals can be rightfully attacked, except when the guardian of it
has abused it to subvert one or more of the rest. The reason is, that
the guardian, as a fluent, is less than the permanent which he is to
guard. He is the temporary and mutable mean, and derives his whole value
from the end. In short, as robbery is not high treason, so neither is
every unjust act of a king the converse. All must be attacked and
endangered. Why? Because the king, as 'a' to A., is a mean to A. or
subordination, in a far higher sense than a proprietor, as 'b'. to B. is
a mean to B. or property.
Act ii. sc. 2. Claudia's speech:--
Chimney-pieces! &c.
The whole of this speech seems corrupt; and if accurately printed,--that
is, if the same in all the prior editions, irremediable but by bold
conjecture. ''Till' my tackle,' should be, I think, 'while,' &c.
Act iii. sc. 1. B. and F. always write as if virtue or goodness were a
sort of talisman, or strange something, that might be lost without the
least fault on the part of the owner. In short, their chaste ladies
value their chastity as a material thing--not as an act or state of
being; and this mere thing being imaginary, no wonder that all their
women are represented with the minds of strumpets, except a few
irrational humorists, far less capable of exciting our sympathy than a
Hindoo, who has had a bason of cow-broth thrown over him;--for this,
though a debasing superstition, is still real, and we might pity the
poor wretch, though we cannot help despising him. But B. and F.'s
Lucinas are clumsy fictions. It is too plain that the authors had no one
idea of chastity as a virtue, but only such a conception as a blind man
might have of the power of seeing, by handling an ox's eye. In The Queen
of Corinth, indeed, they talk differently; but it is all talk, and
nothing is real in it but the dread of losing a reputation. Hence the
frightful contrast between their women (even those who are meant for
virtuous) and Shakspeare's. So, for instance, The Maid in the Mill:--a
woman must not merely have grown old in brothels, but have chuckled over
every abomination committed in them with a rampant sympathy of
imagination, to have had her fancy so drunk with the 'minutiæ' of
lechery as this icy chaste virgin evinces hers to have been.
It would be worth while to note how many of these plays are founded on
rapes,--how many on incestuous passions, and how many on mere lunacies.
Then their virtuous women are either crazy superstitions of a merely
bodily negation of having been acted on, or strumpets in their
imaginations and wishes, or, as in this Maid in the Mill, both at the same
time. In the men, the love is merely lust in one direction,--exclusive
preference of one object. The tyrant's speeches are mostly taken from the
mouths of indignant denouncers of the tyrant's character, with the
substitution of 'I' for 'he,' and the omission of the prefatory 'he acts
as if he thought' so and so. The only feelings they can possibly excite
are disgust at the Aeciuses, if regarded as sane loyalists, or compassion,
if considered as Bedlamites. So much for their tragedies. But even their
comedies are, most of them, disturbed by the fantasticalness, or gross
caricature, of the persons or incidents. There are few characters that you
can really like,--(even though you should have had erased from your mind
all the filth, which bespatters the most likeable of them, as Piniero in
The Island Princess for instance,)--scarcely one whom you can love. How
different this from Shakspeare, who makes one have a sort of sneaking
affection even for his Barnardines;--whose very Iagos and Richards are
awful, and, by the counteracting power of profound intellects, rendered
fearful rather than hateful;--and even the exceptions, as Goneril and
Regan, are proofs of superlative judgment and the finest moral tact, in
being left utter monsters, 'nulla virtute redemptæ,' and in being kept out
of sight as much as possible,--they being, indeed, only means for the
excitement and deepening of noblest emotions towards the Lear, Cordelia,
&c. and employed with the severest economy! But even Shakspeare's
grossness--that which is really so, independently of the increase in
modern times of vicious associations with things indifferent,--(for there
is a state of manners conceivable so pure, that the language of Hamlet at
Ophelia's feet might be a harmless rallying, or playful teazing, of a
shame that would exist in Paradise)--at the worst, how diverse in kind is
it from Beaumont and Fletcher's! In Shakspeare it is the mere generalities
of sex, mere words for the most part, seldom or never distinct images, all
head-work, and fancy-drolleries; there is no sensation supposed in the
speaker. I need not proceed to contrast this with B. and F.
ROLLO.
This is, perhaps, the most energetic of Fletcher's tragedies. He
evidently aimed at a new Richard III. in Rollo;--but as in all his other
imitations of Shakspeare, he was not philosopher enough to bottom his
original. Thus, in Rollo, he has produced a mere personification of
outrageous wickedness, with no fundamental characteristic impulses to
make either the tyrant's words or actions philosophically intelligible.
Hence, the most pathetic situations border on the horrible, and what he
meant for the terrible, is either hateful, [Greek (transliterated): to
misaeton], or ludicrous. The scene of Baldwin's sentence in the third
act is probably the grandest working of passion in all B. and F.'s
dramas;--but the very magnificence of filial affection given to Edith,
in this noble scene, renders the after scene--(in imitation of one of
the least Shakspearian of all Shakspeare's works, if it be his, the
scene between Richard and Lady Anne,)--in which Edith is yielding to a
few words and tears, not only unnatural, but disgusting. In Shakspeare,
Lady Anne is described as a weak, vain, very woman throughout.
Act i. sc. I.
'Gis'. He is indeed the perfect character
Of a good man, and so his actions speak him.
This character of Aubrey, and the whole spirit of this and several other
plays of the same authors, are interesting as traits of the morals which
it was fashionable to teach in the reigns of James I. and his successor,
who died a martyr to them. Stage, pulpit, law, fashion,--all conspired
to enslave the realm. Massinger's plays breathe the opposite spirit;
Shakspeare's the spirit of wisdom which is for all ages. By the by, the
Spanish dramatists--Calderon, in particular,--had some influence in this
respect, of romantic loyalty to the greatest monsters, as well as in the
busy intrigues of B. and F.'s plays.
THE WILD GOOSE CHASE.