society, I leave them to the author of Paul Clifford, and that most
exquisite painter of living manners, Mrs. Gore. St. Giles's is no more
_nature_ than St. James's. I wanted character in its essential truth,
not mortified by particular customs, by fashion, by situation. I wished
to illustrate the manner in which the affections would naturally display
themselves in women--whether combined with high intellect, regulated by
reflection, and elevated by imagination, or existing with perverted
dispositions, or purified by the moral sentiments. I found all these in
Shakspeare; his delineations of women, in whom the virtuous and calm
affections predominate, and triumph over shame, fear, pride, resentment,
vanity, jealousy,--are particularly worthy of consideration, and perfect
in their kind, because so quiet in their effect.
MEDON.
Several critics have remarked in general terms on those beautiful
pictures of female friendship, and of the generous affection of women
for each other, which we find in Shakspeare. Other writers, especially
dramatic writers, have found ample food for wit and satiric delineation
in the littleness of feminine spite and rivalry, in the mean spirit of
competition, the petty jealousy of superior charms, the mutual slander
and mistrust, the transient leagues of folly or selfishness miscalled
friendship--the result of an education which makes vanity the ruling
principle, and of a false position in society. Shakspeare, who looked
upon women with the spirit of humanity, wisdom, and deep love, has done
justice to their natural good tendencies and kindly sympathies. In the
friendship of Beatrice and Hero, of Rosalind and Celia; in the
description of the girlish attachment of Helena and Hermia, he has
represented truth and generous affection rising superior to all the
usual sources of female rivalry and jealousy; and with such force and
simplicity, and obvious self-conviction, that he absolutely forces the
same conviction on us.
ALDA.
Add to these the generous feeling of Viola for her rival Olivia; of
Julia for her rival Sylvia; of Helena for Diana; of the old Countess for
Helena, in the same play; and even the affection of the wicked queen in
Hamlet for the gentle Ophelia, which prove that Shakspeare thought--(and
when did he ever think other than the truth?)--that women have by nature
"virtues that are merciful," and can be just, tender, and true to their
sister women, whatever wits and worldlings, and satirists and
fashionable poets, may say or sing of us to the contrary. There is
another thing which he has most deeply felt and beautifully
represented--the distinction between masculine and feminine _courage_.
A man's courage is often a mere animal quality, and in its most elevated
form a point of honor. But a woman's courage is always a virtue, because
it is not required of us, it is not one of the means through which we
seek admiration and applause; on the contrary, we are courageous through
our affections and mental energies, not through our vanity or our
strength. A woman's heroism is always the excess of sensibility. Do you
remember Lady Fanshawe putting on a sailor's jacket, and his "blue thrum
cap," and standing at her husband's side, unknown to him during a
sea-fight? There she stood, all bathed in tears, but fixed to that spot.
Her husband's exclamation when he turned and discovered her--"Good God,
that love should make such a change as this!" is applicable to all the
acts of courage which we read or hear of in women. This is the courage
of Juliet, when, after summing up all the possible consequences of her
own act, till she almost maddens herself with terror, she drinks the
sleeping potion; and for that passive fortitude which is founded in
piety and pure strength of affection, such as the heroism of Lady Russel
and Gertrude de Wart, he has given us some of the noblest modifications
of it in Hermione, in Cordelia, in Imogen, in Katherine of Arragon.
MEDON.
And what do you call the courage of Lady Macbeth?--
My hands are of your color, but I shame
To wear a heart so white.
And again,
A little water clears us of this deed,
How easy is it then!
If this is not mere masculine indifference to blood and death, mere
firmness of nerve, what is it?
ALDA.
Not _that_, at least, which apparently you deem it; you will find, if
you have patience to read me to the end, that I have judged Lady Macbeth
very differently. Take these frightful passages with the context--take
the whole situation, and you will see that it is no such thing. A friend
of mine truly observed, that if Macbeth had been a ruffian without any
qualms of conscience, Lady Macbeth would have been the one to shrink and
tremble; but that which quenched _him_ lent her fire. The absolute
necessity for self-command, the strength of her reason, and her love for
her husband, combine at this critical moment to conquer all fear but the
fear of detection, leaving her the full possession of her faculties.
Recollect that the same woman who speaks with such horrible indifference
of a little water clearing the blood-stain from her hand, sees in
imagination that hand forever reeking, forever polluted: and when reason
is no longer awake and paramount over the violated feelings of nature
and womanhood, we behold her making unconscious efforts to wash out
that "damned spot," and sighing, heart-broken, over that little hand
which all the perfumes of Arabia will never sweeten more.
MEDON.
I hope you have given her a place among the women in whom the tender
affections and moral sentiments predominate.
ALDA.
You laugh; but, jesting apart, perhaps it would have been a more
accurate classification than placing her among the historical
characters.
MEDON.
Apropos to the historical characters, I hope you have refuted that
_insolent_ assumption, (shall I call it?) that Shakspeare tampered
inexcusably with the truth of history. He is the truest of all
historians. His anachronisms always remind me of those in the fine old
Italian pictures; either they are insignificant, or, if properly
considered, are really beauties; for instance, every one knows that
Correggio's St. Jerome presenting his books to the Virgin, involves
half-a-dozen anachronisms,--to say nothing of that heavenly figure of
the Magdalen, in the same picture, kissing the feet of the infant
Saviour. Some have ridiculed, some have excused this strange combination
of inaccuracies but is it less one of the divinest pieces of sentiment
and poetry that ever breathed and glowed from the canvas? You remember
too the famous nativity by some Neapolitan painter, who has placed Mount
Vesuvius and the Bay of Naples in the background? In these and a hundred
other instances, no one seems to feel that the apparent absurdity
involves the highest truth, and that the sacred beings thus represented,
if once allowed as objects of faith and worship, are eternal under every
aspect, and independent of all time and all locality. So it is with
Shakspeare and his anachronisms. The learned scorn of Johnson and some
of his brotherhood of commentators, and the eloquent defence of
Schlegel, seem in this case superfluous. If he chose to make the Delphic
oracle and Julio Romano contemporary--what does it signify? he committed
no anachronisms of character. He has not metamorphosed Cleopatra into a
turtle-dove, nor Katherine of Arragon into a sentimental heroine. He is
true to the spirit and even to the _letter_ of history; where he
deviates from the latter, the reason may be found in some higher beauty
and more universal truth.
ALDA.
I have proved this, I think, by placing parallel with the dramatic
character all the historic testimony I could collect relative to
Constance, Cleopatra, Katherine of Arragon, &c.
MEDON.
Analyzing the character of Cleopatra must have been something like
catching a meteor by the tail, and making it sit for its picture.
ALDA.
Something like it, in truth; but those of Miranda and Ophelia were more
embarrassing, because they seemed to defy all analysis. It was like
intercepting the dew-drop or the snow-flake ere it fell to earth, and
subjecting it to a chemical process.
MEDON.
Some one said the other day that Shakspeare had never drawn a coquette.
What is Cleopatra but the empress and type of all the coquettes that
ever were--or are? She would put Lady ---- herself to school. But now
for the moral.
ALDA.
The moral!--of what?
MEDON.
Of your book. It has a moral, I suppose.
ALDA.
It has indeed a very deep one, which those who seek will find. If now I
have answered all your considerations and objections, and sufficiently
explained my own views, may I proceed?
MEDON.
If you please--I am prepared to listen in earnest.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] See Foster's Essay on the application of the word
_romantic_--_Essays_, vol. I
[2] Correspondence, vol. iii.
[3] An Oriental proverb
[4] In our own time, Madame de Stael, Mrs. Somerville, Harriet
Martineau, Mrs. Marcet; we need not go back to the Rolands and Agnesi,
nor even to our own Lucy Hutchinson.
CHARACTERS OF INTELLECT.
PORTIA.
We hear it asserted, not seldom by way of compliment to us women, that
intellect is of no sex. If this mean that the same faculties of mind are
common to men and women, it is true; in any other signification it
appears to me false, and the reverse of a compliment. The intellect of
woman bears the same relation to that of man as her physical
organization;--it is inferior in power, and different in kind. That
certain women have surpassed certain men in bodily strength or
intellectual energy, does not contradict the general principle founded
in nature. The essential and invariable distinction appears to me this:
in men the intellectual faculties exist more self-poised and
self-directed--more independent of the rest of the character, than we
ever find them in women, with whom talent, however predominant, is in a
much greater degree modified by the sympathies and moral qualities.
In thinking over all the distinguished women can at this moment call to
mind, I recollect but one, who, in the exercise of a rare talent, belied
her sex, but the moral qualities had been first perverted.[5] It is from
not knowing, or not allowing this general principle, that men of genius
have committed some signal mistakes. They have given us exquisite and
just delineations of the more peculiar characteristics of women, as
modesty, grace, tenderness; and when they have attempted to portray them
with the powers common to both sexes, as wit, energy, intellect, they
have blundered in some respect; they could form no conception of
intellect which was not masculine, and therefore have either suppressed
the feminine attributes altogether and drawn coarse caricatures, or they
have made them completely artificial.[6] Women distinguished for wit may
sometimes appear masculine and flippant, but the cause must be sought
elsewhere than in nature, who disclaims all such. Hence the witty and
intellectual ladies of our comedies and novels are all in the fashion of
some particular time; they are like some old portraits which can still
amuse and please by the beauty of the workmanship, in spite of the
graceless costume or grotesque accompaniments, but from which we turn to
worship with ever new delight the Floras and goddesses of Titian--the
saints and the virgins of Raffaelle and Domenichino. So the Millamants
and Belindas, the Lady Townleys and Lady Teazles are out of date, while
Portia and Rosalind, in whom nature and the feminine character are
paramount, remain bright and fresh to the fancy as when first created.
Portia, Isabella, Beatrice, and Rosalind, may be classed together, as
characters of intellect, because, when compared with others, they are at
once distinguished by their mental superiority. In Portia, it is
intellect kindled into romance by a poetical imagination; in Isabel, it
is intellect elevated by religious principle; in Beatrice, intellect
animated by spirit; in Rosalind, intellect softened by sensibility. The
wit which is lavished on each is profound, or pointed, or sparkling, or
playful--but always feminine; like spirits distilled from flowers, it
always reminds us of its origin; it is a volatile essence, sweet as
powerful; and to pursue the comparison a step further the wit of Portia
is like ottar of roses, rich and concentrated; that of Rosalind, like
cotton dipped in aromatic vinegar; the wit of Beatrice is like sal
volatile; and that of Isabel, like the incense wafted to heaven. Of
these four exquisite characters, considered as dramatic and poetical
conceptions, it is difficult to pronounce which is most perfect in its
way, most admirably drawn, most highly finished. But if considered in
another point of view, as women and individuals, as breathing realities,
clothed in flesh and blood, I believe we must assign the first rank to
Portia, as uniting in herself in a more eminent degree than the others,
all the noblest and most lovable qualities that ever met together in
woman; and presenting a complete personification of Petrarch's exquisite
epitome of female perfection:--
Il vago spirito ardento,
E'n alto intelletto, un puro core.
It is singular, that hitherto no critical justice has been done to the
character of Portia; it is yet more wonderful, that one of the finest
writers on the eternal subject of Shakspeare and his perfections, should
accuse Portia of pedantry and affectation, and confess she is not a
great favorite of his--a confession quite worthy of him, who avers his
predilection for servant-maids, and his preference of the Fannys and the
Pamelas over the Clementinas and Clarissas.[7] Schlegel, who has given
several pages to a rapturous eulogy on the Merchant of Venice, simply
designates Portia as a "rich, beautiful, clever heiress:"--whether the
fault lie in the writer or translator, I do protest against the word
clever.[8] Portia _clever!_ what an epithet to apply to this heavenly
compound of talent, feeling, wisdom, beauty, and gentleness! Now would
it not be well, if this common and comprehensive word were more
accurately defined, or at least more accurately used? It signifies
properly, not so much the possession of high powers, as dexterity in the
adaptation of certain faculties (not necessarily of a high order) to a
certain end or aim--not always the worthiest. It implies something
common-place, inasmuch as it speaks the presence of the _active_ and
_perceptive_, with a deficiency of the _feeling_ and _reflective_
powers; and applied to a woman, does it not almost invariably suggest
the idea of something we should distrust or shrink from, if not allied
to a higher nature? The profligate French women, who ruled the councils
of Europe in the middle of the last century, were clever women; and that
_philosopheress_ Madame du Chatelet, who managed, at one and the same
moment, the thread of an intrigue, her cards at piquet, and a
calculation in algebra, was a very clever woman! If Portia had been
created as a mere instrument to bring about a dramatic catastrophe--if
she had merely detected the flaw in Antonio's bond, and used it as a
means to baffle the Jew, she might have been pronounced a clever woman.
But what Portia does, is forgotten in what she _is_. The rare and
harmonious blending of energy, reflection, and feeling, in her fine
character, make the epithet _clever_ sound like a discord as applied to
_her_, and place her infinitely beyond the slight praise of Richardson
and Schlegel, neither of whom appear to have fully comprehended her.
These and other critics have been apparently so dazzled and engrossed by
the amazing character of Shylock, that Portia has received less than
justice at their hands; while the fact is, that Shylock is not a finer
or more finished character in his way, than Portia is in hers. These two
splendid figures are worthy of each other; worthy of being placed
together within the same rich framework of enchanting poetry, and
glorious and graceful forms. She hangs beside the terrible, inexorable
Jew, the brilliant lights of her character set off by the shadowy power
of his, like a magnificent beauty-breathing Titian by the side of a
gorgeous Rembrandt.
Portia is endued with her own share of those delightful qualities, which
Shakspeare has lavished on many of his female characters; but besides
the dignity, the sweetness, and tenderness which should distinguish her
sex generally, she is individualized by qualities peculiar to herself;
by her high mental powers, her enthusiasm of temperament, her decision
of purpose, and her buoyancy of spirit. These are innate; she has other
distinguishing qualities more external, and which are the result of the
circumstances in which she is placed. Thus she is the heiress of a
princely name and countless wealth; a train of obedient pleasures have
ever waited round her; and from infancy she has breathed an atmosphere
redolent of perfume and blandishment Accordingly there is a commanding
grace, a highbred, airy elegance, a spirit of magnificence in all that
she does and says, as one to whom splendor had been familiar from her
very birth. She treads as though her footsteps had been among marble
palaces, beneath roofs of fretted gold, o'er cedar floors and pavements
of jasper and porphyry--amid gardens full of statues, and flowers, and
fountains, and haunting music. She is full of penetrative wisdom, and
genuine tenderness, and lively wit; but as she has never known want, or
grief, or fear, or disappointment, her wisdom is without a touch of the
sombre or the sad; her affections are all mixed up with faith, hope and
joy; and her wit has not a particle of malevolence or causticity.
It is well known that the Merchant of Venice is founded on two different
tales; and in weaving together his double plot in so masterly a manner,
Shakspeare has rejected altogether the character of the astutious Lady
of Belmont with her magic potions, who figures in the Italian novel.
With yet more refinement, he has thrown out all the licentious part of
the story, which some of his contemporary dramatists would have seized
on with avidity, and made the best or worst of it possible; and he has
substituted the trial of the caskets from another source.[9] We are not
told expressly where Belmont is situated; but as Bassanio takes ship to
go thither from Venice, and as we find them afterwards ordering horses
from Belmont to Padua, we will imagine Portia's hereditary palace as
standing on some lovely promontory between Venice and Trieste,
overlooking the blue Adriatic, with the Friuli mountains or the Euganean
hills for its background, such as we often see in one of Claude's or
Poussin's elysian landscapes. In a scene, in a home like this,
Shakspeare, having first exorcised the original possessor, has placed
his Portia; and so endowed her, that all the wild, strange, and moving
circumstances of the story, become natural, probable, and necessary in
connexion with her. That such a woman should be chosen by the solving of
an enigma, is not surprising: herself and all around her, the scene, the
country, the age in which she is placed, breathe of poetry, romance, and
enchantment.
From the four quarters of the earth they come
To kiss this shrine, this mortal breathing saint
The Hyrcanian desert, and the vasty wilds
Of wide Arabia, are as thoroughfares now,
For princes to come view fair Portia;
The watery kingdom, whose ambitious head
Spits in the face of heaven is no bar
To stop the foreign spirits; but they come
As o'er a brook to see fair Portia.
The sudden plan which she forms for the release of her husband's friend,
her disguise, and her deportment as the young and learned doctor, would
appear forced and improbable in any other woman but in Portia are the
simple and natural result of her character.[10] The quickness with which
she perceives the legal advantage which may be taken of the
circumstances; the spirit of adventure with which she engages in the
masquerading, and the decision, firmness, and intelligence with which
she executes her generous purpose, are all in perfect keeping, and
nothing appears forced--nothing as introduced merely for theatrical
effect.
But all the finest parts of Portia's character are brought to bear in
the trial scene. There she shines forth all her divine self. Her
intellectual powers, her elevated sense of religion, her high honorable
principles, her best feelings as a woman, are all displayed. She
maintains at first a calm self-command, as one sure of carrying her
point in the end; yet the painful heart-thrilling uncertainty in which
she keeps the whole court, until suspense verges upon agony, is not
contrived for effect merely; it is necessary and inevitable. She has two
objects in view; to deliver her husband's friend, and to maintain her
husband's honor by the discharge of his just debt, though paid out of
her own wealth ten times over. It is evident that she would rather owe
the safety of Antonio to any thing rather than the legal quibble with
which her cousin Bellario has armed her, and which she reserves as a
last resource. Thus all the speeches addressed to Shylock in the first
instance, are either direct or indirect experiments on his temper and
feelings. She must be understood from the beginning to the end as
examining, with intense anxiety, the effect of her own words on his mind
and countenance; as watching for that relenting spirit, which she hopes
to awaken either by reason or persuasion. She begins by an appeal to his
mercy, in that matchless piece of eloquence, which, with an irresistible
and solemn pathos, falls upon the heart like "gentle dew from
heaven:"--but in vain; for that blessed dew drops not more fruitless and
unfelt on the parched sand of the desert, than do these heavenly words
upon the ear of Shylock. She next attacks his avarice:
Shylock, there's _thrice_ thy money offered thee!
Then she appeals, in the same breath, both to his avarice and his pity:
Be merciful!
Take thrice thy money. Bid me tear the bond.
All that she says afterwards--her strong expressions, which are
calculated to strike a shuddering horror through the nerves--the
reflections she interposes--her delays and circumlocution to give time
for any latent feeling of commiseration to display itself--all, all are
premeditated and tend in the same manner to the object she has in view.
Thus--
You must prepare your bosom for his knife.
Therefore lay bare your bosom!
These two speeches, though addressed apparently to Antonio, are spoken
_at_ Shylock, and are evidently intended to penetrate _his_ bosom. In
the same spirit she asks for the balance to weigh the pound of flesh;
and entreats of Shylock to have a surgeon ready--
Have by some surgeon, Shylock, on your charge,
To stop his wounds, lest he do bleed to death!
SHYLOCK.
Is it so nominated in the bond?
PORTIA.
It is not so expressed--but what of that?
'Twere good you do so much, for _charity_.
So unwilling is her sanguine and generous spirit to resign all hope, or
to believe that humanity is absolutely extinct in the bosom of the Jew,
that she calls on Antonio, as a last resource, to speak for himself. His
gentle, yet manly resignation--the deep pathos of his farewell, and the
affectionate allusion to herself in his last address to Bassanio--
Commend me to your honorable wife;
Say how I lov'd you, speak me fair in death, &c.
are well calculated to swell that emotion, which through the whole scene
must have been laboring suppressed within her heart.
At length the crisis arrives, for patience and womanhood can endure no
longer; and when Shylock, carrying his savage bent "to the last hour of
act," springs on his victim--"A sentence come, prepare!" then the
smothered scorn, indignation, and disgust, burst forth with an
impetuosity which interferes with the judicial solemnity she had at
first affected;--particularly in the speech--
Therefore, prepare thee to cut off the flesh.
Shed thou no blood; nor cut thou less, nor more,
But just the pound of flesh; if thou tak'st more,
Or less than a just pound,--be it but so much
As makes it light, or heavy, in the substance,
Or the division of the twentieth part
Of one poor scruple; nay, if the scale do turn
But in the estimation of a hair,--
Thou diest, and all thy goods are confiscate.
But she afterwards recovers her propriety, and triumphs with a cooler
scorn and a more self-possessed exultation.