"Helen must needs be fair,
When with your blood you daily paint her thus;"
and when Ulysses replies to the complaint of Achilles that his deeds
are forgotten,--
"Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,
Wherein he puts alms for oblivion;
A great-sized monster of ingratitudes:
Those scraps are good deeds past, which are devour'd
As fast as they are made, forgot as soon
As done. Perseverance, dear my lord,
Keeps honor bright: to have done, is to hang
Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail
In monumental mockery. Take the instant way;
For honor travels in a strait so narrow,
Where one but goes abreast; keep then the path,
For emulation hath a thousand sons,
That one by one pursue. If you give way,
Or hedge aside from the direct forthright,
Like to an enter'd tide, they all rush by,
And leave you hindmost.
For time is like a fashionable host,
That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand,
And with his arms outstretch'd, as he would fly,
Grasps in the comer: welcome ever smiles,
And farewell goes out sighing,"--
we need no help in recognizing the pen of Shakspeare. This is the
speech that holds embedded the world's household line,
"One touch of nature makes the whole world kin."
But we should need sore helping to discover a touch of nature's style
in the lines of Troilus replying to the question, "Why stay we, then?"--
"To make a recordation to my soul
Of every syllable that here was spoke.
But if I tell how these two did co-act,
Shall I not lie in publishing a truth?
Sith yet there is a credence in my heart,
An esperance so obstinately strong,
That doth invert th' attest of eyes and ears;
As if those organs had deceptious functions,
Created only to calumniate."
In the same fashion, the Prologue seems written by a pen whose feather
was in a constant ruffling. It talks of "princes orgulous," a word
nowhere used by Shakspeare, and one which he would have rallied: the
six gates of Troy have
"Massy staples
And corresponsive and fulfilling bolts."
And Hector well earns the epithet which has sprung from his name when
he cries,--
"Stand, stand, thou Greek! thou art a goodly mark:--
No! wilt thou not?--I like thy armor well;
I'll frush it, and unlock the rivets all,
But I'll be master of it. Wilt thou not, beast, abide?
Why then, fly on, I'll hunt thee for thy hide."
Numerous passages like this have the tone which unmistakably remands
them to the original play.
But who can help feeling the joyous and tender mood of Shakspeare
reproduced by the worshipping lines of Troilus to Cressida?--
"Oh that I thought it could be in a woman
(As, if it can, I will presume in you),
To feed for aye her lamp and flame of love;
To keep her constancy in plight and youth,
Outliving beauty's outward, with a mind
That doth renew swifter than blood decays!
Or, that persuasion could but thus convince me,
That my integrity and truth to you
Might be affronted with the match and weight
Of such a winnow'd purity in love!
How were I then uplifted! but, alas!
I am as true as truth's simplicity,
And simpler than the infancy of truth."
What a pure flame mounts up from each altar of these consecrated lines
to show the detestable uncleanness of some scenes which are left over
from the original play! When the wanton Cressida sweeps the chaste
fire from those altars and leaves them standing cold in his heart,
Shakspeare cries,--
"O Cressid!
Let all untruths stand by thy stained name,
And they'll seem glorious."
Some of the sentences spoken by Ulysses have become fixed in the
English consciousness; the rings of robust reflection have grown around
and appropriated them, so that the material is quotable in every market
and is applied to modern conveniences. The famous speech that charges
the Greek factions to their neglect of "degree, priority, and place,"--
"Oh, when degree is shaked,
Which is the ladder to all high designs,
The enterprise is sick!"--
contains a truth as applicable to a democracy as to that Shakspearian
age which reared the defeaters of the Armada, and sent Drake and
Hawkins round the world.
What cause, in want of time or other inconvenience, left this
uncultivated play to be ascribed to Shakspeare is past conjecture. In
many respects it is like the modern burlesque, and may be regarded as
a remote ancestor of the rollicking English fun which brings out the
latent absurdities in ancient and mediæval chivalry. There is, for
instance, a play called "The Field of the Cloth of Gold," which makes
ridiculous the pomp of the courts of Kings Henry VIII. and Francis I.,
and represents the famous tournament as a tilt upon hobby-horses ending
in a milling match with bottle-holders and all the pugilistic cant.
There are plenty of blond women who appear to be out of employment at
present on purpose to lend a zest to this drollery, and everybody seems
to welcome with democratic delight the slur upon obsolete solemnities,
and the insinuation that the surviving ones are no more imposing.
With all the devices of the modern theatre, such a play manages to
be vastly more ludicrous than Troilus and Cressida, but it does not
start with such a cutting motive, and it is in the matter of morality
simply neutral. But the play attributed to Shakspeare is one prolonged
assault upon the foibles and indecencies of greatness, upon the trivial
pretexts that mar and vulgarize an epoch of heroism. The period of the
Trojan war is borrowed, and the characters of Homer's Iliad, to throw
into a salient light what was after all the real occasion of the famous
siege. Paris went to Greece, as Troilus says,--
"And, for an old aunt, whom the Greeks held captive,
He brought a Grecian queen, whose youth and freshness
Wrinkles Apollo's, and makes pale the morning.
Why keep we her? The Grecians keep our aunt.
Is she worth keeping? why, she is a pearl,
Whose price hath launch'd above a thousand ships,
And turn'd crown'd kings to merchants."
Several scholars dissatisfied with this reputed motive of the siege,
and of Homer's Iliad, take refuge in a theory of light-worship, and
of a conflict between the Orient and the Occident, the Dawn and the
Dark, such as no doubt underlies many of the ancient myths whose names
bear allusion to such phenomena. These commentators torture the names
and incidents of the Iliad to clear it of the stigma of having no
motive-power beyond the stealing of a light wife, and a re-delivery of
her to a complacent husband who makes no inquiries. Ten years of siege
and battle, of domestic broil and murder, of Odyssean adventures by sea
and land, that Helen may be transferred, warm from the arms of Priam,
back to the condoning embrace of Menelaus! Truly, when the ugly thing
stands thus stripped of its Homeric mantle, we hurry to demand that it
shall be decently clothed in travesty.
After the Prologue announces that expectation is "tickling skittish
spirits on one and other side," the scene soon opens with the indecent
Pandarus trifling with the famous epic names, as he taps them lightly
with his battledore to keep up his little game, which is to get Troilus
thoroughly involved with Cressida: "An her hair were not somewhat
darker than Helen's (well, go to), there were no more comparison
between the women;" then the puppy says, "I will not dispraise your
sister Cassandra's wit." Think of the jaunty go-between thus estimating
the terrible prophetess of the Agamemnon, while he is only whetting
Troilus's passion for Cressida, and devising means to bring them
together. For this is meant to travesty the rape of Helen, which was
the motive of the siege. The play begins by making incontinence a very
important business, and thus ridiculous. As Thersites says, "All the
argument is a cuckold, and war and lechery confound all."
Subsequently Cressida, at a wink from the Greek Diomedes, passes
out of the keeping of her Trojan lover, thus making the politics as
light as her love. And the scenes where Pandarus lickerishly plans
the assignation, and rallies Cressida afterwards, are so purposely
broad that every pretence of sentiment is emptied out of the play;
the vulgarity becomes so conspicuous that the fighting itself is
infected with it and runs into parody. The reader need only turn to
the interjectional soliloquies of Thersites, which supply to every
mock-heroic incident a very free translation, to perceive that there
was an intention in the co-laborers upon this play to make all such
famous court-manners and their quarrels seem ridiculous.
Thersites is Shakspeare himself in a cynic masquerade, that he may
watch the whole game and be privy to the monstrous immorality. Achilles
hangs back from fighting the Trojans, not in anger at the slight of
Agamemnon, but rather because he has a secret understanding with one
of Priam's daughters. Instead of maintaining consistent political
attitudes, almost everybody is carrying on some private transaction
of this kind, and the great heroes scramble like boys in a shower of
comfits. Pandarus, the disgraceful old uncle of Cressida, who brought
her and Troilus together in the same spirit which gave Helen to Paris,
and back again coolly to her proper husband, is left at the close of
the play to bewail the whole bad issue of the Homeric morals: "A goodly
medicine for mine aching bones! O world, world, world! Thus is the poor
agent despised. O traitors and bawds, how earnestly are you set a'
work, and how ill requited!"
In the second scene, the heroes swagger across the stage one by one
coming from the field, while Pandarus stands by and talks of each in
a way to make of them diminutive patterns of militia colonels. Æneas,
Antenor, Hector, Paris: "There's a brave man, niece;" "It does a man's
heart good." That's Antenor, "And he's a man good enough;" but where
is Troilus? "If he see me, you shall see him nod at me;" but see
Hector, and, oh, "What hacks are on his helmet!--there be hacks!" His
niece says, "Be those with swords?" "Swords? any thing:--an the devil
come to him, it's all one, by God's lid;" but there's Troilus; look,
niece, there's a man, "and his helm more hacked than Hector's." "Had
I a sister were a Grace, or a daughter a Goddess, he should take his
choice. Paris is dirt to him." Eh, Cressid, don't you take? So all
these scenes pass with a mischievous innuendo pushed forward by the
lackey sentences: "I warrant, Helen, to change, would give an eye to
boot." Thus it runs on like a nautical melodrama, or the rattling chaff
of "Tom and Jerry," a stream on which the moral disgust of Thersites
swims in full view.
When Ajax appears, we are made aware in the first place, that he does
not know his letters. He flies into a rage with Thersites because
he refuses to read to him the proclamation of Hector's challenge,
and they fling the vilest Billingsgate at each other, varied with
fisticuffs. They try to outdo each other at a game of epithets. If one
says, "Thou mongrel, beef-witted lord," the other says, "Toad-stool."
"Porcupine," says one in a way to wither. "Scurvy-valiant ass," retorts
the other. So in a later scene these phrases of invective remind us of
Shakspeare: "Damnable box of envy;" "thou full dish of fool;" "thou
idle, immaterial skein of sleeve silk;" "green sarcenet flap for a sore
eye." This, flung at Patroclus, convinces us that the plain of Troy has
shrunken to a dog-pit, and we give odds on Thersites. "To be a mule, a
cat, a lizard, an owl, or a herring without a roe, I would not care;
but to be Menelaus,--I would conspire against destiny. I care not to be
the louse of a lazar, so I were not Menelaus."
There is a long scene in which the prominent Trojans discuss the policy
of returning Helen and getting entirely out of the scrape. Hector says,
"Let her go,--any ten Trojans' lives are as dear to us as she; she is
not worth what she doth cost the holding." This profit-and-loss view
of the case is despised by the rest, especially by Troilus, who is the
only consistent person in the play, and who is nobly contrived to keep
alive for us the tradition of honor and manhood. Now Cassandra enters
to bully like a fish-woman, with arms akimbo:
"Our fire-brand brother, Paris, burns us all.
Cry, Trojans, cry! A Helen, and a woe:
Cry, cry! Troy burns, or else let Helen go."
Troilus flatly says that she is mad. Finally, Hector, though confessing
that by every moral law Helen ought to be restored to her husband,
thinks it better to hold on to her because she is a spur to valor, and
their reputations depend upon preventing the Greeks from carrying their
point. It is a discussion of shopkeepers who are aspiring to be actors
and couch their speech in high-stepping hexameters.
Pandarus sings to Helen such a bit of frippery that we expect to see
them both begin to hop from one foot to the other in the style of the
burlesque, as they deliver the chorus of "Oh! oh! ha! ha! hey ho!"
There never was such deliberate absurdity as the fighting in this play.
The original draught of it was certainly left untouched by Shakspeare,
probably to keep the laugh sustained. It is all done in the vein of
Bombastes. "Now, they are clapper-clawing one another," says Thersites;
"I'll go look on." Diomedes enters, followed by Troilus, who bids
him stand; for, if he took to the river Styx, Troilus would jump in
after him. "Stand, forsooth," says Diomedes; "don't flatter yourself I
was flying: no, my worthy Trojan, I was only extricating myself from
the multitude to get at you,--so come on." They come on, and go off
fighting. Pretty soon Diomedes enters with the horse of Troilus, under
the pantomimic illusion that he has slain its master. He despatches the
horse with a note to Cressida, his new mistress, late the mistress
of the late Troilus. But Troilus was no more dead than Falstaff was
embowelled; he enters in a fine fume, looking up his horse. There is
Ajax bellowing to come to close quarters with him, and Diomedes in the
rear bawling in imitation of Ajax, but ironically, because he thinks
that Troilus fell by his hand. It is a very unexpected accommodation
when Troilus appears, and the three go out fighting. Not a drop of
blood is spilt as yet, for these are pasteboard warriors with wind
for blood. But now comes Hector meeting Achilles, who goes into a
perilous bluster as if the Trojan's last moments had arrived in his
person. "Have at thee, Hector." "Very well," says Hector, "why don't
you begin?" "Well, no, on the whole, I won't," replies Achilles; "my
arms are out of practice, luckily for you; you may go unscathed this
time." No sooner has Hector gone, than Achilles slips off to collect a
party of his Myrmidons whom he engages to waylay Hector and overcome
him by force of numbers. They find him resting with his helmet off,
and they butcher him; Achilles crying, "Here he is, that's your man!"
Then a retreat is sounded on both sides, as if for fear that some one
would get hurt. The whole play breaks up abruptly, and nothing is
finished. It seems like a tale told by an idiot, "full of sound and
fury, signifying nothing." The sincere lover, Troilus, meeting Pandarus
somewhere amid these punchinello combats, invokes ignominy and shame
upon the pander's life, and invites posterity to use his name as a
designation of a vile profession. Thus we return upon the track of
the play's motive, and feel competent to enjoy, without hindrance, the
humor and irony which saturate the scenes. Let us notice the character
of Ajax, which is scratched all over by Shakspeare's pen.
From Malvolio and Dogberry to the famous Ajax may seem a stride fit
only for such a blundering giant to contemplate; but the apparent
distance is due to the quantity of Ajax, and not to any distinction
in his quality. Malvolio's conceit is Turveydropian and runs to
deportment. Even when he grows flighty with the fancy of being Olivia's
husband, he still meditates what his great air must be. "I will be
point-de-vice the very man: to have the humor of state, and after a
demure travel of regard, to ask for my kinsman, Toby. I extend my
hand to him thus, quenching my familiar smile with an austere regard
of control." Standing thus posed, if he should undertake to bow, Toby
might believe he "saw creases come into the whites of his eyes."
Dogberry's consequence affects inconsequential phrases, and his days
on earth are a series of _non-sequiturs_. Ajax has quite as good an
opinion of himself as both these worthies, yet he says he knows not
what pride is. "Why should a man be proud? How doth pride grow? I do
hate a proud man as I hate the engendering of toads." "Yet he loves
himself," says Nestor. Ulysses and Nestor avail themselves of his
monstrous sense of superiority to flatter him into fighting Hector
in the place of Achilles. This is to pique Achilles and break up his
lethargy. Ajax is "a man into whom Nature hath so crowded humors,
that his valor is crushed into folly." He sulks in his tent because he
feels as valorous as Achilles, and must therefore sport the Achillean
moods. He despises the strategy of Ulysses, calls it closet-war,
because his own _forte_ is nothing but giving and taking knocks, and
his want of thought feels superior to all thinking. You have to behave
very gingerly with such a person; if your deference once turns its
back, the offence is mortal, and you may make your will. And these
people are outrageously touchy; before you have time to make all snug,
their conceit has assumed a vortical movement threatening to suck
up into its spout every thing in the way. Fire shots at it if you
please, but they will not make it tumble. Your only tact is to tack
and give it a wide berth. So we see that when Ajax fails to attract
any notice he becomes abusive and violent; and he is constantly trying
to get somebody to concede that he is a man of as pretty parts as any
other Greek. Achilles, forsooth! Who set him up to feel so big, and a
better man than I? "If I go to him, with my armed fist I'll pash him
o'er the face." "Oh, no, you shall not go." "An a' be proud with me,
I'll pheeze his pride." Of course, for of all our pretexts for hating
each other there is none so apt as our mutual conceits. We can pardon
villainy sooner, for that only affronts an abstract conscience. But a
man's conceit is the particular cherished bunion for another man's foot
to inadvertently outrage. A straight blow in the chest, hit out from
the shoulder, is a signal to measure your strength with another man.
But to measure your weakness with him makes you wince. How adroitly
Ulysses "rubs the vein" of Ajax's pride! As soon as the first ripple of
Ulysses's blarney reaches his feet, he begins to float like a bladder
of rapture, and goes bobbing enormously into the net they have spread
for him.
When the plot begins to affect him, Thersites observes that "he goes up
and down the field asking for himself." As Douglas Jerrold would say:
"He stalks as though Colossus had quitted Rhodes to head a company."
"He must fight singly to-morrow with Hector, and is so prophetically
proud of an heroical cudgelling, that he raves in saying nothing."
Then he describes him as a veritable Malvolio in armor. Is he really
in Olivia's garden, with Sir Toby and the rest on the watch? "Why, he
stalks up and down like a peacock; a stride, and a stand; ruminates
like an hostess that hath no arithmetic but her brain to set down her
reckoning; bites his lip with a politic regard,[4] as who should say,
'There were wit in this head, an't would out.' The man's undone for
ever; for if Hector break not his neck in the combat, he'll break't
himself in vain-glory. He knows not me. I said, 'Good morrow, Ajax;'
and he replies, 'Thanks, Agamemnon.' What think you of this man that
takes me for the general? He's grown a very land-fish, languageless, a
monster. A plague of opinion! a man may wear it on both sides, like a
leather jerkin."
Thersites does not allude to opinions which may be turned as easily as
a jacket, but to the opinionative temper; nothing turns us so neatly
inside out as our good opinion of ourselves. Shakspeare uses the word
"opinion" occasionally in this sense; as in I Henry IV. iii. I, where
Worcester criticises Hotspur's disposition:--
"Defect of manners, want of government,
Pride, haughtiness, opinion, and disdain."
So, whether in armor, in a swallow-tail, or in a surplice, our peacock
vein expands around the world.
Then Thersites proposes to imitate the austere conceit of Ajax: "Let
Patroclus make his demands to me, you shall see the pageant of Ajax."
This is done, and the freezing brevity of Thersites is exactly like
Malvolio's in the height of his fantasy, when Sir Toby and the rest
offer to converse with him.