reviled by the King, as one whom his son has degraded himself by merely
looking on; she bears the royal frown without quailing; but the moment
he is gone, the immediate recollection of herself, and of her humble
state, of her hapless love, is full of beauty, tenderness, and nature:--
Even here undone!
I was much afeard: 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.
Will't please, you Sir, be gone?
I told you what would come of this. Beseech you,
Of your own state take care; this dream of mine--
Being now awake--I'll queen it no inch further,
But milk my ewes, and weep.
How often have I told you 'twould be thus
How often said, my dignity would last
But till 'twere known!
FLORIZEL.
It cannot fail, but by
The violation of my faith; and then
Let nature crush the sides o' the earth together
And mar the seeds within! Lift up thy looks.
* * * *
Not for Bohemia, nor the pomp that may
Be thereat glean'd! for all the sun sees, or
The close earth wombs, or the profound seas hide
In unknown fathoms, will I break my oath
To thee, my fair beloved!
Perdita has another characteristic, which lends to the poetical delicacy
of the delineation a certain strength and moral elevation, which is
peculiarly striking. It is that sense of truth and rectitude, that
upright simplicity of mind, which disdains all crooked and indirect
means, which would not stoop for an instant to dissemblance, and is
mingled with a noble confidence in her love and in her lover. In this
spirit is her answer to Camilla, who says, courtier like,--
Besides, you know
Prosperity's the very bond of love;
Whose fresh complexion, and whose heart together
Affliction alters.
To which she replies,--
One of these is true;
I think, affliction may subdue the cheek,
But not take in the mind.
In that elegant scene where she receives the guests at the
sheep-shearing, and distributes the flowers, there is in the full flow
of the poetry, a most beautiful and striking touch of individual
character: but here it is impossible to mutilate the dialogue.
Reverend sirs,
For you there's rosemary and rue; these keep
Seeming and savor all the winter long;
Grace and remembrance be to you both,
And welcome to our shearing!
POLIXENES.
Shepherdess,
(A fair one are you,) well you fit our ages
With flowers of winter.
PERDITA.
Sir, the year growing ancient,
Nor yet on summer's death, nor on the birth
Of trembling winter, the fairest flowers o' the season
Are our carnations, and streaked gilliflowers,
Which some call nature's bastards: of that kind
Our rustic garden's barren; and I care not
To get slips of them.
POLIXENES.
Wherefore, gentle maiden,
Do you neglect them?
PERDITA.
For I have heard it said,
There is an art, which in their piedness, shares
With great creating nature.
POLIXENES.
Say there be;
Yet nature is made better by no mean
But nature makes that mean; so o'er that art
Which, you say, adds to nature, is an art
That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry
A gentle scion to the wildest stock;
And make conceive a bark of baser kind
By bud of nobler race. This is an art
Which does mend nature, change it rather; but
The art itself is nature.
PERDITA.
So it is.
POLIXENES.
Then make your garden rich in gilliflowers,
And do not call them bastards.
PERDITA.
I'll not put
The dibble in earth to set one slip of them;
No more than were I painted, I would wish
This youth should say 'twere well.
It has been well remarked of this passage, that Perdita does not attempt
to answer the reasoning of Polixenes: she gives up the argument, but,
woman-like, retains her own opinion, or rather, her sense of right,
unshaken by his sophistry. She goes on in a strain of poetry, which
comes over the soul like music and fragrance mingled: we seem to inhale
the blended odors of a thousand flowers, till the sense faints with
their sweetness; and she concludes with a touch of passionate sentiment,
which melts into the very heart:--
O Proserpina!
For the flowers now, that, frighted, thou let'st fall
From Dis's wagon! daffodils,
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty; violets dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes,
Or Cytherea's breath; pale primroses,
That die unmarried, ere they can behold
Bright Phoebus in his strength, a malady
Most incident to maids; bold oxlips, and
The crown imperial; lilies of all kinds,
The flower-de-luce being one! O, these I lack,
To make you garlands of; and my sweet friend
To strew him o'er and o'er.
FLORIZEL.
What! like a corse?
PERDITA.
No, like a bank, for Love to lie and play on;
Not like a corse: or if,--not to be buried,
But quick, and in mine arms!
This love of truth, this _conscientiousness_, which forms so distinct a
feature in the character of Perdita, and mingles with its picturesque
delicacy a certain firmness and dignity, is maintained consistently to
the last. When the two lovers fly together from Bohemia, and take refuge
in the court of Leontes, the real father of Perdita, Florizel presents
himself before the king with a feigned tale, in which he has been
artfully instructed by the old counsellor Camillo. During this scene,
Perdita does not utter a word. In the strait in which they are placed,
she cannot deny the story which Florizel relates--she will not confirm
it. Her silence, in spite of all the compliments and greetings of
Leontes, has a peculiar and characteristic grace and, at the conclusion
of the scene, when they are betrayed, the truth bursts from her as if
instinctively, and she exclaims, with emotion,--
The heavens set spies upon us--will not have
Our contract celebrated.
After this scene, Perdita says very little. The description of her
grief, while listening to the relation of her mother's death,--
"One of the prettiest touches of all, was, when at the
relation of the queen's death, with the manner how she came
by it, how attentiveness wounded her daughter: till from one
sign of dolor to another, she did, with an _alas_! I would
fain say, bleed tears:"--
her deportment too as she stands gazing on the statue of Hermione, fixed
in wonder, admiration and sorrow, as if she too were marble--
O royal piece!
There's magic in thy majesty, which has
From thy admiring daughter ta'en the spirits,
Standing like stone beside thee!
are touches of character conveyed indirectly, and which serve to give a
more finished effect to this beautiful picture.
VIOLA.
As the innate dignity of Perdita pierces through her rustic disguise, so
the exquisite refinement of Viola triumphs over her masculine attire.
Viola is, perhaps, in a degree less elevated and ideal than Perdita, but
with a touch of sentiment more profound and heart-stirring; she is
"deep-learned in the lore of love,"--at least theoretically,--and speaks
as masterly on the subject as Perdita does of flowers.
DUKE.
How dost thou like this tune?
VIOLA.
It gives a very echo to the seat
Where love is thron'd.
And again,
If I did love you in my master's flame,
With such a suffering, such a deadly life--
in your denial I would find no sense,
I would not understand it.
OLIVIA.
Why, what would you do?
VIOLA.
Make me a willow cabin at your gate,
And call upon my soul within the house;
Write loyal cantons[35] of contemned love,
And sing them loud even in the dead of night.
Holla your name to the reverberate hills,
And make babbling gossip of the air
Cry out, Olivia! O you should not rest
Between the elements of air and earth,
But you should pity me.
OLIVIA.
You might do much.
The situation and the character of Viola have been censured for their
want of consistency and probability; it is therefore worth while to
examine how far this criticism is true. As for her situation in the
drama, (of which she is properly the heroine,) it is shortly this. She
is shipwrecked on the coast of Illyria: she is alone and without
protection in a strange country. She wishes to enter into the service of
the Countess Olivia; but she is assured that this is impossible; "for
the lady having recently lost an only and beloved brother, has abjured
the sight of men, has shut herself up in her palace, and will admit no
kind of suit." In this perplexity Viola remembers to have heard her
father speak with praise and admiration of Orsino, the Duke of the
country; and having ascertained that he is not married, and that
therefore his court is not a proper asylum for her in her feminine
character, she attires herself in the disguise of a page, as the best
protection against uncivil comments, till she can gain some tidings of
her brother.
If we carry our thoughts back to a romantic and chivalrous age, there is
surely sufficient probability here for all the purposes of poetry. To
pursue the thread of Viola's destiny;--she is engaged in the service of
the Duke, whom she finds "fancy-sick" for the love of Olivia. We are
left to infer, (for so it is hinted in the first scene,) that this
Duke--who with his accomplishments, and his personal attractions, his
taste for music, his chivalrous tenderness, and his unrequited love, is
really a very fascinating and poetical personage, though a little
passionate and fantastic--had already made some impression on Viola's
imagination; and when she comes to play the confidante, and to be loaded
with favors and kindness in her assumed character, that she should be
touched by a passion made up of pity, admiration, gratitude, and
tenderness, does not, I think, in any way detract from the genuine
sweetness and delicacy of her character, for "_she never told her
love_."
Now all this, as the critic wisely observes, may not present a very just
picture of life; and it may also fail to impart any moral lesson for the
especial profit of well-bred young ladies; but is it not in truth and in
nature? Did it ever fail to charm or to interest, to seize on the
coldest fancy, to touch the most insensible heart?
Viola then is the chosen favorite of the enamoured Duke, and becomes his
messenger to Olivia, and the interpreter of his sufferings to that
inaccessible beauty. In her character of a youthful page, she attracts
the favor of Olivia, and excites the jealousy of her lord. The situation
is critical and delicate; but how exquisitely is the character of Viola
fitted to her part, carrying her through the ordeal with all the inward
and spiritual grace of modesty. What beautiful propriety in the
distinction drawn between Rosalind and Viola! The wild sweetness, the
frolic humor which sports free and unblamed amid the shades of Ardennes,
would ill become Viola, whose playfulness is assumed as part of her
disguise as a court-page, and is guarded by the strictest delicacy. She
has not, like Rosalind, a saucy enjoyment in her own incognito; her
disguise does not sit so easily upon her; her heart does not beat freely
under it. As in the old ballad, where "Sweet William" is detected
weeping in secret over her "man's array,"[36] so in Viola, a sweet
consciousness of her feminine nature is for ever breaking through her
masquerade:--
And on her cheek is ready with a blush
Modest as morning, when she coldly eyes
The youthful Phoebus.
She plays her part well, but never forgets nor allows us to forget, that
she is playing a part.
OLIVIA.
Are you a comedian?
VIOLA.
No, my profound heart! and yet by the very fangs of
malice I swear, I am not that I play!
And thus she comments on it:--
Disguise, I see thou art wickedness,
Wherein the pregnant enemy does much;
How easy is it for the proper false
In women's waxen hearts to set their forms!
Alas! our frailty is the cause, not we.
The feminine cowardice of Viola, which will not allow her even to affect
a courage becoming her attire,--her horror at the idea of drawing a
sword, is very natural and characteristic; and produces a most humorous
effect, even at the very moment it charms and interests us.
Contrasted with the deep, silent, patient love of Viola for the Duke, we
have the lady-like wilfulness of Olivia; and her sudden passion, or
rather fancy, for the disguised page, takes so beautiful a coloring of
poetry and sentiment, that we do not think her forward. Olivia is like a
princess of romance, and has all the privileges of one; she is, like
Portia, high born and high bred, mistress over her servants--but not
like Portia, "queen o'er herself." She has never in her life been
opposed; the first contradiction, therefore, rouses all the woman in
her, and turns a caprice into a headlong passion; yet she apologizes for
herself.
I have said too much unto a heart of stone,
And laid mine honor too unchary out;
There's something in me that reproves my fault;
But such a headstrong potent fault it is,
That it but mocks reproof!
And in the midst of her self-abandonment, never allows us to contemn,
even while we pity her:--
What shall you ask of me that I'll deny.
That honor, saved, may upon asking give?
The distance of rank which separates the Countess from the youthful
page--the real sex of Viola--the dignified elegance of Olivia's
deportment, except where passion gets the better of her pride--her
consistent coldness towards the Duke--the description of that "smooth,
discreet, and stable bearing" with which she rules her household--her
generous care for her steward Malvolio, in the midst of her own
distress,--all these circumstances raise Olivia in our fancy, and render
her caprice for the page a source of amusement and interest, not a
subject of reproach. _Twelfth Night_ is a genuine comedy;--a perpetual
spring of the gayest and the sweetest fancies. In artificial society men
and women are divided into castes and classes, and it is rarely that
extremes in character or manners can approximate. To blend into one
harmonious picture the utmost grace and refinement of sentiment, and
the broadest effects of humor; the most poignant wit, and the most
indulgent benignity;--in short, to bring before us in the same scene,
Viola and Olivia, with Malvolio and Sir Toby, belonged only to Nature
and to Shakspeare.
OPHELIA.
A woman's affections, however strong, are sentiments, when they run
smooth; and become passions only when opposed.
In Juliet and Helena, love is depicted as a passion, properly so called;
that is, a natural impulse, throbbing in the heart's blood, and mingling
with the very sources of life;--a sentiment more or less modified by the
imagination; a strong abiding principle and motive, excited by
resistance, acting upon the will, animating all the other faculties, and
again influenced by them. This is the most complex aspect of love, and
in these two characters, it is depicted in colors at once the most
various, the most intense, and the most brilliant.
In Viola and Perdita, love, being less complex, appears more refined;
more a sentiment than a passion--a compound of impulse and fancy, while
the reflective powers and moral energies are more faintly developed. The
same remark applies also to Julia and Silvia, in the Two Gentlemen of
Verona, and, in a greater degree, to Hermia and Helena in the Midsummer
Night's Dream. In the two latter, though perfectly discriminated, love
takes the visionary fanciful cast, which belongs to the whole piece; it
is scarcely a passion or a sentiment, but a dreamy enchantment, a
reverie, which a fairy spell dissolves or fixes at pleasure.
But there was yet another possible modification of the sentiment, as
combined with female nature; and this Shakspeare has shown to us. He has
portrayed two beings, in whom all intellectual and moral energy is in a
manner latent, if existing; in whom love is an unconscious impulse, and
imagination lends the external charm and hue, not the internal power; in
whom the feminine character appears resolved into its very elementary
principles--as modesty, grace,[37] tenderness. _Without_ these a woman
is no woman, but a thing which, luckily, wants a name yet; _with_ these,
though every other faculty were passive or deficient, she might still be
herself. These are the inherent qualities with which God sent us into
the world: they may be perverted by a bad education--they may be
obscured by harsh and evil destinies--they may be overpowered by the
development of some particular mental power, the predominance of some
passion--but they are never wholly crushed out of the woman's soul,
while it retains those faculties which render it responsible to its
Creator. Shakspeare then has shown us that these elemental feminine
qualities, modesty, grace, tenderness, when expanded under genial
influences, suffice to constitute a perfect and happy human creature:
such is Miranda. When thrown alone amid harsh and adverse destinies, and
amid the trammels and corruptions of society, without energy to resist,
or will to act, or strength to endure, the end must needs be desolation.
Ophelia--poor Ophelia! O far too soft, too good, too fair, to be cast
among the briers of this working-day world, and fall and bleed upon the
thorns of life! What shall be said of her? for eloquence is mute before
her! Like a strain of sad sweet music which comes floating by us on the
wings of night and silence, and which we rather feel than hear--like the
exhalation of the violet dying even upon the sense it charms--like the
snow-flake dissolved in air before it has caught a stain of earth--like
the light surf severed from the billow, which a breath disperses--such
is the character of Ophelia: so exquisitely delicate, it seems as if a
touch would profane it; so sanctified in our thoughts by the last and
worst of human woes, that we scarcely dare to consider it too deeply.
The love of Ophelia, which she never once confesses, is like a secret
which we have stolen from her, and which ought to die upon our hearts as
upon her own. Her sorrows ask not words but tears; and her madness has
precisely the same effect that would be produced by the spectacle of
real insanity, if brought before us: we feel inclined to turn away, and
veil our eyes in reverential pity and too painful sympathy.
Beyond every character that Shakspeare has drawn, (Hamlet alone
excepted,) that of Ophelia makes us forget the poet in his own creation.
Whenever we bring her to mind, it is with the same exclusive sense of
her real existence, without reference to the wondrous power which called
her into life. The effect (and what an effect!) is produced by means so
simple, by strokes so few, and so unobtrusive, that we take no thought
of them. It is so purely natural and unsophisticated, yet so profound in
its pathos, that, as Hazlitt observes, it takes us back to the old
ballads; we forget that, in its perfect artlessness, it is the supreme
and consummate triumph of art.
The situation of Ophelia in the story,[38] is that of a young girl who,
at an early age, is brought from a life of privacy into the circle of a
court--a court such as we read of in those early times, at once rude,
magnificent, and corrupted. She is placed immediately about the person
of the queen, and is apparently her favorite attendant. The affection
of the wicked queen for this gentle and innocent creature, is one of
those beautiful redeeming touches, one of those penetrating glances into
the secret springs of natural and feminine feeling which we find only in
Shakspeare. Gertrude, who is not so wholly abandoned but that there
remains within her heart some sense of the virtue she has forfeited,
seems to look with a kind yet melancholy complacency on the lovely being
she has destined for the bride of her son; and the scene in which she is
introduced as scattering flowers on the grave of Ophelia, is one of
those effects of contrast in poetry, in character and in feeling, at
once natural and unexpected; which fill the eye, and make the heart
swell and tremble within itself--like the nightingales singing in the
grove of the Furies in Sophocles.[39]
Again, in the father of Ophelia, the Lord Chamberlain Polonius--the
shrewd, wary, subtle, pompous, garrulous old courtier--have we not the
very man who would send his son into the world to see all, learn all it
could teach of good and evil, but keep his only daughter as far as
possible from every taint of that world he knew so well? So that when
she is brought to the court, she seems in her loveliness and perfect
purity, like a seraph that had wandered out of bounds, and yet breathed
on earth the air of paradise. When her father and her brother find it
necessary to warn her simplicity, give her lessons of worldly wisdom,
and instruct her "to be scanter of her maiden presence," for that
Hamlet's vows of love "but breathe like sanctified and pious bonds, the
better to beguile," we feel at once that it comes too late; for from the
moment she appears on the scene amid the dark conflict of crime and
vengeance, and supernatural terrors, we know what must be her destiny.
Once, at Murano, I saw a dove caught in a tempest; perhaps it was young,
and either lacked strength of wing to reach its home, or the instinct
which teaches to shun the brooding storm; but so it was--and I watched
it, pitying, as it flitted, poor bird hither and thither, with its
silver pinions shining against the black thunder-cloud, till, after a
few giddy whirls, it fell blinded, affrighted, and bewildered, into the
turbid wave beneath, and was swallowed up forever. It reminded me then
of the fate of Ophelia; and now when I think of her, I see again before
me that poor dove, beating with weary wing, bewildered amid the storm.
It is the helplessness of Ophelia, arising merely from her innocence,
and pictured without any indication of weakness, which melts us with
such profound pity. She is so young, that neither her mind nor her
person have attained maturity; she is not aware of the nature of her own
feelings; they are prematurely developed in their full force before she
has strength to bear them; and love and grief together rend and shatter
the frail texture of her existence, like the burning fluid poured into a
crystal vase. She says very little, and what she does say seems rather
intended to hide than to reveal the emotions of her heart; yet in those
few words we are made as perfectly acquainted with her character, and
with what is passing in her mind, as if she had thrown forth her soul
with all the glowing eloquence of Juliet. Passion with Juliet seems
innate, a part of her being, "as dwells the gathered lightning in the
cloud;" and we never fancy her but with the dark splendid eyes and
Titian-like complexion of the south. While in Ophelia we recognize as
distinctly the pensive, fair-haired, blue-eyed daughter of the north,
whose heart seems to vibrate to the passion she has inspired, more
conscious of being loved than of loving; and yet, alas! loving in the
silent depths of her young heart far more than she is loved.
When her brother warns her against Hamlet's importunities--
For Hamlet, and the trifling of his favor,
Hold it a fashion, and a toy of blood,
A violet in the youth of primy nature,
Forward not permanent, sweet not lasting,
The perfume and the suppliance of a minute--
No more!
she replies with a kind of half consciousness--
No more but so?
LAERTES.
Think it no more.
He concludes his admonition with that most beautiful passage, in which
the soundest sense, the most excellent advice, is conveyed in a strain
of the most exquisite poetry.
The chariest maid is prodigal enough,
If she unmask her beauty to the moon:
Virtue itself 'scapes not calumnious strokes.
The canker galls the infants of the spring
Too oft before their buttons be disclos'd:
And in the morn and liquid dew of youth,
Contagious blastments are most imminent.
She answers with the same modesty, yet with a kind of involuntary
avowal, that his fears are not altogether without cause:--
I shall the effect of this good lesson keep
As watchman to my heart. But, good my brother,
Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven;
Whilst, like the puff'd and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,
And recks not his own read.[40]