BOTTOM.

When Malvolio is trying to break up the midnight revel, the mischievous

Maria fleers at him with, "Go shake your ears." That is a performance

for which Malvolio is still too distant from his congener. But

self-sufficiency succeeds in preserving that structure in Bottom, who

is so deep and rich with harmless vanity that he sprouts into the

auricular appendages, and he shakes them in the most amiable, frisky

way through the Dream of a Midsummer Night. But there is nothing

sour about Bottom; he has none of the quality which Margaret Fuller

was the first to call "aloofness." He is hale-fellow with all his

mates who appreciate the small gifts which belong to him, and which he

good-naturedly strives to render serviceable. Though he is a better

fellow than Malvolio, he has all that precisian's ambition; for as the

steward could be Olivia's husband as well as any other man,--forsooth,

why not?--so Bottom thinks he can play all the parts, rises to their

glittering bait, and would appropriate the whole interlude. He is one

of those self-made men who occasionally discredit their own bringing

up and help us to recover our respect for a liberal education. Like

the man of whom Sydney Smith said that he was ready at any moment to

undertake the command of the Channel Fleet or run a factory, they have

elbowed their way into a conviction that they can fill all the offices

from constable to President in a style to astonish men of disciplined

intelligence. And they frequently succeed in doing that. Men who

unfortunately enjoyed early advantages, and whose lives have perhaps

been a protracted training in the virtue as well as wit which lifts

state-craft above gambling, have the proper kind of admiration for

these chevaliers of industry.

But a highly successful deficiency of education does not make Bottom

arrogant. As Athenian dicast, foreman of an English jury, republican

officer under investigation, his suavity would be unimpeachable. He

is good-tempered, and the first tap of flattery cracks his whole

pretension; so that the crafty Quince manages to cast him for Pyramus,

who was just such another sweet-faced and destructive lady's man.

Dogberry's malapropisms are inflations made by his vanity to float him

into an appearance of sagacity, donkeys' hides blown up to take him

across the stream of intercourse. But Bottom miscalls his words from

sheer rusticity, and not from any effort to borrow the language of his

superiors. The word "alleviate" which he has sometimes heard has been

dribbling from brain-cell to cell, and so struggles unconsciously into

"aggravate" at last. He uses genteel words which have stayed out of

town so long as to be countrified; he has not picked them up, but they

have blown into his mind and lodged there, like mallow-seeds. So we see

that he is in most senses a born natural, proprietor by birth of the

crest which at last he wears. But he is not all fool, for when he wakes

out of his exposition of sleep and says he has had a dream, we notice

that he is reluctant to expound it. He begins, "Methought I was,"--but

a feeling of self-respect interrupts him; he tries it again, to say if

he can that he had been wearing asses' ears, but his lips refuse that

indignity and he gives it up, much to Shakspeare's credit.

A student of Shakspeare often finds himself wandering waterless and

foodless in the sage-brush of æsthetic criticism. Heraud, in his book

entitled "Shakspeare, his Inner Life," suggests that when Bottom

"transmogrified" the text, "The eye of man hath not seen," &c., so

that the new gospel according to Bottom ran thus, "The eye of man

hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man's hand is not able

to taste," &c., Shakspeare intended to imply that the changing and

translating of Bottom shadowed forth the manner in which we shall be

transformed in the future life; "but to have done this directly would

have been undramatic and otherwise objectionable." This affronts

and takes advantage of Bottom's want of intelligence, who might

well caution the critic: "Monsieur Cobweb! good Monsieur, get your

weapons in your hand, and kill me a red-hipped humble-bee on the top

of a thistle; and, good Monsieur, bring me the honey-bag. And, good

Monsieur, have a care the honey-bag break not: I would be loath to have

you overflown with a honey-bag." But this surfeiting freshet of the

modern revival spreads all over Shakspeare's meadows of daisies and

forget-me-nots.

Heraud's notion spoils the humor of Bottom's snarl of words which

represents perplexity so profound that it must recur to Scripture for

relief in expression.

I must notice here another pragmatic after-thought, although it has no

connection with the character of Bottom. Heraud is so bent upon forcing

a conscious Protestant motive upon Shakspeare that he spoils one of the

best passages in the play of Cymbeline. When Imogen, in consequence

of a note brought to her from her husband, Leonatus Posthumus, goes

to Milford Haven with Pisanio, whom the husband has commissioned to

kill her for supposed adultery, she first learns the object of the

journey: this converts the beguiling note into something false, unlike

her husband, inexplicable. She has thrust it into her bosom: there it

lies. "Come, here's my heart," as she invites Pisanio to perform his

duty. Then her hand comes into contact with the paper which she had

put there. It shall not stand in the way: "The scriptures of the loyal

Leonatus all turned to heresy?" That is, she has put the note in a

place where it might divert the stroke which the spirit of the note

intended:--

"Away, away,

Corrupters of my faith! You shall no more

Be stomachers to my heart!"

The constant and innocent wife disdains even the slight chance that

a bit of paper might turn or deaden the stroke despatched by a loyal

husband. She is as loyal as he, but he knows it not: so it is better to

die at once than live on thus misconceived. For what is life without

the confidence of a loyal husband? The canon against self-slaughter is

so divinely engraven in the conscience that it suspends her own hand.

Therefore, since life is no longer of value and interest to her, let

Pisanio finish. This is the drift of Imogen's speech.

But Heraud imputes to Shakspeare a theological motive in the use of the

word "scriptures," as if he meant to include, by secondary allusion,

the Bible; and he adds that Shakspeare, although "a critical reader

of the Bible and an extreme Protestant," felt the danger of letting

the Reformation lapse, by the abuse of reason, into heresies, the only

preventive of which was the Catholic principle of authority watching

over the use of the Bible.

The German commentators of Shakspeare have done some magnificent work,

open occasionally to the English charge of over-subtlety. But no

German can yet vie with this English straining to impute to the text

an unnatural and ponderous motive. Bottom said that he could "see a

voice," and went to the chink to spy if he could hear his Thisbe's

face. But these modern observations are far more preternatural.

All the scenes of the "Midsummer Night's Dream," which depend upon the

desire of the Athenian mechanicals to amuse their prince, are merely

comical when taken alone. The characters thus constructed, by passing

into the serious portions of the play, infect it with the element of

humor; for the simple earnestness of all their clownishness fraternizes

in no offensive way with the more poetical moods of high society, and

we feel the charm that equalizes all mankind. The pomp of a court is

concentrated at a fustian play that is poorly propertied with bush,

lantern, and a fellow daubed with lime. Simpleness and duty tender

this contrast, and it comes not amiss. Their crude parody of the fate

of Pyramus and Thisbe, done in perfect good faith, is a claim that

humble love may have its fortunes too, as well as that of the proud

and over-conscious dames who have been roaming through the woods, sick

with fancies. What a delightful raillery it is! Yes, we take the point:

"The best in this kind are but shadows; and the worst are no worse, if

imagination amend them."

It is also a suggestion of the subtlest humor when Titania summons her

fairies to wait upon Bottom; for the fact is that the soul's airy and

nimble fancies are constantly detailed to serve the donkeyism of this

world. "Be kind and courteous to this gentleman." Divine gifts stick

musk-roses in his sleek, smooth head. The world is a peg that keeps

all spiritual being tethered. John Watt agonizes to teach this _vis

inertiæ_ to drag itself by the car-load; Palissy starves for twenty

years to enamel its platter; Franklin charms its house against thunder;

Raphael contributes halos to glorify its ignorance of divinity; all the

poets gather for its beguilement, hop in its walk and gambol before

it, scratch its head, bring honey-bags, and light its farthing dip at

glow-worms' eyes. Bottom's want of insight is circled round by fulness

of insight, his clumsiness by dexterity. In matter of eating, he really

prefers provender: "good hay, sweet hay, hath no fellow." But how

shrewdly Bottom manages this holding of genius to his service! He knows

how to send it to be oriented with the blossoms and the sweets, giving

it the characteristic counsel not to fret itself too much in the action.

You see there is nothing sour and cynical about Bottom. His daily peck

of oats, with plenty of munching-time, travels to the black cell where

the drop of gall gets secreted into the ink of starving thinkers, and

sings content to it on oaten straw. Bottom, full-ballasted, haltered

to a brown-stone-fronted crib, with digestion always waiting upon

appetite, tosses a tester to Shakspeare, who might, if the tradition

be true, have held his horse in the purlieus of the Curtain or Rose

Theatre: perhaps he sublet the holding while he slipped in to show

Bottom how he is a deadly earnest fool; and the boxes crow and clap

their unconsciousness of being put into the poet's celestial stocks.

All this time Shakspeare is divinely restrained from bitterness by the

serenity which overlooks a scene. If, like the ostrich, he had been

only the largest of the birds which do not fly, he might have wrangled

for his rations of ten-penny nails and leather, established perennial

indigestion in literature, and furnished plumes to jackdaws. But he

flew closest to the sun, and competed with the dawn for a first taste

of its sweet and fresh impartiality.

The humor in this play meddles even with love; for that, too, must be

the sport of circumstance and superior power, yet always continue to

be the deepest motive of mankind. The juice of love's flower dropped

on the eyelids of these distempered lovers makes the caprices of

passion show and shift; love in idleness becomes love in earnest, as

Puck distils the drops of marriage or of mischief. Titania herself is

possessed with that common illusion which marries gracious qualities to

absurd companionship. Says Puck,--

"Those things do best please me

That befall preposterously."

But this is fleeting. Shakspeare soon breaks the spell in which some

of his most delicate and sprightly verses have revelled. The whole

play expresses humor on a revel, and brings into one human feeling the

supernature, the caprice and gross mischance, the serious drift of life.