which he is placed in the _Merchant of Venice,_ arouses some doubt
in our minds; he would seem to require a background which is lacking
to him there. This background cannot be the romantic story of Portia
and the three caskets, or of the tired and melancholy Antonio. The
reader is not convinced by the rapid fall of so great an adversary,
who accepts the conversion to Christianity finally imposed upon him.
But apart also from the particular mixture of real and imaginary, of
serious and light, which we find in the _Merchant of Venice,_ it does
not appear that the characters of the strictly historical plays find
the ideal complement which they should find in the plays where they
appear. The reason for this is not to be found in the looseness and
reliance upon chronicles for which they have so often been blamed,
since this is rather a consequence or general effect of Shakespeare's
attitude towards the practical life, described above. This attitude,
as we have seen, lacks a definite ideal, is indeed, without passion
for any sort of particular ideals, but is animated with sympathy for
the varying lots of striving humanity. For this reason, it is entirely
concentrated, on the one hand upon character drawing, and on the other
is inclined to accept somewhat passively the material furnished by
the chronicles and histories. On the one hand it is all force and
impetus, while on the other it lacks idealisation and condensation. The
marvelous Hotspur appears in the play, in order that he may confirm
the glory of youthful Prince Hal, that is to say, that he may provide
a curious anecdote of what was or appeared to be the scapegrace youth
of a future sage sovereign; that is, he is not fully represented.
Coriolanus runs himself into a blind alley; and even if the poet
portrays with historical penetration, the patricians and plebeians of
Rome, it would be vain to seek in the play for the centre of gravity
of his feelings, of his predilictions, or of his aspirations, because
both Coriolanus, the tribunes and his adversaries are looked upon
solely as characters, not as parts and expressions of a sentiment
that should justify one or other or both groups. Finally, Falstaff is
sacrificed, because, like Hotspur, he has been used for the purpose
of enhancing the greatness of the future Henry V; for this reason, he
declines in prestige from the first to the last scenes of the first
part of Henry IV, not to speak of the _Merry Wives of Windsor,_ where
we find him reduced to being a merely farcical character, flouted and
thrashed. And when his former boon companion, Prince Hal, now on the
throne, answers his advances, familiar and confidential as in the
past, with hard, cold words, we do not admire the new king for his
seriousness, because we are sensible of a lack of aesthetic harmony.
Aesthetically speaking, Falstaff did not deserve such treatment, or at
least Henry V, who inflicts it upon him, should not be given the credit
of possessing an admirable moral character, which he does not possess,
for it cannot be maintained that he is a great man, lofty in heart and
mind, when he shows us that he has failed to understand Falstaff, and
to grant him that indulgence to which he is entitled, after so lengthy
a companionship. Falstaff's friends know that poor Sir John, although
he has tried to put a good face on his cruel reception by his young
friend, is unconsolable in the face of this inhuman estrangement, this
chill repulse:
"The king hath run bad humours in the knight,
His heart is fracted and corroborate."
And Mistress Quickly, although a woman of bad character and a
procuress, shows that she possesses a better heart and a better
intellect than the great king, when she attends the dying Sir John with
feminine solicitude. The narrative, of which we had occasion to quote
the first phrase above, continues in the following pitiful strain:
"'A parted even just between twelve and one, even at the turning of the
tide: for after I saw him fumble with the sheets, and play with flowers
and smile upon his fingers ends, I knew there was but one way; for his
nose was as sharp as a pen, and 'a babbled of green fields. 'How now,
Sir John,' quoth I, 'what, man! be o' good cheer.' So 'a cried out
'God, God, God,' three or four times. Now I, to comfort him, bid him 'a
should not think of God; I hoped there was no need to trouble himself
with any such thoughts yet. So 'a bade me lay more clothes on his feet:
I put my hand into the bed and felt them, and they were as cold as any
stone; then I felt to his knees, and so upward and upward, and all was
as cold as any stone." And since the friends of the tavern have heard
that he raved of sack, of his favourite sweet sack, Mistress Quickly
confirms that it was so; and when they add that he raved of women, she
denies it, thus defending in her own way the chastity of the poor dead
man.
4
THE TRAGEDY OF GOOD AND EVIL
The three aspects, with which we have hitherto dealt, compose what
may be called the _lesser_ Shakespeare, in contradistinction to the
_greater_ Shakespeare, of whom we are about to speak. By "lesser,"
we do not wish to suggest that the works thus designated are
artistically weak and imperfect, because there are among them some true
masterpieces, nor that they are less perfect by comparison with others,
because every true work of art is incomparable and contains in itself
its proper perfection. What is intended to be conveyed is that they
are "less complex," in the same way as the sentiment of a mature or an
old man is distinguished by complexity of experiences from that of a
young man, which is not for that reason less genuine. There are major
and minor works in this sense in the production of poets and of all
artists; and in this sense the greater works themselves of the various
historical epochs stand to one another in the relation of greater or
less richness, although each one is an entire world and each is most
beautiful and incomparable in itself. In the case of Shakespeare, the
distinction has already been approximately made by the common accord of
readers and critics. It is among things accepted and we have acted upon
this assumption.
Whoever, for example, passes from the most excellent "historical plays"
to _Macbeth,_ is immediately sensible, not only of the diversity, but
also of the greater complexity, proper to the new work which he has
begun to study. In the former, we find a vision that might be described
in general terms, as psychological or practical; in the latter, the
vision is wider, it seems to be almost philosophical, yet it does
not exclude the particular psychological or practical vision of the
former, but includes it within itself. In the historical plays, we find
individuals, powerful yet limited, as we find them when we consider the
social competition and the political struggles of the day; in the great
plays, the characters are more than individuals; they represent eternal
positions of the human spirit. In the former, the plot hinges upon
the acquisition or loss of a throne, or of some other worldly object;
in the latter, there is also this external gain or loss, but over and
above it the winning or losing of the soul itself, the strife of good
and evil at the heart of things.
Evil: but if this evil were so altogether and openly, if it were
altogether base and repugnant, the tragedy would be finished before it
had begun. But evil was called _greatness_ for Macbeth: that greatness,
which the fatal sisters had prophesied to him and the destined course
of events immediately begins to bestow, pointing out to him that all
the rest is both near and certain, provided that he does not remain
passive, but extends his hand to grasp it. It shines before Macbeth,
as a beautiful and luminous idea shines before an artist, assuming for
this warlike and masterful man, the form of power, supreme, sovereign
power. Shall he miss the mark? Shall he fail of the mission of his
being? Shall he not harken to the call of Destiny? The idea fascinates
him: _nothing_ now _is but what is not_ in his eyes; it also fascinates
and draws along with it his wife, his second self, who has instantly
and with yet more irresistible violence, thrown herself into the
non-existing, which creates itself and already exists.
"Thy letters," (she says), "have transported me beyond
This ignorant present, and I feel now
The future in the instant."
The idea, for her, is visible to the eye, it is "the golden circle,"
which "fate and metaphysical aid," appear already to have placed upon
her brow. The two tremble together, as at the springs of being, in the
abode of the mysterious Mothers. They are both doers and sufferers in a
process of things, in the appearance of a new greatness: they tremble
in that experience, at that creative moment of daring, which demands
resolute dedication of the whole man.
But the obstacle towards the realisation of their daring plan, is not
a material obstacle, nor is it the cowardice that sometimes attacks
the bravest; it is a good of a different sort, not less vigorous, but
of a more lofty quality, gentle and serene, planted in the heart of
Macbeth and called by the name of loyalty, duty, justice, respect for
the being of others, human piety. Thus he feels himself thrown at once
into confusion by the idea that has flashed before him, so great is the
savage desire, which it has set alight in his breast, and such on the
other hand the reverence which the other idea inspires into his deeper
being, and against which he prepares for a desperate struggle. The
supernatural challenge keeps undulating in his mind, now divine, now
diabolical: _cannot be ill, cannot be good._ But his wife, in whom the
power of desire displays itself as absolute and whose determination of
will is rectilinear, knowing not struggle or only struggles speedily
and completely suppressed, his wife, is ready to take his place,
when he shows his weak side, or at the moments of his vacillation.
In the logical clarity of vision that comes to her as the result of
the clearness of view with which she contemplates the achievement of
her end, she has discovered an element of danger. It is concealed in
the "milk of human kindness," circulating in the blood of Macbeth,
whereby he would attain to greatness, without staining himself with
crime. Having discovered the cause of the weakness, she applies the
remedy. This does not consist in making a frontal attack upon his moral
consciousness, or by negating it, but in exciting or strengthening the
will for action, the will pure and simple, taking pleasure in itself
alone, by making it feel the necessity of expressing in action what
seems to it to be beautiful and delightful, and by making it ashamed
of not knowing how to remain at the level of the desire which it
has encouraged, of the plan that it has formed. Macbeth holds back
troubled, because, though he is as bold as man can be in facing danger,
he yet feels that the deed now required of him would take away from
him the very character of man; but for his wife, that deed would make
of him more than a man. The sophistry of the will, to the aid of which
comes the conquering seduction of desire, exercises its irresistible
action and the deed is accomplished.
It is accomplished, but with it, as Macbeth says to himself, nothing is
accomplished or concluded: the same atrocious discord, which appeared
with the first thought of the crime, and which has accompanied its
preparation and execution, continues to act, and Macbeth is never
able to get the better of it, being incapable both of achieving
insensibility to the pricks of conscience and at the same time of
repentance. He persists in his attitude of the first moment, drunk with
greatness, devoured with remorse. He neither can nor will go back, and
does go forward; but he goes forward, increasing both the terms of the
discord, the sum of his crimes, and the torment of his conscience.
No way of salvation opens itself before him: neither the complete
redemption of the good, nor the opposite redemption of the completeness
of evil; neither the tears that relieve the ferocious soul, nor
absolute hardening of the heart. If he had to blame anything for his
course of crimes and torments, he would blame life itself, that _fitful
fever,_ that stupidity of life, which is
"a tale
told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
signifying nothing."
And if there is any image that attracts him from time to time,
filling him with the suavity of desire, it is that of sleep, and
beyond that, the great final, dissolving sleep, which Duncan, whom
he has slaughtered, already enjoys. Thus Macbeth consumes himself,
and his other self, his wife, consumes herself also, in a different
way, because what was in him an implacable call, to which he could
do violence, but could not suppress, presents itself to his wife as
the fascinating idea had presented itself to her, in sensible images,
and therefore as an obscure rebellion of nature. For this reason,
the woman from whose hand the dagger had fallen, when she faced the
sleeping Duncan, who seemed to her to be her father, wanders in the
night, vainly seeking to remove from her small hands the nauseating
odour of blood, which, it seems to her, still clings to them. Both are
already dead, before they die, owing to these bitter, long, continuous,
internal shocks and corrosions. Macbeth receives the news of the death
of her who was his wife, of her whom he had loved and who loved him,
with the desolate coldness of one who has renounced all particular
affections, and the life of the affections themselves. Yet he will not
die like a "Roman fool," he will not slay himself, but will provoke
death in battle, still seeking, not death, but victory. For even in his
last moments, the internal conflict in him has not ceased, even in
those instants, the impulse for greatness rules him and urges him on.
To kill himself would be to admit that he was wrong, and he does not
admit to himself that he was wrong or right: his tragedy lies in this
incapacity to hold himself right or wrong; it is the tragedy of reality
contemplated at the moment of conflict and before the solution has been
obtained. Therefore he dies austerely, representing a sacred mystery,
covered with religious horror.
In _Macbeth,_ the good appears only as revenge taken by the good, as
remorse, punishment. It is not personified. The amiable king Duncan
glides along on the outside of things, unsuspectful of betrayals,
without an inkling of what is passing in the mind of Macbeth, whom he
has rewarded and exalted. The honest Macduff, reestablisher of peace
and justice, is a warrior pitted against a warrior. Lady Macduff and
her son are innocent victims, who flee the knife of the murderers in
vain. The boy with his childish logic expresses his wonderment that the
good in the world does not choke the evil and replies to his mother,
who says that the honest man must do justice upon wicked men and
traitors: "Then the liars and swearers are fools; for there are liars
and swearers enow to beat the honest men and hang up them...."
In _King Lear,_ that tempestuous drama, which is nothing but a sequence
of betrayals and horrible torments, goodness is impersonated and takes
the name of Cordelia, shining in the midst of the tempest, as when the
sky is dark and we look, not upon the darkness, but upon the single
star that is scintillating there.
An infinite hatred for deceitful wickedness has inspired this work:
egoism pure and simple, cruelty, perversity, arouse repugnance and
horror, but do not directly lead to that tremendous doubt as to
the non-existence of goodness, or still less as to its not being
recognisable and separable from its contrary, since that moral deceit,
which takes the appearance of rectitude, generosity, loyalty, and when
it has realised its purpose, discovers itself as impure cupidity,
aridity, hardness of heart, which alone were present throughout. Poor
humanity, which has thus allowed itself to be deceived, enters into
such a fury, when it has discovered its illusion, both against itself
and against the world that has permitted so atrocious an illusion or
delusion, as to reach the point of madness. And humanity goes by the
name of King Lear, proud, imperious, full of confidence in himself and
in his own power and strength of judgment, quite sure that others will
agree with his wishes, all the more so, since he is their benefactor
and they owe him, not only obedience, but duty and gratitude. King
Lear is a creation of pity and of sarcasm: pitiful in his cries of
injured pride, of old age deserted, in the shadow of the madness that
is falling upon him. He has been sarcastically, though sorrowfully,
realised by his creator, because he was mad before he became mad, and
the clown who keeps him company, has been and is more serious and
clear-sighted than he. But the creative impulse of Shakespeare goes
so deeply into the heart of reality, or rather it creates so great a
reality, that he neglects everything suggestive of the obvious, vulgar
side of things, as seen from an average and mediocre point of view.
King Lear assumes gigantic proportions in his sorrow, in his madness,
in his piteousness, in his sarcasm, because the passion that shakes him
is gigantic. The figures of the two deceitful daughters who are opposed
to him, are also gigantic, especially Goneril, to whom Regan, who is
somewhat the younger, gives relief. Goneril's are the guiding mind
and the initiating will; she it is, who first counsels and instructs
her sister, who first faces and dominates her father, and who first
recognises her own equal in the iron will of the evil Edmund, loving
him and despising her own husband, so weak in his goodness, strives
with her sister for the loved one, finally slaying her sister and
immediately afterwards, herself. Regan has here and there a fugitive
moment, not of piety, but of hesitation and almost of suggestion, and
shows herself to be the less strong, just because she always allows
herself to be led by the other. Each of them, although both are thus
powerfully individuated, express the same force of egoism without
scruples, untamed and extreme in its boundlessness. Their personalities
are concentrated, felt and expressed, with the whole-hearted hatred of
an expert.
Yet we come to think that in this tragedy the inspiration of love--of
immense love--is equal to or greater than the inspiration of hate.
Perhaps intensity of hatred, making more intense the attraction of
goodness, helped to create the figure of Cordelia, which is not
a symbol or allegory of abstract goodness, but is all compact of
goodness, of a need for purity, for tenderness, for adoration, which
has here thrown its real and unreal appearance, an appearance which
has poetical reality. Cordelia is goodness itself in its original
well-spring, limpid and shining as it gushes forth: she represents
moral beauty and is therefore both courageous and hesitating, modest
and dignified, ready to disdain contests, where they are of no avail,
but also ready to fight bravely, when to do so is of service. Hers
is a true and complete goodness, not simply softness, mildness and
indulgence. Words have been so misused for purposes of deceit that she
has almost abandoned that inadequate means of communication: she is
silent, when speech would be vain or would set her truthfulness on the
same level as the lies of others. But since she has clear knowledge
and a fine sense of her own self and its contrary, she does not allow
herself to be confused or enticed by false splendours. _"I know you
what you are,"_ she says, looking her sisters in the eyes, as she takes
leave of them. And since goodness is also sympathetic intelligence, she
understands, pardons and lovingly assists her old father, so unjust
and so wanting in understanding toward herself. And since goodness
cannot adopt the form of blind passion, even in the act of defence and
offence, and even when it refuses to tolerate evil, is forced to bow
to the law of severe resignation, which governs the world, and thus
entrusts her with its best duty, so Cordelia does not burst into a rage
against the wickedness of her sisters, when she hears how King Lear has
been driven out and despised, but at once resigns herself to patience
in the affliction, "like," as says one who has seen her at that moment,
to
"Sunshine and rain at once: her smiles and tears
Were like a better day."
There are other personages in the play, who affirm the reality of good
against the false assertion of it: the pure and faithful Kent, the
loyal though unintelligent Gloucester, the brave Edgar, the weak but
honest Duke of Albany, the husband of Goneril, who says:
"Where I could not be honest,
I never yet was valiant."
Finally the perfidious Edmund, when he sees himself near death, hastens
to accomplish a good action and to pay homage to virtue. But all these
belong to the earth: Cordelia is on the earth, earthly herself and
mortal, but she is made of celestial substance, of purest humanity,
which is therefore divine. It has occurred to me to compare her with
the Soul, whom Friar Jacob likened to the only daughter and heiress
of the King of France, and whom her father, for that he loved her
infinitely, had adorned "with a white stole," and her fame flew "to
every land."
No greater spiritual triumph can be conceived than that of Cordelia,
throughout the drama, from the first scene to the last, although she
first appears as denied and rejected by her father, and later, when she
comes with arms to the aid of the unfortunate Lear against the infernal
sisters and the treacherous Edmund, is conquered, thrown into prison
and there strangled by the hangman. Why? Why does not goodness triumph
in the material world? And, why, thus conquered, does she increase
in beauty, evoke ever more disconsolate desire, until she is finally
adored as something sacred? The tragedy of King Lear is penetrated
throughout with this unexpressed yet anguished interrogation, so
full of the sense of the misery of life. The king, acquiring new
sensibility in his madness, as though a veil had been withdrawn from
before his eyes, sees and receives for the first time in himself,
suffering humanity, weeping and trembling, like a child, defenceless,
ill-treated. The fool, who accompanies him, sings, along with much
else, his prophecy to the effect that when calumnies cease, when kings
are punished, and usurers and thieves give up their trade, then all the
kingdom of Albion will be in great confusion. But the sorrow of sorrows
is that of Lear, when, having found Cordelia, he dreams of being ever
after at her side, adoring, and sees the prison transformed into a
paradise: they will sing, he will kneel before her, they will pray,
and tell one another ancient tales. But she is brutally slain before
his eyes and her dead body lies in his arms, as he vainly strives to
reanimate it, and he too dies, uttering the last cry of desperation:
"Thou'lt come no more,
Never, never, never, never!--"
In the tragedy of _Othello,_ evil takes on another face, and here the
sentiment that answers to it, is not condemnation mixed with pity,
not horror for hypocrisy and cruelty, but astonishment. Iago does not
represent evil done through a dream of greatness, or evil for the
egoistic satisfaction of his own desires, but evil for evil's sake,
done almost as though through an artistic need, in order to realise his
own being and feel it strong, dominating and destructive, even in the
subordinate social condition in which he is placed. Certainly, Iago, in
what he says, wishes it to be believed or makes himself believe that
he is aiming only at his "own advantage," as Guicciardini would have
said, and that he despises those who have different rule of conduct and
manage to live honestly, the _honest knaves._ But the truth is that he
does not obtain any material advantage for himself, and that the path
he has selected was not necessary for that object and does not lead to
it. Feelings of vengeance for injustices and affronts suffered lead to
it still less, though at times he says they do, and wishes it to be
believed or tries to believe it himself. What results from his acts is
evil as an end in itself, arising from a turbid desire to prove himself
superior to the rest of the world, to delude and to make it dance to
the tune of his own mind, and in proof of this to bring it to ruin.
The fact that he gives various reasons, with the object of justifying
and of explaining his acts, demonstrates that he himself failed to
understand that peculiar form of evil which possessed his spirit.
None of those about him suspect him: not Othello, a simple, impetuous
soldier, who understands open strife and plotting, but both in war and
between one enemy and another. He is quite unable to conceive this
refined and intellectual degradation. Desdemona, too, a young woman
newly married, rejoicing in the happiness of realized affection and
disposed to find everyone about her good and to make everyone happy,
is unsuspicious, as also is Cassio, who trusts Iago, as a brave and
loyal comrade, and his wife, the experienced Emilia, who knows him from
long habit. The epithets of "good Iago," of "honest Iago" ring through
the whole play and are a bitter and ironical comment underlining the
illusion that possesses them all. He is weaving, without reason, and
as it were for amusement, a horrible web of calumnies, of moral and
physical tortures and of death: a good and generous man, rendered
blind and mad with jealousy and injured honour, is thus led to murder
his innocent and beloved wife. Pity and terror arise together in the
soul, as we see Othello poisoned drop by drop, excited, changed Into a
wild beast: one feels that in Desdemona the warrior possessed all the
sweetness and all the force of life, the happiness on which reposed
all the rest, and that in her person he had found all that one can
conceive as most noble, most gentle and most pure in the world. When he
suspects that she has betrayed him, not only is he pierced with sensual
jealousy, (this too there is, certainly), but injured in what he holds
sacred, and therefore the death that he deals to Desdemona is not
simply vengeance for the shame done him, but above all expiation and
purification, as though he wished to purify the world of such impurity,
and to cleanse her from a stain, which irremediably defiled her. "O,
the pity of all this, Iago! O, Iago, the pity of all this!" He kisses
her before he kills her, kissing his own ideal, which he lays at that
moment in the sepulchre. But he still trembles with love, and perhaps
hopes somehow to get her back and to be united with her forever, by
means of that bloody sacrifice. Desdemona is not aware of the fury
raging around her, sure as she is of her love and of Othello's. Owing
to her very innocence, she affords involuntary incentives to the
jealousy of Othello and easy occasion to the artifice of Iago. Her very
unconsciousness makes her fate the more moving. Such is the infamy
of the crime thus accomplished against her, that the prosaic, shifty
wife of Iago becomes sublime with indignation and courage, when she
sees her dying, rising to poetic nobility and defying every menace.
Transpierced by her husband, she falls at the side of her mistress and
dying sings the willow song, which she had caught from the lips of
Desdemona. Othello also dies, when the deceit has been revealed to him.
The leader whom Venice had held in great honour and in whom she had
reposed complete faith, charging him with commands and governments, is
now nothing but a wretch deserving punishment. But in slaying himself,
he returns in memory to what he was, substituting that image of himself
for his present misery, and using the memory of the warrior that he
was, to drive the sword deeper into his throat.
On the other hand, the rallying-point or centre of the whole play is
not the ruin of the valiant Othello, not the cruel fate of the gentle
Desdemona, but the work, of Iago, of that demidevil, of whom one might
ask in vain, why, as Othello asked, why he had thus noosed the bodies
and souls of those men, who had never nourished any suspicion of him?
"Demand me nothing; what you know, you know
From this time forth I never will speak word."
This was the answer to the poet from that most mysterious form of evil,
when he met with it, as he was contemplating the universe: perversity,
which is an end and a joy to itself.
5
THE TRAGEDY OF THE WILL
The tragedy of the good and evil will, is sometimes followed, sometimes
preceded by another tragedy, that of the will itself. Here the will,
instead of holding the passions in control--making its footstool of
them--allows itself to be dominated by them in their onrush; or it
seeks the good, but remains uncertain, dissatisfied as to the path
chosen; or finally, when it fails to find its own way, a way of some
sort, and does not know what to think of itself or of the world, it
preys upon itself in this empty tension.
A typical form of this first condition of the will is voluptuousness,
which overspreads a soul and makes itself mistress there, inebriating,
sending to sleep, destroying and liquefying the will. When we think
of that enchanting sweetness and perdition, the image of death arises
at the same instant, because it truly is death, if not physical, yet
always internal and moral death, death of the spirit, without which
man is already a corpse in process of decomposition. The tragedy of
_Anthony and Cleopatra_ is composed of the violent sense of pleasure,
in its power to bind and to dominate, coupled with a shudder at its
abject effects of dissolution and of death.
He moves in a world all kisses and caresses, languors, sounds,
perfumes, shimmer of gold and splendid garments, flashing of lights or
silence of deep shadows, enjoyment, now ecstatic, now spasmodic and
furious. Cleopatra is queen of this world, avid for pleasure, which she
herself bestows, diffusing around her its quivering sense, instilling
a frantic desire for it into all, offering herself as an example and
an incitement, but while conferring it on others, remaining herself a
regal and almost a mystical personage. A Roman who has plunged into
that world, spoke then of her, astonished at her power, demoniac or
divine;
"Age cannot wither nor custom stale
Her infinite variety."
Cleopatra asks for songs and music, that she may melt into that sea of
melody, which heightens pleasure:
"Give me some music; music, moody food
Of us that trade in love!"
She knows how to toy with men, keeping their interest alive by her
denials:
"If you find him sad,
Say I am dancing; if in mirth, report
That I am sudden sick."
Her words express sensual fascination in its most terrible form:
"There is gold, and here
My bluest veins to kiss; a hand that kings
Have lipped, and trembled kissing."
All around her dance to the same tune and imitate the rhythmic folly of
her life. Note the scene of the two waiting women, who are joking about
their loves, their future marriages, and the manner of their deaths,
with the soothsayer. Listen to the first words of Carminia, so mirthful
and caressing in her playful coquetry: "Lord Alexas, sweet Alexas, most
anything Alexas, almost most absolute Alexas, where's the soothsayer
that you praised so to the queen? O, that I knew this husband, which,
you say, must charge his horns with garlands!" ...
Anthony is seized and dragged into this vertiginous course of pungent
pleasures, as soon as he appears. In his inebriation the rest of the
world, all the active, real world, seems heavy, prosaic, contemptible
and displeasing. The very name of Rome has no longer any power over him.
"Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch
Of the ranged empire fall! Here is my space.
Kingdoms are clay: one dungy earth alike
Feeds beast as man."
As he folds Cleopatra in his arms, he feels that they form a pair
who make life more noble, and that in them alone it assumes real
significance.
This feeling is not love: we have already called it by its proper name:
voluptuousness. Cleopatra loves pleasure and caprice, and the dominion,
which both of them afford her; she also loves Anthony, because he is,
and in so far as he is, part of her pleasures and caprices, and serves
her as an instrument of dominion. She busies herself with keeping him
bound to her, struggles to retain him when he removes himself from her,
but she always has an eye to other things, which are equally necessary
for her, even more so than he, and in order to retain them, she would
be ready if necessary to give Anthony in exchange. Anthony too, does
not love her; he clearly sees her for what she is, imprecates against
her, and enfolds her in his embrace without forgiveness.
"Shed not a tear; give me a kiss:
Even this repays me."
Love demands union of some sort between two beings for an objective
end, with the moral consent of both; but here we are outside morality,
and even outside the will. We are caught in the whirlwind and carried
along.
Anthony it is, who weakens and is conquered. He has lived an active
life, which, in the present moment of folly, he holds of no account.
He has known war, political strife, the government of States; he has
even been brushed with the wing of glory and of victory. He tries
several times to grasp his own past and to direct his future. He has
not lost his ethical judgment, for he recognizes Cleopatra as she
really is, bows reverently before the memory of Fulvia, and treats his
new wife Octavia, whom also he will abandon, with respect. For a brief
moment, he returns to the world he once knew, takes part in political
business, comes to terms with his colleagues and rivals. It would seem
that he had disentangled himself from the chain that bound him. But
the effort is not lasting, the chain encircles him again; vainly and
with ever declining power of resistance, he yields to that destiny,
which is on the side of Octavius, the man without loves, so cold and
so firm of will. Bad fortune dogs every step of the voluptuary: those
that surround him remark a change in his appearance from what he was
formerly. They see him betray this change by uttering thoughts that are
almost ridiculously feeble, and making inane remarks. They are led to
reflect that the mind of man is nothing but a part of his fortune and
that external things conform to things internal. He himself feels that
he is inwardly dissolving, and compares himself to the changing forms
of the clouds, dissolved with a breath of wind, like water turning to
water. Yet the man, who is thus in process of disaggregation, was once
great, and still affords flashes of greatness, bursting forth in feats
of warlike prowess, accompanied with lofty speech and generous actions.
His generosity confounds Enobarbus, who had deserted him and now takes
his own life for very shame. Around him are yet those ready to die
for sake of the affection that he inspires. Cleopatra stands lower or
higher: she has never known nor has ever desired to know any life but
that of caprice and pleasure. There is logic, will, consistency, in her
vertiginous abandonment. She is consistent also in taking her own life,
when she sees that she would die in a Roman prison, thus escaping shame
and the mockeries of the triumphant foe, and selecting a death of regal
voluptuousness. And with her die her faithful handmaids, by a similar
death; they have known her as their queen and goddess of pleasure, and
now as despising _this vile world_ and a life no longer worthy of being
lived, because no longer beautiful and brilliant. Carminia, before she
slays herself takes a last farewell of her mistress:
"Downy windows close;
And golden Phoebus never be beheld
Of eyes again so royal! Your crown's awry;
I'll mend it, and then play."
The tragedy of the will, which is most poetically lofty in _Anthony and
Cleopatra,_ is nevertheless morally a low form, that is to say, it is
simple and elementary in its roughness, such as would manifest itself
in a soldier like Anthony, the bloody, quarrelsome, pleasure-seeking,
crapulous Anthony.
It shows itself in an atmosphere far more subtle with Hamlet. Hamlet,
the hero so refined intellectually, so delicate in taste, so conscious
of moral values, comes to the action, not from the Roman forum or
from the battlefields of Gaul or Pharsalia, but from the University
of Wittenberg. In _Hamlet,_ the seductions of the will are altogether
overcome; duty is no longer a condition, or a vain effort, but a
spontaneous and regular attitude. The obstacle against which it
strives is not external to it, it is no inebriation of the senses; it
is internal, the will itself in the dialectic of its becoming, in its
passage from meditation to purpose and from purpose to action, in its
becoming will, true, concrete, factual will.
Hamlet has with reason often been recognised as a companion and
precursor of Brutus in _Julius Caesar,_ a play which differs from the
"historical tragedies," more substantially even than _Anthony and
Cleopatra,_ which is restricted to the practical activity. _Hamlet_
attains to a more lofty significance. Here too we find a tragedy of
the will in a man whose ethical conscientiousness is not internally
troubled, for he lives upon a sublime plane; and here too the
obstacle arises from the very bosom of the will. Brutus differs from
Hamlet, in that he comes to a decision and acts; but his action is
accompanied with disgust and repugnance for the impurity with which
its accomplishment must be stained. He reproves, condemns and abhors
the political end towards which Caesar is tending, but he does not
hate Caesar; he would like to destroy that end, to strike at the soul
of Caesar, but not to destroy his body and with it his life. He bows
reluctantly to necessity and with the others decides upon his death,
but requests that honours should be payed to Caesar dead, and spares
Anthony contrary to the advice of Cassius, because, as he says, he
is a priest bound to sacrifice the necessary victim; but he is not a
butcher. Melancholy dogs every step toward the achievement of his end.
He differs here from Cassius, who does not experience like scruples
and delicacy of feeling, but desires the end, by whatever means. He
differs too from Anthony, who discovers at once the path to tread
and enters it; cautious and resolute, he will triumph over him. He
finds everywhere impurity: Cassius, his friend, his brother, behaves
in such a way as to make him doubt his right to shed the blood of
the mighty Julius, because, instead of that justice, which he has
thought to promote and to restore by his act, he now sees only rapine
and injustice. But if the spiritual greatness of Brutus shrouds him
in sadness, it does not deprive him of the capacity for feeling and
understanding human nature. His difference with Cassius comes to an
end with his friend's sorrow, that friend who loves and admires him
sincerely, and yet cannot be other than he is, hoping that his friend
will not condemn too severely his faults and vices, but pass them
over in indulgent silence. The reconciliation of the two is sealed
when Brutus reveals his wounded heart, as he briefly tells his friend
of Portia's death. He enfolds himself in his grief. Brutus is among
those who have always meditated upon death and fortified themselves
with the thought of it. His suffering is not limited to virtue forced
into contamination; for he is haunted by doubt unexpressed. He feels
that man is surrounded with mystery, the mystery of Fate, or, as we
should say, with the mystery surrounding the future history of the
world; he seems to be anxiously asking of himself if the way that he
has chosen and followed is the best and wisest way, or whether some
evil genius has not introduced itself into his life, in order to drive
him to perdition? He hears at night the voice of the evil genius amid
the sounds and songs that should give rest and repose to his agitated
spirit. He prepares himself to face the coming battle, with the same
invincible sadness. It is the day that will bring to an end the work
begun on the Ides of March. He takes leave of Cassius, doubtful if he
will ever see him again, saying farewell to him for ever:
"If we do meet again, why, we shall smile;
If not, why then, this parting was well made."
O, if man could know the event of that day before it befell! But it
must suffice to know that day will have an end, and that the end will
be known. Mighty powers govern the world, Brutus resigns himself to
them: they may have already judged him guilty or be about to do so.
_Hamlet_ has generally been considered the tragedy of Shakespearean
tragedies, where the poet has put most of himself, given us his
philosophy, and with it the key to the other tragedies. But strictly
speaking, Shakespeare has not put himself, that is to say his poetry,
into _Hamlet,_ either more or less than into any of the others; there
is not more philosophy, as judge of reality and of life here than
in the others; there is perhaps less, because it is more perplexed
and vague than the others, and even the celebrated monologue (_To
be or not to be,_) though supremely poetical, is irreducible to a
philosopheme or to a philosophic problem. Finally, it is not the key
or compendium of the other plays, but the expression of a particular
state of the soul, which differs from those expressed in the others.
Those who read it in the ingenuous spirit in which it was written and
conceived, find no difficulty about taking it for what it is, namely
the expression of disaffection and distaste for life; they experience
and assimilate that state of the soul. Life is thought and will, but a
will which creates thought and a thought which creates will, and when
we feel that certain painful impressions have injured and upset us, it
sometimes happens that the will does not obey the stimulus of thought
and becomes weak as will; then thought, feeling in its turn that it
is not stimulated and upheld by the will, begins to wander and fails
to make progress: it tries now this and now that, but grasps nothing
firmly; it is thought not sure of itself, it is not true and effective
thought. There is, as it were, a suspension of the rapid course of the
spirit, a void, a losing of the way, which resembles death, and is
in fact a sort of death. This is the state of soul that Shakespeare
infused into the ancient legend of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, on whom
he conferred many noble aptitudes and gifts, and the promise or the
beginning of a fervent life. He then interrupted and suspended Hamlet's
beginning of life, and let it wander, as though seeking in vain, not
only its proper task, but even the strength necessary to propose it
to himself, with that firmness which becomes and is, indeed, itself
action. Hamlet is a generous and gentle youth, with a disposition
towards meditation and scientific enquiry, a lover of the beautiful,
devoted to knightly sports, prone to friendship, not averse to love,
with faith in the human goodness and in those around him, especially
in his father and mother, and in all his relations and friends. He
was perhaps too refined and sensitive, too delicate in soul; but
his life proceeded, according to its own law, towards certain ends,
caressing certain hopes. In the course of this facile and amiable
existence, he experienced, first the death of his father, followed
soon after by the second marriage of his mother, who seems to have
very speedily forgotten her first husband in the allurement of a new
love. He feels himself in every way injured by this marriage, and with
the disappearance of his esteem for his mother, a horrible suspicion
insinuates itself, which is soon confirmed by the apparition of his
father's restless ghost, which demands vengeance. And Hamlet will, nay
must and will carry it out; he would find a means to do so warily and
effectually, if he had not meanwhile begun to die from that shock to
his sentiments. That is to say, he began to die without knowing it, to
die internally: the pleasures of the world become in his eyes insipid
and rancid, the earth and the sky itself lose their colours. Everything
that is contrary to the ideal and to the joy of life, injustice,
betrayal, lies, hypocrisy, bestial sensuality, greed of power and
riches, cowardice, perversity and with them the nullity of worldly
things, death and the fearful unknown, gather themselves together in
his spirit, round that horrible thing that he has discovered, the
assassination of his father, the adultery of his mother; they tyrannise
over his spirit and form a barrier to his further progress, to his
living with that former warmth and joyous vigour, as indispensable to
thought as it is to action. Hamlet can no longer love, for love is
above all love of life; for this reason he breaks off the love-idyll
that he had begun with Ophelia, whom he loved and whom in a certain
way, he still loves infinitely, but as we love one dead, knowing her to
be no longer for us. Hamlet can laugh no more: sarcasm and irony take
the place of frank laughter on his lips. He fails to coordinate his
acts, himself becoming the victim of circumstances, though constantly
maintaining his attitude of contempt, or breaking out into unexpected
resolves, followed by hasty execution.
Sometimes he still rises to the level of moral indignation, as in the
colloquy with his mother, but this too is a paroxysm, not a coordinated
action. Joy is needed, not only for love, but also for vengeance;
there must be passion for the activity that is being exercised; but
Hamlet is in such a condition that he should give himself the same
advice as he gives to the miserable Ophelia--to get her to a nunnery
and there practice renunciation and restraint. But he is not conscious
of the nature of his malady, and it is precisely for this reason that
he is ill; instead of combating it by applying the right remedy, he
cultivates, nourishes and increases it. At the most, what is taking
place within him excites his astonishment and moves him to vain
self-rebuke and equally vain self-stimulation, as we observe after his
dialogue with the players, and after he has heard the passion, fury and
weeping they put into their part, and when he meets the army led by
Fortinbras against Poland.
"I do not know
Why yet I live to say 'This thing's to do';
Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means
To do't. Examples, gross as earth exhort me:
Witness this army, of such mass and charge,
Led by a delicate and tender prince;
Whose spirit with divine ambition puff'd,
Makes mouths at the invisible event,
Exposing what is miserable and unsure
To all that fortune death and danger dare
Even for an egg-shell.... O, from this time forth,
My thought be bloody or be nothing worth!"
Finally, he accomplishes the great vengeance, but alas, in how small a
way, as though jestingly, as though it were by chance, and he himself
dies as though by chance. He had abandoned his life to chance, so his
death must be due to chance.
We too have termed the condition of spirit that ruins Hamlet, an
illness; but the word is better applied to a doctor or a moralist,
whereas the tragedy is the work of a poet, who does not describe an
illness, but sings a song of desperate and desolate anguish, and so
lofty a song is it, to so great a height does it attain, that it
would seem as though a newer and more lofty conception of reality and
of human action must be born of it. What was perdition for Hamlet,
is a crisis of the human soul, which assumed so great an extension
and complexity after the time of Shakespeare as to give its name to
a whole historical period. Yet it has more than historical value,
because, light or serious, little or great, it returns to live again
perpetually.
6
JUSTICE AND INDULGENCE
It would be vain to seek among the songs of Shakespeare for the song of
reconciliation, of quarrels, composed of inner peace, of tranquillity
achieved, but the song of justice echoes everywhere in his works.
He knows neither perfect saints, nor perfect sinners, for he feels
the struggle at the heart of reality as necessity, not as accident,
artifice, or caprice. Even the good, the brave and the pure have evil,
impurity and weakness in them: "fragility" is the word he utters most
often, not only with regard to women; and on the other hand, even
the wicked, the guilty, the criminal, have glimpses of goodness,
aspirations after redemption, and when everything else is wanting, they
have energy of will and thus possess a sort of spiritual greatness. One
hears that song as a refrain in several of the tragedies, uttered by
foes over the foes whom they have conquered. Anthony pronounces this
elegy over the fallen Brutus:
"This was the noblest Roman of them all:
All the conspirators, save only he,
Did that they did in envy of great Caesar;
He only in a general honest thought
And common good to all, made one of them.
His life was gentle and the elements
So mix'd in him that nature might stand up
And say to all the world 'This was a man.'"
Octavian, when he hears of the death of Anthony, exclaims:
"O Anthony!
... We could not stall together; but yet let me lament,
With tears as sovereign as the blood of hearts,
That thou, my brother, my competitor
In top of all design, my mate in empire,
Friend and companion in the front of war,
Unreconciliable should divide
Where mine his thoughts did kindle, that our stars
Unreconciliable should divide
Our equalness to this."
It is above all in _Henry VIII_ that this feeling for justice widens
into a feeling towards oneself and others. We find a particularly good
instance of it in the dialogues between Queen Catherine and her great
enemy Wolsey. When the queen has mentioned all the grave misdeeds of
the dead man in her severe speech, Griffith craves permission to record
in his turn all the good there was in him; and with so persuasive an
eloquence does he record this good, that the queen, when she has heard
him, concludes with a sad smile:
"After my death I wish no other herald,
No other speaker of my living actions,
But such an honest chronicler as Griffith.
Whom I most hated living thou hast made me,
With thy religious truth and modesty,
Now in his ashes honour: peace be with him!"
One who feels justice in this way, is inclined to be indulgent, and in
Shakespeare we find the song of indulgence, in the _Tempest:_ a lofty
indulgence, for his discernment of good and evil was acute, his sense
alike for what is noble and for what is base, exquisite. He could never
be of those who slip into some form of false indulgence, which lowers
the standard of the ideal, in order to approach the real, cancelling
or rendering uncertain, in greater or lesser measure, the boundaries
between virtue and vice. Prospero it is, who is indulgent in the
_Tempest,_ the sage, the wise, the injured, the beneficent Prospero.
The _Tempest_ is an exercise of the imagination, a delicate pattern,
woven perhaps as a spectacle for some special occasion, such as a
marriage ceremony, for it adopts the procedure of some fanciful,
jesting scenario from the popular Italian comedy. Here we find islands
unknown, aerial spirits, earthly beings and monsters; it is full of
magic and of prodigies, of shipwrecks, rescues and incantations;
and the smiles of innocent love, the quips of comical creatures,
variegate pleasantly its surface. We have already noted the traces
of Shakespeare's tendency toward the romantic, and those echoes of
the comedy of love, of Romeo and Juliet, who are not unfortunate but
fortunate, when they are called Ferdinand and Miranda, with their
irresistible impulse towards love and joy. But although the work has
a bland tone, there are yet to be found in it characters belonging to
tragedy, wicked brothers, who usurp the throne, brothers who meditate
and attempt fratricide. In Caliban we find the malicious, violent
brute, abounding in strength and rich in possibilities. He listens
ecstatically to the soft music, with which the isle often resounds, he
knows its natural secrets and is ready to place himself at the service
of him who shall aid him in his desire for vengeance and shall redeem
him from captivity. Henceforth Prospero has all his enemies in his
power; he can do with them what he likes. But he is not on the same
plane with them, a combatant among combatants: meditation, experience
and science have refined him: he is penetrated with the consciousness
of humanity, of its instability, its illusions, its temptations, its
miseries. Where others think they see firm foothold, he is aware of
change and insecurity; where others find everything clear as day, he
feels the presence of mystery, of the unsolved enigma:
"We are such things
As dreams are made of and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep."
Will he punish? Finally, even his sprite Ariel, his minister of air,
feels compassion for those downcast prisoners, and when asked by
Prospero, does not withhold from him, that in his place he would be
human.
"And mine shall.
Hast thou, which are but air, a touch, a feeling
Of their afflictions, and shall not myself,
One of their kind, which relish all as sharply,
Passion as they, be kindlier moved than thou art?"
The guilty are pardoned, and finally Caliban, the monstrous Caliban,
is pardoned also, promising to behave himself better from that moment
onward. Prospero divests himself of his magic wand, which gave him so
absolute a power over his like, and while yet in his possession, caused
him to incur the risk of behaving towards them in a more than human,
perhaps an inhuman way.
Shakespeare can and does attain to indulgence towards men; but since in
him the contest between good and evil, positive and negative, remains
undecided, he is unable to rise to a feeling of cheerful hope and
faith, nor, on the other hand, to submerge himself in gloomy pessimism.
In his characters, the love of life is extraordinarily vigorous and
tenacious; all of them are agitated by strong passions; they meditate
great designs and pursue them with indomitable vigour; all of them
love infinitely and hate infinitely. But all of them, almost without
exception, also renounce life and face death with fortitude, serenity,
and as though it were a sort of liberation. The motto of all is uttered
by Edgar, in _King Lear,_ in reply to his old father, Gloucester, who
loses courage and wishes to die, when he hears of the defeat of the
king and of Cordelia. Edgar reminds his father that men must face
"their coming here even as their going hence," and that _"ripeness
is all." _ They die magnificently, either in battle, or offering
their throats to the assassin or the executioner, or they transpierce
themselves with their own hands, when nothing is left but death or
dishonour. They know how to die; it seems as though they had all
_"studied death,"_ as says a character in _Macbeth,_ when describing
one of them.
And nevertheless the ardour of life never becomes lessened or
extinguished. Romeo indeed admired the tenacity of life and the fear
of death in him who sold him the poison; miserable, hungry, despised,
suspected by men and by the law, as he was. In _Measure for Measure,_
in the scene where Claudio is in prison and condemned, the usual order
is inverted; first we have the prompt persuasion and decision to
accept death with serenity, and a few moments later the will to live
returns with furious force. The make-believe friar, who assists the
condemned man, sets the nullity of life before him in language full
of warm and rich imagery: it is troublous and such as "none but fools
would keep," a constant heart-ache for the fear of losing it, a craving
after happiness never attained, a falsity of affections, a crepuscular
condition, without joy or repose; and Claudio drinks in these words and
images, feeling that to live is indeed to die, and wishes for death.
But his sister enters, and when she tells him how she has been offered
his life as the price of her dishonour, he instantly clutches hold
again of life at that glimmer of hope, of hope stained with opprobrium,
and dispels with a shudder of horror the image of death:
"To die and go we know not where;
To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;
This sensible and warm motion to become
A kneaded clod; 'tis too horrible!
The weariest and most loathed worldly life
That age, ache, penury and imprisonment
Can lay on nature is a paradise
To what we fear of death...."
And in the same play the singular personage of Barnadine is placed
before us, perfect in a few strokes, Barnadine, the criminal and almost
animal, indifferent to life and death, but who yet lives, gets drunk
and then stretches himself out and sleeps soundly, and when he is
awakened and called to the place of execution, declares firmly, that
he is not disposed to go there that day, so they had better leave him
alone and not trouble him; he turns his shoulders on them and goes back
to his cell, where they can come and find him, if they have anything
to say. Here too the feeling of astonishment at an eagerness for life,
which does not exclude the tranquil acceptance of death, is accentuated
almost to the point of becoming comic and grotesque.
7
IDEAL DEVELOPMENT AND CHRONOLOGICAL SERIES
It is clear that in considering the principal motives of Shakespeare's
poetry and arranging them in series of increasing complexity, we
have not availed ourselves of any quantitative criterion or rule of
measurement, but have considered only the philosophical concept of the
spirit, which is perpetual growth upon itself, and of which every new
act, since it includes its predecessors, is in this sense more rich
than they. We declare in the same way, that prose is more complex than
poetry, because it follows poetry, assumes and dominates, while making
use of it, and that certain concepts and problems imply and presuppose
certain others; we further declare that a particular equality in poetry
presupposes other poetry of a more elementary quality, and that a
pessimistic song of love or sorrow, presupposes a simple love-song.
Thus, in the succession of his works as we have considered them, which
might be more closely defined and particularised, we have nothing less
than the ideal development of Shakespeare's spirit, deduced from the
very quality of the poetical works themselves, from the physiognomy
of each and from their reciprocal relations, which cannot but appear
in relations which are serial and evolutionary. The comedies of love
and the romantic comedies have the vagueness of a dream, followed by
the hard reality of the historical plays, and from these we pass to
the great tragedies, which are dream and reality and more than dream
and reality. The general line followed by the poet even offered the
temptation to construct his development by means of the dialectic triad
of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. But we do not recommend this
course, or if followed, it should only be with the view of reaching and
adopting a compendious and brilliant formula, without suppressing in
any way the consciousness of complexity and variety of many effective
passages, much less the positive value of individual expressions.
This development does not in any case coincide with the chronological
order, because the chronological order takes the works in the order in
which they are apprehensible from without, that is to say, in the order
in which they have been written, acted or printed, and arranges them in
a series that is qualitatively irregular, or in other words, chronicles
them. Now this arrangement must not be opposed to or placed on a
level with the other, as though it were the real opposed to the ideal
development, for the ideal is the only truly real development, while
the chronological is fictitious or arbitrary, and thus unreal; that is
to say, in clear terms, it does not represent development, but simply
a series or succession. To make this point yet more clear, by means of
an example taken from common experience, we have all known men, who in
their youth have practised or tried to practise some form of activity
(music, versification, painting, philosophy, etc.) which they have
afterwards abandoned for other activities, more suitable, because in
them susceptible of richer development. These men, later on, in their
maturity, or when old age is approaching, revert to those earlier
occupations, and take delight in composing verses or music, in painting
or in philosophising, returning, as they say, to their old loves.
Such returns are certainly never pure and simple returns: they are
always coloured to some extent by what has occurred in the interval.
But they really and substantially belong to the anterior moment; the
differences that we observe in them some part of that particular
consideration which we have disregarded in considering the development
of Shakespeare, while recommending it as a theme for special study.
As we find in works which represent a return to the period of youth,
echoes of the mature period, so in youthful works we sometimes find
anticipations and suggestions of the mature period. This is the case
with Shakespeare, not only in certain situations and characters of
the historical plays, but also in certain effects of the _Dream,_ the
_Merchant of Venice_ and _Romeo and Juliet._
As the result of our argument, we cannot pass from the ideal to the
extrinsic or chronological order, and therefore it could only indicate
caprice, were we to conclude from the fact that _Titus Andronicus_
represents a literary Shakespeare or a theatrical imitator, that it
must chronologically precede _Romeo and Juliet,_ or even _Love's
Labour's Lost._ The same applies to the argument that because
_Cymbeline,_ the _Winter's Tale_ and _Pericles_ are composed of
romantic material similar to that of _All's Well,_ of _Much Ado_ and
of _Twelfth Night_ (where we find innocent maidens falsely accused and
afterwards triumphant, dead women, who turn out to be alive, women
dressed as men, and the like), that they must all have been written at
the same time. The same holds good of the historical plays: we cannot
argue from the fact that these plays represent a more complex condition
of the soul than the love comedies and the romantic plays, that the
historical plays are all of them to be dated later than the two groups
above-mentioned; or that for the same reasons, _Hamlet,_ the first
_Hamlet,_ could not by any means have been composed by Shakespeare in
his very earliest period, about 1592, as Swinburne asserts, swears and
takes his solemn oath is the case: and who knows but he is right?
In like manner, we cannot pass from the chronological to the ideal
order, and since the chronology, documentary or conjectural, places
_Coriolanus_ after _Hamlet,_ and also after _Othello, Macbeth, Lear_
and _Anthony and Cleopatra,_ must not, therefore, insist upon finding
in it profound thoughts, which it does not contain, or deny that it
belongs to the period of the "historical plays" with which it has the
closest connection. Again, although the chronology places _Cymbeline_
and the _Winter's Tale,_ as has been said, in the last years of
Shakespeare's life, we must not insist upon finding profound meanings
in those works, or talk, as some have done, of a superior ethic, a
"theological ethic," to which Shakespeare is supposed at last to
have attained, or dwell upon the gracious idyllic scenes to be found
in them, weighing them down with non-existent mysteries, making out
that the Imogens and Hermiones are beings of equal or greater poetic
intensity than Cordelia, or Desdemona, or take Leontes for Othello,
Jacques for Iago, whereas, in the eyes of those possessed of poetic
sentiment, the former stand to the latter in the relation of little
decorative studies compared to works by Raphael or Giorgione. Proof of
this is to be found in the fact that the latter have become popular and
live in the hearts and minds of all, while the former please us, we
admire them, and pass on.
All that can be admitted, because comformable to logic and experience,
is that the two orders in general--but quite in general, and therefore
with several exceptions and disagreements--big and little--correspond
to one another. Indeed, if we take the usual chronological order, as
fixed by philologists and to be found in all Shakespearean manuals
and at the head of the plays, with little variation, we see that the
first comedies of love and the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, including
the romantic element, which is common to all of them, belong to the
first period, between 1591 and 1592. We next find the historical plays,
the comedies of love and the romantic dramas, closely associated;
then begins the period of the great tragedies, _Julius Caesar_ and
_Anthony and Cleopatra;_ then again,--after a return to anterior
forms with _Coriolanus, Cymbeline_ and the _Winter's Tale,_--we reach
the _Tempest,_ which seems to be the last, or among the last of
Shakespeare's works.
Biographers have tried to explain the last period of Shakespeare's
poetry in various ways, sometimes as the period of his _"becoming
serene,"_ sometimes as that of his _"poetical exhaustion"_ sometimes
as _"an attempt after new forms of art"_; but with such utterances as
these, we find ourselves among those conjectural constructions, which
we have purposely avoided, if for no other reason than that so many
people, who are good for nothing else, make them every day, and we do
not wish to deprive them of their occupation.
The _biographical_ character of that period can be interpreted, as we
please, as one of repose, of gay facility, of weariness, of expectation
and training for new works, and so on: but the _poetical_ character
of the works in question, is such as we have described, and such as
all see and feel that it is. It is too but a biographical conjecture,
however plausible,--but certainly most graceful and pleasing--, which
maintains that the magician Prospero, who breaks his wand, buries his
book of enchantments, and dismisses his aerial spirit Ariel, ready
to obey his every nod, symbolizes William Shakespeare himself, who
henceforth renounces his art and takes leave of the imaginary world,
which he had created for his own delight and in obedience to the law of
his own development and where till then he had lived as sovereign.