As well as it does you; and I should do it
With much more ease; for my good will is to it,
And yours against.
* * * *
MIRANDA.
You look wearily.
FERDINAND.
No, noble mistress; 'tis fresh morning with me
When you are by at night. I do beseech you,
(Chiefly that I might set it in my prayers,)
What is your name?
MIRANDA.
Miranda. O my father
I have broke your 'hest to say so!
FERDINAND.
Admir'd Miranda!
Indeed the top of admiration; worth
What's dearest to the world! Full many a lady
I have eyed with best regard: and many a time
The harmony of their tongues hath into bondage
Brought my too diligent ear: for several virtues
Have I liked several women; never any
With so full soul, but some defect in her
Did quarrel with the noblest grace she owed
And put it to the foil. But you, O you,
So perfect and so peerless, are created
Of every creature's best!
MIRANDA.
I do not know
One of my sex: no woman's face remember,
Save, from my glass, mine own; nor have I seen
Mere that I may call men, than you, good friend,
And my dear father. How features are abroad
I am skill-less of: but, by my modesty,
(The jewel in my dower,) I would not wish
Any companion in the world but you;
Nor can imagination form a shape,
Besides yourself, to like of--But I prattle
Something too wildly, and my father's precepts
Therein forget.
FERDINAND.
I am, in my condition
A prince, Miranda--I do think a king--
(I would, not so!) and would no more endure
This wooden slavery, than I would suffer
The flesh-fly blow my mouth. Hear my soul speak
The very instant that I saw you, did
My heart fly to your service; there resides,
To make me slave to it; and for your sake,
Am I this patient log-man.
MIRANDA.
Do you love me?
FERDINAND.
O heaven! O earth! bear witness to this sound
And crown what I profess with kind event,
If I speak true: if hollowly, invert
What best is boded me, to mischief! I,
Beyond all limit of what else i' the world,
Do love, prize, honor you.
MIRANDA.
I am a fool,
To weep at what I am glad of.
FERDINAND.
Wherefore weep you
MIRANDA.
At mine unworthiness, that dare not offer
What I desire to give; and much less take,
What I shall die to want--But this is trifling:
And all the more it seeks to hide itself,
The bigger bulk it shows. Hence, bashful cunning;
And prompt me, plain and holy innocence!
I am your wife, if you will marry me;
If not I'll die your maid: to be your fellow
You may deny me; but I'll be your servant
Whether you will or no!
FERDINAND.
My mistress, dearest!
And I thus humble ever.
MIRANDA.
My husband, then?
FERDINAND.
Ay, with a heart as willing,
As bondage e'er of freedom. Here's my hand.
MIRANDA.
And mine with my heart in it. And now farewell
Till half an hour hence.
As Miranda, being what she is, could only have had a Ferdinand for a
lover, and an Ariel for her attendant, so she could have had with
propriety no other father than the majestic and gifted being, who fondly
claims her as "a thread of his own life--nay, that for which he lives."
Prospero, with his magical powers, his superhuman wisdom, his moral
worth and grandeur, and his kingly dignity, is one of the most sublime
visions that ever swept with ample robes, pale brow, and sceptred hand,
before the eye of fancy. He controls the invisible world, and works
through the agency of spirits: not by any evil and forbidden compact,
but solely by superior might of intellect--by potent spells gathered
from the lore of ages, and abjured when he mingles again as a man with
his fellow men. He is as distinct a being from the necromancers and
astrologers celebrated in Shakspeare's age, as can well be imagined:[46]
and all the wizards of poetry and fiction, even Faust and St. Leon, sink
into common-places before the princely, the philosophic, the benevolent
Prospero.
The Bermuda Isles, in which Shakspeare has placed the scene of the
Tempest, were discovered in his time: Sir George Somers and his
companions having been wrecked there in a terrible storm,[47] brought
back a most fearful account of those unknown islands, which they
described as "a land of devils--a most prodigious and enchanted place,
subject to continual tempests and supernatural visitings." Such was the
idea entertained of the "still-vext Bermoothes" in Shakspeare's age; but
later travellers describe them as perfect regions of enchantment in a
far different sense; as so many fairy Edens, clustered like a knot of
gems upon the bosom of the Atlantic, decked out in all the lavish
luxuriance of nature, with shades of myrtle and cedar, fringed round
with groves of coral; in short, each island a tiny paradise, rich with
perpetual blossoms, in which Ariel might have slumbered, and
ever-verdant bowers, in which Ferdinand and Miranda might have strayed:
so that Shakspeare, in blending the wild relations of the shipwrecked
mariners with his own inspired fancies, has produced nothing, however
lovely in nature and sublime in magical power, which does not harmonize
with the beautiful and wondrous reality.
There is another circumstance connected with the Tempest, which is
rather interesting. It was produced and acted for the first time upon
the occasion of the nuptials of the Princess Elizabeth, the eldest
daughter of James I. with Frederic, the elector palatine. It is hardly
necessary to remind the reader of the fate of this amiable but most
unhappy woman, whose life, almost from the period of her marriage, was
one long tempestuous scene of trouble and adversity.
* * * * *
The characters which I have here classed together, as principally
distinguished by the predominance of passion and fancy, appear to me to
rise, in the scale of ideality and simplicity, from Juliet to Miranda;
the last being in comparison so refined, so elevated above all stain of
earth, that we can only acknowledge her in connection with it through
the emotions of sympathy she feels and inspires.
I remember, when I was in Italy, standing "at evening on the top of
Fiesole," and at my feet I beheld the city of Florence and the Val
d'Arno, with its villas, its luxuriant gardens, groves, and olive
grounds, all bathed in crimson light. A transparent vapor or exhalation,
which in its tint was almost as rich as the pomegranate flower, moving
with soft undulation, rolled through the valley, and the very earth
seemed to pant with warm life beneath its rosy veil. A dark purple
shade, the forerunner of night, was already stealing over the east; in
the western sky still lingered the blaze of the sunset, while the faint
perfume of trees, and flowers, and now and then a strain of music wafted
upwards, completed the intoxication of the senses. But I looked from the
earth to the sky, and immediately above this scene hung the soft
crescent moon--alone, with all the bright heaven to herself; and as that
sweet moon to the glowing landscape beneath it, such is the character of
Miranda compared to that of Juliet.
FOOTNOTES:
[17] Lord Byron remarked of the Italian women, (and he could speak _avec
connaissance de fait_,) that they are the only women in the world
capable of impressions, at once very sudden and very durable; which, he
adds, is to be found in no other nation. Mr. Moore observes afterwards,
how completely an Italian woman, either from nature or her social
position, is led to invert the usual course of frailty among ourselves,
and, weak in resisting the first impulses of passion, to reserve the
whole strength of her character for a display of constancy and
devotedness afterwards.--Both these traits of national character are
exemplified in Juliet--_Moore's Life of Byron_, vol. ii. pp. 303, 338.
4to edit.
[18] _La seve de la vie_, is an expression used somewhere by Madame de
Stael.
[19] Characters of Shakspeare's Plays.
[20] I must allude, but with reluctance, to another character, which I
have heard likened to Juliet, and often quoted as the heroine _par
excellence_ of amatory fiction--I mean the Julie of Rousseau's Nouvelle
Heloise; I protest against her altogether. As a creation of fancy the
portrait is a compound of the most gross and glaring inconsistencies; as
false and impossible to the reflecting and philosophical mind, as the
fabled Syrens, Hamatryads and Centaurs to the eye of the anatomist. As a
woman, Julie belongs neither to nature nor to artificial society; and if
the pages of melting and dazzling eloquence in which Rousseau has
garnished out his idol did not blind and intoxicate us, as the incense
and the garlands did the votaries of Isis, we should be disgusted.
Rousseau, having composed his Julie of the commonest clay of the earth,
does not animate her with fire from heaven, but breathes his own spirit
into her, and then calls the "impetticoated" paradox a _woman_. He makes
her a peg on which to hang his own visions and sentiments--and what
sentiments! but that I fear to soil my pages, I would pick out a few of
them, and show the difference between this strange combination of youth
and innocence, philosophy and pedantry, sophistical prudery, and
detestable _grossierete_, and our own Juliet. No! if we seek a French
Juliet, we must go far--far back to the real Heloise, to her eloquence,
her sensibility, her fervor of passion, her devotedness of truth. She,
at least, married the man she loved, and loved the man she married, and
more than died for him; but enough of both.
[21] Constant describes her beautifully--"Sa voix si douce au travers le
bruit des armes, sa forme delicate au milieu de cet hommes tous couverts
de fer, la purete de son ame opposee leurs calculs avides, son calme
celeste qui contraste avec leurs agitations, remplissent le spectateur
d'une emotion constante et melancolique, telle que ne la fait ressentir
nulle tragedie ordinaire."
[22] Coleridge--preface to Wallenstein.
[23] In the "Two Gentlemen of Verona."
[24] There is an allusion to this court language of love in "All Well
that Ends Well," where Helena says,--
There shall your master have a thousand loves--
A guide, a goddess, and a sovereign;
A counsellor, a traitress, and a dear,
His humble ambition, proud humility,
His jarring concord, and his discord dulcut,
His faith, his sweet disaster, with a world
Of pretty fond adoptious Christendoms
That blinking Cupid gossips.--ACT I SCENE 1
The courtly poets of Elizabeth's time, who copied the Italian
sonnetteers of the sixteenth century, are full of these quaint conceits.
[25] Since this was written, I have met with some remarks of a similar
tendency in that most interesting book, "The Life of Lord E.
Fitzgerald."
[26] Juliet, courageously drinking off the potion, after she has placed
before herself in the most fearful colors all its possible consequences,
is compared by Schlegel to the famous story of Alexander and his
physician.
[27]
Perhaps 'tis pretty to force together
Thoughts so all unlike each other;
To mutter and mock a broken charm,
To dally with wrong that does no harm!
Perhaps 'tis tender, too, and pretty,
At each wild word to feel within
A sweet recoil of love and pity.
And what if in a world of sin
(O sorrow and shame should this be true!)
Such giddiness of heart and brain
Comes seldom save from rage and pain,
So talks as it's most used to do?
COLERIDGE.
These lines seem to me to form the truest comment on Juliet's wild
exclamations against Romeo.
[28] "The censure," observes Schlegel, "originates in a fanciless way of
thinking, to which every thing appears unnatural that does not suit its
tame insipidity. Hence an idea has been formed of simple and natural
pathos which consists in exclamations destitute of imagery, and nowise
elevated above every-day life; but energetic passions electrify the
whole mental powers and will, consequently, in highly-favored natures,
express themselves in an ingenious and figurative manner."
[29] The "Giulietta" of Luigi da Porta was written about 1520. In a
popular little book published in 1565, thirty years before Shakspeare
wrote his tragedy, the name of Juliet occurs as an example of faithful
love, and is thus explained by a note in the margin. "Juliet, a noble
maiden of the citie of Verona, which loved Romeo, eldest son of the Lord
Monteschi; and being privily married together, he at last poisoned
himself for love of her: she, for sorrow of his death, slew herself with
his dagger." This note, which furnishes, in brief, the whole argument of
Shakspeare's play, might possibly have made the first impression on his
fancy. In the novel of Da Porta the catastrophe is altogether different.
After the death of Romeo, the Friar Lorenzo endeavors to persuade Juliet
to leave the fatal monument. She refuses; and throwing herself back on
the dead body of her husband, she resolutely holds her breath and
dies.--"E voltatasi al giacente corpo di Romeo, il cui capo sopra un
origliere, che con lei uell' arca era stato lasciato, posto aveva; gli
occhi meglio rinchiusi avendogli, e di lagrime il freddo volto
bagnandogli, disse;" Che debbo senza di te in vita piu fare, signor mio?
e che altro mi resta verso te se non colla mia morte seguirti? "E detto
questo, la sua gran sciagura nell' animo recatasi, e la perdita del caro
amante ricordandosi, deliberando di piu non vivere, raccolto a se il
fiato, e per buono spazio tenutolo, e poscia con un gran grido fuori
mandandolo, sopra il morto corpo, morta ricadde."
There is nothing so improbable in the story of Romeo and Juliet as to
make us doubt the tradition that it is a real fact. "The Veronese," says
Lord Byron, in one of his letters from Verona, "are tenacious to a
degree of the truth of Juliet's story, insisting on the fact, giving the
date 1303, and showing a tomb. It is a plain, open, and partly decayed
sarcophagus, with withered leaves in it, in a wild and desolate
conventual garden--once a cemetery, now ruined, to the very graves! The
situation struck me as very appropriate to the legend, being blighted as
their love." He might have added, that when Verona itself, with its
amphitheatre and its Paladian structures, lies level with the earth, the
very spot on which it stood will be consecrated by the memory of Juliet.
When in Italy, I met a gentleman, who being then "_dans le genre
romantique_," wore a fragment of Juliet's tomb set in a ring.
[30] Foster's Essays
[31] I have read somewhere that the play of which Helena is the heroine,
(All's Well that Ends Well,) was at first entitled by Shakspeare "Love's
Labor Won." Why the title was altered or by whom I cannot discover.
[32] i. e. I care as much for as I do for heaven.
[33] New Monthly Magazine, vol. iv.
[34] Percy's Reliques.
[35] i. e. _canzons_, songs
[36] Percy's Reliques, vol. iii.--see the ballad of the "Lady turning
Serving Man."
[37] By this word, as used here, I would be understood to mean that
inexpressible something within the soul, which tends to the good, the
beautiful, the true, and is the antipodes to the vulgar, the violent,
and the false;--that which we see diffused externally over the form and
movements, where there is perfect innocence and unconsciousness, as in
children.
[38] _i. e._ In the story of the drama; for in the original "History of
Amleth the Dane," from which Shakspeare drew his materials, there is a
woman introduced who is employed as an instrument to seduce Amleth, but
not even the germ of the character of Ophelia.
[39] In the Oedipus Coloneus
[40] "And recks not his own read," _i. e._ heeds not his own lesson.
[41] Blackwood's Magazine, vol. 11.
[42] Act iii. scene 1.
[43] Goethe. See the analysis of Hamlet in Wilhelm Meister
[44] The Iphigenia in Aulis of Euripides.
[45] Goethe
[46] Such as Cornelius Agrippa, Michael Scott, Dr. Dee. The last was the
contemporary of Shakspeare.
[47] In 1609, about three years before Shakspeare produced the Tempest,
which, though placed first in all the editions of his works, was one of
the last of his dramas.
CHARACTERS OF THE AFFECTIONS
HERMIONE.
Characters in which the affections and the moral qualities predominate
over fancy and all that bears the name of passion, are not, when we meet
with them in real life, the most striking and interesting, nor the
easiest to be understood and appreciated; but they are those on which,
in the long run, we repose with increasing confidence and ever-new
delight. Such characters are not easily exhibited in the colors of
poetry, and when we meet with them there, we are reminded of the effect
of Raffaelle's pictures. Sir Joshua Reynolds assures us, that it took
him three weeks to discover the beauty of the frescos in the Vatican;
and many, if they spoke the truth, would prefer one of Titian's or
Murillo's Virgins to one of Raffaelle's heavenly Madonnas. The less
there is of marked expression or vivid color in a countenance or
character, the more difficult to delineate it in such a manner as to
captivate and interest us: but when this is done, and done to
perfection, it is the miracle of poetry in painting, and of painting in
poetry. Only Raffaelle and Correggio have achieved it in one case, and
only Shakspeare in the other.
When, by the presence or the agency of some predominant and exciting
power, the feelings and affections are upturned from the depths of the
heart, and flung to the surface, the painter or the poet has but to
watch the workings of the passions, thus in a manner made visible, and
transfer them to his page or his canvas, in colors more or less
vigorous: but where all is calm without and around, to dive into the
profoundest abysses of character, trace the affections where they lie
hidden like the ocean springs, wind into the most intricate involutions
of the heart, patiently unravel its most delicate fibres, and in a few
graceful touches place before us the distinct and visible result,--to do
this demanded power of another and a rarer kind.
There are several of Shakspeare's characters which are especially
distinguished by this profound feeling in the conception, and subdued
harmony of tone in the delineation. To them may be particularly applied
the ingenious simile which Goethe has used to illustrate generally all
Shakspeare's characters, when he compares them to the old-fashioned
batches in glass cases, which not only showed the index pointing to the
hour, but the wheels and springs within, which set that index in motion.
Imogen, Desdemona, and Hermione, are three women placed in situations
nearly similar, and equally endowed with all the qualities which can
render that situation striking and interesting. They are all gentle,
beautiful, and innocent; all are models of conjugal submission, truth,
and tenderness, and all are victims of the unfounded jealousy of their
husbands. So far the parallel is close, but here the resemblance ceases;
the circumstances of each situation are varied with wonderful skill, and
the characters, which are as different as it is possible to imagine,
conceived and discriminated with a power of truth and a delicacy of
feeling yet more astonishing.
Critically speaking, the character of Hermione is the most simple in
point of dramatic effect, that of Imogen is the most varied and complex.
Hermione is most distinguished by her magnanimity and her fortitude,
Desdemona by her gentleness and refined grace, while Imogen combines all
the best qualities of both, with others which they do not possess;
consequently she is, as a character, superior to either; but considered
as women, I suppose the preference would depend on individual taste.
Hermione is the heroine of the first three acts of the Winter's Tale.
She is the wife of Leontes, king of Sicilia, and though in the prime of
beauty and womanhood, is not represented in the first bloom of youth.
Her husband on slight grounds suspects her of infidelity with his friend
Polixenes, king of Bohemia; the suspicion once admitted, and working on
a jealous, passionate, and vindictive mind, becomes a settled and
confirmed opinion. Hermione is thrown into a dungeon; her new-born
infant is taken from her, and by the order of her husband, frantic with
jealousy, exposed to death on a desert shore; she is herself brought to
a public trial for treason and incontinency, defends herself nobly, and
is pronounced innocent by the oracle. But at the very moment that she is
acquitted, she learns the death of the prince her son, who
Conceiving the dishonor of his mother,
Had straight declined, drooped, took it deeply,
Fastened and fixed the shame on't in himself,
Threw off his spirit, appetite, and sleep,
And downright languished.
She swoons away with grief, and her supposed death concludes the third
act. The last two acts are occupied with the adventures of her daughter
Perdita; and with the restoration of Perdita to the arms of her mother,
and the reconciliation of Hermione and Leontes, the piece concludes.
Such, in few words, is the dramatic situation. The character of Hermione
exhibits what is never found in the other sex, but rarely in our
own--yet sometimes;--dignity without pride, love without passion, and
tenderness without weakness. To conceive a character in which there
enters so much of the negative, required perhaps no rare and astonishing
effort of genius, such as created a Juliet, a Miranda, or a Lady
Macbeth; but to delineate such a character in the poetical form, to
develop it through the medium of action and dialogue, without the aid of
description: to preserve its tranquil, mild, and serious beauty, its
unimpassioned dignity, and at the same time keep the strongest hold upon
our sympathy and our imagination; and out of this exterior calm,
produce the most profound pathos, the most vivid impression of life and
internal power:--it is this which renders the character of Hermione one
of Shakspeare's masterpieces.
Hermione is a queen, a matron, and a mother: she is good and beautiful,
and royally descended. A majestic sweetness, a grand and gracious
simplicity, an easy, unforced, yet dignified self-possession, are in all
her deportment, and in every word she utters. She is one of those
characters, of whom it has been said proverbially, that "still waters
run deep." Her passions are not vehement, but in her settled mind the
sources of pain or pleasure, love or resentment, are like the springs
that feed the mountain lakes, impenetrable, unfathomable, and
inexhaustible.
Shakspeare has conveyed (as is his custom) a part of the character of
Hermione in scattered touches and through the impressions which she
produces on all around her. Her surpassing beauty is alluded to in few
but strong terms:--
This jealousy
Is for a precious creature; as she is rare
Must it be great.
Praise her but for this her out-door form,
'Which, on my faith, deserves high speech--'
If one by one you wedded all the world,
Or from the all that are, took something good
To make a perfect woman; she you killed
Would be unparalleled.
I might have looked upon my queen's full eyes,
Have taken treasure from her lips--
--and left them
More rich for what they yielded.
The expressions "most sacred lady," "dread mistress," "sovereign," with
which she is addressed or alluded to, the boundless devotion and respect
of those around her, and their confidence in her goodness and innocence,
are so many additional strokes in the portrait.
For her, my lord,
I dare my life lay down, and will do't, sir,
Please you t' accept it, that the queen is spotless
I' the eyes of heaven, and to you.
Every inch of woman in the world,
Ay, every dram of woman's flesh is false,
If she be so.
I would not be a stander-by to hear
My sovereign mistress clouded so, without
My present vengeance taken!
The mixture of playful courtesy, queenly dignity, and lady-like
sweetness, with which she prevails on Polixenes to prolong his visit, is
charming.
HERMIONE.
You'll stay!
POLIXENES.
No, madam.
HERMIONE.
Nay, but you will.
POLIXENES.
I may not, verily.
HERMIONE.
Verily!
You put me off with limber vows; but I,
Tho' you would seek t' unsphere the stars with oaths
Should still say, "Sir, no going!" Verily,
You shall _not_ go! A lady's verily is
As potent as a lord's. Will you go yet?
Force me to keep you as a prisoner,
Not like a guest?
And though the situation of Hermione admits but of few general
reflections, one little speech, inimitably beautiful and characteristic,
has become almost proverbial from its truth. She says:--