artlessness with which Shakspeare has adapted some of the events and
characters of history to his dramatic purposes, he has shown equally his
genius and his wisdom. This, like most of Schlegel's remarks, is
profound and true; and in this respect Katherine of Arragon may rank as
the triumph of Shakspeare's genius and his wisdom. There is nothing in
the whole range of poetical fiction in any respect resembling or
approaching her; there is nothing comparable, I suppose, but Katherine's
own portrait by Holbein, which, equally true to the life, is yet as far
inferior as Katherine's person was inferior to her mind. Not only has
Shakspeare given us here a delineation as faithful as it is beautiful,
of a peculiar modification of character; but he has bequeathed us a
precious moral lesson in this proof that virtue alone,--(by which I mean
here the union of truth or conscience with benevolent affection--the
one the highest law, the other the purest impulse of the soul,)--that
such virtue is a sufficient source of the deepest pathos and power with
out any mixture of foreign or external ornament: for who but Shakspeare
would have brought before us a queen and a heroine of tragedy, stripped
her of all pomp of place and circumstance, dispensed with all the usual
sources of poetical interest, as youth, beauty, grace, fancy, commanding
intellect; and without any appeal to our imagination, without any
violation of historical truth, or any sacrifices of the other dramatic
personages for the sake of effect, could depend on the moral principle
alone, to touch the very springs of feeling in our bosoms, and melt and
elevate our hearts through the purest and holiest impulses of our
nature!
The character, when analyzed, is, in the first place, distinguished by
_truth_. I do not only mean its truth to nature, or its relative truth
arising from its historic fidelity and dramatic consistency, but _truth_
as a quality of the soul; this is the basis of the character. We often
hear it remarked that those who are themselves perfectly true and
artless, are in this world the more easily and frequently deceived--a
common-place fallacy: for we shall ever find that truth is as undeceived
as it is undeceiving, and that those who are true to themselves and
others, may now and then be mistaken, or in particular instances duped
by the intervention of some other affection or quality of the mind; but
they are generally free from illusion, and they are seldom imposed upon
in the long run by the shows of things and superfices of characters. It
is by this integrity of heart and clearness of understanding, this light
of truth within her own soul, and not through any acuteness of
intellect, that Katherine detects and exposes the real character of
Wolsey, though unable either to unravel his designs, or defeat them.
... My lord, my lord,
I am a simple woman, much too weak
T' oppose your cunning.
She rather intuitively feels than knows his duplicity, and in the
dignity of her simplicity she towers above his arrogance as much as she
scorns his crooked policy. With this essential truth are combined many
other qualities, natural or acquired, all made out with the same
uncompromising breadth of execution and fidelity of pencil, united with
the utmost delicacy of feeling. For instance, the apparent contradiction
arising from the contrast between Katherine's natural disposition and
the situation in which she is placed; her lofty Castilian pride and her
extreme simplicity of language and deportment; the inflexible resolution
with which she asserts her right, and her soft resignation to unkindness
and wrong; her warmth of temper breaking through the meekness of a
spirit subdued by a deep sense of religion; and a degree of austerity
tinging her real benevolence;--all these qualities, opposed yet
harmonizing, has Shakspeare placed before us in a few admirable scenes.
Katherine is at first introduced as pleading before the king in behalf
of the commonalty, who had been driven by the extortions of Wolsey into
some illegal excesses. In this scene, which is true to history, we have
her upright reasoning mind, her steadiness of purpose, her piety and
benevolence, placed in a strong light. The unshrinking dignity with
which she opposes without descending to brave the Cardinal, the stern
rebuke addressed to the Duke of Buckingham's surveyor, are finely
characteristic; and by thus exhibiting Katherine as invested with all
her conjugal rights and influence, and royal state, the subsequent
situations are rendered more impressive. She is placed in the first
instance on such a height in our esteem and reverence, that in the midst
of her abandonment and degradation, and the profound pity she afterwards
inspires, the first effect remains unimpaired, and she never falls
beneath it.
In the beginning of the second act we are prepared for the proceedings
of the divorce, and our respect for Katherine heightened by the general
sympathy for "the good queen," as she is expressively entitled, and by
the following beautiful eulogium on her character uttered by the Duke of
Norfolk:--
He (Wolsey) counsels a divorce--a loss of her
That like a jewel hath hung twenty years
About his neck, yet never lost her lustre.
Of her that loves him with that excellence
That angels love good men with; even of her,
That, when the greatest stroke of fortune falls,
Will bless the King!
The scene in which Anna Bullen is introduced as expressing her grief and
sympathy for her royal mistress, is exquisitely graceful.
Here's the pang that pinches;
His highness having liv'd so long with her, and she
So good a lady, that no tongue could ever
Pronounce dishonor of her,--by my life
She never knew harm-doing. O now, after
So many courses of the sun enthron'd,
Still growing in a majesty and pomp,--the which
To leave is a thousand-fold more bitter, than
'Tis sweet at first to acquire,--after this process,
To give her the avaunt! it is a pity
Would move a monster.
OLD LADY.
Hearts of most hard temper
Melt and lament for her.
ANNE.
O, God's will! much better
She ne'er had known pomp: though it be temporal,
Yet if that quarrel, fortune, do divorce
It from the bearer, 'tis a sufferance, panging
As soul and body's severing.
OLD LADY.
Alas, poor lady!
She's a stranger now again.
ANNE.
So much the more
Must pity drop upon her. Verily,
I swear 'tis better to be lowly born,
And range with humble livers in content,
Than to be perk'd up in a glistering grief,
And wear a golden sorrow.
How completely, in the few passages appropriated to Anna Bullen, is her
character portrayed! with what a delicate and yet luxuriant grace is she
sketched off, with her gayety and her beauty, her levity, her extreme
mobility, her sweetness of disposition, her tenderness of heart, and, in
short, all her _femalities_! How nobly has Shakspeare done justice to
the two women, and heightened our interest in both, by placing the
praises of Katherine in the mouth of Anna Bullen! and how characteristic
of the latter, that she should first express unbounded pity for her
mistress, insisting chiefly on her fall from her regal state and worldly
pomp, thus betraying her own disposition:--
For she that had all the fair parts of woman,
Had, too, a woman's heart, which ever yet
Affected eminence, wealth, and sovereignty.
That she should call the loss of temporal pomp, once enjoyed, "a
sufferance equal to soul and body's severing;" that she should
immediately protest that she would not herself be a queen--"No, good
troth! not for all the riches under heaven!"--and not long afterwards
ascend without reluctance that throne and bed from which her royal
mistress had been so cruelly divorced!--how natural! The portrait is not
less true and masterly than that of Katherine; but the character is
overborne by the superior moral firmness and intrinsic excellence of the
latter. That we may be more fully sensible of this contrast, the
beautiful scene just alluded to immediately precedes Katherine's trial
at Blackfriars, and the description of Anna Bullen's triumphant beauty
at her coronation, is placed immediately before the dying scene of
Katherine; yet with equal good taste and good feeling Shakspeare has
constantly avoided all personal collision between the two characters;
nor does Anna Bullen ever appear as queen except in the pageant of the
procession, which in reading the play is scarcely noticed.
To return to Katherine. The whole of the trial scene is given nearly
verbatim from the old chronicles and records; but the dryness and
harshness of the law proceedings is tempered at once and elevated by the
genius and the wisdom of the poet. It appears, on referring to the
historical authorities, that when the affair was first agitated in
council, Katherine replied to the long expositions and theological
sophistries of her opponents with resolute simplicity and composure: "I
am a woman, and lack wit and learning to answer these opinions; but I am
sure that neither the king's father nor my father would have
condescended to our marriage, if it had been judged unlawful. As to your
saying that I should put the cause to eight persons of this realm, for
quietness of the king's conscience, I pray Heaven to send his Grace a
quiet conscience and this shall be your answer, that I say I am his
lawful wife, and to him lawfully married, though not worthy of it; and
in this point I will abide, till the court of Rome, which was privy to
the beginning, have made a final ending of it."[101]
Katherine's appearance in the court at Blackfriars, attended by a noble
troop of ladies and prelates of her counsel, and her refusal to answer
the citation, are historical.[102] Her speech to the king--
Sir, I beseech you do me right and justice,
And to bestow your pity on me, &c. &c.
is taken word for word (as nearly as the change from prose to blank
verse would allow) from the old record in Hall. It would have been easy
for Shakspeare to have exalted his own skill, by throwing a coloring of
poetry and eloquence into this speech, without altering the sense or
sentiment; but by adhering to the calm argumentative simplicity of
manner and diction natural to the woman, he has preserved the truth of
character without lessening the pathos of the situation. Her challenging
Wolsey as a "foe to truth," and her very expressions, "I utterly
refuse,--yea, from my soul _abhor_ you for my judge," are taken from
fact. The sudden burst of indignant passion towards the close of this
scene,
In one who ever yet
Had stood to charity, and displayed the effects
Of disposition gentle, and of wisdom
O'ertopping woman's power;
is taken from nature, though it occurred on a different occasion.[103]
Lastly, the circumstance of her being called back after she had appealed
from the court, and angrily refusing to return, is from the life. Master
Griffith, on whose arm she leaned, observed that she was called: "On,
on," quoth she; "it maketh no matter, for it is no indifferent court for
me, therefore I will not tarry. Go on your ways."[104]
King Henry's own assertion, "I dare to say, my lords, that for her
womanhood, wisdom, nobility, and gentleness, never prince had such
another wife, and therefore if I would willingly change her I were not
wise," is thus beautifully paraphrased by Shakspeare:--
That man i' the world, who shall report he has
A better wife, let him in nought be trusted,
For speaking false in that! Thou art, alone,
If thy rare qualities, sweet gentleness,
(Thy meekness saint-like, wife-like government,
Obeying in commanding; and thy parts,
Sovereign and pious else, could speak thee out,)
The queen of earthly queens. She is noble born,
And, like her true nobility, she has
Carried herself towards me.
The annotators on Shakspeare have all observed the close resemblance
between this fine passage--
Sir,
I am about to weep; but, thinking that
We are a queen, or long have dreamed so, certain
The daughter of a king--my drops of tears
I'll turn to sparks of fire.
and the speech of Hermione--
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, which burns
Worse than tears drown.
But these verbal gentlemen do not seem to have felt that the resemblance
is merely on the surface, and that the two passages could not possibly
change places, without a manifest violation of the truth of character.
In Hermione it is pride of sex merely: in Katherine it is pride of place
and pride of birth. Hermione, though so superbly majestic, is perfectly
independent of her regal state: Katherine, though so meekly pious, will
neither forget hers, nor allow it to be forgotten by others for a
moment. Hermione, when deprived of that "crown and comfort of her
life," her husband's love, regards all things else with despair and
indifference except her feminine honor: Katherine, divorced and
abandoned, still with true Spanish pride stands upon respect, and will
not bate one atom of her accustomed state
Though unqueened, yet like a queen
And daughter to a king, inter me!
The passage--
A fellow of the royal bed, that owns
A moiety of the throne--a great king's daughter,
... here standing
To prate and talk for life and honor 'fore
Who please to come to hear,[105]
would apply nearly to both queens, yet a single sentiment--nay, a single
sentence--could not possibly be transferred from one character to the
other. The magnanimity, the noble simplicity, the purity of heart, the
resignation in each--how perfectly equal in degree! how diametrically
opposite in kind![106]
Once more to return to Katherine.
We are told by Cavendish, that when Wolsey and Campeggio visited the
queen by the king's order she was found at work among her women, and
came forth to meet the cardinals with a skein of white thread hanging
about her neck; that when Wolsey addressed her in Latin, she interrupted
him, saying, "Nay, good my lord, speak to me in English, I beseech you;
although I understand Latin." "Forsooth then," quoth my lord, "madam, if
it please your grace, we come both to know your mind, how ye be disposed
to do in this matter between the king and you, and also to declare
secretly our opinions and our counsel unto you, which we have intended
of very zeal and obedience that we bear to your grace." "My lords, I
thank you then," quoth she, "of your good wills; but to make answer to
your request I cannot so suddenly, for I was set among my maidens at
work, thinking full little of any such matter; wherein there needeth a
longer deliberation, and a better head than mine to make answer to so
noble wise men as ye be. I had need of good counsel in this case, which
toucheth me so near; and for any counsel or friendship that I can find
in England, they are nothing to my purpose or profit. Think you, I pray
you, my lords, will any Englishmen counsel, or be friendly unto me,
against the king's pleasure, they being his subjects? Nay, forsooth, my
lords! and for my counsel, in whom I do intend to put my trust, they be
not here; they be in Spain, in my native country.[107] Alas! my lords, I
am a poor woman lacking both wit and understanding sufficiently to
answer such approved wise men as ye be both, in so weighty a matter. I
pray you to extend your good and indifferent minds in your authority
unto me, for I am a simple woman, destitute and barren of friendship and
counsel, here in a foreign region; and as for your counsel, I will not
refuse, but be glad to hear."
It appears, also, that when the Archbishop of York and Bishop Tunstall
waited on her at her house near Huntingdon, with the sentence of the
divorce, signed by Henry, and confirmed by act of parliament, she
refused to admit its validity, she being Henry's wife, and not his
subject. The bishop describes her conduct in his letter: "She being
therewith in great choler and agony, and always interrupting our words,
declared that she would never leave the name of queen, but would persist
in accounting herself the king's wife till death." When the official
letter containing minutes of their conference was shown to her, she
seized a pen, and dashed it angrily across every sentence in which she
was styled _Princess-dowager_.
If now we turn to that inimitable scene between Katherine and the two
cardinals, (act iii. scene 1,) we shall observe how finely Shakspeare
has condensed these incidents, and unfolded to us all the workings of
Katherine's proud yet feminine nature. She is discovered at work with
some of her women--she calls for music "to soothe her soul grown sad
with troubles"--then follows the little song, of which the sentiment is
so well adapted to the occasion, while its quaint yet classic elegance
breathes the very spirit of those times, when Surrey loved and sung.
SONG.
Orpheus with his lute-made trees,
And the mountain-tops that freeze,
Bow themselves when he did sing
To his music, plants and flowers
Ever sprung, as sun and showers
There had made a lasting spring.
Every thing that heard him play,
Even the billows of the sea,
Hung their heads and then lay by
In sweet music is such art,
Killing care, and grief of heart,
Fall asleep, on hearing, die.
They are interrupted by the arrival of the two cardinals. Katherine's
perception of their subtlety--her suspicion of their purpose--her sense
of her own weakness and inability to contend with them, and her mild
subdued dignity, are beautifully represented; as also the guarded
self-command with which she eludes giving a definitive answer; but when
they counsel her to that which she, who knows Henry, feels must end in
her ruin, then the native temper is roused at once, or, to use
Tunstall's expression, "the choler and the agony," burst forth in words.
Is this your christian counsel? Out upon ye!
Heaven is above all yet; there sits a Judge
That no king can corrupt.
WOLSEY.
Your rage mistakes us.
QUEEN KATHERINE.
The more shame for ye! Holy men I thought ye,
Upon my soul, two reverend cardinal virtues;
But cardinal sins, and hollow hearts, I fear ye:
Mend them, for shame, my lords: is this your comfort
The cordial that ye bring a wretched lady?
With the same force of language, and impetuous yet dignified feeling,
she asserts her own conjugal truth and merit, and insists upon her
rights.
Have I liv'd thus long, (let me speak myself,
Since virtue finds no friends,) a wife, a true one
A woman, (I dare say, without vain-glory,)
Never yet branded with suspicion?
Have I, with all my full affections,
Still met the king--lov'd him next heaven, obey'd him
Been out of fondness superstitious to him--
Almost forgot my prayers to content him,
And am I thus rewarded? 'tis not well, lords, &c.
My lord, I dare not make myself so guilty,
To give up willingly that noble title
Your master wed me to: nothing but death
Shall e'er divorce my dignities.
And this burst of unwonted passion is immediately followed by the
natural reaction; it subsides into tears, dejection, and a mournful
self-compassion.
Would I had never trod this English ground,
Or felt the flatteries that grow upon it.
What will become of me now, wretched lady?
I am the most unhappy woman living.
Alas! poor wenches! where are now your fortunes?
[_To her women_
Shipwrecked upon a kingdom, where no pity,
No friends, no hope, no kindred weep for me!
Almost no grave allowed me! Like the lily that once
Was mistress of the field, and flourish'd,
I'll hang my head and perish.
Dr. Johnson observes on this scene, that all Katherine's distresses
could not save her from a quibble on the word _cardinal_.
Holy men I thought ye,
Upon my soul, two reverend cardinal virtues;
But cardinal sins, and hollow hearts, I fear ye!
When we read this passage in connection with the situation and
sentiment, the scornful play upon the words is not only appropriate and
natural, it seems inevitable. Katherine, assuredly, is neither an
imaginative nor a witty personage; but we all acknowledge the truism,
that anger inspires wit, and whenever there is passion there is poetry.
In the instance just alluded to, the sarcasm springs naturally out from
the bitter indignation of the moment. In her grand rebuke of Wolsey, in
the trial scene, how just and beautiful is the gradual elevation of her
language, till it rises into that magnificent image--
You have by fortune and his highness' favors,
Gone slightly o'er low steps, and now are mounted,
Where powers are your retainers, &c.
In the depth of her affliction, the pathos as naturally clothes itself
in poetry.
Like the lily,
That was mistress of the field, and flourish'd,
I'll hang my head and perish.
But these, I believe, are the only instances of imagery throughout; for,
in general, her language is plain and energetic. It has the strength and
simplicity of her character, with very little metaphor and less wit.
In approaching the last scene of Katherine's life, I feel as if about to
tread within a sanctuary, where nothing befits us but silence and tears;
veneration so strives with compassion, tenderness with awe.[108]
We must suppose a long interval to have elapsed since Katherine's
interview with the two cardinals. Wolsey was disgraced, and poor Anna
Bullen at the height of her short-lived prosperity. It was Wolsey's fate
to be detested by both queens. In the pursuance of his own selfish and
ambitious designs, he had treated both with perfidy; and one was the
remote, the other the immediate, cause of his ruin.[109]
The ruffian king, of whom one hates to think, was bent on forcing
Katherine to concede her rights, and illegitimize her daughter, in favor
of the offspring of Anna Bullen: she steadily refused, was declared
contumacious, and the sentence of divorce pronounced in 1533. Such of
her attendants as persisted in paying her the honors due to a queen were
driven from her household; those who consented to serve her as
princess-dowager, she refused to admit into her presence; so that she
remained unattended, except by a few women, and her gentleman usher,
Griffith. During the last eighteen months of her life, she resided at
Kimbolton. Her nephew, Charles V., had offered her an asylum and
princely treatment; but Katherine, broken in heart, and declining in
health, was unwilling to drag the spectacle of her misery and
degradation into a strange country: she pined in her loneliness,
deprived of her daughter, receiving no consolation from the pope, and no
redress from the emperor. Wounded pride, wronged affection, and a
cankering jealousy of the woman preferred to her, (which though it never
broke out into unseemly words, is enumerated as one of the causes of her
death,) at length wore out a feeble frame. "Thus," says the chronicle,
"Queen Katherine fell into her last sickness; and though the king sent
to comfort her through Chapuys, the emperor's ambassador, she grew worse
and worse; and finding death now coming, she caused a maid attending on
her to write to the king to this effect:--
"My most dear Lord, King, and Husband;
"The hour of my death now approaching, I cannot choose but, out of the
love I bear you, advise you of your soul's health, which you ought to
prefer before all considerations of the world or flesh whatsoever; for
which yet you have cast me into many calamities, and yourself into many
troubles: but I forgive you all, and pray God to do so likewise; for the
rest, I commend unto you Mary our daughter, beseeching you to be a good
father to her, as I have heretofore desired. I must intreat you also to
respect my maids, and give them in marriage, which is not much, they
being but three, and all my other servants a year's pay besides their
due, lest otherwise they be unprovided for: lastly, I make this vow,
that mine eyes desire you above all things.--Farewell!"[110]
She also wrote another letter to the ambassador, desiring that he would
remind the king of her dying request, and urge him to do her this last
right.
What the historian relates, Shakspeare realizes. On the wonderful beauty
of Katherine's closing scene we need not dwell; for that requires no
illustration. In transferring the sentiments of her letter to her lips,
Shakspeare has given them added grace, and pathos, and tenderness,
without injuring their truth and simplicity: the feelings, and almost
the manner of expression, are Katherine's own. The severe justice with
which she draws the character of Wolsey is extremely characteristic! the
benign candor with which she listens to the praise of him "whom living
she most hated," is not less so. How beautiful her religious
enthusiasm!--the slumber which visits her pillow, as she listens to that
sad music she called her knell; her awakening from the vision of
celestial joy to find herself still on earth--
Spirits of peace! where are ye? are ye gone,
And leave me here in wretchedness behind ye?