so her humility has a peculiar grace. If she feels and repines over her
lowly birth, it is merely as an obstacle which separates her from the
man she loves. She is more sensible to his greatness than her own
littleness: she is continually looking from herself up to him, not from
him down to herself. She has been bred up under the same roof with him;
she has adored him from infancy. Her love is not "th' infection taken in
at the eyes," nor kindled by youthful romance: it appears to have taken
root in her being; to have grown with her years; and to have gradually
absorbed all her thoughts and faculties, until her fancy "carries no
favor in it but Bertram's," and "there is no living, none, if Bertram be
away."
It may be said that Bertram, arrogant, wayward, and heartless, does not
justify this ardent and deep devotion. But Helena does not behold him
with our eyes; but as he is "sanctified in her idolatrous fancy." Dr.
Johnson says he cannot reconcile himself to a man who marries Helena
like a coward, and leaves her like a profligate. This is much too
severe; in the first place, there is no necessity that we _should_
reconcile ourselves to him. In this consists a part of the wonderful
beauty of the character of Helena--a part of its womanly truth, which
Johnson, who accuses Bertram, and those who so plausibly defend him, did
not understand. If it never happened in real life, that a woman, richly
endued with heaven's best gifts, loved with all her heart, and soul, and
strength, a man unequal to or unworthy of her, and to whose faults
herself alone was blind--I would give up the point: but if it be in
nature, why should it not be in Shakspeare? We are not to look into
Bertram's character for the spring and source of Helena's love for him,
but into her own. She loves Bertram,--because she loves him!--a woman's
reason,--but here, and sometimes elsewhere, all-sufficient.
And although Helena tells herself that she loves in vain, a conviction
stronger than reason tells her that she does not: her love is like a
religion, pure, holy, and deep: the blessedness to which she has lifted
her thoughts is forever before her; to despair would be a crime,--it
would be to cast herself away and die. The faith of her affection,
combining with the natural energy of her character, believing all things
possible makes them so. It could say to the mountain of pride which
stands between her and her hopes, "Be thou removed!" and it is removed.
This is the solution of her behavior in the marriage scene, where
Bertram, with obvious reluctance and disdain, accepts her hand, which
the king, his feudal lord and guardian, forces on him. Her maidenly
feeling is at first shocked, and she shrinks back--
That you are well restor'd, my lord, I am glad:
Let the rest go.
But shall she weakly relinquish the golden opportunity, and dash the cup
from her lips at the moment it is presented? Shall she cast away the
treasure for which she has ventured both life and honor, when it is just
within her grasp? Shall she, after compromising her feminine delicacy by
the public disclosure of her preference, be thrust back into shame, "to
blush out the remainder of her life," and die a poor, lost, scorned
thing? This would be very pretty and interesting and characteristic in
Viola or Ophelia, but not at all consistent with that high determined
spirit, that moral energy, with which Helena is portrayed. Pride is the
only obstacle opposed to her. She is not despised and rejected as a
woman, but as a poor physician's daughter; and this, to an understanding
so clear, so strong, so just as Helena's, is not felt as an unpardonable
insult. The mere pride of rank and birth is a prejudice of which she
cannot comprehend the force, because her mind towers so immeasurably
above it; and, compared to the infinite love which swells within her own
bosom, it sinks into nothing. She cannot conceive that he, to whom she
has devoted her heart and truth, her soul, her life, her service, must
not one day love her in return; and once her own beyond the reach of
fate, that her cares, her caresses, her unwearied patient tenderness,
will not at last "win her lord to look upon her"--
... For time will bring on summer,
When briars shall have leaves as well as thorns,
And be as sweet as sharp.
It is this fond faith which, hoping all things, enables her to endure
all things:--which hallows and dignifies the surrender of her woman's
pride, making it a sacrifice on which virtue and love throw a mingled
incense.
The scene in which the Countess extorts from Helen the confession of her
love, must, as an illustration, be given here. It is perhaps, the finest
in the whole play, and brings out all the striking points of Helen's
character, to which I have already alluded. We must not fail to remark,
that though the acknowledgment is wrung from her with an agony which
seems to convulse her whole being, yet when once she has given it solemn
utterance, she recovers her presence of mind, and asserts her native
dignity. In her justification of her feelings and her conduct, there is
neither sophistry, nor self-deception, nor presumption, but a noble
simplicity, combined with the most impassioned earnestness; while the
language naturally rises in its eloquent beauty, as the tide of feeling,
now first let loose from the bursting heart, comes pouring forth in
words. The whole scene is wonderfully beautiful.
HELENA.
What is your pleasure, madam?
COUNTESS.
You know, Helen, I am a mother to you.
HELENA.
Mine honorable mistress.
COUNTESS
Nay, a mother;
Why not a mother? When I said a mother,
Methought you saw a serpent: what's in mother,
That you start at it? I say, I am your mother:
And put you in the catalogue of those
That were enwombed mine: 'tis often seen,
Adoption strives with nature; and choice breeds
A native slip to us from foreign seeds.
You ne'er oppress'd me with a mother's groan,
Yet I express to you a mother's care;--
God's mercy, maiden! does it curd thy blood,
To say, I am thy mother? What's the matter
That this distempered messenger of wet,
The many-color'd Iris, rounds thine eye?
Why?--that you are my daughter?
HELENA.
That I am not.
COUNTESS.
I say, I am your mother.
HELENA.
Pardon, madam:
The Count Roussillon cannot be my brother:
I am from humble, he from honor'd name;
No note upon my parents, his all noble:
My master, my dear lord he is: and I
His servant live, and will his vassal die:
He must not be my brother.
COUNTESS.
Nor I your mother?
HELENA.
You are my mother, madam; would you were
(So that my lord, your son, were not my brother,)
Indeed my mother, or, were you both our mothers,
I care no more for, than I do for Heaven,[32]
So I were not his sister; can't no other,
But I, your daughter, he must be my brother?
COUNTESS.
Yes, Helen, you might be my daughter-in-law;
God shield, you mean it not! daughter and mother
So strive upon your pulse: what, pale again?
My fear hath catch'd your fondness: now I see
The mystery of your loneliness, and find
Your salt tears' head. Now to all sense 'tis gross
You love my son; invention is asham'd,
Against the proclamation of thy passion,
To say, thou dost not: therefore tell me true;
But tell me, then, 'tis so:--for, look, thy cheeks
Confess it, one to the other.
Speak, is't so?
If it be so, you have wound a goodly clue!
If it be not, forswear't: howe'er, I charge thee,
As heaven shall work in me for thy avail,
To tell me truly.
HELENA.
Good madam, pardon me!
COUNTESS.
Do you love my son?
HELENA.
Your pardon, noble mistress!
COUNTESS.
Love you my son?
HELENA.
Do not you love him, madam?
COUNTESS.
Go not about; my love hath in't a bond,
Whereof the world takes note: come, come, disclose
The state of your affection; for your passions
Have to the full appeach'd.
HELENA.
Then I confess
Here on my knee, before high heaven and you,
That before you, and next unto high heaven,
I love your son:--
My friends were poor, but honest; so's my love
Be not offended; for it hurts not him,
That he is loved of me; I follow him not
By any token of presumptuous suit;
Nor would I have him till I do deserve him:
Yet never know how that desert should be.
I know I love in vain; strive against hope;
Yet, in this captious and untenable sieve,
I still pour in the waters of my love,
And lack not to love still: thus, Indian-like,
Religious in mine error, I adore
The sun that looks upon his worshipper,
But knows of him no more. My dearest madam,
Let not your hate encounter with my love,
For loving where you do: but, if yourself,
Whose aged honor cites a virtuous youth,
Did ever in so true a flame of liking,
Wish chastely, and love dearly, that your Dian
Was both herself and love; O then give pity
To her, whose state is such, that cannot choose
But lend and give, where she is sure to lose;
That seeks not to find that her search implies,
But, riddle-like, lives sweetly where she dies.
This old Countess of Roussillon is a charming sketch. She is like one of
Titian's old women, who still, amid their wrinkles, remind us of that
soul of beauty and sensibility, which must have animated them when
young. She is a fine contrast to Lady Capulet--benign, cheerful, and
affectionate; she has a benevolent enthusiasm, which neither age, nor
sorrow, nor pride can wear away. Thus, when she is brought to believe
that Helen nourishes a secret attachment for her son, she observes--
Even so it was with me when I was young!
This thorn
Doth to our rose of youth rightly belong,
It is the show and seal of nature's truth,
When love's strong passion is impress'd in youth.
Her fond, maternal love for Helena, whom she has brought up: her pride
in her good qualities overpowering all her own prejudices of rank and
birth, are most natural in such a mind; and her indignation against her
son, however strongly expressed, never forgets the mother.
What angel shall
Bless this unworthy husband? he cannot thrive
Unless _her_ prayers, whom heaven delights to hear
And loves to grant, reprieve him from the wrath
Of greatest justice.
Which of them both
Is dearest to me--I have no skill in sense
To make distinction.
This is very skilfully, as well as delicately conceived. In rejecting
those poetical and accidental advantages which Giletta possesses in the
original story, Shakspeare has substituted the beautiful character of
the Countess; and he has contrived, that, as the character of Helena
should rest for its internal charm on the depth of her own affections,
so it should depend for its _external_ interest on the affection she
inspires. The enthusiastic tenderness of the old Countess, the
admiration and respect of the King, Lafeu, and all who are brought in
connection with her, make amends for the humiliating neglect of Bertram;
and cast round Helen that collateral light, which Giletta in the story
owes to other circumstances, striking indeed, and well imagined, but not
(I think) so finely harmonizing with the character.
It is also very natural that Helen, with the intuitive discernment of a
pure and upright mind, and the penetration of a quick-witted woman,
should be the first to detect the falsehood and cowardice of the boaster
Parolles, who imposes on every one else.
It has been remarked, that there is less of poetical imagery in this
play than in many of the others. A certain solidity in Helen's character
takes place of the ideal power; and with consistent truth of keeping,
the same predominance of feeling over fancy, of the reflective over the
imaginative faculty, is maintained through the whole dialogue. Yet the
finest passages in the serious scenes are those appropriated to her;
they are familiar and celebrated as quotations, but fully to understand
their beauty and truth, they should be considered relatively to her
character and situation; thus, when in speaking of Bertram, she says,
"that he is one to whom she wishes well," the consciousness of the
disproportion between her words and her feelings draws from her this
beautiful and affecting observation, so just in itself, and so true to
her situation, and to the sentiment which fills her whole heart:--
'Tis pity
That wishing well had not a body in't
Which might be felt: that we the poorer born,
Whose baser stars do shut us up in wishes,
Might with effects of them follow our friends,
And act what we must only think, which never
Returns us thanks.
Some of her general reflections have a sententious depth and a
contemplative melancholy, which remind us of Isabella:--
Our remedies oft in themselves do lie
Which we ascribe to heaven; the fated sky
Gives us free scope; only doth backward pull
Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull.
Impossible be strange events to those
That weigh their pains in sense; and do suppose
What hath been cannot be.
He that of greatest works is finisher,
Oft does them by the weakest minister;
So holy writ in babes hath judgment shown,
When judges have been babes.
Oft expectation fails, and most oft there
Where most it promises; and oft it hits,
Where hope is coldest, and despair most sits.
Her sentiments in the same manner are remarkable for the union of
profound sense with the most passionate feeling; and when her language
is figurative, which is seldom, the picture presented to us is
invariably touched either with a serious, a lofty, or a melancholy
beauty. For instance:--
It were all one
That I should love a bright particular star,
And think to wed it--he's so far above me.
And when she is brought to choose a husband from among the young lords
at the court, her heart having already made its election, the
strangeness of that very privilege for which she had ventured all,
nearly overpowers her, and she says beautifully:--
The blushes on my cheeks thus whisper me,
"We blush that thou shouldst choose;--but be refused,
Let the white death sit on that cheek for ever
We'll ne'er come there again!"
In her soliloquy after she has been forsaken by Bertram, the beauty lies
in the intense feeling, the force and simplicity of the expressions.
There is little imagery, and wherever it occurs, it is as bold as it is
beautiful, and springs out of the energy of the sentiment, and the
pathos of the situation. She has been reading his cruel letter.
_Till I have no wife I have nothing in France._
'Tis bitter!
Nothing in France, until he has no wife!
Thou shalt have none, Roussillon, none in France,
Then hast thou all again. Poor lord! is't I
That chase thee from thy country, and expose
Those tender limbs of thine to the event
Of the none-sparing war? And is it I
That drive thee from the sportive court, where thou
Wast shot at with fair eyes, to be the mark
Of smoky muskets? O you leaden messengers,
That ride upon the violent speed of fire,
Fly with false aim! move the still-piercing air,
That sings with piercing, do not touch my lord!
Whoever shoots at him, I set him there;
Whoever charges on his forward breast,
I am the caitiff that do hold him to it;
And though I kill him not, I am the cause
His death was so effected; better 'twere
I met the ravin lion when he roared
With sharp constraint of hunger; better 'twere
That all the miseries which nature owes,
Were mine at once.
No, no, although
The air of paradise did fan the house,
And angels officed all; I will be gone.
Though I cannot go the length of those who have defended Bertram on
almost every point, still I think the censure which Johnson has passed
on the character is much too severe. Bertram is certainly not a pattern
hero of romance, but full of faults such as we meet with every day in
men of his age and class. He is a bold, ardent, self-willed youth, just
dismissed into the world from domestic indulgence, with an excess of
aristocratic and military pride, but not without some sense of true
honor and generosity. I have lately read a defence of Bertram's
character, written with much elegance and plausibility. "The young
Count," says this critic, "comes before us possessed of a good heart,
and of no mean capacity, but with a haughtiness which threatens to dull
the kinder passions, and to cloud the intellect. This is the inevitable
consequence of an illustrious education. The glare of his birthright has
dazzled his young faculties. Perhaps the first words he could
distinguish were from the important nurse, giving elaborate directions
about his lordship's pap. As soon as he could walk, a crowd of
submissive vassals doffed their caps, and hailed his first appearance on
his legs. His spelling book had the arms of the family emblazoned on the
cover. He had been accustomed to hear himself called the great, the
mighty son of Roussillon, ever since he was a helpless child. A
succession of complacent tutors would by no means destroy the illusion;
and it is from their hands that Shakspeare receives him, while yet in
his minority. An overweening pride of birth is Bertram's great foible.
To cure him of this, Shakspeare sends him to the wars, that he may win
fame for himself, and thus exchange a shadow for a reality. There the
great dignity that his valor acquired for him places him on an equality
with any one of his ancestors, and he is no longer beholden to them
alone for the world's observance. Thus in his own person he discovers
there is something better than mere hereditary honors; and his heart is
prepared to acknowledge that the entire devotion of a Helen's love is of
more worth than the court-bred smiles of a princess."[33]
It is not extraordinary that, in the first instance, his spirit should
revolt at the idea of marrying his mother's "waiting gentlewoman," or
that he should refuse her; yet when the king, his feudal lord, whose
despotic authority was in this case legal and indisputable, threatens
him with the extremity of his wrath and vengeance, that he should submit
himself to a hard necessity, was too consistent with the manners of the
time to be called _cowardice_. Such forced marriages were not uncommon
even in our own country, when the right of wardship, now vested in the
Lord Chancellor, was exercised with uncontrolled and often cruel
despotism by the sovereign.
There is an old ballad, in which the king bestows a maid of low degree
on a noble of his court, and the undisguised scorn and reluctance of the
knight and the pertinacity of the lady, are in point.
He brought her down full forty pound
Tyed up within a glove,
"Fair maid, I'll give the same to thee,
Go seek another love."
"O I'll have none of your gold," she said,
"Nor I'll have none of your fee;
But your fair bodye I must have,
The king hath granted me."
Sir William ran and fetched her then,
Five hundred pounds in gold,
Saying, "Fair maid, take this to thee,
My fault will ne'er be told."
"'Tis not the gold that shall me tempt,"
These words then answered she;
"But your own bodye I must have,
The king hath granted me."
"Would I had drank the water clear,
When I did drink the wine,
Rather than my shepherd's brat
Should be a ladye of mine!"[34]
Bertram's disgust at the tyranny which has made his freedom the payment
of another's debt, which has united him to a woman whose merits are not
towards him--whose secret love, and long-enduring faith, are yet unknown
and untried--might well make his bride distasteful to him. He flies her
on the very day of their marriage, most like a wilful, haughty, angry
boy, but not like a profligate. On other points he is not so easily
defended; and Shakspeare, we see, has not defended, but corrected him.
The latter part of the play is more perplexing than pleasing. We do not,
indeed, repine with Dr. Johnson, that Bertram, after all his
misdemeanors, is "dismissed to happiness;" but, not withstanding the
clever defence that has been made for him, he has our pardon rather than
our sympathy; and for mine own part, I could find it easier to love
Bertram as Helena does, than to excuse him; her love for him is his best
excuse.
PERDITA.
In Viola and Perdita the distinguishing traits are the same--sentiment
and elegance; thus we associate them together, though nothing can be
more distinct to the fancy than the Doric grace of Perdita, compared to
the romantic sweetness of Viola. They are created out of the same
materials, and are equal to each other in the tenderness, delicacy, and
poetical beauty of the conception. They are both more imaginative than
passionate; but Perdita is the more imaginative of the two. She is the
union of the pastoral and romantic with the classical and poetical, as
if a dryad of the woods had turned shepherdess. The perfections with
which the poet has so lavishly endowed her, sit upon her with a certain
careless and picturesque grace, "as though they had fallen upon her
unawares." Thus Belphoebe, in the Fairy Queen, issues from the
flowering forest with hair and garments all besprinkled with the leaves
and blossoms they had entangled in their flight; and so arrayed by
chance and "heedless hap," takes all hearts with "stately presence and
with princely port,"--most like to Perdita!
The story of Florizel and Perdita is but an episode in the "Winter's
Tale;" and the character of Perdita is properly kept subordinate to that
of her mother, Hermione: yet the picture is perfectly finished in every
part;--Juliet herself is not more firmly and distinctly drawn. But the
coloring in Perdita is more silvery light and delicate; the pervading
sentiment more touched with the ideal; compared with Juliet, she is like
a Guido hung beside a Georgione, or one of Paesiello's airs heard after
one of Mozart's.
The qualities which impart to Perdita her distinct individuality, are
the beautiful combination of the pastoral with the elegant--of
simplicity with elevation--of spirit with sweetness. The exquisite
delicacy of the picture is apparent. To understand and appreciate its
effective truth and nature, we should place Perdita beside some of the
nymphs of Arcadia, or the Chloris' and Sylvias of the Italian pastorals,
who, however graceful in themselves, when opposed to Perdita, seem to
melt away into mere poetical abstractions;--as, in Spenser, the fair but
fictitious Florimel, which the subtle enchantress had moulded out of
snow, "vermeil tinctured," and informed with an airy spirit, that knew
"all wiles of woman's wits," fades and dissolves away, when placed next
to the real Florimel, in her warm, breathing, human loveliness.
Perdita does not appear till the fourth act, and the whole of the
character is developed in the course of a single scene, (the third,)
with a completeness of effect which leaves nothing to be
required--nothing to be supplied. She is first introduced in the
dialogue between herself and Florizel, where she compares her own lowly
state to his princely rank, and expresses her fears of the issue of
their unequal attachment. With all her timidity and her sense of the
distance which separates her from her lover, she breathes not a single
word which could lead us to impugn either her delicacy or her dignity.
FLORIZEL.
These your unusual weeds to each part of you
Do give a life--no shepherdess, but Flora
Peering in April's front; this your sheep-shearing
Is as the meeting of the petty gods,
And you the queen on't.
PERDITA.
Sir, my gracious lord,
To chide at your extremes it not becomes me;
O pardon that I name them: your high self,
The gracious mark o' the land, you have obscured
With a swain's bearing; and me, poor lowly maid,
Most goddess-like prank'd up:--but that our feasts
In every mess have folly, and the feeders
Digest it with a custom, I should blush
To see you so attired; sworn, I think
To show myself a glass.
The impression of her perfect beauty and airy elegance of demeanor is
conveyed in two exquisite passages:--
What you do
Still betters what is done. When you speak, sweet,
I'd have you do it ever. When you sing,
I'd have you buy and sell so; so give alms,
Pray so, and for the ordering your affairs
To sing them too. When you do dance, I wish you
A wave o' the sea, that you might ever do
Nothing but that; move still, still so, and own
No other function.
I take thy hand; this hand
As soft as dove's down, and as white as it;
Or Ethiopian's tooth, or the fann'd snow,
That's bolted by the northern blasts twice o'er.
The artless manner in which her innate nobility of soul shines forth
through her pastoral disguise, is thus brought before us at once:--
This is the prettiest low-born lass that ever
Ran on the green sward; nothing she does or seems,
But smacks of something greater than herself;
Too noble for this place.