As thine was to thy husband; and this boy
Liker in feature to his father Geffrey,
Than thou and John in manners: being as like
As rain to water, or devil to his dam.
My boy a bastard! By my soul, I think
His father never was so true begot;
It cannot be, an if thou wert his mother.
ELINOR.
There's a good mother, boy, that blots thy father.
CONSTANCE.
There's a good grandam, boy, that would blot thee.
* * * *
ELINOR.
Come to thy grandam, child.
CONSTANCE.
Do child; go to its grandam, child:
Give grandam kingdom, and its grandam will
Give it a plum, a cherry, and a fig:
There's a good grandam.
ARTHUR.
Good my mother, peace!
I would that I were low laid in my grave;
I am not worth this coil that's made for me.
ELINOR.
His mother shames him so, poor boy, he weeps.
CONSTANCE.
Now shame upon you, whe'r she does or no!
His grandam's wrongs, and not his mother's shame,
Draw those heaven-moving pearls from his poor eyes
Which heaven shall take in nature of a fee:
Ay, with these crystal beads heav'n shall be bribed
To do him justice, and revenge on you.
ELINOR.
Thou monstrous slanderer of heaven and earth!
CONSTANCE.
Thou monstrous injurer of heaven and earth!
Call me not slanderer; thou and thine usurp
The dominations, royalties, and rights
Of this oppressed boy. This is thy eldest son's son
Infortunate in nothing but in thee.
* * * *
ELINOR.
Thou unadvised scold, I can produce
A will that bars the title of thy son.
CONSTANCE.
Ay, who doubts that? A will! a wicked will--
A woman's will--a canker'd grandam's will!
KING PHILIP.
Peace, lady: pause, or be more moderate.
And in a very opposite mood, when struggling with the consciousness of
her own helpless situation, the same susceptible and excitable fancy
still predominates:--
Thou shalt be punish'd for thus frighting me;
For I am sick, and capable of fears;
Oppressed with wrongs, and therefore full of fears
A widow, husbandless, subject to fears;
A woman, naturally born to fears;
And though thou now confess thou didst but jest
With my vexed spirits, I cannot take a truce,
But they will quake and tremble all this day.
What dost thou mean by shaking of thy head?
Why dost thou look so sadly on my son?
What means that hand upon that breast of thine?
Why holds thine eye that lamentable rheum,
Like a proud river peering o'er his bounds?
Be these sad signs confirmers of thy words?
* * * *
Fellow, begone! I cannot brook thy sight--
This news hath made thee a most ugly man!
It is the power of imagination which gives so peculiar a tinge to the
maternal tenderness of Constance; she not only loves her son with the
fond instinct of a mother's affection, but she loves him with her
poetical imagination, exults in his beauty and his royal birth, hangs
over him with idolatry, and sees his infant brow already encircled with
the diadem. Her proud spirit, her ardent enthusiastic fancy, and her
energetic self-will, all combine with her maternal love to give it that
tone and character which belongs to her only: hence that most beautiful
address to her son, which coming from the lips of Constance, is as full
of nature and truth as of pathos and poetry, and which we could hardly
sympathize with in any other:--
ARTHUR.
I do beseech you, madam, be content.
CONSTANCE.
If thou, that bid'st me be content, wert grim,
Ugly, and slanderous to thy mother's womb,
Full of unpleasing blots and sightless stains,
Lame, foolish, crooked, swart, prodigious.
Patched with foul moles and eye-offending marks,
I would not care--I then would be content;
For then I should not love thee; no, nor thou
Become thy great birth, nor deserve a crown.
But thou art fair, and at thy birth, dear boy!
Nature and Fortune join'd to make thee great:
Of Nature's gifts thou mayest with lilies boast,
And with the half-blown rose: but Fortune, O!
She is corrupted, chang'd, and won from thee;
She adulterates hourly with thine uncle John;
And with her golden hand hath pluck'd on France
To tread down fair respect of sovereignty.
It is this exceeding vivacity of imagination which in the end turns
sorrow to frenzy. Constance is not only a bereaved and doating mother,
but a generous woman, betrayed by her own rash confidence; in whose mind
the sense of injury mingling with the sense of grief, and her impetuous
temper conflicting with her pride, combine to overset her reason; yet
she is not mad: and how admirably, how forcibly she herself draws the
distinction between the frantic violence of uncontrolled feeling and
actual madness!--
Thou art not holy to belie me so;
I am not mad: this hair I tear is mine;
My name is Constance; I was Geffrey's wife;
Young Arthur is my son, and he is lost:
I am not mad; I would to Heaven I were!
For then, 'tis like I should forget myself:
O, if I could, what grief should I forget!
Not only has Constance words at will, and fast as the passionate
feelings rise in her mind they are poured forth with vivid, overpowering
eloquence; but, like Juliet, she may be said to speak in pictures. For
instance:--
Why holds thine eye that lamentable rheum?
Like a proud river peering o'er its bounds.
And throughout the whole dialogue there is the same overflow of
eloquence, the same splendor of diction, the same luxuriance of imagery;
yet with an added grandeur, arising from habits of command, from the
age, the rank, and the matronly character of Constance. Thus Juliet
pours forth her love like a muse in a rapture: Constance raves in her
sorrow like a Pythoness possessed with the spirit of pain. The love of
Juliet is deep and infinite as the boundless sea: and the grief of
Constance is so great, that nothing but the round world itself is able
to sustain it.
I will instruct my sorrows to be proud;
For grief is proud and makes his owner stout.
To me, and to the state of my great grief
Let kings assemble, for my grief's so great,
That no supporter but the huge firm earth
Can hold it up. Here I and Sorrow sit;
Here is my throne,--bid kings come bow to it!
An image more majestic, more wonderfully sublime, was never presented to
the fancy; yet almost equal as a flight of poetry is her apostrophe to
the heavens;--
Arm, arm, ye heavens, against these perjured kings
A widow calls!--be husband to me, heavens!
And again--
O that my tongue were in the thunder's mouth,
Then with a passion would I shake the world!
Not only do her thoughts start into images, but her feelings become
persons: grief haunts her as a living presence:
Grief fills the room up of my absent child;
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me;
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form;
Then have I reason to be fond of grief.
And death is welcomed as a bridegroom; she sees the visionary monster as
Juliet _saw_ "the bloody Tybalt festering in his shroud," and heaps one
ghastly image upon another with all the wild luxuriance of a distempered
fancy:--
O amiable, lovely death!
Thou odoriferous stench! sound rottenness!
Arise forth from the couch of lasting night,
Thou hate and terror to prosperity,
And I will kiss thy detestable bones;
And put my eye-balls in thy vaulty brows;
And right these fingers with thy household worms;
And stop this gap of breath with fulsome dust;
And be a carrion monster like thyself;
Come, grin on me, and I will think thou smil'st,
And buss thee as thy wife! Misery's love,
O come to me!
Constance, who is a majestic being, is majestic in her very frenzy.
Majesty is also the characteristic of Hermione: but what a difference
between _her_ silent, lofty, uncomplaining despair, and the eloquent
grief of Constance, whose wild lamentations, which come bursting forth
clothed in the grandest, the most poetical imagery, not only melt, but
absolutely electrify us!
On the whole, it may be said that pride and maternal affection form the
basis of the character of Constance, as it is exhibited to us; but that
these passions, in an equal degree common to many human beings, assume
their peculiar and individual tinge from an extraordinary development of
intellect and fancy. It is the energy of passion which lends the
character its concentrated power, as it is the prevalence of imagination
throughout which dilates it into magnificence.
Some of the most splendid poetry to be met with in Shakspeare, may be
found in the parts of Juliet and Constance; the most splendid, perhaps,
excepting only the parts of Lear and Othello; and for the same
reason,--that Lear and Othello as men, and Juliet and Constance as
women, are distinguished by the predominance of the same
faculties,--passion and imagination.
The sole deviation from history which may be considered as essentially
interfering with the truth of the situation, is the entire omission of
the character of Guy de Thouars, so that Constance is incorrectly
represented as in a state of widowhood, at a period when, in point of
fact, she was married. It may be observed, that her marriage took place
just at the period of the opening of the drama; that Guy de Thouars
played no conspicuous part in the affairs of Bretagne till after the
death of Constance, and that the mere presence of this personage,
altogether superfluous in the action, would have completely destroyed
the dramatic interest of the situation;--and what a situation! One more
magnificent was never placed before the mind's eye than that of
Constance, when, deserted and betrayed, she stands alone in her despair,
amid her false friends and her ruthless enemies![88] The image of the
mother-eagle, wounded and bleeding to death, yet stretched over her
young in an attitude of defiance, while all the baser birds of prey are
clamoring around her eyry, gives but a faint idea of the moral sublimity
of this scene. Considered merely as a poetical or dramatic picture, the
grouping is wonderfully fine; on one side, the vulture ambition of that
mean-souled tyrant, John; on the other, the selfish, calculating policy
of Philip: between them, balancing their passions in his hand, the cold,
subtle, heartless Legate: the fiery, reckless Falconbridge; the princely
Louis; the still unconquered spirit of that wrangling queen, old Elinor;
the bridal loveliness and modesty of Blanche; the boyish grace and
innocence of young Arthur; and Constance in the midst of them, in all
the state of her great grief, a grand impersonation of pride and
passion, helpless at once and desperate,--form an assemblage of figures,
each perfect in its kind, and, taken all together, not surpassed for the
variety, force, and splendor of the dramatic and picturesque effect.
QUEEN ELINOR.
Elinor of Guienne, and Blanche of Castile, who form part of the group
around Constance, are sketches merely, but they are strictly historical
portraits, and full of truth and spirit.
At the period when Shakspeare has brought these three women on the scene
together, Elinor of Guienne (the daughter of the last Duke of Guienne
and Aquitaine, and like Constance, the heiress of a sovereign duchy) was
near the close of her long, various, and unquiet life--she was nearly
seventy: and, as in early youth, her violent passions had overborne both
principle and policy, so in her old age we see the same character, only
modified by time; her strong intellect and love of power, unbridled by
conscience or principle, surviving when other passions were
extinguished, and rendered more dangerous by a degree of subtlety and
self-command to which her youth had been a stranger. Her personal and
avowed hatred for Constance, together with its motives, are mentioned by
the old historians. Holinshed expressly says, that Queen Elinor was
mightily set against her grandson Arthur, rather moved thereto by envy
conceived against his mother, than by any fault of the young prince, for
that she knew and dreaded the high spirit of the Lady Constance.
Shakspeare has rendered this with equal spirit and fidelity.
QUEEN ELINOR.
What now, my son! have I not ever said,
How that ambitious Constance would not cease,
Till she had kindled France and all the world
Upon the right and party of her son?
This might have been prevented and made whole
With very easy arguments of love;
Which now the manage of two kingdoms must
With fearful bloody issue arbitrate.
KING JOHN.
Our strong possession and our right for us!
QUEEN ELINOR.
Your strong possession much more than your right;
Or else it must go wrong with you and me.
So much my conscience whispers in your ear--
Which none but Heaven, and you, and I shall hear.
Queen Elinor preserved to the end of her life her influence over her
children, and appears to have merited their respect. While intrusted
with the government, during the absence of Richard I., she ruled with a
steady hand, and made herself exceedingly popular; and as long as she
lived to direct the counsels of her son John, his affairs prospered. For
that intemperate jealousy which converted her into a domestic firebrand,
there was at least much cause, though little excuse. Elinor had hated
and wronged the husband of her youth,[89] and she had afterwards to
endure the negligence and innumerable infidelities of the husband whom
she passionately loved:[90]--"and so the whirligig of time brought in
his revenges." Elinor died in 1203, a few months after Constance, and
before the murder of Arthur--a crime which, had she lived, would
probably never have been consummated; for the nature of Elinor, though
violent, had no tincture of the baseness and cruelty of her son.
BLANCHE.
Blanche of Castile was the daughter of Alphonso IX. of Castile, and the
grand-daughter of Elinor. At the time that she is introduced into the
drama, she was about fifteen, and her marriage with Louis VIII., then
Dauphin, took place in the abrupt manner here represented. It is not
often that political marriages have the same happy result. We are told
by the historians of that time, that from the moment Louis and Blanche
met, they were inspired by a mutual passion, and that during a union of
more than twenty-six years they were never known to differ, nor even
spent more than a single day asunder.[91]
In her exceeding beauty and blameless reputation; her love for her
husband, and strong domestic affections; her pride of birth and rank;
her feminine gentleness of deportment; her firmness of temper; her
religious bigotry; her love of absolute power, and her upright and
conscientious administration of it, Blanche greatly resembled Maria
Theresa of Austria. She was, however, of a more cold and calculating
nature; and in proportion as she was less amiable as a woman, did she
rule more happily for herself and others. There cannot be a greater
contrast than between the acute understanding, the steady temper, and
the cool intriguing policy of Blanche, by which she succeeded in
disuniting and defeating the powers arrayed against her and her infant
son, and the rash confiding temper and susceptible imagination of
Constance, which rendered herself and her son easy victims to the fraud
or ambition of others. Blanche, during forty years, held in her hands
the destinies of the greater part of Europe, and is one of the most
celebrated names recorded in history--but in what does she survive to us
except in a name? Nor history, nor fame, though "trumpet-tongued," could
do for _her_ what Shakspeare and poetry have done for Constance. The
earthly reign of Blanche is over, her sceptre broken, and her power
departed. When will the reign of Constance cease? when will _her_ power
depart? Not while this world is a world, and there exists in it human
souls to kindle at the touch of genius, and human hearts to throb with
human sympathies!
* * * * *
There is no female character of any interest in the play of Richard II.
The Queen (Isabelle of France) enacts the same passive part in the drama
that she does in history.
The same remark applies to Henry IV. In this admirable play there is no
female character of any importance; but Lady Percy, the wife of Hotspur,
is a very lively and beautiful sketch: she is sprightly, feminine, and
fond; but without any thing energetic or profound, in mind or in
feeling. Her gayety and spirit in the first scenes, are the result of
youth and happiness, and nothing can be more natural than the utter
dejection and brokenness of heart which follow her husband's death: she
is no heroine for war or tragedy; she has no thought of revenging her
loss; and even her grief has something soft and quiet in its pathos. Her
speech to her father-in-law, Northumberland, in which she entreats him
"not to go to the wars," and at the same time pronounces the most
beautiful eulogium on her heroic husband, is a perfect piece of feminine
eloquence, both in the feeling and in the expression.
Almost every one knows by heart Lady Percy's celebrated address to her
husband, beginning,
O, my good lord, why are you thus alone?
and that of Portia to Brutus, in Julius Caesar,
... You've ungently, Brutus,
Stol'n from my bed.
The situation is exactly similar, the topics of remonstrance are nearly
the same; the sentiments and the style as opposite as are the characters
of the two women. Lady Percy is evidently accustomed to win more from
her fiery lord by caresses than by reason: he loves her in his rough way
"as Harry Percy's wife," but she has no real influence over him: he has
no confidence in her.
LADY PERCY.
... In faith,
I'll know your business, Harry, that I will.
I fear my brother Mortimer doth stir
About this title, and hath sent for you
To line his enterprise, but if you go--
HOTSPUR.
So far afoot, I shall be weary, love!
The whole scene is admirable, but unnecessary here, because it
illustrates no point of character in her. Lady Percy has no _character_,
properly so called; whereas, that of Portia is very distinctly and
faithfully drawn from the outline furnished by Plutarch. Lady Percy's
fond upbraidings, and her half playful, half pouting entreaties,
scarcely gain her husband's attention. Portia, with true matronly
dignity and tenderness, pleads her right to share her husband's
thoughts, and proves it too
I grant I am a woman, but withal,
A woman that Lord Brutus took to wife,
I grant I am a woman, but withal,
A woman well reputed--Cato's daughter.
Think you, I am no stronger than my sex
Being so father'd and so husbanded?
* * * *
BRUTUS.
You are my true and honorable wife:
As dear to me, as are the ruddy drops
That visit my sad heart!
Portia, as Shakspeare has truly felt and represented the character, is
but a softened reflection of that of her husband Brutus: in him we see
an excess of natural sensibility, an almost womanish tenderness of
heart, repressed by the tenets of his austere philosophy: a stoic by
profession, and in reality the reverse--acting deeds against his nature
by the strong force of principle and will. In Portia there is the same
profound and passionate feeling, and all her sex's softness and
timidity, held in check by that self-discipline, that stately dignity,
which she thought became a woman "so fathered and so husbanded." The
fact of her inflicting on herself a voluntary wound to try her own
fortitude, is perhaps the strongest proof of this disposition. Plutarch
relates, that on the day on which Caesar was assassinated, Portia
appeared overcome with terror, and even swooned away, but did not in her
emotion utter a word which could affect the conspirators. Shakspeare has
rendered this circumstance literally.
PORTIA.
I pr'ythee, boy, run to the senate house,
Stay not to answer me, but get thee gone.
Why dost thou stay?
LUCIUS.
To know my errand, madam.
PORTIA.
I would have had thee there and here again,
Ere I can tell thee what thou should'st do there.
O constancy! be strong upon my side:
Set a huge mountain 'tween my heart and tongue!
I have a man's mind, but a woman's might.
... Ah me! how weak a thing
The heart of woman is! O I grow faint, &c.
There is another beautiful incident related by Plutarch, which could not
well be dramatized. When Brutus and Portia parted for the last time in
the island of Nisida, she restrained all expression of grief that she
might not shake _his_ fortitude; but afterwards, in passing through a
chamber in which there hung a picture of Hector and Andromache, she
stopped, gazed upon it for a time with a settled sorrow, and at length
burst into a passion of tears.[92]
If Portia had been a Christian, and lived in later times, she might have
been another Lady Russel; but she made a poor stoic. No factitious or
external control was sufficient to restrain such an exuberance of
sensibility and fancy: and those who praise the _philosophy_ of Portia
and the _heroism_ of her death, certainly mistook the character
altogether. It is evident, from the manner of her death, that it was not
deliberate self-destruction, "after the high Roman fashion," but took
place in a paroxysm of madness, caused by overwrought and suppressed
feeling, grief, terror, and suspense. Shakspeare has thus represented
it:--
BRUTUS.
O Cassius! I am sick of many griefs!
CASSIUS.
Of your philosophy you make no use,
If you give place to accidental evils.
BRUTUS.
No man bears sorrow better; Portia's dead.
CASSIUS.
Ha!--Portia?
BRUTUS.
She is dead.
CASSIUS.
How 'scap'd I killing when I cross'd you so?
O insupportable and touching loss--
Upon what sickness?
BRUTUS.
Impatient of my absence,
And grief that young Octavius with Mark Antony
Had made themselves so strong--(for with her death
These tidings came)--_with this she fell distract_,
And, her attendants absent, swallowed fire.
So much for woman's philosophy!
MARGARET OF ANJOU.
Malone has written an essay, to prove from external and internal
evidence, that the three parts of King Henry VI. were not originally
written by Shakspeare, but altered by him from two old plays,[93] with
considerable improvements and additions of his own. Burke, Porson, Dr.
Warburton, and Dr. Farmer, pronounced this piece of criticism
convincing and unanswerable; but Dr. Johnson and Steevens would not be
convinced, and, moreover, have contrived to answer the _unanswerable_.
"Who shall decide when doctors disagree?" The only arbiter in such a
case is one's own individual taste and judgment. To me it appears that
the three parts of Henry VI. have less of poetry and passion, and more
of unnecessary verbosity and inflated language, than the rest of
Shakspeare's works; that the continual exhibition of treachery,
bloodshed, and violence, is revolting, and the want of unity of action,
and of a pervading interest, oppressive and fatiguing; but also that
there are splendid passages in the Second and Third Parts, such as
Shakspeare alone could have written: and this is not denied by the most
skeptical.[94]