Now as Parolles departs, saying, "Get thee a good husband, and use him
as he uses thee," Helena shows us the originality of her character by
compelling love, that is usually of a habit so timid and retiring, to
put it off and become adventurous. She chides the weakness of sitting
still to mope and be macerated by passion. Something must be done to
justify and consecrate it, to vindicate Nature's scope: she already
claims Bertram by divine sanction of her feeling. No matter whether he
knows it or not, she knows he is that other part of her which her clear
soul misses; and Fate shall not be pardoned if it leaves her less whole
and rounded than she ought to be. Hitherto she is but half a person,
and that half is disabled at the discovery. Love fills her with this
rebuke of incompleteness, till she cannot tolerate thus being half-born
into the world. When love takes hold of such determined minds, who are
capable of willing and well endowed to confirm the will in action,
the feminine traits acquire a bravery which inspires an invention not
inconsistent with womanhood. She must find some way to reach the court,
and put love's halo round his person: perhaps it will be absorbed and
mingle with his blood. When the heart pronounces strongly, its meaning
is sure to gather on the countenance and lend to conduct the purple of
victory. So Helena will not have a secret, to prey like a worm upon the
damask buds of all her youth. "Fortune," she said, "was no goddess,
that had put such difference betwixt their two estates; love, no god,
that would not extend his might only where qualities were level." She
will not risk leaving the business to Heaven, and sit half made up till
Providence may by chance observe her plight.
"Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie
Which we ascribe to Heaven: the fated sky
Gives us free scope; only, doth backward pull
Our slow designs, when we ourselves are dull.
Impossible be strange attempts to those
That weigh their pains in sense, and do suppose
What hath been cannot be."
Still, with all this venturesome disposition to help the piecing-out of
destiny, she is a true woman, who must relapse from the boldest project
into the secret humility of loving, and of looking up to the orb around
which the heart revolves. And how honest she is! for she had a father
whose "skill was almost as great as his honesty." So she acknowledges
her passion to Bertram's mother, as if to let us see that her action is
not a plot, and her motive nothing short of womanly.
"I follow him not
By any token of presumptuous suit;
Nor would I have him, till I do deserve him;
Yet never know how that desert should be.
... Thus, Indian-like,
Religious in mine error, I adore
The sun, that looks upon his worshipper,
But knows of him no more."
In this admirable scene, the Countess does not repel, but rather seems
to undertake the part of Nature's good-will for any love that is real
enough and full enough for two.
"Even so it was with me when I was young:
If we are Nature's, these are ours; this thorn
Doth to our rose of youth rightly belong:
Our blood to us, this to our blood is born;
It is the show and seal of Nature's truth,
Where love's strong passion is impress'd in youth."
Nature is not a member of society, and pays small heed to the
prescriptions of a set. She does not ponder dowries and settlements,
nor hunt up the title-deeds of clothes and houses; and does not snuff
up the wedding-breakfast across the sacrament that mixes the blood of
two hearts.
"Strange is it, that our bloods
Of color, weight, and heat, pour'd all together,
Would quite confound distinction, yet stand off
In differences so mighty:
... Good alone
Is good without a name."
It has not yet occurred to Bertram that Helena entertains for him an
affection which he might duplicate. When he departs for the court, he
only says to her, "The best wishes that can be forged in your thoughts
be servants to you," little conscious how implicitly they would serve
her. His soul is preoccupied with the image of Maud, the fair daughter
of Lafeu.
"I stuck my choice upon her, ere my heart
Durst make too bold a herald of my tongue."
Beyond her beauty there stretched a long perspective of contempt for
all other women. Maud was too near to him, and blocked up the outlets
of each eye, that no glances might get forth to scour the region which
was so fruitful with Helena, to forage for her heart and gather it,--
"Thence it came,
That she, whom all men prais'd, and whom myself,
Since I have lost, have lov'd, was in mine eye
The dust that did offend it."
He is at first superior in rank and inferior in nature, his blood
and virtue contending for empire in him. She is still the woman whom
Nature has elected for him, notwithstanding his surprise and contempt
when she summons him out of the crowd of courtiers in pursuance of
the boon she had craved of the King, if he recovered by the use of
her prescriptions. In her the voice of Nature spoke more truly than
Bertram's passing inclination. As she claims the precious fee, the
blushes in her cheeks whisper,--
"We blush that thou shouldst choose: but, be repuls'd,
Let the white death sit on thy cheek for ever;
We'll ne'er come there again."
Bertram feigns compliance with the wishes of the King; but, determining
to get rid of her, he hurries from the marriage rite to the Florentine
wars. There was a technical marriage of two persons who are not yet
wedded, for he does not yet deserve her. The shadow of her plebeian
origin is large enough to obscure her merit; so that poetic justice
requires that he must wait till she is appreciated, when he will find
that he has gained every thing in yielding every thing to the supremacy
of pure womanhood. He flings himself away to the wars, exclaiming,
"Till I have no wife, I have nothing in France."
When she perceives that she is the cause of his expatriation, her
decision is made to leave France, so that he may be free to enter
it again. She becomes a pilgrim, with bared feet, to do penance for
ambitious love, wandering here and there, keeping out of the way that
he may be recalled from the dangers of war:--
"He is too good and fair for death and me;
Whom I myself embrace, to set him free."
By and by, Bertram, believing that she is dead, is overwhelmed with an
access of love for her. His awakened conviction "cries to see what's
done." Supposing that she is departed, he finds that she is for the
first time present. Although he has been full of faults, and does not
hesitate to screen himself by the most ungentlemanly prevarications,
there is a strain of his nature that sounded when he thought that death
had snapped her string. The vibration woke the tone of Helena, and
married him to her without a priest save death. "Sweet Helen's knell"
became the joy-peals of her marriage morn. Then he receives his true
patent of nobility; for her soul converts him to a man.
In this play, Shakspeare has followed the incidents of an old story;
but, in doing so, Helena grew upon his hands to be so fine that we
dislike to see her submit to a certain one of the circumstances of that
borrowed plot. And we wonder that Shakspeare should not have shielded
her by a better invention.
We are not satisfied to know that such incidents were very common in
the novels of that day, whence Shakspeare derived many of his plots;
for the greatest moments of his genius have taught us reverently to
demand of him more than that he should be content to take the old
threads and weave the old strand over. We expect to follow them as
clews that lead through subtle labyrinths of Nature where the heart
has stored its secrets. Whenever we venture with him on that raft of
some light tale of Boccaccio, we are not surprised if we drop into deep
water whose cresting waves admonish Shakspeare to brace and fortify the
slim float he started on. We do not relish the idea that Shakspeare is
mainly interested to work out a plot into a good acting play, and so
takes the nearest coarse things that may suit such a purpose. It is
true they have been immersed till they are encrusted all over with his
imagination, and their cheapness is concealed. The Chinese drop a shot
into the shell of a pearl oyster, and by and by reclaim it all cased
in an iris. It seems to be a drop distilled from many sunsets; but the
kernel is still a shot. Shakspeare dips the coarse narratives of the
Italian writers into his many-colored verse; and they are turned into
necklaces to heave on the breath of fair women, and signet-rings to
stamp the sense and sovereignty of manhood. But we expect of Shakspeare
something more than cunning ornament. The splendor of his poetry
does not dazzle us so that we cannot look for hidden meanings and
transcendent allusions to the soul of things, as we so often find in
him.
But in her character Shakspeare clearly rose to a conviction that love
may put such emphasis upon a woman that she must declare herself,
notwithstanding the tradition of the sex, that the man's love must have
the opening word. Yet, upon reflection, have not women always spoken
before men ask them? The shyest and most timorous heart that scuds to
covert at every rustle of discovery has already put man upon its track.
Some conniving hour has dropped a softer tone into the voice which she
never heard from her own tongue before. It surprises her into a faint
blush, and surprises him into a sudden observation; as when a new
planet steps into the field of view, and startles the watcher with one
more world. It was but a blush's shadow, such as a bubble drops on the
bed of a clear brook; but it goes athwart his eyes. As they look whence
it came, he sees it has already pulled down the lids of hers and set
them for a snare. She has spoken: she has made a declaration. With all
the enterprise of Helena, she could not have advertised herself more
fully.
There are many dialects and methods of expression; and every woman
will instinctively pronounce her mother-tongue. From Viola to Helena
stretches a whole chromatic scale of tones which do not transcend
the holding bars. Helena was not a type anticipating some future of
an inverted relation of the sexes, when, perhaps, even _seven_ women
might have Scripture for laying hold of one man. But she bravely
testifies of woman the faculty of a love so sacred, and improvised by
a heart so firm and true, so inspired with its own destiny, that she
perceives through a man's indifference what a man so often perceives
through hers, through a firmament barred by sullen cloud-racks, the
clear heaven that will be corresponsive to the heart. Helena cannot
be daunted by the weather. While the storm lasts, the upper blue is
confided to her keeping against the next fine day. But we shall see
Ophelia cower beneath the broken roof of reason, while the heart is too
weak to shore it up against the wild pother that is breaking round her.