Slaughters a thousand, waiting upon that.
Our praises are our wages; you may ride us
With one soft kiss a thousand furlongs, ere
With spur we heat an acre.
She receives the first intimation of her husband's jealous suspicions
with incredulous astonishment. It is not that, like Desdemona, she does
not or cannot understand; but she _will_ not. When he accuses her more
plainly, she replies with a calm dignity:--
Should a villain say so--
The most replenished villain in the world--
He were as much more villain: you, my lord,
Do but mistake.
This characteristic composure of temper never forsakes her; and yet it
is so delineated that the impression is that of grandeur, and never
borders upon pride or coldness: it is the fortitude of a gentle but a
strong mind, conscious of its own innocence. Nothing can be more
affecting than her calm reply to Leontes, who, in his jealous rage,
heaps insult upon insult, and accuses her before her own attendants, as
no better "than one of those to whom the vulgar give bold titles."
How will this grieve you,
When you shall come to clearer knowledge, that
You have thus published me! Gentle my lord,
You scarce can right me thoroughly then, to say
You _did_ mistake.
Her mild dignity and saint-like patience, combined as they are with the
strongest sense of the cruel injustice of her husband, thrill us with
admiration as well as pity; and we cannot but see and feel, that for
Hermione to give way to tears and feminine complaints under such a blow,
would be quite incompatible with the character. Thus she says of
herself, as she is led to prison:--
There's some ill planet reigns:
I must be patient till the heavens look
With an aspect more favorable. Good my lords,
I am not prone to weeping, as our sex
Commonly are; the want of which vain dew
Perchance shall dry your pities; but I have
That honorable grief lodged here, that burns
Worse than tears drown. Beseech you all, my lords
With thought so qualified as your charities
Shall best instruct you, measure me; and so
The king's will be performed.
When she is brought to trial for supposed crimes, called on to defend
herself, "standing to prate and talk for life and honor, before who
please to come and hear," the sense of her ignominious situation--all
its shame and all its horror press upon her, and would apparently crush
even _her_ magnanimous spirit, but for the consciousness of her own
worth and innocence, and the necessity that exists for asserting and
defending both.
If powers divine
Behold our human actions, (as they do),
I doubt not, then, but innocence shall make
False accusation blush, and tyranny
Tremble at patience.
* * * *
For life, I prize it
As I weigh grief, which I would spare. For honor--
'Tis a derivative from me to mine,
And only that I stand for.
Her earnest, eloquent justification of herself, and her lofty sense of
female honor, are rendered more affecting and impressive by that
chilling despair that contempt for a life which has been made bitter to
her through unkindness, which is betrayed in every word of her speech,
though so calmly characteristic. When she enumerates the unmerited
insults which have been heaped upon her, it is without asperity or
reproach, yet in a tone which shows how completely the iron has entered
her soul. Thus, when Leontes threatens her with death:--
Sir, spare your threats;
The bug which you would fright me with, I seek.
To me can life be no commodity;
The crown and comfort of my life, your favor,
I do give lost; for I do feel it gone,
But know not how it went. My second joy,
The first-fruits of my body, from his presence
I am barr'd, like one infectious. My third comfort--
Starr'd most unluckily!--is from my breast,
The innocent milk in its most innocent mouth,
Haled out to murder. Myself on every post
Proclaimed a strumpet; with immodest hatred,
The childbed privilege denied, which 'longs
To women of all fashion. Lastly, hurried
Here to this place, i' the open air, before
I have got strength of limit. Now, my liege,
Tell me what blessings I have here alive,
That I should fear to die. Therefore, proceed,
But yet hear this; mistake me not. No! life,
I prize it not a straw:--but for mine honor.
(Which I would free,) if I shall be condemned
Upon surmises; all proof sleeping else,
But what your jealousies awake; I tell you,
'Tis rigor and not law.
The character of Hermione is considered open to criticism on one point.
I have heard it remarked that when she secludes herself from the world
for sixteen years, during which time she is mourned as dead by her
repentant husband, and is not won to relent from her resolve by his
sorrow, his remorse, his constancy to her memory; such conduct, argues
the critic, is unfeeling as it is inconceivable in a tender and virtuous
woman. Would Imogen have done so, who is so generously ready to grant a
pardon before it be asked? or Desdemona, who does not forgive because
she cannot even resent? No, assuredly; but this is only another proof of
the wonderful delicacy and consistency with which Shakspeare has
discriminated the characters of all three. The incident of Hermione's
supposed death and concealment for sixteen years, is not indeed very
probable in itself, nor very likely to occur in every-day life. But
besides all the probability necessary for the purposes of poetry, it has
all the likelihood it can derive from the peculiar character of
Hermione, who is precisely the woman who could and would have acted in
this manner. In such a mind as hers, the sense of a cruel injury,
inflicted by one she had loved and trusted, without awakening any
violent anger or any desire of vengeance, would sink deep--almost
incurably and lastingly deep. So far she is most unlike either Imogen or
Desdemona, who are portrayed as much more flexible in temper; but then
the circumstances under which she is wronged are very different, and far
more unpardonable. The self-created, frantic jealousy of Leontes is very
distinct from that of Othello, writhing under the arts of Iago: or that
of Posthumus, whose understanding has been cheated by the most damning
evidence of his wife's infidelity. The jealousy which in Othello and
Posthumus is an error of judgment, in Leontes is a vice of the blood;
he suspects without cause, condemns without proof; he is without
excuse--unless the mixture of pride, passion, and imagination, and the
predisposition to jealousy with which Shakspeare has portrayed him, be
considered as an excuse. Hermione has been openly insulted: he to whom
she gave herself, her heart, her soul, has stooped to the weakness and
baseness of suspicion; has doubted her truth, has wronged her love, has
sunk in her esteem, and forfeited her confidence. She has been branded
with vile names; her son, her eldest hope, is dead--dead through the
false accusation which has stuck infamy on his mother's name; and her
innocent babe, stained with illegitimacy, disowned and rejected, has
been exposed to a cruel death. Can we believe that the mere tardy
acknowledgment of her innocence could make amends for wrongs and agonies
such as these? or heal a heart which must have bled inwardly, consumed
by that untold grief, "which burns worse than tears drown?" Keeping in
view the peculiar character of Hermione, such as she is delineated, is
she one either to forgive hastily or forget quickly? and though she
might, in her solitude, mourn over her repentant husband, would his
repentance suffice to restore him at once to his place in her heart: to
efface from her strong and reflecting mind the recollection of his
miserable weakness? or can we fancy this high-souled woman--left
childless through the injury which has been inflicted on her, widowed in
heart by the unworthness of him she loved, a spectacle of grief to
all--to her husband a continual reproach and humiliation--walking
through the parade of royalty in the court which had witnessed her
anguish, her shame, her degradation, and her despair? Methinks that the
want of feeling, nature, delicacy, and consistency, would lie in such an
exhibition as this. In a mind like Hermione's, where the strength of
feeling is founded in the power of thought, and where there is little of
impulse or imagination,--"the depth, but not the tumult of the
soul,"[48]--there are but two influences which predominate over the
will,--time and religion. And what then remained, but that, wounded in
heart and spirit, she should retire from the world?--not to brood over
her wrongs, but to study forgiveness, and wait the fulfilment of the
oracle which had promised the termination of her sorrows. Thus a
premature reconciliation would not only have been painfully inconsistent
with the character; it would also have deprived us of that most
beautiful scene, in which Hermione is discovered to her husband as the
statue or image of herself. And here we have another instance of that
admirable art, with which the dramatic character is fitted to the
circumstances in which it is placed: that perfect command over her own
feelings, that complete self-possession necessary to this extraordinary
situation, is consistent with all that we imagine of Hermione: in any
other woman it would be so incredible as to shock all our ideas of
probability.
This scene, then, is not only one of the most picturesque and striking
instances of stage effect to be found in the ancient or modern drama,
but by the skilful manner in which it is prepared, it has, wonderful as
it appears, all the merit of consistency and truth. The grief, the love,
the remorse and impatience of Leontes, are finely contrasted with the
astonishment and admiration of Perdita, who, gazing on the figure of her
mother like one entranced, looks as if she were also turned to marble.
There is here one little instance of tender remembrance in Leontes,
which adds to the charming impression of Hermione's character.
Chide me, dear stone! that I may say indeed
Thou art Hermione; or rather thou art she
In thy not chiding, for she was as tender
As infancy and grace.
Thus she stood,
Even with such life of majesty--warm life--
As now it coldly stands--when first I woo'd her!
The effect produced on the different persons of the drama by this living
statue--an effect which at the same moment is, and is _not_
illusion--the manner in which the feelings of the spectators become
entangled between the conviction of death and the impression of life,
the idea of a deception and the feeling of a reality; and the exquisite
coloring of poetry and touches of natural feeling with which the whole
is wrought up, till wonder, expectation, and intense pleasure, hold our
pulse and breath suspended on the event,--are quite inimitable.
The expressions used here by Leontes,--
Thus she stood,
Even with such life of majesty--_warm life_.
The fixture of her eye has motion in't.
And we are mock'd by art!
And by Polixines,--
The very life seems warm upon her lip,
appear strangely applied to a statue, such as we usually imagine it--of
the cold colorless marble; but it is evident that in this scene Hermione
personates one of those images or effigies, such as we may see in the
old gothic cathedrals, in which the stone, or marble, was colored after
nature. I remember coming suddenly upon one of these effigies, either at
Basle or at Fribourg, which made me start: the figure was large as life;
the drapery of crimson, powdered with stars of gold; the face and eyes,
and hair, tinted after nature, though faded by time: it stood in a
gothic niche, over a tomb, as I think, and in a kind of dim uncertain
light. It would have been very easy for a living person to represent
such an effigy, particularly if it had been painted by that "rare
Italian master, Julio Romano,"[49] who, as we are informed, was the
reputed author of this wonderful statue.
The moment when Hermione descends from her pedestal, to the sound of
soft music, and throws herself without speaking into her husband's arms,
is one of inexpressible interest. It appears to me that her silence
during the whole of this scene (except where she invokes a blessing on
her daughter's head) is in the finest taste as a poetical beauty,
besides being an admirable trait of character. The misfortunes of
Hermione, her long religious seclusion, the wonderful and almost
supernatural part she has just enacted, have invested her with such a
sacred and awful charm, that any words put into her mouth, must, I
think, have injured the solemn and profound pathos of the situation.
There are several among Shakspeare's characters which exercise a far
stronger power over our feelings, our fancy, our understanding, than
that of Hermione; but not one,--unless perhaps Cordelia,--constructed
upon so high and pure a principle. It is the union of gentleness with
power which constitutes the perfection of mental grace. Thus among the
ancients, with whom the _graces_ were also the _charities_, (to show,
perhaps, that while form alone may constitute beauty, sentiment is
necessary to grace,) one and the same word signified equally _strength_
and _virtue_. This feeling, carried into the fine arts, was the secret
of the antique grace--the grace of repose. The same eternal nature--the
same sense of immutable truth and beauty, which revealed this sublime
principle of art to the ancient Greeks, revealed it to the genius of
Shakspeare; and the character of Hermione, in which we have the same
largeness of conception and delicacy of execution,--the same effect of
suffering without passion, and grandeur without effort, is an instance,
I think, that he felt within himself, and by intuition, what we study
all our lives in the remains of ancient art. The calm, regular,
classical beauty of Hermione's character is the more impressive from the
wild and gothic accompaniments of her story, and the beautiful relief
afforded by the pastoral and romantic grace which is thrown around her
daughter Perdita.
The character of Paulina, in the Winter's Tale, though it has obtained
but little notice, and no critical remark, (that I have seen,) is yet
one of the striking beauties of the play: and it has its moral too. As
we see running through the whole universe that principle of contrast
which may be called the life of nature, so we behold it every where
illustrated in Shakspeare: upon this principle he has placed Emilia
beside Desdemona, the nurse beside Juliet; the clowns and dairy-maids,
and the merry peddler thief Autolycus round Florizel and Perdita;--and
made Paulina the friend of Hermione.
Paulina does not fill any ostensible office near the person of the
queen, but is a lady of high rank in the court--the wife of the Lord
Antigones. She is a character strongly drawn from real and common
life--a clever, generous, strong-minded, warmhearted woman, fearless in
asserting the truth, firm in her sense of right, enthusiastic in all her
affections: quick in thought, resolute in word, and energetic in action;
but heedless, hot-tempered, impatient, loud, bold, voluble, and
turbulent of tongue; regardless of the feelings of those for whom she
would sacrifice her life, and injuring from excess of zeal those whom
she most wishes to serve. How many such are there in the world! But
Paulina, though a very termagant, is yet a poetical termagant in her
way; and the manner in which all the evil and dangerous tendencies of
such a temper are placed before us, even while the individual character
preserves the strongest hold upon our respect and admiration, forms an
impressive lesson, as well as a natural and delightful portrait.
In the scene, for instance, where she brings the infant before Leontes,
with the hope of softening him to a sense of his injustice--"an office
which," as she observes, "becomes a woman best"--her want of
self-government, her bitter, inconsiderate reproaches, only add, as we
might easily suppose, to his fury.
PAULINA.
I say I come
From your good queen!
LEONTES.
Good queen!
PAULINA.
Good queen, my lord, good queen: I say good queen;
And would by combat make her good, so were I
A man, the worst about you.
LEONTES.
Force her hence.
PAULINA.
Let him that makes but trifles of his eyes,
First hand me: on mine own accord I'll off;
But first I'll do mine errand. The good queen
(For she is good) hath brought you forth a daughter--
Here 'tis; commends it to your blessing.
LEONTES.
Traitors!
Will you not push her out! Give her the bastard.
PAULINA.
Forever
Unvenerable be thy hands, if thou
Tak'st up the princess by that forced baseness
Which he has put upon't!
LEONTES.
He dreads his wife.
PAULINA.
So, I would _you_ did; then 'twere past all doubt
You'd call your children your's.
LEONTES.
A callat,
Of boundless tongue, who late hath beat her husband,
And now baits me!--this brat is none of mine.
PAULINA.
It is yours,
And might we lay the old proverb to your charge,
So like you, 'tis the worse.
* * * *
LEONTES.
A gross hag!
And lozel, thou art worthy to be hang'd,
That wilt not stay her tongue.
ANTIGONES.
Hang all the husbands
That cannot do that feat, you'll leave yourself
Hardly one subject.
LEONTES.
Once more, take her hence.
PAULINA.
A most unworthy and unnatural lord
Can do no more.
LEONTES.
I'll have thee burn'd.
PAULINA.
I care not:
It is an heretic that makes the fire,
Not she which burns in't.
Here, while we honor her courage and her affection, we cannot help
regretting her violence. We see, too, in Paulina, what we so often see
in real life, that it is not those who are most susceptible in their own
temper and feelings, who are most delicate and forbearing towards the
feelings of others. She does not comprehend, or will not allow for the
sensitive weakness of a mind less firmly tempered than her own. There
is a reply of Leontes to one of her cutting speeches, which is full of
feeling, and a lesson to those, who, with the best intentions in the
world, force the painful truth, like a knife, into the already lacerated
heart.
PAULINA.
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 kill'd
Would be unparallel'd.
LEONTES.
I think so. Kill'd!
She I kill'd? I did so: but thou strik'st me
Sorely, to say I did; it is as bitter
Upon thy tongue, as in my thought. Now, good now,
Say so but seldom.
CLEOMENES.
Not at all, good lady:
You might have spoken a thousand things that would
Have done the time more benefit, and grac'd
Your kindness better.
We can only excuse Paulina by recollecting that it is a part of her
purpose to keep alive in the heart of Leontes the remembrance of his
queen's perfections, and of his own cruel injustice. It is admirable,
too, that Hermione and Paulina, while sufficiently approximated to
afford all the pleasure of contrast, are never brought too nearly in
contact on the scene or in the dialogue;[50] for this would have been a
fault in taste, and have necessarily weakened the effect of both
characters:--either the serene grandeur of Hermione would have subdued
and overawed the fiery spirit of Paulina, or the impetuous temper of the
latter must have disturbed in some respect our impression of the calm,
majestic, and somewhat melancholy beauty of Hermione.
DESDEMONA.
The character of Hermione is addressed more to the imagination; that of
Desdemona to the feelings. All that can render sorrow majestic is
gathered round Hermione; all that can render misery heart-breaking is
assembled round Desdemona. The wronged but self-sustained virtue of
Hermione commands our veneration; the injured and defenceless innocence
of Desdemona so wrings the soul, "that all for pity we could die."
Desdemona, as a character, comes nearest to Miranda, both in herself as
a woman, and in the perfect simplicity and unity of the delineation; the
figures are differently draped--the proportions are the same. There is
the same modesty, tenderness, and grace; the same artless devotion in
the affections, the same predisposition to wonder, to pity, to admire;
the same almost ethereal refinement and delicacy; but all is pure poetic
nature within Miranda and around her: Desdemona is more associated with
the palpable realities of every-day existence, and we see the forms and
habits of society tinting her language and deportment; no two beings can
be more alike in character--nor more distinct as individuals.
The love of Desdemona for Othello appears at first such a violation of
all probabilities, that her father at once imputes it to magic, "to
spells and mixtures powerful o'er the blood."
She, in spite of nature,
Of years, of country, credit, every thing,
To fall in love with what she feared to look on!
And the devilish malignity of Iago, whose coarse mind cannot conceive an
affection founded purely in sentiment, derives from her love itself a
strong argument against her.
Ay, there's the point, as to be bold with you,
Not to affect any proposed matches
Of her own clime, complexion, and degree,
Whereto, we see, in all things nature tends,[51] &c.
Notwithstanding this disparity of age, character, country, complexion,
we, who are admitted into the secret, see her love rise naturally and
necessarily out of the leading propensities of her nature.
At the period of the story a spirit of wild adventure had seized all
Europe. The discovery of both Indies was yet recent; over the shores of
the western hemisphere still fable and mystery hung, with all their dim
enchantments, visionary terrors, and golden promises! perilous
expeditions and distant voyages were every day undertaken from hope of
plunder, or mere love of enterprise; and from these the adventurers
returned with tales of "Antres vast and desarts wild--of cannibals that
did each other eat--of Anthropophagi, and men whose heads did grow
beneath their shoulders." With just such stories did Raleigh and
Clifford, and their followers return from the New World: and thus by
their splendid or fearful exaggerations, which the imperfect knowledge
of those times could not refute, was the passion for the romantic and
marvellous nourished at home, particularly among the women. A cavalier
of those days had no nearer no surer way to his mistress's heart, than
by entertaining her with these wondrous narratives. What was a general
feature of his time, Shakspeare seized and adapted to his purpose with
the most exquisite felicity of effect. Desdemona, leaving her household
cares in haste, to hang breathless on Othello's tales, was doubtless a
picture from the life; and her inexperience and her quick imagination
lend it an added propriety: then her compassionate disposition is
interested by all the disastrous chances, hair-breadth 'scapes, and
moving accidents by flood and field, of which he has to tell; and her
exceeding gentleness and timidity, and her domestic turn of mind, render
her more easily captivated by the military renown, the valor, and lofty
bearing of the noble Moor--
And to his honors and his valiant parts
Does she her soul and fortunes consecrate.
The confession and the excuse for her love is well placed in the mouth
of Desdemona, while the history of the rise of that love, and of his
course of wooing, is, with the most graceful propriety, as far as she is
concerned, spoken by Othello, and in her absence. The last two lines
summing up the whole--
She loved me for the dangers I had passed,
And I loved her that she did pity them--
comprise whole volumes of sentiment and metaphysics.
Desdemona displays at times a transient energy, arising from the power
of affection, but gentleness gives the prevailing tone to the
character--gentleness in its excess--gentleness verging on
passiveness--gentleness, which not only cannot resent,--but cannot
resist.
OTHELLO.
Then of so gentle a condition!
IAGO.
Ay! too gentle.
OTHELLO.
Nay, that's certain