Act I.

Transcriber's note.

Minor punctuation inconsistencies have been silently repaired. Variable

spelling has been retained. A list of the changes made can be found at

the end of the book. In the Index of Scenes, clarendon typeface is

indicated as bold. Sidenotes are presented [within square brackets].

Mark up: _italic_

=bold=

SHAKESPEARE AS A DRAMATIC ARTIST

_MOULTON_

London

HENRY FROWDE

[Illustration]

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE

AMEN CORNER, E.C.

SHAKESPEARE AS A DRAMATIC ARTIST

A POPULAR ILLUSTRATION OF THE PRINCIPLES OF SCIENTIFIC CRITICISM

BY RICHARD G. MOULTON, M.A.

LATE SCHOLAR OF CHRIST'S COLLEGE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY (EXTENSION)

LECTURER IN LITERATURE

Oxford

AT THE CLARENDON PRESS

1885

[_All rights reserved_]

PREFACE.

I HAVE had three objects before me in writing this book. The first

concerns the general reader. 'No one needs assistance in order to

perceive Shakespeare's greatness; but an impression is not uncommonly to

be found, especially amongst English readers, that Shakespeare's

greatness lies mainly in his deep knowledge of human nature, while, as

to the technicalities of Dramatic Art, he is at once careless of them

and too great to need them. I have endeavoured to combat this impression

by a series of Studies of Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist. They are

chiefly occupied with a few master-strokes of art, sufficient to

illustrate the revolution Shakespeare created in the Drama of the

world--a revolution not at once perceived simply because it had carried

the Drama at a bound so far beyond Dramatic Criticism that the

appreciation of Shakespeare's plays was left to the uninstructed public,

while the trained criticism that ought to have recognised the new

departure was engaged in clamouring for other views of dramatic

treatment, which it failed to perceive that Shakespeare had rendered

obsolete.

While the earlier chapters are taken up with these Studies, the rest of

the work is an attempt, in very brief form, to present Dramatic Criticism

as a regular Inductive Science. If I speak of this as a new branch of

Science I am not ignoring the great works on Shakespeare-Criticism which

already exist, the later of which have treated their subject in an

inductive spirit. What these still leave wanting is a _recognition_ of

method in application to the study of the Drama: my purpose is to claim

for Criticism a position amongst the Inductive Sciences, and to sketch

in outline a plan for the Dramatic side of such a Critical Science.

A third purpose has been to make the work of use as an educational

manual. Shakespeare now enters into every scheme of liberal education;

but the annotated editions of his works give the student little

assistance except in the explanation of language and allusions; and the

idea, I believe, prevails that anything like the discussion of literary

characteristics or dramatic effect is out of place in an educational

work--is, indeed, too 'indefinite' to be 'examined on.' Ten years'

experience in connection with the Cambridge University Extension, during

which my work has been to teach literature apart from philology, has

confirmed my impression that the subject-matter of literature, its

exposition and analysis from the sides of science, history, and art, is

as good an educational discipline as it is intrinsically valuable in

quickening literary appreciation.

There are two special features of the book to which I may here draw

attention. Where practicable, I have appended in the margin references

to the passages of Shakespeare on which my discussion is based. (These

references are to the Globe Edition.) I have thus hoped to reduce to a

minimum the element of personal opinion, and to give to my treatment at

least that degree of definiteness which arises when a position stands

side by side with the evidence supporting it. I have also endeavoured to

meet a practical difficulty in the use of Shakespeare-Criticism as an

educational subject. It is usual in educational schemes to name single

plays of Shakespeare for study. Experience has convinced me that

methodical study of the subject-matter is not possible within the

compass of a single play. On the other hand, few persons in the

educational stage of life can have the detailed knowledge of

Shakespeare's plays as a whole which is required for a full treatment of

the subject. The present work is so arranged that it assumes knowledge

of only five plays--_The Merchant of Venice_, _Richard III_, _Macbeth_,

_Julius Cæsar_, and _King Lear_. Not only in the Studies, but also in

the final review, the matter introduced is confined to what can be

illustrated out of these five plays. These are amongst the most familiar

of the Shakespearean Dramas, or they can be easily read before

commencing the book; and if the arrangement is a limitation involving a

certain amount of repetition, yet I believe the gain will be greater

than the loss. For the young student, at all events, it affords an

opportunity of getting what will be the best of all introductions to the

whole subject--a thorough knowledge of five plays.

In passing the book through the press I have received material

assistance from my brother, Dr. Moulton, Master of the Leys School, and

from my College friend, Mr. Joseph Jacobs. With the latter, indeed, I

have discussed the work in all its stages, and have been under continual

obligation to his stores of knowledge and critical grasp in all

departments of literary study. I cannot even attempt to name the many

friends--chiefly fellow-workers in the University Extension

Movement--through whose active interest in my Shakespeare teaching I

have been encouraged to seek for it publication.

RICHARD G. MOULTON.

_April, 1885._

CONTENTS.

=INTRODUCTION.=

PLEA FOR AN INDUCTIVE SCIENCE OF LITERARY CRITICISM.

=PART FIRST.=

SHAKESPEARE CONSIDERED AS A DRAMATIC ARTIST, _IN TEN STUDIES_.

I.

THE TWO STORIES SHAKESPEARE BORROWS FOR HIS 'MERCHANT OF VENICE.'

PAGE

_A Study in the Raw Material of the Romantic Drama_. 43

II.

_How Shakespeare Improves the Stories in the Telling_.

_A Study in Dramatic Workmanship_. 58

III.

HOW SHAKESPEARE MAKES HIS PLOT MORE COMPLEX IN ORDER TO MAKE IT MORE

SIMPLE.

_A Study in Underplot_. 74

IV.

A PICTURE OF IDEAL VILLANY IN 'RICHARD III.'

_A Study in Character-Interpretation_. 90

V.

'RICHARD III': HOW SHAKESPEARE WEAVES NEMESIS INTO HISTORY.

_A Study in Plot_. 107

VI.

HOW NEMESIS AND DESTINY ARE INTERWOVEN IN 'MACBETH.'

_A further Study in Plot_. 125

VII.

MACBETH, LORD AND LADY.

_A Study in Character-Contrast_. 144

VIII.

JULIUS CÆSAR BESIDE HIS MURDERERS AND HIS AVENGER.

_A Study in Character-Grouping_. 168

IX.

HOW THE PLAY OF 'JULIUS CÆSAR' WORKS UP TO A CLIMAX

AT THE CENTRE.

_A Study in Passion and Movement_. 185

X.

HOW CLIMAX MEETS CLIMAX IN THE CENTRE OF 'LEAR.'

_A Study in more complex Passion and Movement_. 202

=PART SECOND.=

SURVEY OF DRAMATIC CRITICISM AS AN INDUCTIVE SCIENCE.

XI.

TOPICS OF DRAMATIC CRITICISM. 227

XII.

INTEREST OF CHARACTER. 237

XIII.

INTEREST OF PASSION. 246

XIV.

INTEREST OF PLOT. 268

INTRODUCTION.

_PLEA FOR AN INDUCTIVE SCIENCE OF LITERARY CRITICISM._

INTRODUCTION.

[_Proposition._]

IN the treatment of literature the proposition which seems to stand most

in need of assertion at the present moment is, _that there is an

inductive science of literary criticism_. As botany deals inductively

with the phenomena of vegetable life and traces the laws underlying

them, as economy reviews and systematises on inductive principles the

facts of commerce, so there is a criticism not less inductive in

character which has for its subject-matter literature.

* * * * *

[_Presumption in favour of inductive literary criticism._]

The presumption is clearly that literary criticism should follow other

branches of thought in becoming inductive. Ultimately, science means no

more than organised thought; and amongst the methods of organisation

induction is the most practical. To begin with the observation of facts;

to advance from this through the arrangement of observed facts; to use

_à priori_ ideas, instinctive notions of the fitness of things, insight

into far probabilities, only as side-lights for suggesting convenient

arrangements, the value of which is tested only by the actual

convenience in arranging they afford; to be content with the sure

results so obtained as 'theory' in the interval of waiting for still

surer results based on a yet wider accumulation of facts: this is a

regimen for healthy science so widely established in different tracts of

thought as almost to rise to that universal acceptance which we call

common sense. Indeed the whole progress of science consists in winning

fresh fields of thought to the inductive methods.

[_Current conceptions of criticism coloured by notions other than

inductive._]

Yet the great mass of literary criticism at the present moment is of a

nature widely removed from induction. The prevailing notions of

criticism are dominated by the idea of _assaying_, as if its function

were to test the soundness and estimate the comparative value of

literary work. Lord Macaulay, than whom no one has a better right to be

heard on this subject, compares his office of reviewer to that of a

king-at-arms, versed in the laws of literary precedence, marshalling

authors to the exact seats to which they are entitled. And, as a matter

of fact, the bulk of literary criticism, whether in popular conversation

or in discussions by professed critics, occupies itself with the merits

of authors and works; founding its estimates and arguments on canons of

taste, which are either assumed as having met with general acceptance,

or deduced from speculations as to fundamental conceptions of literary

beauty.

[_Criticism judicial and inductive. The two distinguished._]

It becomes necessary then to recognise two different kinds of literary

criticism, as distinct as any two things that can be called by the same

name. The difference between the two may be summed up as the difference

between the work of a _judge_ and of an _investigator_. The one is the

enquiry into what ought to be, the other the enquiry into what is.

Judicial criticism compares a new production with those already existing

in order to determine whether it is inferior to them or surpasses them;

criticism of investigation makes the same comparison for the purpose of

identifying the new product with some type in the past, or

differentiating it and registering a new type. Judicial criticism has a

mission to watch against variations from received canons; criticism of

investigation watches for new forms to increase its stock of species.

The criticism of taste analyses literary works for grounds of preference

or evidence on which to found judgments; inductive criticism analyses

them to get a closer acquaintance with their phenomena.

Let the question be of Ben Jonson. Judicial criticism starts by holding

Ben Jonson responsible for the decay of the English Drama.

Inductive criticism takes objection to the word 'decay' as suggesting

condemnation, but recognises Ben Jonson as the beginner of a new

tendency in our dramatic history.

But, judicial criticism insists, the object of the Drama is to pourtray

human nature, whereas Ben Jonson has painted not men but caricatures.

Induction sees that this formula cannot be a sufficient definition of

the Drama, for the simple reason that it does not take in Ben Jonson;

its own mode of putting the matter is that Ben Jonson has founded a

school of treatment of which the law is caricature.

But Ben Jonson's caricatures are palpably impossible.

Induction soon satisfies itself that their point lies in their

impossibility; they constitute a new mode of pourtraying qualities of

character, not by resemblance, but by analysing and intensifying

contrasts to make them clearer.

Judicial criticism can see how the poet was led astray; the bent of his

disposition induced him to sacrifice dramatic propriety to his satiric

purpose.

Induction has another way of putting the matter: that the poet

has utilised dramatic form for satiric purpose; thus by the

'cross-fertilisation' of two existing literary species he has added to

literature a third including features of both.

At all events, judicial criticism will maintain, it must be admitted

that the Shakespearean mode of pourtraying is infinitely the higher: a

sign-painter, as Macaulay points out, can imitate a deformity of

feature, while it takes a great artist to bring out delicate shades of

expression.

Inductive treatment knows nothing about higher or lower, which lie

outside the domain of science. Its point is that science is indebted to

Ben Jonson for a new species; if the new species be an easier form of

art it does not on that account lose its claim to be analysed.

The critic of merit can always fall back upon taste: who would not

prefer Shakespeare to Ben Jonson?

But even from this point of view scientific treatment can plead its own

advantages. The inductive critic reaps to the full the interest of Ben

Jonson, to which the other has been forcibly closing his eyes; while, so

far from liking Shakespeare the less, he appreciates all the more keenly

Shakespeare's method of treatment from his familiarity with that which

is its antithesis.

[_The two criticisms confused:_]

It must be conceded at once that both these kinds of criticism have

justified their existence. Judicial criticism has long been established

as a favourite pursuit of highly cultivated minds; while the criticism

of induction can shelter itself under the authority of science in

general, seeing that it has for its object to bring the treatment of

literature into the circle of the inductive sciences. [_conception of

critical method limited to judicial method._] It is unfortunate,

however, that the spheres of the two have not been kept distinct. In the

actual practice of criticism the judicial method has obtained an

illegitimate supremacy which has thrown the other into the shade; it has

even invaded the domain of the criticism that claims to be scientific,

until the word _criticism_ itself has suffered, and the methodical

treatment of literature has by tacit assumption become limited in idea

to the judicial method.

[_Partly a survival of Renaissance influence:_]

Explanation for this limited conception of criticism is not far to seek.

Modern criticism took its rise before the importance of induction was

recognised: it lags behind other branches of thought in adapting itself

to inductive treatment chiefly through two influences. The first of

these is connected with the revival of literature after the darkness of

the middle ages. The birth of thought and taste in modern Europe was the

Renaissance of classical thought and taste; by Roman and Greek

philosophy and poetry the native powers of our ancestors were trained

till they became strong enough to originate for themselves. It was

natural for their earliest criticism to take the form of applying the

classical standards to their own imitations: [_and its testing by

classical models._] now we have advanced so far that no one would

propose to test exclusively by classical models, but nevertheless the

idea of _testing_ still lingers as the root idea in the treatment of

literature. Other branches of thought have completely shaken off this

attitude of submission to the past: literary criticism differs from the

rest only in being later to move. This is powerfully suggested by the

fact that so recent a writer as Addison couples science in general with

criticism in his estimate of probable progress; laying down the

startling proposition that 'it is impossible for us who live in the

later ages of the world to make observations in criticism, in morality,

_or in any art or science_, which have not been touched upon by others'!

[_Partly the methods of journalism have invaded systematic criticism._]

And even for this lateness a second influence goes far to account. The

grand literary phenomenon of modern times is journalism, the huge

apparatus of floating literature of which leading object is to review

literature itself. The vast increase of production consequent upon the

progress of printing has made production itself a phenomenon worthy of

study, and elevated the sifting of production into a prominent literary

occupation; by the aid of book-tasters alone can the ordinary reader

keep pace with production. It is natural enough that the influence of

journalism should pass beyond its natural sphere, and that the review

should tend to usurp the position of the literature for which reviewing

exists. Now in journalism testing and valuation of literary work have a

real and important place. It has thus come about that in the great

preponderance of ephemeral over permanent literature the machinery

adapted to the former has become applied to the latter: methods proper

to journalism have settled the popular conception of systematic

treatment; and the bias already given to criticism by the Renaissance

has been strengthened to resist the tendency of all kinds of thought

towards inductive methods.

[_The limitation defended: theory of taste as condensed experience._]

History will thus account for the way in which the criticism of taste

and valuation tends to be identified with criticism in general: but

attempts are not wanting to give the identification a scientific basis.

Literary appreciation, it is said, is a thing of culture. A critic in

the reviewer's sense is one who has the literary faculty both originally

acute and developed by practice: he thus arrives quickly and with

certainty at results which others would reach laboriously and after

temporary misjudgments. Taste, however arbitrary in appearance, is in

reality condensed experience; judicial criticism is a wise economy of

appreciation, the purpose of which is to anticipate natural selection

and universal experience. He is a good critic who, by his keen and

practised judgment, can tell you at once the view of authors and works

which you would yourself come to hold with sufficient study and

experience.

[_The theory examined. The judicial spirit a limit on appreciation._]

Now in the first place there is a flaw in this reasoning: it omits to

take into account that the judicial attitude of mind is itself a barrier

to appreciation, as being opposed to that delicacy of receptiveness

which is a first condition of sensibility to impressions of literature

and art. It is a matter of commonest experience that appreciation may be

interfered with by prejudice, by a passing unfavourable mood, or even by

uncomfortable external surroundings. But it is by no means sufficient

that the reader of literature should divest himself of these passive

hindrances to appreciation: poets are pioneers in beauty, and

considerable activity of effort is required to keep pace with them.

Repetition may be necessary to catch effects--passages to be read over

and over again, more than one author of the same school to be studied,

effect to be compared with kindred effect each helping the other. Or an

explanation from one who has already caught the idea may turn the mind

into a receptive attitude. Training again is universally recognised as a

necessity for appreciation, and to train is to make receptive. [_On the

other hand sympathy the great interpreter._] Beyond all these conditions

of perception, and including them, is yet another. It is a foundation

principle in art-culture, as well as in human intercourse, that

_sympathy is the grand interpreter_: secrets of beauty will unfold

themselves to the sunshine of sympathy, while they will wrap themselves

all the closer against the tempest of sceptical questionings. Now a

judicial attitude of mind is highly unreceptive, for it necessarily

implies a restraint of sympathy: every one, remarks Hogarth, is a judge

of painting except the connoisseur. The judicial mind has an appearance

of receptiveness, because it seeks to shut out prejudice: but what if

the idea of judging be itself a prejudice? On this view the very

consciousness of fairness, involving as it does limitation of sympathy,

will be itself unfair. In practical life, where we have to act, the

formation of judgments is a necessity. In art we can escape the

obligation, and here the judicial spirit becomes a wanton addition to

difficulties of appreciation already sufficiently great; the mere notion

of condemning may be enough to check our receptivity to qualities which,

as we have seen, it may need our utmost effort to catch. So that the

judicial attitude of mind comes to defeat its own purpose, and disturbs

unconsciously the impression it seeks to judge; until, as Emerson puts

it, 'if you criticise a fine genius the odds are that you are out of

your reckoning, and instead of the poet are censuring your caricature of

him.'

[_The theory refuted by experience: the history of criticism a triumph

of authors over critics._]

But the appeal made is to experience: to experience let it go. It will

be found that, speaking broadly, _the whole history of criticism has

been a triumph of authors over critics_: so long as criticism has meant

the gauging of literature, so long its progress has consisted in the

reversal of critical judgments by further experience. I hesitate to

enlarge upon this part of my subject lest I be inflicting upon the

reader the tedium of a thrice-told tale. But I believe that the ordinary

reader, however familiar with notable blunders of criticism, has little

idea of that which is the essence of my argument--the degree of

regularity, amounting to absolute law, with which criticism, where it

has set itself in opposition to freedom of authorship, has been found in

time to have pronounced upon the wrong side, and has, after infinite

waste of obstructive energy, been compelled at last to accept

innovations it had pronounced impossible under penalty of itself

becoming obsolete.

[_Case of the Shakespearean Drama: retiring waves of critical

opposition._]

Shakespeare-criticism affords the most striking illustration. Its

history is made up of wave after wave of critical opposition, each

retiring further before the steady advance of Shakespeare's fame. They

may almost be traced in the varying apologetic tones of the successive

_Variorum_ editors, until Reed, in the edition of 1803, is content to

leave the poet's renown as established on a basis which will 'bid

defiance to the caprices of fashion and the canker of time.' [I.

_Unmeasured attack._] The first wave was one of unmeasured virulent

attack. Rymer, accepted in his own day as the champion of 'regular'

criticism, and pronounced by Pope one of the best critics England ever

had, says that in Tragedy Shakespeare appears quite out of his element:

His brains are turned; he raves and rambles without any coherence,

any spark of reason, or any rule to control him or set bounds to his

phrensy.

The shouting and battles of his scenes are necessary to keep the

audience awake, 'otherwise no sermon would be so strong an opiate.'

Again:

In the neighing of an horse, or in the growling of a mastiff, there

is a meaning, there is as lively an expression, and, may I say, more

humanity, than many times in the tragical flights of Shakespeare.

The famous Suggestion Scene in _Othello_ has, in Rymer's view, no point

but 'the mops, the mows, the grimace, the grins, the gesticulation.' On

Desdemona's

O good Iago,

What shall I do to win my lord again?

he remarks that no woman bred out of a pig-stye would talk so meanly.

Speaking of Portia he says, 'she is scarce one remove from a natural,

she is own cousin-german, of one piece, the very same impertinent flesh

and blood with Desdemona.' And Rymer's general verdict of

_Othello_--which he considers the best of Shakespeare's tragedies--is

thus summed up:

There is in this play some burlesque, some humour and ramble of

comical wit, some show and some mimicry to divert the spectators:

but the tragical part is plainly none other than a bloody farce,

without salt or savour.

In the eighteenth century Lord Lansdowne, writing on 'Unnatural Flights

in Poetry,' could refuse to go into the question of Shakespeare's

soliloquies, as being assured that 'not one in all his works could be

excused by reason or nature.' The same tone was still later kept up by

Voltaire, who calls Shakespeare a writer of monstrous farces called

tragedies; says that nature had blended in him all that is most great

and elevating with all the basest qualities that belong to barbarousness

without genius; and finally proceeds to call his poetry the fruit of the

imagination of an intoxicated savage. [2. _The Shakespearean Drama held

inadmissible, yet attractive._]--Meanwhile a second wave of opinion had

arisen, not conceiving a doubt as to the total inadmissibility of the

Shakespearean Drama, yet feeling its attraction. This is perhaps most

exactly illustrated in the forgotten critic Edwards, who ruled that

'poor Shakespeare'--the expression his own--must be excluded from the

number of good tragedians, yet 'as Homer from the Republic of Plato,

with marks of distinction and veneration.' But before this the more

celebrated dramatists of the Restoration had shown the double feeling in

the way they reconstructed Shakespeare's plays, and turned them into

'correct' dramas. Thus Otway made the mediæval Capulets and Montagus

presentable by giving them a classical dress as followers of Marius and

Sulla; and even Dryden joined in a polite version of _The Tempest_, with

an original touch for symmetry's sake in the addition to the heroine

Miranda, a maid who had never seen a man, of a suitable hero, a man who

had never seen a maid. [3. _The Shakespearean Drama admitted with

excuses._]--Against loud abuse and patronising reconstruction the silent

power of Shakespeare's works made itself more and more felt, and we

reach a third stage when the Shakespearean Drama is accepted as it

stands, but with excuses. Excuse is made for the poet's age, in which

the English nation was supposed to be struggling to emerge from

barbarism. Heywood's apology for uniting light and serious matter is

allowed, that 'they who write to all must strive to please all.' Pope

points out that Shakespeare was dependent for his subsistence on

pleasing the taste of tradesmen and mechanics; and that his 'wrong

choice of subjects' and 'wrong conduct of incidents,' his 'false

thoughts and forced expressions' are the result of his being forced to

please the lowest of the people and keep the worst of company. Similarly

Theobald considers that he schemed his plots and characters from

romances simply for want of classical information. [4. _The

Shakespearean Drama not felt to need defence as a whole, but praised and

blamed in its parts._]--With the last name we pass to yet another

school, with whom Shakespeare's work as a whole is not felt to need

defence, and the old spirit survives only in their distribution of

praise and blame amongst its different parts. Theobald opens his preface

with the comparison of the Shakespearean Drama to a splendid pile of

buildings, with 'some parts finished up to hit the taste of a

connoisseur, others more negligently put together to strike the fancy of

a common beholder.' Pope--who reflects the most various schools of

criticism, often on successive pages--illustrates this stage in his

remark that Shakespeare has excellences that have elevated him above all

others, and almost as many defects; 'as he has certainly written better

so he has perhaps written worse than any other.' Dr. Johnson sets out by

describing Shakespeare as 'having begun to assume the dignity of an

ancient'--the highest commendation in his eyes. But he goes on to point

out the inferiority of Shakespeare's Tragedy to his Comedy, the former

the outcome of skill rather than instinct, with little felicity and

always leaving something wanting; how he seems without moral purpose,

letting his precepts and axioms drop casually from him, dismissing his

personages without further care, and leaving the examples to operate by

chance; how his plots are so loosely formed that they might easily be

improved, his set speeches cold and weak, his incidents imperfectly told

in many words which might be more plainly described in few. Then in the

progress of his commentary, he irritates the reader, as Hallam points

out, by the magisterial manner in which he dismisses each play like a

schoolboy's exercise. [5. _Finally criticism comes round entirely to

Shakespeare._]--At last comes a revolution in criticism and a new order

of things arises: with Lessing to lead the way in Germany and Coleridge

in England, a school of critics appear who are in complete harmony with

their author, who question him only to learn the secrets of his art. The

new spirit has not even yet leavened the whole of the literary world;

but such names as Goethe, Tieck, Schlegel, Victor Hugo, Ulrici, Gervinus

suggest how many great reputations have been made, and reputations

already great have been carried into a new sphere of greatness, by the

interpretation and unfolding of Shakespeare's greatness: not one critic

has in recent years risen to eminence by attacking Shakespeare.

[_Other examples._]

And the Shakespearean Drama is only the most illustrious example of

authors triumphing over the criticism that attempted to judge them.

[_Milton._] It is difficult for a modern reader to believe that even

Rymer could refer to the _Paradise Lost_ as 'what some are pleased to

call a poem'; or that Dr. Johnson could assert of the minor poems of

Milton that they exhibit 'peculiarity as distinguished from excellence,'

'if they differ from others they differ for the worse.' He says of

_Comus_ that it is 'inelegantly splendid and tediously instructive';

and of _Lycidas_, that its diction is harsh, its rhymes uncertain, its

numbers unpleasing, that 'in this poem there is no nature for there is

no truth, there is no art for there is nothing new,' that it is 'easy,

vulgar, and therefore disgusting,'--after which he goes through the

different parts of the poem to show what Milton should have done in

each. Hallam has pointed out how utterly impotent Dr. Johnson has been

to fix the public taste in the case of these poems; yet even Hallam

could think the verse of the poet who wrote _Paradise Lost_ sufficiently

described by the verdict, 'sometimes wanting in grace and almost always

in ease.' [_Shakespeare's Sonnets._] In the light of modern taste it is

astonishing indeed to find Steevens, with his devotion of a lifetime to

Shakespeare, yet omitting the Sonnets from the edition of 1793, 'because

the strongest Act of Parliament that could be framed would not compel

readers into their service.' [_Spenser._] It is equally astonishing to

find Dryden speaking of Spenser's 'ill choice of stanza,' and saying of

the _Faerie Queene_ that if completed it might have been more of a

piece, but it could not be perfect, because its model was not true: an

example followed up in the next century by a 'person of quality,' who

translated a book of the _Faerie Queene_ out of its 'obsolete language

and manner of verse' into heroic couplets. [_Gray._] I pass over the

crowd of illustrations, such as the fate of Gray at the hands of Dr.

Johnson, [_Keats._] of Keats at the hands of monthly and quarterly

reviewers, [_Waverley Novels._] or of the various Waverley Novels

capriciously selected by different critics as examples of literary

suicide. But we have not yet had time to forget how Jeffrey--one of the

greatest names in criticism--set in motion the whole machinery of

reviewing in order to put down Wordsworth. [_Wordsworth._] Wordsworth's

most elaborate poem he describes as a 'tissue of moral and devotional

ravings,' a 'hubbub of strained raptures and fantastical sublimities':

his 'effusions on ... the physiognomy of external nature' he

characterises as 'eminently fantastic, obscure, and affected.' Then, to

find a climax, he compares different species of Wordsworth's poetry to

the various stages of intoxication: his Odes are 'glorious delirium' and

'incoherent rapture,' his Lyrical Ballads a 'vein of pretty deliration,'

his _White Doe_ is 'low and maudlin imbecility.' Not a whit the less has

the influence of Wordsworth deepened and solidified; and if all are not

yet prepared to accept him as the apostle of a new religion, yet he has

tacitly secured his place in the inner circle of English poets. In fine,

the work of modern criticism is seriously blocked by the perpetual

necessity of revising and reversing what this same Jeffrey calls the

'impartial and irreversible sentences' of criticism in the past. And as

a set-off in the opposite scale only one considerable achievement is to

be noted: [_Robert Montgomery._] that journalism afforded a medium for

Macaulay to quench the light of Robert Montgomery, which, on Macaulay's

own showing, journalism had puffed into a flame.

[_Defeat of criticism in the great literary questions._]

It is the same with the great literary questions that have from time to

time arisen, the pitched battles of criticism: as Goldsmith says, there

never has been an unbeaten path trodden by the poet that the critic has

not endeavoured to recall him by calling his attempt an innovation.

[_Blank verse._] Criticism set its face steadily from the first against

blank verse in English poetry. The interlocutors in Dryden's _Essay on

the Drama_ agree that it is vain to strive against the stream of the

people's inclination, won over as they have been by Shakespeare, Ben

Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher; but, as they go on to discuss the rights

of the matter, the most remarkable thing to a modern reader is that the

defence of blank verse is made to rest only on the colloquial character

of dramatic poetry, and neither party seems to conceive the possibility

of non-dramatic poetry other than in rhyme. Before Dryden's _Essay on

Satire_ the _Paradise Lost_ had made its appearance; but so impossible

an idea is literary novelty to the 'father of English criticism' that

Dryden in this Essay refuses to believe Milton's own account of the

matter, saying that, whatever reasons Milton may allege for departing

from rhyme, 'his own particular reason is plainly this, that rhyme was

not his talent, he has neither the ease of doing it nor the graces of

it.' To one so steeped in French fashions as Rymer, poetry that lacks

rhyme seems to lack everything; many of Shakespeare's scenes might, he

says, do better without words at all, or at most the words set off the

action like the drone of a bagpipe. Voltaire estimates blank verse at

about the same rate, and having to translate some of Shakespeare's for

purposes of exact comparison, he remarks that blank verse costs nothing

but the trouble of dictating, that it is not more difficult to write

than a letter. Dr. Johnson finds a theoretic argument in the unmusical

character of English poetry to prove the impossibility of its ever

adapting itself to the conditions of blank verse, and is confident

enough to prophesy: 'poetry may subsist without rhyme, but English

poetry will not often please.' Even Byron is found only one degree more

tolerant than Dryden: he has the grace to except Milton from his dictum

that no one ever wrote blank verse who could rhyme. Thus critical taste,

critical theory, and critical prophecy were unanimous against blank

verse as an English measure: for all that it has become the leading

medium of English poetry, and a doubter of to-day would be more likely

to doubt the permanence of English rhyme than of English blank verse.

[_The 'three unities':_] As to the famous 'three unities,' not only the

principles themselves, but even the refutation of them has now become

obsolete. Yet this stickling for the unities has been merely the chief

amongst many examples of the proneness the critical mind has exhibited

towards limiting literary appreciation and production by single

standards of taste. [_and limitations by still narrower classical

standards._] The same tone of mind that contended for the classical

unities had in an earlier generation contended for the classical

languages as the sole vehicle of literary expression, and the modern

languages of Europe had to assert their rights by hard fighting. In

Latin literature itself a more successful attempt has been made to limit

taste by the writers of a single period, the Augustan age, and so

construct a list of Latin poets which omits Lucretius. And for a short

period of the Renaissance movement the limitation was carried further to

a single one of the Augustan writers, and 'Ciceronianism' struggled hard

against the freedom of style it chose to nickname 'Apuleianism,' till it

fell itself before the laughter of Erasmus. [_Criticism failing to

distinguish the permanent and transitory._] It would seem almost to be a

radical law of the critical temperament that admiration for the past

paralyses faith in the future; while criticism proves totally unable to

distinguish between what has been essential in the greatness of its

idols and what has been as purely accidental as, to use Scott's

illustration, the shape of the drinking-glass is to the flavour of the

wine it contains. And if criticism has thus failed in distinguishing

what is permanent in past literature, it has proved equally mistaken in

what it has assumed to be accidental and transitory. Early commentators

on Shakespeare, whatever scruples they may have had upon other points,

had no misgivings in condemning the irregularities of his English and

correcting his grammar. This was described as obsolete by Dryden half a

century after the poet's death; while it is delicious to hear Steevens,

in the Advertisement to his edition of 1766, mentioning that 'some have

been of opinion that even a particular syntax prevailed in the time of

Shakespeare'--a novel suggestion he promptly rejects. If the two could

have lived each a century later, Dryden would have found Malone laying

down that Shakespeare had been the great purifyer and refiner of our

language, and Steevens would have seen Shakespeare's grammar studied

with the same minuteness and reduced to the same regular form as the

grammar of his commentators and readers; while one of the most

distinguished of our modern grammarians, instituting a comparison

between Elizabethan and nineteenth century English, fancies the

representative of the old-fashioned tongue characterising current speech

in the words of Sebastian:

Surely

It is a sleepy language!

[_Critical works where inductive retain their force, where judicial have

become obsolete._]

The critics may themselves be called as chief witnesses against

themselves. Those parts of their works in which they apply themselves to

analysing and interpreting their authors survive in their full force:

where they judge, find fault, and attempt to regulate, they inevitably

become obsolete. Aristotle, the founder of all criticism, is for the

most part inductive in his method, describing poetry as it existed in

his day, distinguishing its different classes and elements, and

tabulating its usages: accordingly Aristotle's treatise, though more

than two thousand years old, remains the text-book of the Greek Drama.

In some places, however, he diverges from his main purpose, as in the

final chapter, in which he raises the question whether Epic or Tragic is

more excellent, or where he promises a special treatise to discuss

whether Tragedy is yet perfect: here he has for modern readers only the

interest of curiosity. Dr. Johnson's analysis of 'metaphysical poetry,'

Addison's development of the leading effects in _Paradise Lost_, remain

as true and forcible to-day as when they were written: Addison

constructing an order of merit for English poets with Cowley and Sprat

at the head, Dr. Johnson lecturing Shakespeare and Milton as to how they

ought to have written--these are to us only odd anachronisms. It is like

a contest with atomic force, this attempt at using ideas drawn from the

past to mould and limit productive power in the present and future. The

critic peers into the dimness of history, and is found to have been

blind to what was by his side: Boileau strives to erect a throne of

Comedy for Terence, and never suspects that a truer king was at hand in

his own personal friend Molière. It is in vain for critics to denounce,

their denunciation recoils on themselves: the sentence of Rymer that

the soul of modern Drama was a brutish and not a reasonable soul, or of

Voltaire, that Shakespeare's Tragedy would not be tolerated by the

lowest French mob, can harm none but Rymer and Voltaire. If the critics

venture to prophesy, the sequel is the only refutation of them needed;

if they give reasons, the reasons survive only to explain how the

critics were led astray; if they lay down laws, literary greatness in

the next generation is found to vary directly with the boldness with

which authors violate the laws. If they assume a judicial attitude, the

judgment-seat becomes converted into a pillory for the judge, and a

comic side to literary history is furnished by the mockery with which

time preserves the proportions of things, as seen by past criticism, to

be laid side by side with the true perspective revealed by actual

history. In such wise it has preserved to us the list of 'poets

laureate' who preceded Southey: Shadwell, Tate, Rowe, Eusden, Cibber,

Whitehead, Warton, Pye. It reveals Dryden sighing that Spenser could

only have read the rules of Bossu, or smitten with a doubt whether he

might not after all excuse Milton's use of blank verse 'by the example

of Hannibal Caro'; Rymer preferring Ben Jonson's _Catiline_ to all the

tragedies of the Elizabethan age, and declaring Waller's _Poem on the

Navy Royal_ beyond all modern poetry in any language; Voltaire wondering

that the extravagances of Shakespeare could be tolerated by a nation

that had seen Addison's _Cato_; Pope assigning three-score years and ten

as the limit of posthumous life to 'moderns' in poetry, and celebrating

the trio who had rescued from the 'uncivilised' Elizabethan poetry the

'fundamental laws of wit.' These three are Buckingham, Roscommon, and

Walsh: as to the last of whom if we search amongst contemporary

authorities to discover who he was, we at last come upon his works

described in the _Rambler_ as 'pages of inanity.'

[_In actual practice criticism is found to have gradually approached

induction._]

But in the conflict between judicial criticism and science the most

important point is to note how the critics' own ideas of criticism are

found to be gradually slipping away from them. Between the Renaissance

and the present day criticism, as judged by the methods actually

followed by critics, has slowly changed from the form of laying down

laws to authors into the form of receiving laws from authors. [_Five

stages. 1. Idea of judging solely by classical standards._] The process

of change falls into five stages. In its first stage the conception of

criticism was bounded by the notion of comparing whatever was produced

with the masterpieces and trying it by the ideas of Greek and Roman

literature. Boileau objected to Corneille's tragedies, not because they

did not excite admiration, but because admiration was not one of the

tragical passions as laid down by Aristotle. To Rymer's mind it was

clearly a case of classical standards or no standards, and he describes

his opponents as 'a kind of stage-quacks and empirics in poetry who have

got a receipt to please.' And there is a degree of _naïveté_ in the way

in which Bossu betrays his utter unconsciousness of the possibility that

there should be more than one kind of excellence, where, in a passage in

which he is admitting that the moderns have as much spirit and as lucky

fancies as the ancients, he nevertheless calls it 'a piece of injustice

to pretend that our new rules destroy the fancies of the old masters,

and that they must condemn all their works who could not foresee all our

humours.' Criticism in this spirit is notably illustrated by the

Corneille incident in the history of the French Academy. The fashionable

literary world, led by a Scudéry, solemnly impeach Corneille of

originality, and Richelieu insists on the Academy pronouncing judgment;

which they at last do, unwillingly enough, since, as Boileau admitted,

all France was against them. The only one that in the whole incident

retained his sense of humour was the victim himself; who, early in the

struggle, being confronted by critics recognising no merit but that of

obedience to rules, set himself to write his _Clitandre_ as a play

which should obey all the rules of Drama and yet have nothing in it: 'in

which,' he said, 'I have absolutely succeeded.' [2. _Recognition of

modern as illegitimate merit._]--But this reign of simple faith began to

be disturbed by sceptical doubts: it became impossible entirely to

ignore merit outside the pale of classical conformity. Thus we get a

Dennis unable to conceal his admiration for the daring of Milton, as a

man who knew the rules of Aristotle, 'no man better,' and yet violated

them. Literature of the modern type gets discussed as it were under

protest. Dr. Johnson, when he praises Addison's _Cato_ for adhering to

Aristotle's principles 'with a _scrupulousness_ almost unexampled on the

English stage,' is reflecting the constant assumption throughout this

transitional stage, that departure from classical models is the result

of carelessness, and that beauties in such offending writers are lucky

hits. The spirit of this period is distinctly brought out by Dr. Johnson

where he 'readily allows' that the union in one composition of serious

and ludicrous is 'contrary to the rules of criticism,' but, he adds,

'there is always an appeal open from criticism to nature.' [3. _Modern

standards of judging side by side with ancient._]--Once admitted to

examination the force of modern literature could not fail to assert its

equality with the literature of the ancients, and we pass into a third

stage of criticism when critics grasp the conception that there may be

more than one set of rules by which authors may be judged. The new

notion made its appearance early in the country which was the main

stronghold of the opposite view. Perrault in 1687 instituted his

'Parallels' between the ancients and the moderns to the advantage of the

latter; and the question was put in its naked simplicity by Fontenelle,

the 'Nestor of literature,' when he made it depend upon another

question, 'whether the trees that used to grow in our woods were larger

than those which grow now.' Later, and with less distinctness, English

criticism followed the lead. Pope, with his happy indifference to

consistency, after illustrating the first stage where he advises to

write 'as if the Stagirite o'erlooked each line,' and where he contends

that if the classical authors indulge in a licence that licence becomes

a law to us, elsewhere lays down that to apply ancient rules in the

treatment of modern literature is to try by the laws of one country a

man belonging to another. In one notable instance the genius of Dr.

Johnson rises superior to the prejudices of his age, and he vindicates

in his treatment of Shakespeare the conception of a school of Drama in

which the unities of time and place do not apply. But he does it with

trembling: 'I am almost frightened at my own temerity; and when I

estimate the fame and the strength of those who maintain the contrary

opinion, am ready to sink down in reverential silence.' [4. _Conception

of criticism as judging begins to waver:_]--Criticism had set out with

judging by one set of laws, it had come to judge by two: the change

began to shake the notion of _judging_ as the function of criticism, and

the eyes of critics came to be turned more to the idea of literary

beauty itself, as the end for which the laws of literary composition

were merely means. Addison is the great name connected with this further

transitional stage. We find Addison not only arguing negatively that

'there is sometimes a greater judgment shown in deviating from the rules

of art than in adhering to them,' [_changing to the search for

beauties:_] but even laying down as a positive theory that the true

function of a critic is 'to discover the concealed beauties of a

writer'; while the practical illustration of his theory which he gave in

the case of the _Paradise Lost_ is supposed to have revolutionised the

opinion of the fashionable reading-public. [5. _and finally to

investigation of laws in literature as it stands._]--Addison was removed

by a very little from the final stage of criticism, the conception of

which is perhaps most fully brought out by Gervinus, where he declares

his purpose of treating Shakespeare as the 'revealing genius' of his

department of art and of its laws. Thus slowly and by gradual stages has

the conception of criticism been changing in the direction of induction:

starting from judgment by the laws of the ancient classics as standards

beyond which there is no appeal, passing through the transitional stage

of greater and greater toleration for intrinsic worth though of a modern

type, to arrive at the recognition of modern standards of judgment side

by side with ancient; again passing through a further transitional stage

of discrediting judgment altogether as the purpose of criticism in

favour of the search for intrinsic worth in literature as it stands,

till the final conception is reached of analysing literature as it

stands for the purpose of discovering its laws in itself. The later

stages do not universally prevail yet. But the earlier stages have at

all events become obsolete; and there is no reader who will not

acquiesce cheerfully in one of the details Addison gives out for his

ideal theatre, by which Rymer's tragedy _Edgar_ was to be cut up into

snow to make the Storm Scene in Shakespeare's _Lear_.

* * * * *

[_Separateness of the two criticisms._]

It may be well to recall the exact purpose to which the present argument

is intended to lead. The purpose is not to attack journalism and kindred

branches of criticism in the interests of inductive treatment. It would

be false to the principles of induction not to recognise that the

criticism of taste has long since established its position as a fertile

branch of literature. Even in an inductive system journalism would still

have place as a medium for fragmentary and tentative treatment. Moreover

it may be admitted that induction in its formal completeness of system

can never be applied in practical life; and in the intellectual pursuits

of real life trained literary taste may be a valuable acquisition. What

is here attacked is the mistake which has identified the criticism of

taste and valuation with the conception of criticism as a whole; the

intrusion of methods belonging to journalism into treatment that claims

to be systematic. [_Criticism of taste belongs to creative literature:_]

So far from being a standard of method in the treatment of literature,

criticism of the reviewer's order is outside science altogether. It

finds its proper place on the creative side of literature, as a branch

in which literature itself has come to be taken as a theme for literary

writing; it thus belongs to the literature treated, not to the

scientific treatment of it. [_as the lyrics of prose._] Reviews so

placed may be regarded almost as the lyrics of prose: like lyric poems

they have their completeness in themselves, and their interest lies, not

in their being parts of some whole, but in their flashing the

subjectivity of a writer on to a variety of isolated topics; they thus

have value, not as fragments of literary science, but as fragments of

Addison, of Jeffrey, of Macaulay. Nor is the bearing of the present

argument that commentators should set themselves to eulogise the authors

they treat instead of condemning them (though this would certainly be

the safer of two errors). The treatment aimed at is one independent of

praise or blame, one that has nothing to do with merit, relative or

absolute. The contention is for a branch of criticism separate from the

criticism of taste; a branch that, in harmony with the spirit of other

modern sciences, reviews the phenomena of literature as they actually

stand, enquiring into and endeavouring to systematise the laws and

principles by which they are moulded and produce their effects.

Scientific criticism and the criticism of taste have distinct spheres:

and the whole of literary history shows that the failure to keep the two

separate results only in mutual confusion.

Our present purpose is with inductive criticism. What, by the analogy of

other sciences, is implied in the inductive treatment of literature?

[_Application of induction to literary subject-matter._]

The inductive sciences occupy themselves directly with facts, that is,

with phenomena translated by observation into the form of facts; and

soundness of inductive theory is measured by the closeness with which it

will bear confronting with the facts. In the case of literature and art

the facts are to be looked for in the literary and artistic productions

themselves: the dramas, epics, pictures, statues, pillars, capitals,

symphonies, operas--the details of these are the phenomena which the

critical observer translates into facts. A picture is a title for a

bundle of facts: that the painter has united so many figures in such and

such groupings, that he has given such and such varieties of colouring,

and such and such arrangement of light and shade. Similarly the _Iliad_

is a short name implying a large number of facts characterising the

poem: that its principal personages are Agamemnon and Achilles, that

these personages are represented as displaying certain qualities, doing

certain deeds, and standing in certain relations to one another.

[_Difficulty: the want of positiveness in literary impressions._]

Here, however, arises that which has been perhaps the greatest

stumbling-block in the way of securing inductive treatment for

literature. Science deals only with ascertained facts: but the details

of literature and art are open to the most diverse interpretation. They

leave conflicting impressions on different observers, impressions both

subjective and variable in themselves, and open to all manner of

distracting influences, not excepting that of criticism itself. Where in

the treatment of literature is to be found the positiveness of

subject-matter which is the first condition of science?

[_The difficulty not confined to literature._]

In the first place it may be pointed out that this want of certainty in

literary interpretation is not a difficulty of a kind peculiar to

literature. The same object of terror will affect the members of a crowd

in a hundred different ways, from presence of mind to hysteria; yet this

has not prevented the science of psychology from inductively discussing

fear. Logic proposes to scientifically analyse the reasoning processes

in the face of the infinite degrees of susceptibility different minds

show to proof and persuasion. It has become proverbial that taste in art

is incapable of being settled by discussion, yet the art of music has

found exact treatment in the science of harmony. In the case of these

well-established sciences it has been found possible to separate the

variable element from that which is the subject-matter of the science:

such a science as psychology really covers two distinct branches of

thought, the psychology that discusses formally the elements of the

human mind, and another psychology, not yet systematised, that deals

with the distribution of these elements amongst different individuals.

It need then be no barrier to inductive treatment that in the case of

literature and art the will and consciousness act as disturbing forces,

refracting what may be called natural effects into innumerable effects

on individual students. It only becomes a question of practical

procedure, in what way the interfering variability is to be eliminated.

[_The variable element to be eliminated by reference not to taste;_]

It is precisely at this point that _à priori_ criticism and induction

part company. The _à priori_ critic gets rid of uncertainty in literary

interpretation by confining his attention to effects produced upon the

best minds: he sets up _taste_ as a standard by which to try impressions

of literature which he is willing to consider. The inductive critic

cannot have recourse to any such arbitrary means of limiting his

materials; for his doubts he knows no court of appeal except the appeal

to the literary works themselves. [_but to the objective details of the

literature itself._] The astronomer, from the vast distance of the

objects he observes, finds the same phenomenon producing different

results on different observers, and he has thus regularly to allow for

personal errors: but he deals with such discrepancies only by fresh

observations on the stars themselves, and it never occurs to him that he

can get rid of a variation by abstract argument or deference to a

greater observer. In the same way the inductive critic of literature

must settle his doubts by referring them to the literary productions

themselves; to him the question is not of the nobler view or the view in

best taste, but simply what view fits in best with the details as they

stand in actual fact. He quite recognises that it is not the objective

details but the subjective impressions they produce that make literary

effect, but the objective details are the _limit_ on the variability of

the subjective impressions. The character of Macbeth impresses two

readers differently: how is the difference to be settled? The _à priori_

critic contends that his conception is the loftier; that a hero should

be heroic; that moreover the tradition of the stage and the greatest

names in the criticism of the past bear him out; or, finally, falls back

upon good taste, which closes the discussion. The inductive critic

simply puts together all the sayings and doings of Macbeth himself, all

that others in the play say and appear to feel about him, and whatever

view of the character is consistent with these and similar facts of the

play, that view he selects; while to vary from it for any external

consideration would seem to him as futile as for an astronomer to make a

star rise an hour earlier to tally with the movements of another star.

[_Foundation axiom of the inductive criticism: Interpretation of the

nature of an hypothesis._]

We thus arrive at a foundation axiom of inductive literary criticism:

_Interpretation in literature is of the nature of a scientific

hypothesis, the truth of which is tested by the degree of completeness

with which it explains the details of the literary work as they actually

stand_. That will be the true meaning of a passage, not which is the

most worthy, but which most nearly explains the words as they are; that

will be the true reading of a character which, however involved in

expression or tame in effect, accounts for and reconciles all that is

represented of the personage. The inductive critic will interpret a

complex situation, not by fastening attention on its striking elements

and ignoring others as oversights and blemishes, but by putting together

with business-like exactitude all that the author has given, weighing,

balancing, and standing by the product. He will not consider that he has

solved the action of a drama by some leading plot, or some central idea

powerfully suggested in different parts, but will investigate patiently

until he can find a scheme which will give point to the inferior as well

as to the leading scenes, and in connection with which all the details

are harmonised in their proper proportions. In this way he will be

raising a superstructure of exposition that rests, not on authority

however high, but upon a basis of indisputable fact.

[_Practical objection: Did the authors intend those interpretations?_]

In actual operation I have often found that such positive analysis

raises in the popular mind a very practical objection: that the

scientific interpretation seems to discover in literary works much more

in the way of purpose and design than the authors themselves can be

supposed to have dreamed of. Would not Chaucer and Shakespeare, it is

asked, if they could come to life now, be greatly astonished to hear

themselves lectured upon? to find critics knowing their purposes better

than they had known them themselves, and discovering in their works laws

never suspected till after they were dead, and which they themselves

perhaps would need some effort to understand? Deep designs are traced in

Shakespeare's plots, and elaborate combinations in his characters and

passions: is the student asked to believe that Shakespeare really

_intended_ these complicated effects?

[_Answer: changed meaning of 'design' in science._]

The difficulty rests largely upon a confusion in words. Such words as

'purpose,' 'intention,' have a different sense when used in ordinary

parlance from that which they bear when applied in criticism and

science. In ordinary parlance a man's 'purpose' means his conscious

purpose, of which he is the best judge; in science the 'purpose' of a

thing is the purpose it actually serves, and is discoverable only by

analysis. Thus science discovers that the 'purpose' of earthworms is to

break up the soil, the 'design' of colouring in flowers is to attract

insects, though the flower is not credited with fore-sight nor the worm

with disinterestedness. In this usage alone can the words 'purpose,'

'intention,' be properly applied to literature and art: science knows no

kind of evidence in the matter of creative purpose so weighty as the

thing it has actually produced. This has been well put by Ulrici:

The _language_ of the artist is poetry, music, drawing, colouring:

there is no other form in which he can express himself with equal

depth and clearness. Who would ask a philosopher to paint his ideas

in colours? It would be equally absurd to think that because a poet

cannot say with perfect philosophic certainty in the form of

reflection and pure thought what it was that he wished and intended

to produce, that he never thought at all, but let his imagination

improvise at random.

Nothing is more common than for analysis to discover design in what, so

far as consciousness is concerned, has been purely instinctive. Thus

physiology ascertains that bread contains all the necessary elements of

food except one, which omission happens to be supplied by butter: this

may be accepted as an explanation of our 'purpose' in eating butter with

bread, without the explanation being taken to imply that all who have

ever fed on bread and butter have consciously _intended_ to combine the

nitrogenous and oleaginous elements of food. It is the natural order of

things that the practical must precede the analytic. Bees by instinct

construct hexagonal cells, and long afterwards mensuration shows that

the hexagon is the most economic shape for such stowage; individual

states must rise and fall first before the sciences of history and

politics can come to explain the how and why of their mutations.

Similarly it is in accordance with the order of things that Shakespeare

should produce dramas by the practical processes of art-creation, and

that it should be left for others, his critics succeeding him at long

intervals, to discover by analysis his 'purposes' and the laws which

underlie his effects. The poet, if he could come to life now, would not

feel more surprise at this analysis of his 'motives' and unfolding of

his unconscious 'design' than he would feel on hearing that the beating

of his heart--to him a thing natural enough, and needing no

explanation--had been discovered to have a distinct purpose he could

never have dreamed of in propelling the circulation of his blood, a

thing of which he had never heard.

[_Three points of contrast between judicial and inductive criticism._]

There are three leading ideas in relation to which inductive and

judicial criticism are in absolute antagonism: to bring out these

contrasts will be the most effective way of describing the inductive

treatment.

The first of these ideas is order of merit, together with the kindred

notions of partisanship and hostility applied to individual authors and

works. [1. _Comparisons of merit: these outside science._] The minds of

ordinary readers are saturated with this class of ideas; they are the

weeds of taste, choking the soil, and leaving no room for the purer

forms of literary appreciation. Favoured by the fatal blunder of modern

education, which considers every other mental power to stand in need of

training, but leaves taste and imagination to shift for themselves,

literary taste has largely become confused with a spurious form of it:

the mere taste for competition, comparison of likes and dislikes, gossip

applied to art and called criticism. Of course such likes and dislikes

must always exist, and journalism is consecrated to the office of giving

them shape and literary expression; though it should be led by

experience, if by nothing else, to exercise its functions with a double

reserve, recognising that the judicial attitude of mind is a limit on

appreciation, and that the process of testing will itself be tried by

the test of vitality. But such preferences and comparisons of merit must

be kept rigidly outside the sphere of science. Science knows nothing of

competitive examination: a geologist is not heard extolling old red

sandstone as a model rock-formation, or making sarcastic comments on the

glacial epoch. Induction need not disturb the freedom with which we

attach ourselves to whatever attracts our individual dispositions:

individual partisanship for the wooded snugness of the Rhine or the bold

and bracing Alps is unaffected by the adoption of exact methods in

physical geography. What is to be avoided is the confusion of two

different kinds of interest attaching to the same object. In the study

of the stars and the rocks, which can inspire little or no personal

interest, it is easy to keep science pure; to keep it to 'dry light,' as

Heraclitus calls it, intelligence unclouded by the humours of individual

sentiment, as Bacon interprets. But when science comes to be applied to

objects which can excite emotion and inspire affection, then confusion

arises, and the scientific student of political economy finds his

treatment of pauperism disturbed by the philanthropy which belongs to

him as a man. Still more in so emotional an atmosphere as the study of

beauty, the student must use effort to separate the _beauty_ of an

object, which is a thing of art and perfectly analysable, from his

personal _interest_ in it, which is as distinctly external to the

analysis of beauty as his love for his dog is external to the science of

zoology. The possibility of thus separating interest and perception of

beauty without diminishing either may be sufficiently seen in the case

of music--an art which has been already reduced to scientific form.

Music is as much as any art a thing of tastes and preferences; besides

partialities for particular masters one student will be peculiarly

affected by melody, another is all for dramatic effect, others have a

special taste for the fugue or the sonata. No one can object to such

preferences, but the science of music knows nothing about them; its

exposition deals with modes of treatment or habits of orchestration

distinguishing composers, irrespective of the private partialities they

excite. Mozart and Wagner are analysed as two items in the sum of facts

which make up music; and if a particular expositor shows by a turn in

the sentence that he has a leaning to one or the other, the slip may do

no harm, but for the moment science has been dropped.

[_Inductive treatment concerned with differences of kind, not of

degree._]

There is, however, a sort of difference between authors and works, the

constant recognition of which would more than make up to cultured

pleasure for discarding comparisons of merit. Inductive treatment is

concerned with _differences of kind_ as distinguished from differences

of degree. Elementary as this distinction is, the power of firmly

grasping it is no slight evidence of a trained mind: the power, that is,

of clearly seeing that two things are different, without being at the

same time impelled to rank one above the other. The confusion of the two

is a constant obstacle in the way of literary appreciation. It has been

said, by way of comparison between two great novelists, that George

Eliot constructs characters, but Charlotte Brontë creates them. The

description (assuming it to be true) ought to shed a flood of interest

upon both authoresses; by perpetually throwing on the two modes of

treatment the clear light of contrast it ought to intensify our

appreciation of both. As a fact, however, the description is usually

quoted to suggest a preference for Charlotte Brontë on the supposed

ground that creation is 'higher' than construction; and the usual

consequences of preferences are threatened--the gradual closing of our

susceptibilities to those qualities in the less liked of the two which

do not resemble the qualities of the favourite. Yet why should we not be

content to accept such a description (if true) as constituting a

difference of kind, and proceed to recognise 'construction' and

'creation' as two parallel modes of treatment, totally distinct from one

another in the way in which a fern is distinct from a flower, a

distinction allowing no room for preferences because there is no common

ground on which to compare? This separateness once granted, the mind,

instead of having to choose between the two, would have scope for taking

in to the full the detailed effects flowing from both modes of

treatment, and the area of mental pleasure would be enlarged. The great

blunders of criticism in the past, which are now universally admitted,

rest on this inability to recognise differences of kind in literature.

The Restoration poets had a mission to bring the heroic couplet to

perfection: poetry not in their favourite measure they treated, not as

different, but as bad, and rewrote or ignored Spenser and Milton. And

generations of literary history have been wasted in discussing whether

the Greek dramatists or Shakespeare were the higher: now every one

recognises that they constitute two schools different in kind that

cannot be compared.

[_Distinctions of kind a primary element in appreciation._]

It is hardly going too far to assert that this sensitiveness to

differences of kind as distinguished from differences of degree is the

first condition of literary appreciation. Nothing can be more essential

to art-perception than receptiveness, and receptiveness implies a change

in the receptive attitude of mind with each variety of art. To

illustrate by an extreme case. Imagine a spectator perfectly familiar

with the Drama, but to whom the existence of the Opera was unknown, and

suppose him to have wandered into an opera-house, mistaking it for a

theatre. At first the mistake under which he was labouring would distort

every effect: the elaborate overture would seem to him a great 'waste'

of power in what was a mere accessory; the opening recitative would

strike him as 'unnaturally' delivered, and he would complain of the

orchestral accompaniment as a 'distraction'; while at the first aria he

would think the actor gone mad. As, however, arias, terzettos,

recitatives succeeded one another, he must at last catch the idea that

the music was an essential element in the exhibition, and that he was

seeing, not a drama, but a drama translated into a different kind of

art. The catching of this idea would at once make all the objectionable

elements fall into their proper places. No longer distracted by the

thought of the ordinary Drama, his mind would have leisure to catch the

special effects of the Opera: he would feel how powerfully a change of

passion could move him when magnified with all the range of expression

an orchestra affords, and he would acknowledge a dramatic touch as the

diabolic spirit of the conspirator found vent in a double D. The

illustration is extreme to the extent of absurdity: but it brings out

how expectation plays an important part in appreciation, and how the

expectation has to be adapted to that on which it is exercised. The

receptive attitude is a sort of mental focus which needs adjusting

afresh to each variety of art if its effects are to be clearly caught;

and to disturb attention when engaged on one species of literature by

the thought of another is as unreasonable as to insist on one

microscopic object appearing definite when looked at with a focus

adjusted to another object. [_Each author a separate species._] This

will be acknowledged in reference to the great divisions of art: but

does it not apply to the species as well as the genera, indeed to each

individual author? Wordsworth has laid down that each fresh poet is to

be tried by fresh canons of taste: this is only another way of saying

that the differences between poets are differences of kind, that each

author is a 'school' by himself, and can be appreciated only by a

receptive attitude formed by adjustment to himself alone. In a

scientific treatment of literature, at all events, an elementary axiom

must be: [_Second axiom of inductive criticism: its function in

distinguishing literary species._] _That inductive criticism is mainly

occupied in distinguishing literary species_. And on this view it will

clearly appear how such notions as order of merit become disturbing

forces in literary appreciation: unconsciously they apply the

_qualitative_ standard of the favourite works to works which must

necessarily be explained by a different standard. They are defended on

the ground of pleasure, but they defeat their own object: no element in

pleasure is greater than variety, and comparisons of merit, with every

other form of the judicial spirit, are in reality arrangements for

appreciating the smallest number of varieties.

[II. _The 'laws of art': confusion between law external and

scientific._]

The second is the most important of the three ideas, both for its effect

in the past and for the sharpness with which it brings judicial and

inductive criticism into contrast. It is the idea that there exist

'laws' of art, in the same sense in which we speak of laws in morality

or the laws of some particular state--great principles which have been

laid down, and which are binding on the artist as the laws of God or his

country are binding on the man; that by these, and by lesser principles

deduced from these, the artist's work is to be tried, and praise or

blame awarded accordingly. Great part of formal criticism runs on these

lines; while, next in importance to comparisons of merit, the popular

mind considers literary taste to consist in a keen sensitiveness to the

'faults' and 'flaws' of literary workmanship.

This attitude to art illustrates the enormous misleading power of the

metaphors that lie concealed in words. The word 'law,' justly applicable

in one of its senses to art, has in practice carried with it the

associations of its other sense; and the mistake of metaphor has been

sufficient to distort criticism until, as Goldsmith remarks, rules have

become the greatest of all the misfortunes which have befallen the

commonwealth of letters. Every expositor has had to point out the

widespread confusion between the two senses of this term. Laws in the

moral and political world are external obligations, restraints of the

will; they exist where the will of a ruler or of the community is

applied to the individual will. In science, on the other hand, law has

to do not with what ought to be, but with what is; scientific laws are

facts reduced to formulæ, statements of the habits of things, so to

speak. The laws of the stars in the first sense could only mean some

creative fiat, such as 'Let there be lights in the firmament of heaven';

in the scientific sense laws of the stars are summaries of their

customary movements. In the act of getting drunk I am violating God's

moral law, I am obeying his law of alcoholic action. So scientific laws,

in the case of art and literature, will mean descriptions of the

practice of artists or the characteristics of their works, when these

will go into the form of general propositions as distinguished from

disconnected details. The key to the distinction is the notion of

external authority. There cannot be laws in the moral and political

sense without a ruler or legislative authority; in scientific laws the

law-giver and the law-obeyer are one and the same, and for the laws of

vegetation science looks no further than the facts of the vegetable

world. [_The 'laws of art' are scientific laws._] In literature and art

the term 'law' applies only in the scientific sense; the laws of the

Shakespearean Drama are not laws imposed by some external authority upon

Shakespeare, but laws of dramatic practice derived from the analysis of

his actual works. Laws of literature, in the sense of external

obligations limiting an author, there are none: if he were voluntarily

to bind himself by such external laws, he would be so far curtailing

art; it is hardly a paradox to say the art is legitimate only when it

does not obey laws. [_The word 'fault' meaningless in inductive

criticism._] What applies to the term 'law' applies similarly to the

term 'fault.' The term is likely always to be used from its extreme

convenience in art-training; but it must be understood strictly as a

term of education and discipline. In inductive criticism, as in the

other inductive sciences, the word 'fault' has no meaning. If an artist

acts contrary to the practice of all other artists, the result is either

that he produces no art-effect at all, in which case there is nothing

for criticism to register and analyse, or else he produces a new effect,

and is thus extending, not breaking, the laws of art. The great clash of

horns in Beethoven's Heroic Symphony was at first denounced as a gross

fault, a violation of the plainest laws of harmony; now, instead of a

'fault,' it is spoken of as a 'unique effect,' and in the difference

between the two descriptions lies the whole difference between the

conceptions of judicial and inductive criticism. Again and again in the

past this notion of faults has led criticism on to wrong tracks, from

which it has had to retrace its steps on finding the supposed faults to

be in reality new laws. Immense energy was wasted in denouncing

Shakespeare's 'fault' of uniting serious with light matter in the same

play as a violation of fundamental dramatic laws; experience showed this

mixture of passions to be the source of powerful art-effects hitherto

shut out of the Drama, and the 'fault' became one of the distinguishing

'laws' in the most famous branch of modern literature. It is necessary

then to insist upon the strict scientific sense of the term 'law' as

used of literature and art; and the purging of criticism from the

confusion attaching to this word is an essential step in its elevation

to the inductive standard. It is a step, moreover, in which it has been

preceded by other branches of thought. At one time the practice of

commerce and the science of economy suffered under the same confusion:

the battle of 'free trade' has been fought, the battle of 'free art' is

still going on. In time it will be recognised that the practice of

artists, like the operations of business, must be left to its natural

working, and the attempt to impose external canons of taste on artists

will appear as futile as the attempt to effect by legislation the

regulation of prices.

[_Objection as to the moral purpose of literature:_]

Objections may possibly be taken to this train of argument on very high

grounds, as if the protest against the notion of law-obeying in art were

a sort of antinomianism. Literature, it may be said, has a moral

purpose, to elevate and refine, and no duty can be higher than that of

pointing out what in it is elevating and refining, and jealously

watching against any lowering of its standard. [_this outside inductive

treatment, though intrinsically more important._] Such contention may

readily be granted, and yet may amount to no more than this: that there

are ways of dealing with literature which are more important than

inductive criticism, but which are none the less outside it. Jeremy

Collier did infinite service to our Restoration Drama, but his was not

the service of a scientific critic. The same things take different ranks

as they are tried by the standards of science or morals. An enervating

climate may have the effect of enfeebling the moral character, but this

does not make the geographer's interest in the tropical zone one whit

the less. Economy concerns itself simply with the fact that a certain

subsidence of profits in a particular trade will drive away capital to

other trades. But the details of human experience that are latent in

such a proposition: the chilling effects of unsuccess and the dim colour

it gives to the outlook into the universe, the sifting of character and

separation between the enterprising and the simple, the hard thoughts as

to the mysterious dispensations of human prosperity, the sheer misery of

a wage-class looking on plenty and feeling starvation--this human drama

of failing profits may be vastly more important than the whole science

of economy, but economy none the less entirely and rightly ignores it.

[_Objection: Art as an arbitrary product not subject to law._]

To some, I know, it appears that literature is a sphere in which the

strict sense of the word 'law' has no application: that such laws belong

to nature, not to art. The essence, it is contended, of the natural

sciences is the certainty of the facts with which they deal. Art, on the

contrary, is creative; it does not come into the category of objective

phenomena at all, but is the product of some artist's will, and

therefore purely arbitrary. If in a compilation of observations in

natural history for scientific use it became known that the compiler had

at times drawn upon his imagination for his details, the whole

compilation would become useless; and any scientific theories based upon

it would be discredited. But the artist bases his work wholly on

imagination, and caprice is a leading art-beauty: how, it is asked, can

so arbitrary a subject-matter be reduced to the form of positive laws?

[_Third axiom of inductive criticism: art a part of nature._]

In view of any such objections, it may be well to set up a third axiom

of inductive criticism: _That art is a part of nature_. Nature, it is

true, is the vaguest of words: but this is a vagueness common to the

objection and the answer. The objection rests really on a false

antithesis, of which one term is 'nature,' while it is not clear what is

the other term; the axiom set up in answer implies that there is no real

distinction between 'nature' and the other phenomena which are the

subject of human enquiry. The distinction is supposed to rest upon the

degree to which arbitrary elements of the mind, such as imagination,

will, caprice, enter into such a thing as art-production. [_Other

arbitrary products subject to inductive treatment._] But there are other

things in which the human will plays as much part as it does in art, and

which have nevertheless proved compatible with inductive treatment.

Those who hold that 'thought is free' do not reject psychology as an

inductive science; actual politics are made up of struggles of will,

exercises of arbitrary power, and the like, and yet there is a political

science. If there is an inductive science of politics, men's voluntary

actions in the pursuit of public life, and an inductive science of

economy, men's voluntary actions in pursuit of wealth, why should there

not be an inductive science of art, men's voluntary actions in pursuit

of the beautiful? The whole of human action, as well as the whole of

external nature, comes within the jurisdiction of science; so far from

the productions of the will and imagination being exempted from

scientific treatment, will and imagination themselves form chapters in

psychology, and caprice has been analysed.

[III. _Testing by fixed standards inconsistent with inductive

treatment._]

It remains to notice the third of the three ideas in relation to which

the two kinds of criticism are in complete contrast with one another. It

is a vague notion, which no objector would formulate, but which as a

fact does underlie judicial criticism, and insensibly accompanies its

testing and assaying. It is the idea that the foundations of literary

form have reached their final settlement, the past being tacitly taken

as a standard for the present and future, or the present as a standard

for the past. Thus in the treatment of new literature the idea manifests

itself in a secret antagonism to variations from received models; at the

very least, new forms are called upon to justify themselves, and so the

judicial critic brings his least receptive attitude to the new effects

which need receptiveness most. In opposition to this tacit assumption,

inductive criticism starts with a distinct counter-axiom of the utmost

importance: _That literature is a thing of development_. [_Fourth axiom

of inductive criticism: literature a thing of development._] This axiom

implies that the critic must come to literature as to that in which he

is expecting to find unlimited change and variety; he must keep before

him the fact that production must always be far ahead of criticism and

analysis, and must have carried its conquering invention into fresh

regions before science, like settled government in the wake of the

pioneer, follows to explain the new effects by new principles. No doubt

in name literary development is recognised in all criticism; yet in its

treatment both of old literature and new the _à priori_ criticism is

false to development in the scientific sense of the term. [_Ignoring of

development in new literature:_] Such systems are apt to begin by laying

down that 'the object of literature is so and so,' or that 'the purpose

of the Drama is to pourtray human nature'; they then proceed to test

actual literature and dramas by the degree in which they carry out these

fundamental principles. Such procedure is the opposite of the inductive

method, and is a practical denial of development in literature.

[_'purpose' in literature continually modifying._] Assuming that the

object of existing literature were correctly described, such a formula

could not bind the literature of the future. Assuming that there was

ever a branch of art which could be reduced to one simple purpose, yet

the inherent tendency of the human mind and its productions to develop

would bring it about that what were at first means towards this purpose

would in time become ends in themselves side by side with the main

purpose, giving us in addition to the simple species a modified variety

of it; external influences, again, would mingle with the native

characteristics of the original species, and produce new species

compound in their purposes and effects. The real literature would be

ever obeying the first principle of development and changing from simple

to complex, while the criticism that tried it by the original standard

would be at each step removed one degree further from the only standard

by which the literature could be explained. [_Development in past

literature confused with improvement._] And if judicial criticism fails

in providing for development in the future and present, it is equally

unfortunate in giving a false twist to development when looked for in

the past. The critic of comparative standards is apt to treat early

stages of literature as elementary, tacitly assuming his own age as a

standard _up to_ which previous periods have developed. Thus his

treatment of the past becomes often an assessment of the degrees in

which past periods have approximated to his own, advancing from literary

pot-hooks to his own running facility. The clearness of an ancient

writer he values at fifty per cent. as compared with modern standards,

his concatenation of sentences is put down as only forty-five. But what

if a certain degree of mistiness be an essential element in the phase

of literary development to which the particular writer belongs, so that

in him modern clearness would become, in judicial phrase, a fault? What

if Plato's concatenation of sentences would simply spoil the flavour of

Herodotus's story-telling, if Jeremy Taylor's prolixity and Milton's

bi-lingual prose be simply the fittest of all dresses for the thought of

their age and individual genius? In fact, the critic of fixed standards

confuses development with _improvement_: a parallel mistake in natural

history would be to understand the statement that man is higher in the

scale of development than the butterfly as implying that a butterfly was

God's failure in the attempt to make man. The inductive critic will

accord to the early forms of his art the same independence he accords to

later forms. Development will not mean to him education for a future

stage, but the perpetual branching out of literary activity into ever

fresh varieties, different in kind from one another, and each to be

studied by standards of its own: the 'individuality' of authors is the

expression in literary parlance which corresponds to the perpetual

'differentiation' of new species in science. Alike, then, in his

attitude to the past and the future, the inductive critic will eschew

the temptation to judgment by fixed standards, which in reality means

opposing lifeless rules to the ever-living variety of nature. He will

leave a dead judicial criticism to bury its dead authors and to pen for

them judicious epitaphs, and will himself approach literature filled

equally with reverence for the unbroken vitality of its past and faith

in its exhaustless future.

[_Summary._]

To gather up our results. Induction, as the most universal of scientific

methods, may be presumed to apply wherever there is a subject-matter

reducible to the form of fact; such a subject-matter will be found in

literature where its effects are interpreted, not arbitrarily, but with

strict reference to the details of the literary works as they actually

stand. There is thus an inductive literary criticism, akin in spirit

and methods to the other inductive sciences, and distinct from other

branches of criticism, such as the criticism of taste. This inductive

criticism will entirely free itself from the judicial spirit and its

comparisons of merit, which is found to have been leading criticism

during half its history on to false tracks from which it has taken the

other half to retrace its steps. On the contrary, inductive criticism

will examine literature in the spirit of pure investigation: looking for

the laws of art in the practice of artists, and treating art, like the

rest of nature, as a thing of continuous development, which may thus be

expected to fall, with each author and school, into varieties distinct

in kind from one another, and each of which can be fully grasped only

when examined with an attitude of mind adapted to the special variety

without interference from without.

* * * * *

To illustrate the criticism thus described in its application to

Shakespeare is the purpose of the present work.

The scope of the book is limited to the consideration of Shakespeare in

his character as the great master of the Romantic Drama; and its

treatment of his dramatic art divides itself into two parts. The first

applies the inductive method in a series of Studies devoted to

particular plays, and to single important features of dramatic art which

these plays illustrate. One of the purposes of this first part is to

bring out how the inductive method, besides its scientific interest, has

the further recommendation of assisting more than any other treatment to

enlarge our appreciation of the author and of his achievements. The

second part will use the materials collected in the first part to

present, in the form of a brief survey, Dramatic Criticism as an

inductive science: enumerating, so far as its materials admit, the

leading topics which such a science would treat, and arranging these

topics in the logical connection which scientific method requires.

PART FIRST.

SHAKESPEARE CONSIDERED AS A DRAMATIC ARTIST _IN TEN STUDIES_.

I.

THE TWO STORIES SHAKESPEARE BORROWS FOR HIS MERCHANT OF VENICE.

_A Study in the Raw Material of the Romantic Drama_.

[_Story as the Raw Materials of the Romantic Drama._]

THE starting-point in the treatment of any work of literature is its

position in literary history: the recognition of this gives the attitude

of mind which is most favourable for extracting from the work its full

effect. The division of the universal Drama to which Shakespeare belongs

is known as the 'Romantic Drama,' one of its chief distinctions being

that it uses the stories of Romance, together with histories treated as

story-books, as the sources from which the matter of the plays is taken;

Romances are the _raw material_ out of which the Shakespearean Drama is

manufactured. This very fact serves to illustrate the elevation of the

Elizabethan Drama in the scale of literary development: just as the

weaver uses as his raw material that which is the finished product of

the spinner, so Shakespeare and his contemporaries start in their art of

dramatising from Story which is already a form of art. In the

exhibition, then, of Shakespeare as an Artist, it is natural to begin

with the raw material which he worked up into finished masterpieces. For

illustration of this no play could be more suitable than _The Merchant

of Venice_, in which two tales, already familiar in the story form, have

been woven together into a single plot: the Story of the Cruel Jew, who

entered into a bond with his enemy of which the forfeit was to be a

pound of this enemy's own flesh, and the Story of the Heiress and the

Caskets. The present study will deal with the stories themselves,

considering them as if with the eye of a dramatic artist to catch the

points in which they lend themselves to dramatic effect; the next will

show how Shakespeare improves the stories in the telling, increasing

their dramatic force by the very process of working them up; a third

study will point out how, not content with two stories, he has added

others in the development of his plot, making it more complex only in

reality to make it more simple.

[_Story of The Jew._]

In the Story of the Jew the main point is its special capability for

bringing out the idea of _Nemesis_, one of the simplest and most

universal of dramatic motives. Described broadly, Nemesis is retribution

as it appears in the world of art. [_Nemesis as a dramatic idea._] In

reality the term covers two distinct conceptions: in ancient thought

Nemesis was an artistic bond between excess and reaction, in modern

thought it is an artistic bond between sin and retribution. The

distinction is part of the general difference between Greek and modern

views of life. [_Ancient conception: artistic connection between excess

and reaction._] The Greeks may be said to be the most artistic nation of

mankind, in the sense that art covered so large a proportion of their

whole personality: it is not surprising to find that they projected

their sense of art into morals. Aristotle was a moral philosopher, but

his system of ethics reads as an artistically devised pattern, in which

every virtue is removed at equal distances from vices of excess and

defect balancing it on opposite sides. The Greek word for law signifies

proportion and distribution, _nomos_; and it is only another form of it

that expresses _Nemesis_ as the power punishing violations of proportion

in things human. Distinct from Justice, which was occupied with crime,

Nemesis was a companion deity to Fortune; and as Fortune went through

the world distributing the good things of life heedlessly without regard

to merit, so Nemesis followed in her steps, and, equally without regard

to merit, delighted in cutting down the prosperity that was high enough

to attract her attention. Polycrates is the typical victim of such

Nemesis: cast off by his firmest ally for no offence but an unbroken

career of good luck, in the reaction from which his ally feared to be

involved; essaying as a forlorn hope to propitiate by voluntarily

throwing in the sea his richest crown-jewel; recognising when this was

restored by fishermen that heaven had refused his sacrifice, and

abandoning himself to his fate in despair. But Nemesis, to the moral

sense of antiquity, could go even beyond visitation on innocent

prosperity, and goodness itself could be carried to a degree that

invited divine reaction. Heroes like Lycurgus and Pentheus perished for

excess of temperance; and the ancient Drama startles the modern reader

with an Hippolytus, whose passionate purity brought down on him a

destruction prophesied beforehand by those to whom religious duty

suggested moderate indulgence in lust.

[_Modern conception: artistic connection between sin and retribution._]

Such malignant correction of human inequalities is not a function to

harmonise with modern conceptions of Deity. Yet the Greek notion of

Nemesis has an element of permanency in it, for it represents a

principle underlying human life. It suggests a sort of elasticity in

human experience, a tendency to rebound from a strain; this is the

equilibrium of the moral world, the force which resists departure from

the normal, becoming greater in proportion as departure from the normal

is wider. Thus in commercial speculation there is a safe medium certain

to bring profit in the long run; in social ambition there is a certain

rise though slow: if a man hurries to be rich, or seeks to rise in

public life by leaps and bounds, the spectator becomes aware of a secret

force that has been set in motion, as when the equilibrium of physical

bodies has been disturbed, which force threatens to drag the aspirant

down to the point from which he started, or to debase him lower in

proportion to the height at which he rashly aimed. Such a force is

'risk,' and it may remain risk, but if it be crowned with the expected

fall the whole is recognised as 'Nemesis.' This Nemesis is deeply

embedded in the popular mind and repeatedly crops up in its proverbial

wisdom. Proverbs like 'Grasp all, lose all,' 'When things come to the

worst they are sure to mend,' exactly express moral equilibrium, and the

'golden mean' is its proverbial formula. The saying 'too much of a good

thing' suggests that the Nemesis on departures from the golden mean

applies to good things as well as bad; while the principle is made to

apply even to the observation of the golden mean itself in the proverb

'Nothing venture, nothing have.' Nevertheless, this side of the whole

notion has in modern usage fallen into the background in comparison with

another aspect of Nemesis. The grand distinction of modern thought is

the predominance in it of moral ideas: they colour even its imagination;

and if the Greeks carried their art-sense into morals, modern instincts

have carried morals into art. In particular the speculations raised by

Christianity have cast the shadow of Sin over the whole universe. It has

been said that the conception of Sin is unknown to the ancients, and

that the word has no real equivalent in Latin or Classical Greek. The

modern mind is haunted by it. Notions of Sin have invaded art, and

Nemesis shows their influence: vague conceptions of some supernatural

vindication of artistic proportion in life have now crystallised into

the interest of watching morals and art united in their treatment of

Sin. The link between Sin and its retribution becomes a form of

art-pleasure; and no dramatic effect is more potent in modern Drama than

that which emphasises the principle that whatsoever a man soweth that

shall he also reap.

[_Dramatic Nemesis latent in the Story of the Jew._]

Now for this dramatic effect of Nemesis it would be difficult to find a

story promising more scope than the Story of the Cruel Jew. It will be

seen at once to contain a double nemesis, attaching to the Jew himself

and to his victim. The two moreover represent the different conceptions

of Nemesis in the ancient and modern world; Antonio's excess of moral

confidence suffers a nemesis of reaction in his humiliation, and

Shylock's sin of judicial murder finds a nemesis of retribution in his

ruin by process of law. The nemesis, it will be observed, is not merely

two-fold, but double in the way that a double flower is distinct from

two flowers: it is a nemesis _on_ a nemesis; the nemesis which visits

Antonio's fault is the crime for which Shylock suffers his nemesis.

Again, in that which gives artistic character to the reaction and the

retribution the two nemeses differ. Let St. Paul put the difference for

us: 'Some men's sins are evident, going before unto judgment; and some

they follow after.' So in cases like that of Shylock the nemesis is

interesting from its very obviousness and the impatience with which we

look for it; in the case of Antonio the nemesis is striking for the very

opposite reason, that he of all men seemed most secure against it.

[_Antonio: perfection and self-sufficiency, the Nemesis of Surprise._]

Antonio must be understood as a perfect character: for we must read the

play in the light of its age, and intolerance was a mediæval virtue. But

there is no single good quality that does not carry with it its special

temptation, and the sum of them all, or perfection, has its shadow in

self-sufficiency. It is so with Antonio. Of all national types of

character the Roman is the most self-sufficient, alike incorruptible by

temptation and independent of the softer influences of life: [=iii.= ii.

297.] we find that 'Roman honour' is the idea which Antonio's friends

are accustomed to associate with him. Further the dramatist contrives to

exhibit Antonio to us in circumstances calculated to bring out this

drawback to his perfection. In the opening scene we see the dignified

merchant-prince suffering under the infliction of frivolous visitors, to

which his friendship with the young nobleman exposes him: his tone

throughout the interview is that of the barest toleration, and suggests

that his courtesies are felt rather as what is due to himself than what

is due to those on whom they are bestowed. [=i.= i. 60-64.] When

Salarino makes flattering excuses for taking his leave, Antonio replies,

first with conventional compliment,

Your worth is very dear in my regard,

and then with blunt plainness, as if Salarino were not worth the trouble

of keeping up polite fiction:

I take it, your own business calls on you

And you embrace the occasion to depart.

[=i.= i. 8.]

The visitors, trying to find explanation for Antonio's seriousness,

suggest that he is thinking of his vast commercial speculations; Antonio

draws himself up:

[=i.= i. 41.]

Believe me, no: I thank my fortune for it,

My ventures are not in one bottom trusted,

Nor to one place; nor is my whole estate

Upon the fortune of this present year:

Therefore my merchandise makes me not sad.

Antonio is saying in his prosperity that _he_ shall never be moved. But

the great temptation to self-sufficiency lies in his contact, not with

social inferiors, but with a moral outcast such as Shylock: confident

that the moral gulf between the two can never be bridged over, Antonio

has violated dignity as well as mercy in the gross insults he has heaped

upon the Jew whenever they have met. [=i.= iii. 99 &c.] In the Bond

Scene we see him unable to restrain his insults at the very moment in

which he is soliciting a favour from his enemy; [=i.= iii. 107-130.] the

effect reaches a climax as Shylock gathers up the situation in a single

speech, reviewing the insults and taunting his oppressor with the

solicited obligation:

Well then, it now appears you need my help:

Go to, then; you come to me, and you say,

'Shylock, we would have moneys': you say so;

You, that did void your rheum upon my beard

And foot me as you spurn a stranger cur

Over your threshold: moneys is your suit.

There is such a foundation of justice for these taunts that for a

moment our sympathies are transferred to Shylock's side. But Antonio, so

far from taking warning, is betrayed beyond all bounds in his defiance;

and in the challenge to fate with which he replies we catch the tone of

infatuated confidence, the _hybris_ in which Greek superstition saw the

signal for the descent of Nemesis.

[=i.= iii. 131.]

I am as like to call thee so again,

To spit on thee again, to spurn thee too.

If thou wilt lend this money, lend it not

As to thy friends ...

_But lend it rather to thine enemy,

Who, if he break, thou may'st with better face

Exact the penalty_.

To this challenge of self-sufficiency the sequel of the story is the

answering Nemesis: the merchant becomes a bankrupt, the first citizen of

Venice a prisoner at the bar, the morally perfect man holds his life and

his all at the mercy of the reprobate he thought he might safely insult.

[_Shylock: malignant justice, the Nemesis of Measure for Measure._]

So Nemesis has surprised Antonio in spite of his perfectness: but the

malice of Shylock is such as is perpetually crying for retribution, and

the retribution is delayed only that it may descend with accumulated

force. In the case of this second nemesis the Story of the Jew exhibits

dramatic capability in the opportunity it affords for the sin and the

retribution to be included within the same scene. [=iv.= i.] Portia's

happy thought is a turning-point in the Trial Scene on the two sides of

which we have the Jew's triumph and the Jew's retribution; the two sides

are bound together by the principle of measure for measure, and for each

detail of vindictiveness that is developed in the first half of the

scene there is a corresponding item of nemesis in the sequel. [_Charter_

v. _statute_. =iv.= i. 38; compare 102, 219.] To begin with, Shylock

appeals to the charter of the city. It is one of the distinctions

between written and unwritten law that no flagrant injustice can arise

out of the latter. If the analogy of former precedents would seem to

threaten such an injustice, it is easy in a new case to meet the special

emergency by establishing a new precedent; where, however, the letter of

the written law involves a wrong, however great, it must, nevertheless,

be exactly enforced. Shylock takes his stand upon written law; [compare

=iii.= iii. 26-31.] indeed upon the strictest of all kinds of written

law, for the charter of the city would seem to be the instrument

regulating the relations between citizens and aliens--an absolute

necessity for a free port--which could not be superseded without

international negotiations. But what is the result? As plaintiff in the

cause Shylock would, in the natural course of justice, leave the court,

when judgment had been given against him, with no further mortification

than the loss of his suit. He is about to do so when he is recalled:

It is enacted in the laws of Venice, &c.

[=iv.= i. 314.]

Unwittingly, he has, by the action he has taken, entangled himself with

an old statute law, forgotten by all except the learned Bellario, which,

going far beyond natural law, made the mere attempt upon a citizen's

life by an alien punishable to the same extent as murder. Shylock had

chosen the letter of the law, and by the letter of the law he is to

suffer. [_Humour_ v. _quibble_.] Again, every one must feel that the

plea on which Portia upsets the bond is in reality the merest quibble.

It is appropriate enough in the mouth of a bright girl playing the

lawyer, but no court of justice could seriously entertain it for a

moment: by every principle of interpretation a bond that could justify

the cutting of human flesh must also justify the shedding of blood,

which is necessarily implied in such cutting. But, to balance this, we

have Shylock in the earlier part of the scene refusing to listen to

arguments of justice, and taking his stand upon his 'humour': [=iv.= i.

40-62.] if he has a whim, he pleads, for giving ten thousand ducats to

have a rat poisoned, who shall prevent him? The suitor who rests his

cause on a whim cannot complain if it is upset by a quibble. Similarly,

throughout the scene, every point in Shylock's justice of malice meets

its answer in the justice of nemesis. He is offered double the amount of

his loan:

[_Offer of double_ v. _refusal of principal._]

If every ducat in six thousand ducats

Were in six parts, and every part a ducat,

he answers, he would not accept them in lieu of his bond. [=iv.= i. 318,

336.] The wheel of Nemesis goes round, and Shylock would gladly accept

not only this offer but even the bare principal; but he is denied, on

the ground that he has refused it in open court. They try to bend him to

thoughts of mercy:

[_Complete security_ v. _total loss._]

How shalt thou hope for mercy, rendering none?

He dares to reply:

What judgement shall I dread, doing no wrong?

The wheel of Nemesis goes round, and Shylock's life and all lie at the

mercy of the victim to whom he had refused mercy and the judge to whose

appeal for mercy he would not listen. [_Exultation_ v. _irony._] In the

flow of his success, when every point is being given in his favour, he

breaks out into unseemly exultation:

[=iv.= i. 223, 246, 250, 301, 304.]

A Daniel come to judgement! yea, a Daniel!

The ebb comes, and his enemies catch up the cry and turn it against him:

[=iv.= i. 313, 317, 323, 333, 340.]

A Daniel, still say I, a second Daniel!

I thank thee, Jew, for _teaching_ me that word.

Such then is the Story of the Jew, and so it exhibits nemesis clashing

with nemesis, the nemesis of surprise with the nemesis of equality and

intense satisfaction.

* * * * *

[_The Caskets Story._]

In the Caskets Story, which Shakespeare has associated with the Story of

the Jew, the dramatic capabilities are of a totally different kind. In

the artist's armoury one of the most effective weapons is Idealisation:

[_Idealisation:_] inexplicable touches throwing an attractiveness over

the repulsive, uncovering the truth and beauty which lie hidden in the

commonplace, and showing how much can be brought out of how little with

how little change. [_the exhibition of a commonplace experience in a

glorified form._] A story will be excellent material, then, for dramatic

handling which contains at once some experience of ordinary life, and

also the surroundings which can be made to exhibit this experience in a

glorified form: the more commonplace the experience, the greater the

triumph of art if it can be idealised. The point of the Caskets Story to

the eye of an artist in Drama is the opportunity it affords for such an

idealisation of the commonest problem in everyday experience--what may

be called the Problem of Judgment by Appearances.

[_Problem of Judgment by Appearances._]

In the choice between alternatives there are three ways in which

judgment may be exercised. The first mode, if it can be called judgment

at all, is to accept the decision of chance--to cast lots, or merely to

drift into a decision. An opposite to this is purely rational choice.

But rational choice, if strictly interpreted as a logical process,

involves great complications. If a man would choose according to the

methods of strict reason, he must, first of all, purge himself of all

passion, for passion and reason are antagonistic. Next, he must examine

himself as to the possibility of latent prejudice; and as prejudice may

be unconsciously inherited, he must include in the sphere of his

examination ancestral and national bias. Then, he must accumulate all

the evidence that can possibly bear upon the question in hand, and

foresee every eventuality that can result from either alternative. When

he has all the materials of choice before him, he must proceed to

balance them against one another, seeing first that the mental faculties

employed in the process have been equally developed by training. All

such preliminary conditions having been satisfied, he may venture to

enquire on which side the balance dips, maintaining his suspense so long

as the dip is undecided. And when a man has done all this he has

attained only that degree of approach to strictly rational choice which

his imperfect nature admits. Such pure reason has no place in real life:

judgment in practical affairs is something between chance and this

strict reason; it attempts to use the machinery of rational choice, but

only so far as practical considerations proper to the matter in hand

allow. This medium choice is what I am here calling Judgment by

Appearances, for it is clear that the antithesis between appearance and

reality will obtain so long as the materials of choice are

scientifically incomplete; the term will apply with more and more

appropriateness as the divergence from perfect conditions of choice is

greater.

[_This idealised: a maximum in the issue._]

Judgment by Appearances so defined is the only method of judgment proper

to practical life, and accordingly an exalted exhibition of it must

furnish a keen dramatic interest. How is such a process to be glorified?

Clearly Judgment by Appearances will reach the ideal stage when there is

the maximum of importance in the issue to be decided and the minimum of

evidence by which to decide it. These two conditions are satisfied in

the Caskets Story. In questions touching the individual life, that of

marriage has this unique importance, that it is bound up with wide

consequences which extend beyond the individual himself to his

posterity. With the suitors of Portia the question is of marriage with

the woman who is presented as supreme of her age in beauty, in wealth

and in character; [=ii.= i. 40, &c.] moreover, the other alternative is

a vow of perpetual celibacy. So the question at issue in the Caskets

Story concerns the most important act of life in the most important form

in which it can be imagined to present itself. [_and a minimum in the

evidence._] When we turn to the evidence on which this question is to be

decided we find that of rational evidence there is absolutely none. The

choice is to be made between three caskets distinguished by their metals

and by the accompanying inscriptions:

[=ii.= vii. 5-9.]

Who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire.

Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves.

Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath.

However individual fancies may incline, it is manifestly impossible to

set up any train of _reasoning_ which should discover a ground of

preference amongst the three. And it is worth noting, as an example of

Shakespeare's nicety in detail, that the successful chooser reads in the

scroll which announces his victory,

[=iii.= ii. 132.]

You that choose not by the view,

Chance _as_ fair, and choose _as_ true:

Shakespeare does not say '_more_ fair,' '_more_ true.' [=i.= ii. 30-36.]

This equal balancing of the alternatives will appear still clearer when

we recollect that it is an intentional puzzle with which we are dealing,

and accordingly that even if ingenuity could discover a preponderance of

reason in favour of any one of the three, there would be the chance that

this preponderance had been anticipated by the father who set the

puzzle. The case becomes like that of children bidden to guess in which

hand a sweetmeat is concealed. They are inclined to say the right hand,

but hesitate whether that answer may not have been foreseen and the

sweetmeat put in the left hand; and if on this ground they are tempted

to be sharp and guess the left hand, there is the possibility that this

sharpness may have been anticipated, and the sweetmeat kept after all in

the right hand. If then the Caskets Story places before us three

suitors, going through three trains of intricate reasoning for guidance

in a matter on which their whole future depends, whereas we, the

spectators, can see that from the nature of the case no reasoning can

possibly avail them, we have clearly the Problem of Judgment by

Appearances drawn out in its ideal form; and our sympathies are

attracted by the sight of a process, belonging to our everyday

experience, yet developed before us in all the force artistic setting

can bestow.

[_Solution of the problem: the characters of the choosers determine

their fates._]

But is this all? Does Shakespeare display before us the problem, yet

give no help towards its solution? The key to the suitors' fates is not

to be found in the trains of reasoning they go through. [=iii.= ii, from

43; esp. 61.] As if to warn us against looking for it in this

direction. Shakespeare contrives that we never hear the reasonings of

the successful suitor. By a natural touch Portia, who has chosen

Bassanio in her heart, is represented as unable to bear the suspense of

hearing him deliberate, and calls for music to drown his meditations; it

is only the conclusion to which he has come that we catch as the music

closes. The particular song selected on this occasion points dimly in

the direction in which we are to look for the true solution of the

problem:

[=iii.= ii. 63.]

Tell me where is fancy bred,

Or in the heart or in the head?

'Fancy' in Shakespearean English means 'love'; and the discussion,

whether love belongs to the head or the heart, is no inappropriate

accompaniment to a reality which consists in this--that the success in

love of the suitors, which they are seeking to compass by their

reasonings, is in fact being decided by their characters.

To compare the characters of the three suitors, it will be enough to

note the different form that pride takes in each. [=ii.= i, vii.] The

first suitor is a prince of a barbarian race, who has thus never known

equals, but has been taught to consider himself half divine; as if made

of different clay from the rest of mankind he instinctively shrinks from

'lead.' [=ii.= vii. 20.] Yet modesty mingles with his pride, and though

he feels truly that, so far [=ii.= vii. 24-30.] as the estimation of him

by others is concerned, he might rely upon 'desert,' yet he doubts if

desert extends as far as Portia. [=ii.= vii, from 36.] What seizes his

attention is the words, 'what many men desire'; and he rises to a flight

of eloquence in picturing wildernesses and deserts become thoroughfares

by the multitude of suitors flocking to Belmont. But he is all the while

betraying a secret of which he was himself unconscious: he has been led

to seek the hand of Portia, not by true love, but by the feeling that

what all the world is seeking the Prince of Morocco must not be slow to

claim. Very different is the pride of Arragon. [=ii.= ix.] He has no

regal position, but rather appears to be one who has fallen in social

rank: [compare =ii.= ix. 47-9.] he makes up for such a fall by intense

pride of family, and is one of those who complacently thank heaven that

they are not as other men. The 'many men' which had attracted Morocco

repels Arragon:

[=ii.= ix. 31.]

I will not choose what many men desire,

Because I will not jump with common spirits,

And rank me with the barbarous multitudes.

[=ii.= ix, from 36.] He is caught by the bait of 'desert.' It is true he

almost deceives us with the lofty tone in which he reflects how the

world would benefit if dignities and offices were in all cases purchased

by the merit of the wearer; yet there peeps through his sententiousness

his real conception of merit--the sole merit of family descent. His

ideal is that the 'true seed of honour' should be 'picked from the chaff

and ruin of the times,' and wrest greatness from the 'low peasantry' who

had risen to it. He accordingly rests his fate upon desert: and he finds

in the casket of his choice a fool's head. [=iii.= ii, from 73.] Of

Bassanio's soliloquy we hear enough to catch that his pride is the pride

of the soldier, who will yield to none the post of danger, [compare =i.=

ii. 124.] and how he is thus attracted by the 'threatening' of the

leaden casket:

thou meagre lead,

Which rather threatenest than dost promise aught,

Thy paleness moves me more than eloquence.

Moreover, he is a lover, and the threatening is a challenge to show what

he will risk for love: his true heart finds its natural satisfaction in

'giving and hazarding' his all. This is the pride that is worthy of

Portia; and thus the ingenious puzzle of the 'inspired' father has

succeeded in piercing through the outer defence of specious reasoning,

and carrying its repulsion and attraction to the inmost characters of

the suitors.

[_General principle: character as an element in judgment._]

Such, then, is Shakespeare's treatment of the Problem of Judgment by

Appearances: while he draws out the problem itself to its fullest extent

in displaying the suitors elaborating trains of argument for a

momentous decision in which we see that reason can be of no avail, he

suggests for the solution that, besides reason, there is in such

judgments another element, character, and that in those crises in which

reason is most fettered, character is most potent. An important solution

this is; for what is character? A man's character is the shadow of his

past life; it is the grand resultant of all the forces from within and

from without that have been operating upon him since he became a

conscious agent. Character is the sandy footprint of the commonplace

hardened into the stone of habit; it is the complexity of daily tempers,

judgments, restraints, impulses, all focussed into one master-passion

acting with the rapidity of an instinct. To lay down then, that where

reason fails as an element in judgment, character comes to its aid, is

to bind together the exceptional and the ordinary in life. In most of

the affairs of life men have scope for the exercise of commonplace

qualities, but emergencies do come where this is denied them; in these

cases, while they think, like the three suitors, that they are moving

voluntarily in the direction in which they are judging fit at the

moment, in reality the weight of their past lives is forcing them in the

direction in which their judgment has been accustomed to take them. Thus

in the moral, as in the physical world, nothing is ever lost: not a

ripple on the surface of conduct but goes on widening to the outermost

limit of experience. Shakespeare's contribution to the question of

practical judgment is that by the long exercise of commonplace qualities

we are building up a character which, though unconsciously, is the

determining force in the emergencies in which commonplace qualities are

impossible.

II.

HOW SHAKESPEARE IMPROVES THE STORIES IN THE TELLING.

_A Study in Dramatic Workmanship._

[_Two points of Dramatic Mechanism._]

IN treating the Story as the raw material of the Romantic Drama it has

already been shown, in the case of the stories utilised for _The

Merchant of Venice_, what natural capacities these exhibit for dramatic

effect. The next step is to show how the artist increases their dramatic

force in the process of working them up. Two points will be illustrated

in the present study: first, how Shakespeare meets the difficulties of a

story and reduces them to a minimum; secondly, how he improves the two

tales by weaving them together so that they assist one another's effect.

[_Reduction of difficulties specially important in Drama._]

The avoidance or reduction of difficulties in a story is an obvious

element in any kind of artistic handling; it is of special importance in

Drama in proportion as we are more sensitive to improbabilities in what

is supposed to take place before our eyes than in what we merely hear of

by narrative. This branch of art could not be better illustrated than in

the Story of the Jew: never perhaps has an artist had to deal with

materials so bristling with difficulties of the greatest magnitude, and

never, it may be added, have they been met with greater ingenuity. The

host of improbabilities gathering about such a detail as the pound of

flesh must strike every mind. [_First difficulty: monstrosity of the

Jew's character._] There is, however, preliminary to these, another

difficulty of more general application: the difficulty of painting a

character bad enough to be the hero of the story. It might be thought

that to paint excess of badness is comparatively easy, as needing but a

coarse brush. On the contrary, there are few severer tests of creative

power than the treatment of monstrosity. To be told that there is

villainy in the world and tacitly to accept the statement may be easy;

it is another thing to be brought into close contact with the villains,

to hear them converse, to watch their actions and occasionally to be

taken into their confidence. We realise in Drama through our sympathy

and our experience: in real life we have not been accustomed to come

across monsters and are unfamiliar with their behaviour; in proportion

then as the badness of a character is exaggerated it is carried outside

the sphere of our experience, the naturalness of the scene is

interrupted and its human interest tends to decline. So, in the case of

the story under consideration, the dramatist is confronted with this

dilemma: he must make the character of Shylock absolutely bad, or the

incident of the bond will appear unreal; he must not make the character

extraordinarily bad, or there is danger of the whole scene appearing

unreal.

[_Its repulsiveness counteracted by sympathy with his wrongs._]

Shakespeare meets a difficulty of this kind by a double treatment. On

the one hand, he puts no limits to the blackness of the character

itself; on the other hand, he provides against repulsiveness by giving

it a special attraction of another kind. In the present case, while

painting Shylock as a monster, he secures for him a hold upon our

sympathy by representing him as a victim of intolerable ill-treatment

and injustice. The effect resembles the popular sympathy with criminals.

The men themselves and their crimes are highly repulsive; but if some

slight irregularity occurs in the process of bringing them to

justice--if a counsel shows himself unduly eager, or a judge appears for

a moment one-sided, a host of volunteer advocates espouse their cause.

These are actuated no doubt by sensitiveness to purity of justice; but

their protests have a ring that closely resembles sympathy with the

criminals themselves, whom they not unfrequently end by believing to be

innocent and injured. [e.g. in =iii.= i, iii; =iv.= i; =ii.= 5.] In the

same way Shakespeare shows no moderation in the touches of

bloodthirstiness, of brutality, of sordid meanness he heaps together in

the character of Shylock; but he takes equal pains to rouse our

indignation at the treatment he is made to suffer. [e.g. =iii.= i.;

=iv.= i, &c.] Personages such as Gratiano, Salanio, Salarino, Tubal,

serve to keep before us the mediæval feud between Jew and Gentile, and

the persecuting insolence with which the fashionable youth met the

money-lenders who ministered to their necessities. [=i.= iii. 107-138.]

Antonio himself has stepped out of his natural character in the

grossness of his insults to his enemy. [=iii.= i. 57, 133; =iii.= iii.

22; and =i.= iii. 45.] Shylock has been injured in pocket as well as in

sentiment, Antonio using his wealth to disturb the money-market and

defeat the schemes of the Jew; according to Shylock Antonio has hindered

him of half-a-million, and were he out of Venice the usurer could make

what merchandise he would. Finally, our sense of deliverance in the

Trial Scene cannot hinder a touch of compunction for the crushed

plaintiff, as he appeals against the hard justice meted out to him:--the

loss of his property, the acceptance of his life as an act of grace, the

abandonment of his religion and race, which implies the abandonment of

the profession by which he makes his living.

[=iv.= i. 374.]

Nay, take my life and all; pardon not that:

You take my house when you do take the prop

That doth sustain my house; you take my life

When you do take the means whereby I live.

By thus making us resent the harsh fate dealt to Shylock the dramatist

recovers in our minds the fellow-feeling we have lost in contemplating

the Jew himself. [_Dramatic Hedging._] A name for such double treatment

might be 'Dramatic Hedging': as the better covers a possible loss by a

second bet on the opposite side, so, when the necessities of a story

involve the creation of a monster, the dramatic artist 'hedges' against

loss of attractiveness by finding for the character human interest in

some other direction. So successful has Shakespeare been in the present

instance that a respectable minority of readers rise from the play

partisans of Shylock.

[_Difficulties connected with the pound of flesh._]

We pass on to the crop of difficulties besetting the pound of flesh as a

detail in the bond. That such a bond should be proposed, that when

proposed it should be accepted, that it should be seriously entertained

by a court of justice, that if entertained at all it should be upset on

so frivolous a pretext as the omission of reference to the shedding of

blood: these form a series of impossible circumstances that any

dramatist might despair of presenting with even an approach to

naturalness. Yet if we follow the course of the story as moulded by

Shakespeare we shall find all these impossibilities one after another

evaded.

[_Proposal of the bond._]

At the end of the first scene Antonio had bidden Bassanio go forth and

try what his credit could do in Venice. [=i.= i. 179.] Armed with this

blank commission Bassanio hurries into the city. As a gay young nobleman

he knows nothing of the commercial world except the money-lenders; and

now proceeds to the best-known of them, apparently unaware of what any

gossip on the Rialto could have told him, the unfortunate relations

between this Shylock and his friend Antonio. [compare =i.= iii. 1-40.]

At the opening of the Bond Scene we find Bassanio and Shylock in

conversation, Bassanio impatient and irritated to find that the famous

security he has to offer seems to make so little impression on the

usurer. [=i.= iii. 41.] At this juncture Antonio himself falls[1] in

with them, sees at a glance to what his rash friend has committed him,

but is too proud to draw back in sight of his enemy. Already a minor

difficulty is surmounted, as to how Antonio comes to be in the position

of asking an obligation of Shylock. Antonio is as impatient as dignity

will permit to bring an awkward business to a conclusion. Shylock, on

the contrary, to whom the interview itself is a triumph, in which his

persecutor is appearing before him in the position of a client, casts

about to prolong the conversation to as great a length as possible. Any

topic would serve his purpose; but what topic more natural than the

question at the root of the feud between the two, the question of

lending money on interest? It is here we reach the very heart of our

problem, how the first mention of the pound of flesh is made without a

shock of unreality sufficient to ruin the whole scene. Had Shylock asked

for a forfeiture of a million per cent., or in any other way thrown into

a commercial form his purpose of ruining Antonio, the old feud and the

present opportunity would be explanation sufficient: the real difficulty

is the total incongruity between such an idea as a pound of human flesh

and commercial transactions of any kind. [_The proposal led up to by the

discourse on interest._] This difficulty Shakespeare has met by one of

his greatest triumphs of mechanical ingenuity: his leading up to the

proposal of the bond by the discussion on interest. The effect of this

device a modern reader is in danger of losing: [=i.= iii, from 69.] we

are so familiar with the idea of interest at the present day that we are

apt to forget what the difficulty was to the ancient and mediæval mind,

which for so many generations kept the practice of taking interest

outside the pale of social decency. This prejudice was one of the

confusions arising out of the use of a metal currency. The ancient mind

could understand how corn put into the ground would by the agency of

time alone produce twentyfold, thirtyfold, or a hundredfold; they could

understand how cattle left to themselves would without human assistance

increase from a small to a large flock: but how could metal grow? how

could lifeless gold and silver increase and multiply like animals and

human beings? The Greek word for interest, _tokos_, is the exact

equivalent of the English word _breed_, and the idea underlying the two

was regularly connected with that of interest in ancient discussions.

The same idea is present throughout the dispute between Antonio and

Shylock. Antonio indignantly asks:

[=i.= iii. 134.]

when did friendship take

A _breed_ for _barren metal_ of his friend?

[=i.= iii. 72.]

Shylock illustrates usury by citing the patriarch Jacob and his clever

trick in cattle-breeding; showing how, at a time when cattle were the

currency, the natural rate of increase might be diverted to private

advantage. Antonio interrupts him:

[=i.= iii. 96.]

Is your gold and silver ewes and rams?

Shylock answers:

I cannot tell; I make it _breed_ as fast;

both parties thus showing that they considered the distinction between

the using of flesh and metal for the medium of wealth to be the

essential point in their dispute. With this notion then of flesh

_versus_ money floating in the air between them the interview goes on to

the outbursts of mutual hatred which reach a climax in Antonio's

challenge to Shylock to do his worst; [=i.= iii, from 138.] this

challenge suddenly combines with the root idea of the conversation to

flash into Shylock's mind the suggestion of the bond. In an instant he

smoothes his face and proposes friendship. He will lend the money

without interest, in pure kindness, nay more, he will go to that extent

of good understanding implied in joking, and will have a merry bond;

while as to the particular joke (he says in effect), since you

Christians cannot understand interest in the case of money while you

acknowledge it in the case of flesh and blood, suppose I take as my

interest in this bond a pound of your own flesh. In such a context the

monstrous proposal sounds almost natural. It has further been ushered

in a manner which makes it almost impossible to decline it. When one who

is manifestly an injured man is the first to make advances, a generous

adversary finds it almost impossible to hold back. A sensitive man,

again, will shrink from nothing more than from the ridicule attaching to

those who take serious precautions against a jest. And the more

incongruous Shylock's proposal is with commercial negotiations the

better evidence it is of his non-commercial intentions. In a word, the

essence of the difficulty was the incongruity between human flesh and

money transactions: it has been surmounted by a discussion, flowing

naturally from the position of the two parties, of which the point is

the relative position of flesh and money as the medium of wealth in the

past.

[_Difficulty of legally recognising the bond evaded:_]

The bond thus proposed and accepted, there follows the difficulty of

representing it as entertained by a court of justice. With reference to

Shakespeare's handling of this point it may be noted, first, that he

leaves us in doubt whether the court would have entertained it: [=iv.=

i. 104.] the Duke is intimating an intention of adjourning at the moment

when the entrance of Portia gives a new turn to the proceedings. [=iv.=

i. 17.] Again, at the opening of the trial, the Duke gives expression to

the universal opinion that Shylock's conduct was intelligible only on

the supposition that he was keeping up to the last moment the

appearance of insisting on his strange terms, in order that before the

eyes of the whole city he might exhibit his enemy at his mercy, and then

add to his ignominy by publicly pardoning him: a fate which, it must be

admitted, was no more than Antonio justly deserved. This will explain

how Shylock comes to have a hearing at all: when once he is admitted to

speak it is exceedingly difficult to resist the pleas Shakespeare puts

into his mouth. [=iv.= i. 38.] He takes his stand on the city's charter

and the letter of the law, and declines to be drawn into any discussion

of natural justice; [=iv.= i. 90.] yet even as a question of natural

justice what answer can be found when he casually points to the

institution of slavery, which we must suppose to have existed in Venice

at the period? Shylock's only offence is his seeking to make Antonio's

life a matter of barter: what else is the accepted institution of

slavery but the establishment of power over human flesh and blood and

life, simply because these have been bought with money, precisely as

Shylock has given good ducats for his rights over the flesh of Antonio?

No wonder the perplexed Duke is for adjourning.

[_Difficulty as to the traditional mode of upsetting the bond met._]

There remains one more difficulty, the mode in which, according to the

traditional story, the bond is upset. It is manifest that the agreement

as to the pound of flesh, if it is to be recognised by a court of

justice at all, cannot without the grossest perversion of justice be

cancelled on the ground of its omitting to mention blood. Legal evasion

can go to great lengths. It is well known that an Act requiring cabs to

carry lamps at night has been evaded through the omission of a direction

that the lamps were to be lighted; and that importers have escaped a

duty on foreign gloves at so much the pair by bringing the right-hand

and left-hand gloves over in different ships. But it is perfectly

possible to carry lamps without lighting them, while it is a clear

impossibility to cut human flesh without shedding blood. Nothing of

course would be easier than to upset the bond on rational

grounds--indeed the difficulty is rather to imagine it receiving

rational consideration at all; but on the other hand no solution of the

perplexity could be half so dramatic as the one tradition has preserved.

The dramatist has to choose between a course of procedure which shall be

highly dramatic but leave a sense of injustice, and one that shall be

sound and legal but comparatively tame. Shakespeare contrives to secure

both alternatives. He retains the traditional plea as to the blood, but

puts it into the mouth of one known to his audience to be a woman

playing the lawyer for the nonce; [=iv.= i. 314, 347.] and again, before

we have time to recover from our surprise and feel the injustice of the

proceeding, he follows up the brilliant evasion by a sound legal plea,

the suggestion of a real lawyer. Portia has come to the court from a

conference with her cousin Bellario, the most learned jurist of Venice.

[=iii.= iv. 47; =iv.= i. 143.] Certainly it was not this doctor who hit

upon the idea of the blood being omitted. His contribution to the

interesting consultation was clearly the old statute of Venice, which

every one else seems to have forgotten, which made the mere attempt on

the life of a citizen by an alien punishable with death and loss of

property: according to this piece of statute law not only would

Shylock's bond be illegal, but the demand of such security constituted a

capital offence. Thus Shakespeare surmounts the final difficulty in the

story of the Jew in a mode which retains dramatic force to the full, yet

does this without any violation of legal fairness.

* * * * *

[_The interweaving of the two stories._]

The second purpose of the present study is to show how Shakespeare has

improved his two stories by so weaving them together that they assist

one another's effect.

First, it is easy to see how the whole movement of the play rises

naturally out of the union of the two stories. One of the main

distinctions between the progress of events in real life or history and

in Drama is that the movement of a drama falls into the form technically

known as Complication and Resolution. [_Complication and Resolution._]

A dramatist fastens our attention upon some train of events: then he

sets himself to divert this train of events from its natural course by

some interruption; this interruption is either removed, and the train of

events returns to its natural course, or the interruption is carried on

to some tragic culmination. In _The Merchant of Venice_ our interest is

at the beginning fixed on Antonio as rich, high-placed, the protector

and benefactor of his friends. By the events following upon the incident

of the bond we see what would seem the natural life of Antonio diverted

into a totally different channel; in the end the old course is restored,

and Antonio becomes prosperous as before. Such interruption of a train

of incidents is its Complication, and the term Complication suggests a

happy Resolution to follow. Complication and Resolution are essential to

dramatic movement, as discords and their 'resolution' into concords

constitute the essence of music. [_The one story complicated and

resolved by the other._] The Complication and Resolution in the story of

the Jew serve for the Complication and Resolution of the drama as a

whole; and my immediate point is that these elements of movement in the

one story spring directly out of its connection with the other. [=i.= i,

from 122; =i.= iii.] But for Bassanio's need of money and his blunder in

applying to Shylock the bond would never have been entered into, and the

change in Antonio's fortunes would never have come about: thus the cause

for all the Complication of the play (technically, the Complicating

Force) is the happy lover of the Caskets Story. Similarly Portia is the

means by which Antonio's fortunes are restored to their natural flow: in

other words, the source of the Resolution (or Resolving Force) is the

maiden of the Caskets Story. The two leading personages of the one tale

are the sources respectively of the Complication and Resolution in the

other tale, which carry the Complication and Resolution of the drama as

a whole. Thus simply does the movement of the whole play flow from the

union of the two stories.

[_The whole play symmetrical about its central scene._]

One consequence flowing from this is worth noting; that the scene in

which Bassanio makes his successful choice of the casket is the Dramatic

Centre of the whole play, as being the point in which the Complicating

and Resolving Forces meet. This Dramatic Centre is, according to

Shakespeare's favourite custom, placed in the exact mechanical centre of

the drama, covering the middle of the middle Act. There is again an

amount of poetic splendour lavished upon this scene which throws it up

as a poetic centre to the whole. More than this, it is the real crisis

of the play. Looking philosophically upon the whole drama as a piece of

history, we must admit that the true turning-point is the success of

Bassanio; the apparent crisis is the Trial Scene, but this is in reality

governed by the scene of the successful choice, and if Portia and

Bassanio had not been united in the earlier scene no lawyer would have

interposed to turn the current of events in the trial. There is yet

another sense in which the same scene may be called central. Hitherto I

have dealt with only two tales; the full plot however of _The Merchant

of Venice_ involves two more, the Story of Jessica and the Episode of

the Rings: it is to be observed that all four stories meet in the scene

of the successful choice. This scene is the climax of the Caskets Story.

[=iii.= ii, from 221.] It is connected with the catastrophe in the Story

of the Jew: Bassanio, at the moment of his happiness, learns that the

friend through whom he has been able to contend for the prize has

forfeited his life to his foe as the price of his liberality. The scene

is connected with the Jessica Story: for Jessica and her husband are the

messengers who bring the sad tidings, and thus link together the bright

and gloomy elements of the play. [=iii.= ii. 173-187.] Finally, the

Episode of the Rings, which is to occupy the end of the drama, has its

foundation in this scene, in the exchange of the rings which are

destined to be the source of such ironical perplexity. Such is the

symmetry with which the plot of _The Merchant of Venice_ has been

constructed: the incident which is technically its Dramatic Centre is at

once its mechanical centre, its poetic centre, and, philosophically

considered, its true turning-point; while, considering the play as a

Romantic drama with its union of stories, we find in the same central

incident all the four stories dovetailed together.

[_Shakespeare as a master of Plot_.]

These points may appear small and merely technical. But is a constant

purpose with me in the present exposition of Shakespeare as a Dramatic

Artist to combat the notion, so widely prevalent amongst ordinary

readers, that Shakespeare, though endowed with the profoundest grasp of

human nature, is yet careless in the construction of his plots: a notion

in itself as improbable as it would be that a sculptor could be found to

produce individual figures exquisitely moulded and chiselled, yet

awkwardly and clumsily grouped. It is the minuter points that show the

finish of an artist; and such symmetry of construction as appears in

_The Merchant of Venice_ is not likely to characterise a dramatist who

sacrifices plot to character-painting.

[_The union of a light with a serious story._]

There remains another point, which no one will consider small or

technical, connected with the union of the two stories: the fact that

Shakespeare has thus united a light and a serious story, that he has

woven together gloom and brightness. This carries us to one of the great

battlefields of dramatic history; no feature is more characteristic of

the Romantic Drama than this mingling of light and serious in the same

play, and at no point has it been more stoutly assailed by critics

trained in an opposite school. I say nothing of the wider scope this

practice gives to the dramatist, nor the way in which it brings the

world of art nearer to the world of reality; my present purpose is to

review the dramatic effects which flow from the mingling of the two

elements in the present play.

[_Dramatic effects arising out of this union._]

In general human interest the stories are a counterpoise to one

another, so different in kind, so equal in the degree of interest their

progress continues to call forth. The incidents of the two tales gather

around Antonio and Portia respectively; [_Effects of Human Interest._]

each of these is a full and rounded character, and they are both centres

of their respective worlds. [=i.= i. 1.] The stories seem to start from

a common point. The keynote to the story of the Jew is the strange

'sadness'--the word implies no more than seriousness--which overpowers

Antonio, and which seems to be the shadow of his coming trouble. Compare

with this the first words we hear of Portia:

[=i.= ii. 1.]

By my troth, Nerissa, my little body is aweary of this great world.

Such a humorous languor is a fitting precursor to the excitement and

energy of the scenes which follow. But from this common starting-point

the stories move in opposite directions; the spectator's sympathies are

demanded alternately for two independent chains of circumstances, for

the fortunes of Antonio sinking lower and lower, and the fortunes of

Portia rising higher and higher. He sees the merchant and citizen become

a bankrupt prisoner, the lordly benefactor of his friends a wretch at

the mercy of his foe. He sees Portia, already endowed with beauty,

wealth, and character, attain what to her heart is yet higher, the power

to lay all she has at the feet of the man she loves. Then, when they are

at the climax of their happiness and misery, when Portia has received

all that this world can bestow, and Antonio has lost all that this world

can take away, for the first time these two central personages meet face

to face in the Trial Scene. [_Effects of Plot._] And if from general

human interest we pass on to the machinery of plot, we find this also

governed by the same combination: a half-serious frolic is the medium in

which a tragic crisis finds its solution.

[_Emotional effects: increase of tragic passion;_]

But it is of course passion and emotional interest which are mainly

affected by the union of light and serious: these we shall appreciate

chiefly in connection with the Trial Scene, where the emotional threads

of the play are gathered into a knot, and the two personages who are the

embodiments of the light and serious elements face one another as judge

and prisoner. [=iv.= i, from 225.] In this scene it is remarkable how

Portia takes pains to prolong to the utmost extent the crisis she has

come to solve; she holds in her fingers the threads of the tangled

situation, and she is strong enough to play with it before she will

consent to bring it to an end. [178.] She has intimated her opinion that

the letter of the bond must be maintained, [184-207.] she has made her

appeal to Shylock for mercy and been refused, she has heard Bassanio's

appeal to wrest the law for once to [214-222.] her authority and has

rejected it; there remains nothing but to pronounce the decree. [225.]

But at the last moment she asks to see the bond, and every spectator in

court holds his breath and hears his heart beat as he follows the

lawyer's eye down line after line. [227-230.] It is of no avail; at the

end she can only repeat the useless offer of thrice the loan, with the

effect of drawing from Shylock an oath that he will not give way.

[230-244.] Then Portia admits that the bond is forfeit, with a needless

reiteration of its horrible details; yet, as if it were some evenly

balanced question, in which after-thoughts were important, she once more

appeals to Shylock to be merciful and bid her tear the bond, and evokes

a still stronger asseveration from the malignant victor, until even

Antonio's stoicism begins to give way, and he begs for a speedy

judgment. [243.] Portia then commences to pass her judgment in language

of legal prolixity, which sounds like a recollection of her hour with

Bellario:--

For the intent and purpose of the law

Hath full relation to the penalty,

Which here appeareth due upon the bond, &c.

[255-261.]

Next she fads about the details of the judicial barbarity, the balance

to weigh the flesh, a surgeon as a forlorn hope; and when Shylock demurs

to the last, stops to argue that he might do this for charity. At last

surely the intolerable suspense will come to a termination. [263.] But

our lawyer of half-an-hour's standing suddenly remembers she has

forgotten to call on the defendant in the suit, and the pathos is

intensified by the dying speech of Antonio, calmly welcoming death for

himself, anxious only to soften Bassanio's remorse, his last human

passion a rivalry with Portia for the love of his friend.

[=iv.= i. 276.]

Bid her be judge

Whether Bassanio had not once a love.

[=iv.= i, from 299.]

When the final judgment can be delayed no longer its opening sentences

are still lengthened out by the jingling repetitions of judicial

formality,

The law allows it, and the court awards it, &c.

Only when every evasion has been exhausted comes the thunderstroke which

reverses the whole situation. Now it is clear that had this situation

been intended to have a tragic termination this prolonging of its

details would have been impossible; thus to harrow our feelings with

items of agony would be not art but barbarity. It is because Portia

knows what termination she is going to give to the scene that she can

indulge in such boldness; it is because the audience have recognised in

Portia the signal of deliverance that the lengthening of the crisis

becomes the dramatic beauty of suspense. It appears then that, if this

scene be regarded only as a crisis of tragic passion, the dramatist has

been able to extract more _tragic_ effect out of it by the device of

assisting the tragic with a light story.

[_reaction and comic effect;_]

Again, it is a natural law of the human mind to pass from strain to

reaction, and suspense relieved will find vent in vehement exhilaration.

By giving Portia her position in the crisis scene the dramatist is

clearly furnishing the means for a reaction to follow, and the reaction

is found in the [=iv.= i, from 425.] Episode of the Rings, by which the

disguised wives entangle their husbands in a perplexity affording the

audience the bursts of merriment needed as relief from the tension of

the Trial Scene. The play is thus brought into conformity with the laws

of mental working, and the effect of the reaction is to make the

serious passion more keen because more healthy.

[_effects of mixed passion._]

Finally, there are the effects of mixed passion, neither wholly serious

nor wholly light, but compounded of the two, which are impossible to a

drama that can admit only a single tone. The effect of Dramatic Irony,

which Shakespeare inherited from the ancient Drama, but greatly modified

and extended, is powerfully illustrated at the most pathetic point of

the Trial Scene, [=iv.= i. 273-294.] when Antonio's chance reference to

Bassanio's new wife calls from Bassanio and his followers agonised vows

to sacrifice even their wives if this could save their patron--little

thinking that these wives are standing by to record the vow. But there

is an effect higher than this. [=iv.= i. 184-202.] Portia's outburst on

the theme of mercy, considered only as a speech, is one of the noblest

in literature, a gem of purest truth in a setting of richest music. But

the situation in which she speaks it is so framed as to make Portia

herself the embodiment of the mercy she describes. How can we imagine a

higher type of mercy, the feminine counterpart of justice, than in the

bright woman, at the moment of her supreme happiness, appearing in the

garb of the law to deliver a righteous unfortunate from his one error,

and the justice of Venice from the insoluble perplexity of having to

commit a murder by legal process? And how is this situation brought

about but by the most intricate interweaving of a story of brightness

with a story of trouble?

In all branches then of dramatic effect, in Character, in Plot and in

Passion, the union of a light with a serious story is found to be a

source of power and beauty. The fault charged against the Romantic Drama

has upon a deeper view proved a new point of departure in dramatic

progress; and in this particular case the combination of tales so

opposite in character must be regarded as one of the leading points in

which Shakespeare has improved the tales in the telling.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] No commentator has succeeded in making intelligible the line

[=i.= iii. 42.]

How like a fawning publican he looks!

as it stands in the text at the opening of Shylock's soliloquy. The

expression 'fawning publican' is so totally the opposite of all the

qualities of Antonio that it could have no force even in the mouth of a

satirist. It is impossible not to be attracted by the simple change in

the text that would not only get over this difficulty, but add a new

effect to the scene: the change of assigning this single line to

Antonio, reserving, of course, the rest of the speech for Shylock. The

passage would then read thus [the stage direction is my own]:

_Enter_ ANTONIO.

_Bass._ This is Signior Antonio.

_Ant._ [_Aside_]. How like a fawning publican he looks--

[BASSANIO _whispers_ ANTONIO _and brings him to_ SHYLOCK.

_Shy._ [_Aside_]. I hate him, for he is a Christian, But more, &c.

Both the terms 'fawning' and 'publican' are literally applicable to

Shylock, and are just what Antonio would be likely to say of him. It is

again a natural effect for the two foes on meeting for the first time in

the play to exchange scowling defiance. Antonio's defiance is cut short

at the first line by Bassanio's running up to him, explaining what he

has done, and bringing Antonio up to where Shylock is standing; the time

occupied in doing this gives Shylock scope for his longer soliloquy.

III.

HOW SHAKESPEARE MAKES HIS PLOT MORE COMPLEX IN ORDER TO MAKE IT MORE

SIMPLE.

_A Study in Underplot._

[_Paradox of simplicity by means of increased complexity._]

THE title of the present study is a paradox: that Shakespeare makes a

plot more complex[2] in order to make it more simple. It is however a

paradox that finds an illustration from the material world in every open

roof. The architect's problem has been to support a heavy weight without

the assistance of pillars, and it might have been expected that in

solving the problem he would at least have tried every means in his

power for diminishing the weight to be supported. On the contrary, he

has increased this weight by the addition of massive cross-beams and

heavy iron-girders. Yet, if these have been arranged according to the

laws of construction, each of them will bring a supporting power

considerably greater than its own weight; and thus, while in a literal

sense increasing the roof, for all practical purposes they may be said

to have diminished it. Similarly a dramatist of the Romantic school,

from his practice of uniting more than one story in the same plot, has

to face the difficulty of complexity. This difficulty he solves not by

seeking how to reduce combinations as far as possible, but, on the

contrary, by the addition of more and inferior stories; yet if these new

stories are so handled as to emphasise and heighten the effect of the

main stories, the additional complexity will have resulted in increased

simplicity. In the play at present under consideration, Shakespeare has

interwoven into a common pattern two famous and striking tales; his

plot, already elaborate, he has made yet more elaborate by the addition

of two more tales less striking in their character--the Story of Jessica

and the Episode of the Rings. [_The Jessica Story and the Rings Episode

assist the main stories._] If it can be shown that these inferior

stories have the effect of assisting the main stories, smoothing away

their difficulties and making their prominent points yet more prominent,

it will be clear that he has made his plot more complex only in reality

to make it more simple. The present study is devoted to noticing how the

Stories of Jessica and of the Rings minister to the effects of the Story

of the Jew and the Caskets Story.

[_The Jessica Story. It serves as Underplot for mechanical personages._]

To begin with: it may be seen that in many ways the mechanical working

out of the main stories is assisted by the Jessica story. In the first

place it relieves them of their superfluous personages. Every drama,

however simple, must contain 'mechanical' personages, who are introduced

into the play, not for their own sake, but to assist in presenting

incidents or other personages. The tendency of Romantic Drama to put a

story as a whole upon the stage multiplies the number of such mechanical

personages: and when several such stories come to be combined in one,

there is a danger of the stage being crowded with characters which

intrinsically have little interest. Here the Underplots become of

service and find occupation for these inferior personages. In the

present case only four personages are essential to the main

plot--Antonio, Shylock, Bassanio, Portia. But in bringing out the

unusual tie that binds together a representative of the city and a

representative of the nobility, [e.g. =i.= i; =iii.= iii; =iv.= i.] and

upon which so much of the plot rests, it is an assistance to introduce

the rank and file of gay society and depict these paying court to the

commercial magnate. The high position of Antonio and Bassanio in their

respective spheres will come out still clearer if these lesser social

personages are graduated. [=i.= i; compare =iii.= i. esp. 14-18.]

Salanio, Salerio, and Salarino are mere parasites; [=i.= i. 74-118. =i.=

ii. 124. =v.= i, &c. =i.= ii, &c. =iii.= i. 80, &c.] Gratiano has a

certain amount of individuality in his wit; while, seeing that Bassanio

is a scholar as well as a nobleman and soldier, it is fitting to give

prominence amongst his followers to the intellectual and artistic

Lorenzo. Similarly the introduction of Nerissa assists in presenting

Portia fully; Shylock is seen in his relations with his race by the aid

of Tubal, his family life is seen in connection with Jessica, and his

behaviour to dependants in connection with Launcelot; Launcelot himself

is set off by Gobbo. Now the Jessica story is mainly devoted to these

inferior personages, and the majority of them take an animated part in

the successful elopement. It is further to be noted that the Jessica

Underplot has itself an inferior story attached to it, [=ii.= ii. iii;

=iii.= v.] that of Launcelot, who seeks scope for his good nature by

transferring himself to a Christian master, just as his mistress seeks a

freer social atmosphere in union with a Christian husband. And,

similarly, side by side with the Caskets Story, which unites Portia and

Bassanio, [=iii.= ii. 188, &c.] we have a faintly-marked underplot which

unites their followers, Nerissa and Gratiano. In one or other of these

inferior stories the mechanical personages find attachment to plot; and

the multiplication of individual figures, instead of leaving an

impression of waste, is made to minister to the sense of Dramatic

Economy.

[_It assists mechanical development: occupying the three months'

interval,_]

Again: as there are mechanical personages so there are mechanical

difficulties--difficulties of realisation which do not belong to the

essence of a story, but which appear when the story comes to be worked

out upon the stage. The Story of the Jew involves such a mechanical

difficulty in the interval of three months which elapses between the

signing of the bond and its forfeiture. In a classical setting this

would be avoided by making the play begin on the day the bond falls due;

such treatment, however, would shut out the great dramatic opportunity

of the Bond Scene. The Romantic Drama always inclines to exhibiting the

whole of a story; it must therefore in the present case _suppose_ a

considerable interval between one part of the story and another, and

such suppositions tend to be weaknesses. The Jessica Story conveniently

bridges over this interval. The first Act is given up to bringing about

the bond, which at the beginning of the third Act appears to be broken.

The intervening Act consists of no less than nine scenes, and while

three of them carry on the progress of the Caskets Story, the other six

are devoted to the elopement of Jessica: the bustle and activity implied

in such rapid change of scene indicating how an underplot can be used to

keep the attention of the audience just where the natural interest of

the main story would flag.

[_and so breaking gradually the news of Antonio's losses._]

The same use of the Jessica Story to bridge over the three months'

interval obviates another mechanical difficulty of the main plot. The

loss of all Antonio's ships, the supposition that all the commercial

ventures of so prudent a merchant should simultaneously miscarry, is so

contrary to the chances of things as to put some strain upon our sense

of probability; and this is just one of the details which, too

unimportant to strike us in an anecdote, become realised when a story is

presented before our eyes. The artist, it must be observed, is not bound

to find actual solutions for every possible difficulty; he has merely to

see that they do not interfere with dramatic effect. Sometimes he so

arranges his incidents that the difficulty is met and vanishes;

sometimes it is kept out of sight, the portion of the story which

contains it going on behind the scenes; at other times he is content

with reducing the difficulty in amount. In the present instance the

improbability of Antonio's losses is lessened by the gradual way in

which the news is broken to us, distributed amongst the numerous scenes

of the three months' interval. [=ii.= viii. 25.] We get the first hint

of it in a chance conversation between Salanio and Salarino, in which

they are chuckling over the success of the elopement and the fury of the

robbed father. Salanio remarks that Antonio must look that he keep his

day; this reminds Salarino of a ship he has just heard of as lost

somewhere in the English Channel:

I thought upon Antonio when he told me;

And wish'd in silence that it were not his.

[=iii.= i.] In the next scene but one the same personages meet, and one

of them, enquiring for the latest news, is told that the rumour yet

lives of Antonio's loss, and now the exact place of the wreck is

specified as the Goodwin Sands; Salarino adds: 'I would it might prove

the end of his losses.' Before the close of the scene Shylock and Tubal

have been added to it. Tubal has come from Genoa and gives Shylock the

welcome news that at Genoa it was _known_ that Antonio had lost an

argosy coming from Tripolis; while on his journey to Venice Tubal had

travelled with creditors of Antonio who were speculating upon his

bankruptcy as a certainty. [=iii.= ii.] Then comes the central scene in

which the full news reaches Bassanio at the moment of his happiness: all

Antonio's ventures failed--

From Tripolis, from Mexico and England,

From Lisbon, Barbary, and India,

not one escaped. [=iii.= iii.] In the following scene we see Antonio in

custody.

[_The Jessica Story assists Dramatic Hedging in regard to Shylock._]

These are minor points such as may be met with in any play, and the

treatment of them belongs to ordinary Dramatic Mechanism. But we have

already had to notice that the Story of the Jew contains special

difficulties which belong to the essence of the story, and must be met

by special devices. One of these was the monstrous character of the Jew

himself; and we saw how the dramatist was obliged to maintain in the

spectators a double attitude to Shylock, alternately letting them be

repelled by his malignity and again attracting their sympathy to him as

a victim of wrong. Nothing in the play assists this double attitude so

much as the Jessica Story. Not to speak of the fact that Shylock shows

no appreciation for the winsomeness of the girl who attracts every one

else in the drama, nor of the way in which this one point of brightness

in the Jewish quarter throws up the sordidness of all her surroundings,

[=ii.= iii. 2.] we hear the Jew's own daughter reflect that his house is

a 'hell,' and we see enough of his domestic life to agree with her.

[e.g. =ii.= v.] A Shylock painted without a tender side at all would be

repulsive; he becomes much more repulsive when he shows a tenderness for

one human being, and yet it appears how this tenderness has grown hard

and rotten with the general debasement of his soul by avarice, until, in

his ravings over his loss, [=iii.= i, from 25.] his ducats and his

daughter are ranked as equally dear.

[=iii.= i. 92.] I would my daughter were dead at my foot, and the

jewels in her ear! Would she were hearsed at my foot, and the ducats

in her coffin!

For all this we feel that he is hardly used in losing her. Paternal

feeling may take a gross form, but it is paternal feeling none the less,

and cannot be denied our sympathy; bereavement is a common ground upon

which not only high and low, but even the pure and the outcast, are

drawn together. Thus Jessica at home makes us hate Shylock: with Jessica

lost we cannot help pitying him. The perfection of Dramatic Hedging lies

in the equal balancing of the conflicting feelings, and one of the most

powerful scenes in the whole play is devoted to this twofold display of

Shylock. Fresh from the incident of the elopement, he is encountered by

the parasites and by Tubal: these amuse themselves with alternately

'chaffing' him upon his losses, and 'drawing' him in the matter of the

expected gratification of his vengeance, while his passions rock him

between extremes of despair and fiendish anticipation. [_Jessica

Shakespeare's compensation to Shylock._] We may go further. Great

creative power is accompanied by great attachment to the creations and

keen sense of justice in disposing of them. Looked at as a whole, the

Jessica Story is Shakespeare's compensation to Shylock. [=iv.= i.

348-394.] The sentence on Shylock, which the necessities of the story

require, is legal rather than just; yet large part of it consists in a

requirement that he shall make his daughter an heiress. And, to put it

more generally, the repellent character and hard fate of the father have

set against them the sweetness and beauty of the daughter, together with

the full cup of good fortune which her wilful rebellion brings her in

the love of Lorenzo and the protecting friendship of Portia. Perhaps the

dramatist, according to his wont, is warning us of this compensating

treatment when he makes one of the characters early in the play exclaim:

[=ii.= iv. 34.]

If e'er the Jew her father come to heaven,

It will be for his gentle daughter's sake.

[_The Jessica Story explains Shylock's unyieldingness._]

The other main source of difficulty in the Story of the Jew is, as we

have seen, the detail concerning the pound of flesh, which throws

improbability over every stage of its progress. In one at least of these

stages the difficulty is directly met by the aid of the Jessica Story:

it is this which explains Shylock's resolution not to give way. When we

try in imagination to realise the whole circumstances, common sense must

take the view taken in the play itself by the Duke:

[=iv.= i. 17.]

Shylock, the world thinks, and I think so too,

That thou but lead'st this fashion of thy malice

To the last hour of act; and then 'tis thought

Thou'lt show thy mercy and remorse more strange

Than is thy strange apparent cruelty.

A life-long training in avarice would not easily resist an offer of nine

thousand ducats. But further, the alternatives between which Shylock has

to choose are not so simple as the alternatives of Antonio's money or

his life. On the one hand, Shylock has to consider the small chance that

either the law or the mob would actually suffer the atrocity to be

judicially perpetrated, and how his own life would be likely to be lost

in the attempt. Again, turning to the other alternative, Shylock is

certainly deep in his schemes of vengeance, and the finesse of malignity

must have suggested to him how much more cruel to a man of Antonio's

stamp it would be to fling him a contemptuous pardon before the eyes of

Venice than to turn him into a martyr, even supposing this to be

permitted. But at the moment when the choice becomes open to Shylock he

has been maddened by the loss of his daughter, who, with the wealth she

has stolen, has gone to swell the party of his deadly foe. It is fury,

not calculating cruelty, that makes Shylock with a madman's tenacity

cling to the idea of blood, while this passion is blinding him to a more

keenly flavoured revenge, and risking the chance of securing any

vengeance at all[3].

[_The Jessica Story assists the interweaving of the main stories._]

From the mechanical development of the main plot and the reduction of

its difficulties, we pass to the interweaving of the two principal

stories, which is so leading a feature of the play. In the main this

interweaving is sufficiently provided for by the stories themselves, and

we have already seen how the leading personages in the one story are the

source of the whole movement in the other story. But this interweaving

is drawn closer still by the affair of Jessica: [_It is thus a Link

Action,_] technically described the position in the plot of Jessica's

elopement is that of a Link Action between the main stories. This

linking appears in the way in which Jessica and her suite are in the

course of the drama transferred from the one tale to the other. At the

opening of the play they are personages in the Story of the Jew, and

represent its two antagonistic sides, Jessica being the daughter of the

Jew and Lorenzo a friend and follower of Bassanio and Antonio. First the

contrivance of the elopement assists in drawing together these opposite

sides of the Jew Story, and aggravating the feud on which it turns.

[=iii.= ii, from 221.] Then, as we have seen, Jessica and her husband in

the central scene of the whole play come into contact with the Caskets

Story at its climax. From this point they become adopted into the

Caskets Story, and settle down in the house and under the protection of

Portia. [_helping to restore the balance between the main stories,_]

This transference further assists the symmetry of interweaving by

helping to adjust the balance between the two main stories. In its

_mass_, if the expression may be allowed, the Caskets tale, with its

steady progress to a goal of success, is over-weighted by the tale of

Antonio's tragic peril and startling deliverance: the Jessica episode,

withdrawn from the one and added to the other, helps to make the two

more equal. Once more, the case, we have seen, is not merely that of a

union between stories, but a union between stories opposite in kind, a

combination of brightness with gloom. [_and a bond between their bright

and dark climaxes._] The binding effect of the Jessica Story extends to

the union between these opposite tones. We have already had occasion to

notice how the two extremes meet in the central scene, how from the

height of Bassanio's bliss we pass in an instant to the total ruin of

Antonio, which we then learn in its fulness for the first time: the link

which connects the two is the arrival of Jessica and her friends as

bearers of the news.

[_Character effects. Character of Jessica._]

So far, the points considered have been points of Mechanism and Plot; in

the matter of Character-Interest the Jessica episode is to an even

greater degree an addition to the whole effect of the play, Jessica and

Lorenzo serving as a foil to Portia and Bassanio. The characters of

Jessica and Lorenzo are charmingly sketched, though liable to

misreading unless carefully studied. To appreciate Jessica we must in

the first place assume the grossly unjust mediæval view of the Jews as

social outcasts. [=ii.= v.] The dramatist has vouchsafed us a glimpse of

Shylock at home, and brief as the scene is it is remarkable how much of

evil is crowded into it. The breath of home life is trust, yet the one

note which seems to pervade the domestic bearing of Shylock is the

lowest suspiciousness. [12, 16, 36.] Three times as he is starting for

Bassanio's supper he draws back to question the motives for which he has

been invited. He is moved to a shriek of suspicion by the mere fact of

his servant joining him in shouting for the absent Jessica, [7.] by the

mention of masques, by the sight of the servant whispering to his

daughter [28, 44.]. Finally, he takes his leave with the words

[52.]

Perhaps I will return immediately,

a device for keeping order in his absence which would be a low one for a

nurse to use to a child, but which he is not ashamed of using to his

grown-up daughter and the lady of his house. The short scene of

fifty-seven lines is sufficient to give us a further reminder of

Shylock's sordid house-keeping, which is glad to get rid of the

good-natured Launcelot as a 'huge feeder'; [3, 46.] and his aversion to

any form of gaiety, which leads him to insist on his shutters being put

up when he hears that there is a chance of a pageant in the streets

[28.]. Amidst surroundings of this type Jessica has grown up, a

motherless girl, mingling only with harsh men (for we nowhere see a

trace of female companionship for her): [=ii.= iii. 20.] it can hardly

be objected against her that she should long for a Christian atmosphere

in which her affections might have full play. Yet even for this natural

reaction she feels compunction:

[=ii.= iii. 16.]

Alack, what heinous sin is it in me

To be ashamed to be my father's child!

But though I am a daughter to his blood,

I am not to his manners.

Formed amidst such influences it would be a triumph to a character if it

escaped repulsiveness; Jessica, on the contrary, is full of attractions.

She has a simplicity which stands to her in the place of principle. More

than this she has a high degree of feminine delicacy. Delicacy will be

best brought out in a person who is placed in an equivocal situation,

and we see Jessica engaged, not only in an elopement, but in an

elopement which, [=ii.= iv. 30.] it appears, has throughout been planned

by herself and not by Lorenzo. Of course a quality like feminine

delicacy is more conveyed by the bearing of the actress than by positive

words; we may however notice the impression which Jessica's part in the

elopement scenes makes upon those who are present. [=ii.= iv. 30-40.]

When Lorenzo is obliged to make a confidant of Gratiano, and tell him

how it is Jessica who has planned the whole affair, instead of feeling

any necessity of apologising for her the thought of her childlike

innocence moves him to enthusiasm, and it is here that he exclaims:

If e'er the Jew her father come to heaven,

It will be for his gentle daughter's sake.

[=ii.= vi.]

In the scene of the elopement itself, Jessica has steered clear of both

prudishness and freedom, and when after her pretty confusion she has

retired from the window, even Gratiano breaks out:

[=ii.= vi. 51.]

Now, by my hood, a Gentile and no Jew;

while Lorenzo himself has warmed to see in her qualities he had never

expected:

[=ii.= vi. 52.]

Beshrew me but I love her heartily;

For she is wise, if I can judge of her,

And fair she is, if that mine eyes be true,

And true she is, as she has proved herself,

And therefore, like herself, wise, fair, and true,

Shall she be placed in my constant soul.

So generally, all with whom she comes into contact feel her spell:

[=ii.= iii. 10.] the rough Launcelot parts from her with tears he is

ashamed of yet cannot keep down; [=iii.= i. 41.] Salarino--the last of

men to take high views of women--resents as a sort of blasphemy

Shylock's claiming her as his flesh and blood; [=iii.= iv, v; =v.= i.]

while between Jessica and Portia there seems to spring in an instant an

attraction as mysterious as is the tie between Antonio and Bassanio.

[_Character of Lorenzo._]

Lorenzo is for the most part of a dreamy inactive nature, as may be seen

in his amused tolerance of Launcelot's word-fencing [=iii.= v.

44-75.]--word-fencing being in general a challenge which none of

Shakespeare's characters can resist; similarly, Jessica's enthusiasm on

the subject of Portia, which in reality he shares, he prefers to meet

with banter [=iii.= v. 75-89.]:

Even such a husband

Hast thou of me as she is for a wife.

But the strong side of his character also is shown us in the play: [=v.=

i. 1-24, 54-88.] he has an artist soul, and to the depth of his passion

for music and for the beauty of nature we are indebted for some of the

noblest passages in Shakespeare. This is the attraction which has drawn

him to Jessica, her outer beauty is the index of artistic sensibility

within: [=v.= i. 69, 1-24.] 'she is never merry when she hears sweet

music,' and the soul of rhythm is awakened in her, just as much as in

her husband, by the moonlight scene. Simplicity again, is a quality they

have in common, as is seen by their ignorance in money-matters, [=iii.=

i. 113, 123.] and the way a valuable turquoise ring goes for a

monkey--if, at least, Tubal may be believed: a carelessness of money

which mitigates our dislike of the free hand Jessica lays upon her

father's ducats and jewels. On the whole, however, Lorenzo's dreaminess

makes a pretty contrast to Jessica's vivacity. And Lorenzo's inactivity

is capable of being roused to great things. This is seen by the

elopement itself: [esp. =ii.= iv. 20, 30; =ii.= vi. 30. &c.] for the

suggestion of its incidents seems to be that Lorenzo meant at first no

more than trifling with the pretty Jewess, and that he rose to the

occasion as he found and appreciated Jessica's higher tone and

attraction. [=iii.= iv. 24, 32.] Finally, we must see the calibre of

Lorenzo's character through the eyes of Portia, who selects him at

first sight as the representative to whom to commit her household in her

absence, of which commission she will take no refusal.

[_Jessica and Lorenzo a foil to Portia and Bassanio._]

So interpreted the characters of Jessica and Lorenzo make the whole

episode of the elopement an antithesis to the main plot. To a wedded

couple in the fresh happiness of their union there can hardly fall a

greater luxury than to further the happiness of another couple; this

luxury is granted to Portia and Bassanio, and in their reception of the

fugitives what picturesque contrasts are brought together! The two pairs

are a foil to one another in kind, and set one another off like gold and

gems. Lorenzo and Jessica are negative characters with the one positive

quality of intense capacity for enjoyment; Bassanio and Portia have

everything to enjoy, yet their natures appear dormant till roused by an

occasion for daring and energy. The Jewess and her husband are

distinguished by the bird-like simplicity that so often goes with

special art-susceptibility; Portia and Bassanio are full and rounded

characters in which the whole of human nature seems concentrated. The

contrast is of degree as well as kind: the weaker pair brought side by

side with the stronger throw out the impression of their strength.

Portia has a fulness of power which puts her in her most natural

position when she is extending protection to those who are less able to

stand by themselves. Still more with Bassanio: he has so little scope in

the scenes of the play itself, which from the nature of the stories

present him always in situations of dependence on others, that we see

his strength almost entirely by the reflected light of the attitude

which others hold to him; in the present instance we have no difficulty

in catching the intellectual power of Lorenzo, and Lorenzo looks up to

Bassanio as a superior. And the couples thus contrasted in character

present an equal likeness and unlikeness in their fortunes. Both are

happy for ever, and both have become so through a bold stroke. Yet in

the one instance it is blind obedience, in face of all temptations, to

the mere whims of a good parent, who is dead, that has been guided to

the one issue so passionately desired; in the case of the other couple

open rebellion, at every practical risk, against the legitimate

authority of an evil father, still living, has brought them no worse

fate than happiness in one another, and for their defenceless position

the best of patrons.

It seems, then, that the introduction of the Jessica Story is justified,

not only by the purposes of construction which it serves, but by the

fact that its human interest is at once a contrast and a supplement to

the main story, with which it blends to produce the ordered variety of a

finished picture.

[_The Rings Episode assists the mechanism of the main stories,_]

A few words will be sufficient to point out how the effects of the main

plot are assisted by the Rings Episode, which, though rich in fun, is of

a slighter character than the Jessica Story, and occupies a much smaller

space in the field of view. The dramatic points of the two minor stories

are similar. Like the Jessica Story the Rings Episode assists the

mechanical working out of the main plot. An explanation must somehow be

given to Bassanio that the lawyer is Portia in disguise; mere mechanical

explanations have always an air of weakness, but the affair of the rings

utilises the explanation in the present case as a source of new dramatic

effects. This arrangement further assists, to a certain extent, in

reducing the improbability of Portia's project. The point at which the

improbability would be most felt would be, not the first appearance of

the lawyer's clerk, for then we are engrossed in our anxiety for

Antonio, but when the explanation of the disguise came to be made; there

might be a danger lest here the surprise of Bassanio should become

infectious, and the audience should awake to the improbability of the

whole story: as it is, their attention is at the critical moment

diverted to the perplexity of the penitent husbands. [_and their

interweaving;_] The Story of the Rings, like that of Jessica, assists

the interweaving of the two main stories with one another, its subtlety

suggesting to what a degree of detail this interlacing extends. Bassanio

is the main point which unites the Story of the Jew and the Caskets

Story; in the one he occupies the position of friend, in the other of

husband. [=iv.= i. 425-454.] The affair of the rings, slight as it is,

is so managed by Portia that its point becomes a test as between his

friendship and his love; and so equal do these forces appear that,

though his friendship finally wins and he surrenders his betrothal ring,

yet it is not until after his wife has given him a hint against herself:

An if your wife be not a mad-woman,

And know how well I have deserved the ring,

She would not hold out enemy for ever

For giving it to me.

The Rings Episode, even more than the Jessica Story, assists in

restoring the balance between the main tales. The chief inequality

between them lies in the fact that the Jew Story is complicated and

resolved, while the Caskets Story is a simple progress to a goal; when,

however, there springs from the latter a sub-action which has a highly

comic complication and resolution the two halves of the play become

dramatically on a par. And the interweaving of the dark and bright

elements in the play is assisted by the fact that the Episode of the

Rings not only provides a comic reaction to relieve the tragic crisis,

but its whole point is a Dramatic Irony in which serious and comic are

inextricably mixed.

[_and assists in the development of Portia's character._]

Finally, as the Jessica Story ministers to Character effect in

connection with the general ensemble of the personages, so the Episode

of the Rings has a special function in bringing out the character of

Portia. The secret of the charm which has won for Portia the suffrages

of all readers is the perfect balance of qualities in her character: she

is the meeting-point of brightness, force, and tenderness. And, to crown

the union, Shakespeare has placed her at the supreme moment of life, on

the boundary line between girlhood and womanhood, when the wider aims

and deeper issues of maturity find themselves in strange association

with the abandon of youth. The balance thus becomes so perfect that it

quivers, and dips to one side and the other. [=i.= ii. 39.] Portia is

the saucy child as she sprinkles her sarcasms over Nerissa's enumeration

of the suitors: in the trial she faces the world of Venice as a heroine.

[=iii.= ii. 150.] She is the ideal maiden in the speech in which she

surrenders herself to Bassanio: [=iv.= i. 184.] she is the ideal woman

as she proclaims from the judgment seat the divinity of mercy. Now the

fourth Act has kept before us too exclusively one side of this

character. Not that Portia in the lawyer's gown is masculine: but the

dramatist has had to dwell too long on her side of strength. He will not

dismiss us with this impression, but indulges us in one more daring feat

surpassing all the madcap frolics of the past. Thus the Episode of the

Rings is the last flicker of girlhood in Portia before it merges in the

wider life of womanhood. We have rejoiced in a great deliverance wrought

by a noble woman: our enjoyment rises higher yet when the Rings Episode

reminds us that this woman has not ceased to be a sportive girl.

It has been shown, then, that the two inferior stories in _The Merchant

of Venice_ assist the main stories in the most varied manner, smoothing

their mechanical working, meeting their special difficulties, drawing

their mutual interweaving yet closer, and throwing their character

effects into relief: the additional complexity they have brought has

resulted in making emphatic points yet more prominent, and the total

effect has therefore been to increase clearness and simplicity. Enough

has now been said on the building up of Dramas out of Stories, which is

the distinguishing feature of the Romantic Drama; the studies that

follow will be applied to the more universal topics of dramatic

interest, Character, Plot, and Passion.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] It is a difficulty of literary criticism that it has to use as

technical terms words belonging to ordinary conversation, and therefore

more or less indefinite in their significations. In the present work I

am making a distinction between 'complex' and 'complicated': the latter

is applied to the diverting a story out of its natural course with a

view to its ultimate 'resolution'; 'complex' is reserved for the

interweaving of stories with one another. Later on 'single' will be

opposed to 'complex,' and 'simple' to 'complicated.'

[3] This seems to me a reasonable view notwithstanding what Jessica says

to the contrary (iii. ii. 286), that she has often heard her father

swear he would rather have Antonio's flesh than twenty times the value

of the bond. It is one thing to swear vengeance in private, another

thing to follow it up in the face of a world in opposition. A man of

overbearing temper surrounded by inferiors and dependants often utters

threats, and seems to find a pleasure in uttering them, which both he

and his hearers know he will never carry out.

IV.

A PICTURE OF IDEAL VILLAINY IN RICHARD III.

_A Study in Character-Interpretation._

[_Villainy as a subject for art-treatment._]

I HOPE that the subject of the present study will not be considered by

any reader forbidding. On the contrary, there is surely attractiveness

in the thought that nothing is so repulsive or so uninteresting in the

world of fact but in some way or other it may be brought under the

dominion of art-beauty. The author of _L'Allegro_ shows by the companion

poem that he could find inspiration in a rainy morning; and the great

master in English poetry is followed by a great master in English

painting who wins his chief triumphs by his handling of fog and mist.

Long ago the masterpiece of Virgil consecrated agricultural toil;

Murillo's pictures have taught us that there is a beauty in rags and

dirt; rustic commonplaces gave a life passion to Wordsworth, and were

the cause of a revolution in poetry; while Dickens has penetrated into

the still less promising region of low London life, and cast a halo

around the colourless routine of poverty. Men's evil passions have given

Tragedy to art, crime is beautified by being linked to Nemesis, meanness

is the natural source for brilliant comic effects, ugliness has reserved

for it a special form of art in the grotesque, and pain becomes

attractive in the light of the heroism that suffers and the devotion

that watches. In the infancy of modern English poetry Drayton found a

poetic side to topography and maps, and Phineas Fletcher idealised

anatomy; while of the two greatest imaginations belonging to the modern

world Milton produced his masterpiece in the delineation of a fiend, and

Dante in a picture of hell. The final triumph of good over evil seems to

have been already anticipated by art.

[_The villainy of Richard ideal in its scale,_]

The portrait of Richard satisfies a first condition of ideality in the

scale of the whole picture. The sphere in which he is placed is not

private life, but the world of history, in which moral responsibility is

the highest: if, therefore, the quality of other villainies be as fine,

here the issues are deeper. [_and in its fulness of development._] As

another element of the ideal, the villainy of Richard is presented to us

fully developed and complete. Often an artist of crime will rely--as

notably in the portraiture of Tito Melema--mainly on the succession of

steps by which a character, starting from full possession of the

reader's sympathies, arrives by the most natural gradations at a height

of evil which shocks. In the present case all idea of growth is kept

outside the field of this particular play; the opening soliloquy

announces a completed process:

[=i.= i. 30.]

I am determined to prove a villain.

What does appear of Richard's past, seen through the favourable medium

of a mother's description, only seems to extend the completeness to

earlier stages:

[=iv.= iv. 167.]

A grievous burthen was thy birth to me;

Tetchy and wayward was thy infancy;

Thy school-days frightful, desperate, wild, and furious,

Thy prime of manhood daring, bold, and venturous,

Thy age confirm'd, proud, subtle, bloody, treacherous,

More mild, but yet more harmful, kind in hatred.

So in the details of the play there is nowhere a note of the hesitation

that betrays tentative action. When even Buckingham is puzzled as to

what can be done if Hastings should resist, Richard answers:

[=iii.= i. 193.]

Chop off his head, man; somewhat we will do.

His choice is only between different modes of villainy, never between

villainy and honesty.

[_It has no sufficient motive._]

Again, it is to be observed that there is no suggestion of impelling

motive or other explanation for the villainy of Richard. He does not

labour under any sense of personal injury, such as Iago felt in

believing, however groundlessly, [_Othello_: =i.= iii. 392, &c.] that

his enemies had wronged him through his wife; [_Lear_: =i.= ii. 1-22.]

or Edmund, whose soliloquies display him as conscious that his birth has

made his whole life an injury. Nor have we in this case the morbid

enjoyment of suffering which we associate with Mephistopheles, and which

Dickens has worked up into one of his most powerful portraits in Quilp.

Richard never turns aside to gloat over the agonies of his victims; it

is not so much the details as the grand schemes of villainy, the

handling of large combinations of crime, that have an interest for him:

he is a strategist in villainy, not a tactician. Nor can we point to

ambition as a sufficient motive. He is ambitious in a sense which

belongs to all vigorous natures; he has the workman's impulse to rise by

his work. But ambition as a determining force in character must imply

more than this; it is a sort of moral dazzling, its symptom is a

fascination by ends which blinds to the ruinous means leading up to

these ends. Such an ambition was Macbeth's; but in Richard the symptoms

are wanting, and in all his long soliloquies he is never found dwelling

upon the prize in view. A nearer approach to an explanation would be

Richard's sense of bodily deformity. Not only do all who come in contact

with him shrink from the 'bottled spider,' [=i.= iii. 242, 228; =iv.=

iv. 81, &c.] but he himself gives a conspicuous place in his meditations

to the thought of his ugliness; from the outset he connects his criminal

career with the reflection that he 'is not shaped for sportive tricks'

[=i.= i. 14.]:

Deform'd, unfinish'd, sent before my time

Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,

And that so lamely and unfashionable

That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;

Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,

Have no delight to pass away the time,

Unless to spy my shadow in the sun

And descant on mine own deformity.

Still, it would be going too far to call this the motive of his crimes:

the spirit of this and similar passages is more accurately expressed by

saying that he has a morbid pleasure in contemplating physical ugliness

analogous to his morbid pleasure in contemplating moral baseness. [esp.

=i.= ii. 252-264.]

[_Villainy has become to Richard an end in itself._]

There appears, then, no sufficient explanation and motive for the

villainy of Richard: the general impression conveyed is that to Richard

villainy has become an end in itself needing no special motive. This is

one of the simplest principles of human development--that a means to an

end tends to become in time an end in itself. The miser who began

accumulating to provide comforts for his old age finds the process

itself of accumulating gain firmer and firmer hold upon him, until, when

old age has come, he sticks to accumulating and foregoes comfort. So in

previous plays Gloster may have been impelled by ambition to his crimes:

[compare _3 Henry VI:_ =iii.= ii. 165-181.] by the time the present play

is reached crime itself becomes to him the dearer of the two, and the

ambitious end drops out of sight. This leads directly to one of the two

main features of Shakespeare's portrait: Richard is an _artist in

villainy_. [_Richard an artist in villainy._] What form and colour are

to the painter, what rhythm and imagery are to the poet, that crime is

to Richard: it is the medium in which his soul frames its conceptions of

the beautiful. The gulf that separates between Shakespeare's Richard and

the rest of humanity is no gross perversion of sentiment, nor the

development of abnormal passions, nor a notable surrender in the

struggle between interest and right. It is that he approaches villainy

as a thing of pure intellect, a region of moral indifference in which

sentiment and passion have no place, attraction to which implies no more

motive than the simplest impulse to exercise a native talent in its

natural sphere.

[_Richard lacks the emotions naturally attending crime._]

Of the various barriers that exist against crime, the most powerful are

the checks that come from human emotions. It is easier for a criminal

to resist the objections his reason interposes to evildoing than to

overcome these emotional restraints: either his own emotions, woven by

generations of hereditary transmission into the very framework of his

nature, which make his hand tremble in the act of sinning; or the

emotions his crimes excite in others, such as will cause hardened

wretches, who can die calmly on the scaffold, to cower before the

menaces of a mob. Crime becomes possible only because these emotions can

be counteracted by more powerful emotions on the other side, by greed,

by thirst for vengeance, by inflamed hatred. In Richard, however, when

he is surveying his works, we find no such evil emotions raised, no

gratified vengeance or triumphant hatred. The reason is that there is in

him no restraining emotion to be overcome. Horror at the unnatural is

not subdued, but absent; [=i.= ii.] his attitude to atrocity is the

passionless attitude of the artist who recognises that the tyrant's

cruelty can be set to as good music as the martyr's heroism. Readers are

shocked at the scene in which Richard wooes Lady Anne beside the bier of

the parent he has murdered, and wonder that so perfect an intriguer

should not choose a more favourable time. But the repugnance of the

reader has no place in Richard's feelings: the circumstances of the

scene are so many _objections_, to be met by so much skill of treatment.

A single detail in the play illustrates perfectly this neutral attitude

to horror. Tyrrel comes to bring the news of the princes' murder;

Richard answers:

[=iv.= iii. 31.]

Come to me, Tyrrel, soon at after supper,

And thou shalt tell the process of their death.

Quilp could not have waited for his gloating till after supper; other

villains would have put the deed out of sight when done; the epicure in

villainy reserves his _bonbouche_ till he has leisure to do it justice.

Callous to his own emotions, he is equally callous to the emotions he

rouses in others. When Queen Margaret is pouring a flood of curses which

make the innocent courtiers' hair stand on end, and the heaviest curse

of all, which she has reserved for Richard himself, [=i.= iii. 216-239.]

is rolling on its climax,

Thou slander of thy mother's heavy womb!

Thou loathed issue of thy father's loins!

Thou rag of honour! thou detested--

he adroitly slips in the word 'Margaret' in place of the intended

'Richard,' and thus, with the coolness of a schoolboy's small joke,

disconcerts her tragic passion in a way that gives a moral wrench to the

whole scene. [=iv.= iv, from 136.] His own mother's curse moves him not

even to anger; he caps its clauses with bantering repartees, until he

seizes an opportunity for a pun, and begins to move off: [=ii.= ii.

109.] he treats her curse, as in a previous scene he had treated her

blessing, with a sort of gentle impatience as if tired of a fond yet

somewhat troublesome parent. Finally, there is an instinct which serves

as resultant to all the complex forces, emotional or rational, which

sway us between right and wrong; this instinct of conscience is formally

disavowed by Richard:

[=v.= iii. 309.]

Conscience is but a word that cowards use,

Devised at first to keep the strong in awe.

[_But he regards villainy with the intellectual enthusiasm of the

artist._]

But, if the natural heat of emotion is wanting, there is, on the other

hand, the full intellectual warmth of an artist's enthusiasm, whenever

Richard turns to survey the game he is playing. He reflects with a

relish how he does the wrong and first begins the brawl, how he sets

secret mischief abroach and charges it on to others, beweeping his own

victims to simple gulls, and, [=i.= iii, from 324.] when these begin to

cry for vengeance, quoting Scripture against returning evil for evil,

and thus seeming a saint when most he plays the devil. The great master

is known by his appreciation of details, in the least of which he can

see the play of great principles: so the magnificence of Richard's

villainy does not make him insensible to commonplaces of crime. When in

the long usurpation conspiracy there is a moment's breathing space just

before the Lord Mayor enters, [=iii.= vi. 1-11.] Richard and Buckingham

utilise it for a burst of hilarity over the deep hypocrisy with which

they are playing their parts; how they can counterfeit the deep

tragedian, murder their breath in the middle of a word, tremble and

start at wagging of a straw:--here we have the musician's flourish upon

his instrument from very wantonness of skill. Again:

[=i.= i. 118.]

Simple, plain Clarence! I do love thee so

That I will shortly send thy soul to heaven--

is the composer's pleasure at hitting upon a readily workable theme.

Richard appreciates his murderers as a workman appreciates good tools:

[=i.= iii. 354.]

Your eyes drop millstones, when fools' eyes drop tears:

I like you, lads.

[=i.= ii, from 228.]

And at the conclusion of the scene with Lady Anne we have the artist's

enjoyment of his own masterpiece:

Was ever woman in this humour woo'd?

Was ever woman in this humour won?...

What! I, that kill'd her husband and his father,

To take her in her heart's extremest hate,

With curses in her mouth, tears in her eyes,

The bleeding witness of her hatred by;

Having God, her conscience, and these bars against me,

And I nothing to back my suit at all,

But the plain devil and dissembling looks,

And yet to win her, all the world to nothing!

The tone in this passage is of the highest: it is the tone of a musician

fresh from a triumph of his art, the sweetest point in which has been

that he has condescended to no adventitious aids, no assistance of

patronage or concessions to popular tastes; it has been won by pure

music. So the artist in villainy celebrates a triumph of _plain devil_!

[_The villainy ideal in success: a fascination of irresistibility in

Richard._]

This view of Richard as an artist in crime is sufficient to explain the

hold which villainy has on Richard himself: but ideal villainy must be

ideal also in its success; and on this side of the analysis another

conception in Shakespeare's portraiture becomes of first importance. It

is obvious enough that Richard has all the elements of success which can

be reduced to the form of skill: but he has something more. No theory of

human action will be complete which does not recognise a dominion of

will over will operating by mere contact, without further explanation so

far as conscious influence is concerned. What is it that takes the bird

into the jaws of the serpent? No persuasion or other influence on the

bird's consciousness, for it struggles to keep back; we can only

recognise the attraction as a force, and give it a name, fascination. In

Richard there is a similar Fascination of Irresistibility, which also

operates by his mere presence, and which fights for him in the same way

in which the idea of their invincibility fought for conquerors like

Napoleon, and was on occasions as good to them as an extra twenty or

thirty thousand men. A consideration like this will be appreciated in

the case of _tours de force_ like the Wooing of Lady Anne, which is a

stumblingblock to many readers--a widow beside the bier of her murdered

husband's murdered father wooed and won by the man who makes no secret

that he is the murderer of them both. The analysis of ordinary human

motives would make it appear that Anne would not yield at points at

which the scene represents her as yielding; some other force is wanted

to explain her surrender, and it is found in this secret force of

irresistible will which Richard bears about with him. But, it will be

asked, in what does this fascination appear? The answer is that the idea

of it is furnished to us by the other scenes of the play. Such a

consideration illustrates the distinction between real and ideal. An

ideal incident is not an incident of real life simply clothed in beauty

of expression; nor, on the other hand, is an ideal incident divorced

from the laws of real possibility. Ideal implies that the transcendental

has been made possible by treatment: that an incident (for example)

which might be impossible in itself becomes possible through other

incidents with which it is associated, just as in actual life the action

of a public personage which may have appeared strange at the time

becomes intelligible when at his death we can review his life as a

whole. Such a scene as the Wooing Scene might be impossible as a

fragment; it becomes possible enough in the play, where it has to be

taken in connection with the rest of the plot, throughout which the

irresistibility of the hero is prominent as one of the chief threads of

connection. [_The fascination is to be conveyed in the acting._] Nor is

it any objection that the Wooing Scene comes early in the action. The

play is not the book, but the actor's interpretation on the stage, and

the actor will have collected even from the latest scenes elements of

the interpretation he throws into the earliest: the actor is a lens for

concentrating the light of the whole play upon every single detail. The

fascination of irresistibility, then, which is to act by instinct in

every scene, may be arrived at analytically when we survey the play as a

whole--when we see how by Richard's innate genius, by the reversal in

him of the ordinary relation of human nature to crime, especially by his

perfect mastery of the successive situations as they arise, the

dramatist steadily builds up an irresistibility which becomes a secret

force clinging to Richard's presence, and through the operation of which

his feats are half accomplished by the fact of his attempting them.

[_The irresistibility analysed. Unlikely means._]

To begin with: the sense of irresistible power is brought out by the way

in which the unlikeliest things are continually drawn into his schemes

and utilised as means. [=i.= i, from 42.] Not to speak of his regular

affectation of blunt sincerity, he makes use of the simple brotherly

confidence of Clarence as an engine of fratricide, [=iii.= iv; esp. 76

compared with =iii.= i. 184.] and founds on the frank familiarity

existing between himself and Hastings a plot by which he brings him to

the block. The Queen's compunction at the thought of leaving Clarence

out of the general reconciliation around the dying king's bedside is

the fruit of a conscience tenderer than her neighbours': [=ii.= i, from

73: cf. 134.] Richard adroitly seizes it as an opportunity for shifting

on to the Queen and her friends the suspicion of the duke's murder.

[=iii.= i. 154.] The childish prattle of little York Richard manages to

suggest to the bystanders as dangerous treason; [=ii.= i. 52-72.] the

solemnity of the king's deathbed he turns to his own purposes by

outdoing all the rest in Christian forgiveness and humility; [=iii.= v.

99, &c.] and he selects devout meditation as the card to play with the

Lord Mayor and citizens. On the other hand, amongst other devices for

the usurpation conspiracy, he starts a slander upon his own mother's

purity; [=iii.= v. 75-94.] and further--by one of the greatest strokes

in the whole play--makes capital in the Wooing Scene out of his own

heartlessness, [=i.= ii. 156-167.] describing in a burst of startling

eloquence the scenes of horror he has passed through, the only man

unmoved to tears, in order to add:

And what these sorrows could not thence exhale,

Thy beauty hath, and made them blind with weeping.

There are things which are too sacred for villainy to touch, and there

are things which are protected by their own foulness: both alike are

made useful by Richard.

[_The sensation produced by one crime made to bring about others._]

Similarly it is to be noticed how Richard can utilise the very sensation

produced by one crime as a means to bring about more; as when he

interrupts the King's dying moments to announce the death of Clarence in

such a connection as must give a shock to the most unconcerned

spectator, [=ii.= i, from 77; cf. 134.] and then draws attention to the

pale faces of the Queen's friends as marks of guilt. He thus makes one

crime beget another without further effort on his part, reversing the

natural law by which each criminal act, through its drawing more

suspicion to the villain, tends to limit his power for further mischief.

[_Richard's own plans foisted on to others._] It is to the same purpose

that Richard chooses sometimes instead of acting himself to foist his

own schemes on to others; as when he inspires Buckingham with the idea

of the young king's arrest, and, when Buckingham seizes the idea as his

own, meekly accepts it from him:

[=ii.= ii. 112-154; esp. 149.]

I, like a child, will go by thy direction.

There is in all this a dreadful _economy_ of crime: not the economy of

prudence seeking to reduce its amount, but the artist's economy which

delights in bringing the largest number of effects out of a single

device. Such skill opens up a vista of evil which is boundless.

[_No signs of effort in Richard: imperturbability of mind._]

The sense of irresistible power is again brought out by his perfect

imperturbability of mind: villainy never ruffles his spirits. He never

misses the irony that starts up in the circumstances around him, and

says to Clarence:

[=i.= i. 111.]

This deep disgrace in brotherhood

_Touches_ me deeply.

While taking his part in entertaining the precocious King he treats us

to continual asides--

[=iii.= i. 79, 94.]

So wise so young, they say, do never live long--

showing how he can stop to criticise the scenes in which he is an actor.

[=iii.= iv. 24.] He can delay the conspiracy on which his chance of the

crown depends by coming late to the council, [=iii.= iv. 32.] and then

while waiting the moment for turning upon his victim is cool enough to

recollect the Bishop of Ely's strawberries. [_humour;_] But more than

all these examples is to be noted Richard's _humour_. This is _par

excellence_ the sign of a mind at ease with itself: scorn, contempt,

bitter jest belong to the storm of passion, but humour is the sunshine

of the soul. Yet Shakespeare has ventured to endow Richard with

unquestionable humour. [=i.= i. 151-156.] Thus, in one of his earliest

meditations, he prays, 'God take King Edward to his mercy,' for then he

will marry Warwick's youngest daughter:

What though I kill'd her husband and her father!

The readiest way to make the wench amends

Is to become her husband and her father!

[e.g. =i.= i. 118; =ii.= ii. 109; =iv.= iii. 38, 43; =i.= iii. 142;

=ii.= i. 72; =iii.= vii. 51-54, &c.]

And all through there perpetually occur little turns of language into

which the actor can throw a tone of humorous enjoyment; notably, when he

complains of being 'too childish-foolish for this world,' and where he

nearly ruins the effect of his edifying penitence in the Reconciliation

Scene, by being unable to resist one final stroke:

I thank my God for my humility!

[_freedom from prejudice._]

Of a kindred nature is his perfect frankness and fairness to his

victims: villainy never clouds his judgment. Iago, astutest of

intriguers, was deceived, as has been already noted, by his own morbid

acuteness, and firmly believed--what the simplest spectator can see to

be a delusion--that Othello has tampered with his wife. Richard, on the

contrary, is a marvel of judicial impartiality; he speaks of King Edward

in such terms as these--

[=i.= i. 36.]

If King Edward be as true and just

As I am subtle, false and treacherous;

and weighs elaborately the superior merit of one of his victims to his

own:

[=i.= ii. from 240.]

Hath she forgot already that brave prince,

Edward, her lord, whom I, some three months since,

Stabb'd in my angry mood at Tewksbury?

A sweeter and a lovelier gentleman,

Framed in the prodigality of nature,

Young, valiant, wise, and, no doubt, right royal,

The spacious world cannot again afford:

And will she yet debase her eyes on me,

That cropped the golden prime of this sweet prince,

And made her widow to a woful bed?

On me, whose all not equals Edward's moiety?

Richard can rise to all his height of villainy without its leaving on

himself the slightest trace of struggle or even effort.

[_A recklessness suggesting boundless resources._]

Again, the idea of boundless resource is suggested by an occasional

recklessness, almost a slovenliness, in the details of his intrigues.

Thus, in the early part of the Wooing Scene he makes two blunders of

which a tyro in intrigue might be ashamed. [=i.= ii. 91.] He denies that

he is the author of Edward's death, to be instantly confronted with the

evidence of Margaret as an eye-witness. Then a few lines further on he

goes to the opposite extreme:

[=i.= ii. 101.]

_Anne._ Didst thou not kill this king?

_Glouc._ I grant ye.

_Anne_. Dost grant me, hedgehog?

The merest beginner would know better how to meet accusations than by

such haphazard denials and acknowledgments. But the crack

billiard-player will indulge at the beginning of the game in a little

clumsiness, giving his adversaries a prospect of victory only to have

the pleasure of making up the disadvantage with one or two brilliant

strokes. And so Richard, essaying the most difficult problem ever

attempted in human intercourse, lets half the interview pass before he

feels it worth while to play with caution.

[_General character of Richard's intrigue: inspiration rather than

calculation._]

The mysterious irresistibility of Richard, pointed to by the succession

of incidents in the play, is assisted by the very improbability of some

of the more difficult scenes in which he is an actor. Intrigue in

general is a thing of reason, and its probabilities can be readily

analysed; but the genius of intrigue in Richard seems to make him avoid

the caution of other intriguers, and to give him a preference for feats

which seem impossible. The whole suggests how it is not by calculation

that he works, but he brings the _touch_ of an artist to his dealing

with human weakness, and follows whither his artist's inspiration leads

him. If, then, there is nothing so remote from evil but Richard can make

it tributary; if he can endow crimes with power of self-multiplying; if

he can pass through a career of sin without the taint of distortion on

his intellect and with the unruffled calmness of innocence; if Richard

accomplishes feats no other would attempt with a carelessness no other

reputation would risk, even slow reason may well believe him

irresistible. When, further, such qualifications for villainy become,

by unbroken success in villainy, reflected in Richard's very bearing;

when the only law explaining his motions to onlookers is the lawlessness

of genius whose instinct is more unerring than the most laborious

calculation and planning, it becomes only natural that the _opinion_ of

his irresistibility should become converted into a mystic _fascination_,

making Richard's very presence a signal to his adversaries of defeat,

chilling with hopelessness the energies with which they are to face his

consummate skill.

The two main ideas of Shakespeare's portrait, the idea of an artist in

crime and the fascination of invincibility which Richard bears about

with him, are strikingly illustrated in the wooing of Lady Anne. [=i.=

ii.] For a long time Richard will not put forth effort, but meets the

loathing and execration hurled at him with repartee, saying in so many

words that he regards the scene as a 'keen encounter of our wits.'

[115.] All this time the mysterious power of his presence is operating,

the more strongly as Lady Anne sees the most unanswerable cause that

denunciation ever had to put produce no effect upon her adversary, and

feels her own confidence in her wrongs recoiling upon herself. [from

152.] When the spell has had time to work then he assumes a serious

tone: suddenly, as we have seen, turning the strong point of Anne's

attack, his own inhuman nature, into the basis of his plea--he who never

wept before has been softened by love to her. From this point he urges

his cause with breathless speed; [175.] he presses a sword into her hand

with which to pierce his breast, knowing that she lacks the nerve to

wield it, and seeing how such forbearance on her part will be a

starting-point in giving way. [from 193.] We can trace the sinking of

her will before the unconquerable will of her adversary in her feebler

and feebler refusals, while as yet very shame keeps her to an outward

defiance. Then, when she is wishing to yield, he suddenly finds her an

excuse by declaring that all he desires at this moment is that she

should leave the care of the King's funeral

To him that hath more cause to be a mourner.

By yielding this much to penitence and religion we see she has commenced

a downward descent from which she will never recover. Such consummate

art in the handling of human nature, backed by the spell of an

irresistible presence, the weak Anne has no power to combat. [=iv.= i.

66-87.] To the last she is as much lost in amazement as the reader at

the way it has all come about:

Lo, ere I can repeat this curse again,

Even in so short a space, my woman's heart

Grossly grew captive to his honey words.

[_Ideal_ v. _real villainy_]

To gather up our results. A dramatist is to paint a portrait of ideal

villainy as distinct from villainy in real life. In real life it is a

commonplace that a virtuous life is a life of effort; but the converse

is not true, that he who is prepared to be a villain will therefore lead

an easy life. On the contrary, 'the _way_ of transgressors is hard.' The

metaphor suggests a path, laid down at first by the Architect of the

universe, beaten plain and flat by the generations of men who have since

trodden it: he who keeps within this path of rectitude will walk, not

without effort, yet at least with safety; but he who 'steps aside' to

the right or left will find his way beset with pitfalls and

stumblingblocks. In real life a man sets out to be a villain, but his

mental power is deficient, and he remains a villain only in intention.

Or he has stores of power, but lacks the spark of purpose to set them

aflame. Or, armed with both will to plan and mind to execute, yet his

efforts are hampered by unfit tools. Or, if his purpose needs reliance

alone on his own clear head and his own strong arm, yet in the critical

moment the emotional nature he has inherited with his humanity starts

into rebellion and scares him, like Macbeth, from the half-accomplished

deed. Or, if he is as hardened in nature as corrupt in mind and will,

yet he is closely pursued by a mocking fate, which crowns his well-laid

plans with a mysterious succession of failures. Or, if there is no other

limitation on him from within or from without, yet he may move in a

world too narrow to give him scope: the man with a heart to be the

scourge of his country proves in fact no more than the vagabond of a

country side.--But in Shakespeare's portrait we have infinite capacity

for mischief, needing no purpose, for evil has become to it an end in

itself; we have one who for tools can use the baseness of his own nature

or the shame of those who are his nearest kin, while at his touch all

that is holiest becomes transformed into weapons of iniquity. We have

one whose nature in the past has been a gleaning ground for evil in

every stage of his development, and who in the present is framed to look

on unnatural horror with the eyes of interested curiosity. We have one

who seems to be seconded by fate with a series of successes, which

builds up for him an irresistibility that is his strongest safeguard;

and who, instead of being cramped by circumstances, has for his stage

the world of history itself, in which crowns are the prize and nations

the victims. In such a portrait is any element wanting to arrive at the

ideal of villainy?

[_Ideal villainy_ v. _monstrosity._]

The question would rather be whether Shakespeare has not gone too far,

and, passing outside the limits of art, exhibited a monstrosity. Nor is

it an answer to point to the 'dramatic hedging' by which Richard is

endowed with undaunted personal courage, unlimited intellectual power,

and every good quality not inconsistent with his perfect villainy. The

objection to such a portrait as the present study presents is that it

offends against our sense of the principles upon which the universe has

been constructed; we feel that before a violation of nature could attain

such proportions nature must have exerted her recuperative force to

crush it. If, however, the dramatist can suggest that such reassertion

of nature is actually made, that the crushing blow is delayed only while

it is accumulating force: in a word, if the dramatist can draw out

before us a _Nemesis_ as ideal as the villainy was ideal, then the full

demands of art will be satisfied. The Nemesis that dominates the whole

play of _Richard III_ will be the subject of the next study.

V.

RICHARD III: HOW SHAKESPEARE WEAVES NEMESIS INTO HISTORY.

_A Study in Plot._

[_Richard III: from the Character side a violation of Nemesis;_]

I HAVE alluded already to the dangerous tendency, which, as it appears

to me, exists amongst ordinary readers of Shakespeare, to ignore plot as

of secondary importance, and to look for Shakespeare's greatness mainly

in his conceptions of character. But the full character effect of a

dramatic portrait cannot be grasped if it be dissociated from the plot;

and this is nowhere more powerfully illustrated than in the play of

_Richard III_. The last study was devoted exclusively to the Character

side of the play, and on this confined view the portrait of Richard

seemed a huge offence against our sense of moral equilibrium, rendering

artistic satisfaction impossible. Such an impression vanishes when, as

in the present study, the drama is looked at from the side of Plot.

[_from the side of Plot, the transformation of history into Nemesis._]

The effect of this plot is, however, missed by those who limit their

attention in reviewing it to Richard himself. These may feel that there

is nothing in his fate to compensate for the spectacle of his crimes:

man must die, and a death in fulness of energy amid the glorious stir of

battle may seem a fate to be envied. But the Shakespearean Drama with

its complexity of plot is not limited to the individual life and fate in

its interpretation of history; and when we survey all the distinct

trains of interest in the play of _Richard III_, with their blendings

and mutual influence, we shall obtain a sense of dramatic satisfaction

amply counterbalancing the monstrosity of Richard's villainy. Viewed as

a study in character the play leaves in us only an intense craving for

Nemesis: when we turn to consider the plot, this presents to us the

world of history transformed into an intricate design of which the

recurrent pattern is Nemesis.

[_The underplot: a set of separate Nemesis Actions._]

This notion of tracing a pattern in human affairs is a convenient key to

the exposition of plot. Laying aside for the present the main interest

of Richard himself, we may observe that the bulk of the drama consists

in a number of minor interests--single threads of the pattern--each of

which is a separate example of Nemesis. [_Clarence._] The first of these

trains of interest centres around the Duke of Clarence. He has betrayed

the Lancastrians, to whom he had solemnly sworn fealty, for the sake of

the house of York; [=i.= iv. 50, 66.] this perjury is his bitterest

recollection in his hour of awakened conscience, and is urged home by

the taunts of his murderers; while his only defence is that he did it

all for his brother's love. [=ii.= i. 86.] Yet his lot is to fall by a

treacherous death, the warrant for which is signed by this brother, the

King and head of the Yorkist house, [=i.= iv. 250.] while its execution

is procured by the bulwark of the house, the intriguing Richard. [_The

King._] The centre of the second nemesis is the King, who has thus

allowed himself in a moment of suspicion to be made a tool for the

murder of his brother, seeking to stop it when too late. [=ii.= i.

77-133.] Shakespeare has contrived that this death of Clarence,

announced as it is in so terrible a manner beside the King's sick bed,

gives him a shock from which he never rallies, and he is carried out to

die with the words on his lips:

O God, I fear Thy justice will take hold

On me, and you, and mine, and yours for this.

[_The Queen and her kindred._]

In this nemesis on the King are associated the Queen and her kindred.

They have been assenting parties to the measures against Clarence

(however little they may have contemplated the bloody issue to which

those measures have been brought by the intrigues of Gloster). [=ii.=

ii. 62-65.] This we must understand from the introduction of Clarence's

children, who serve no purpose except to taunt the Queen in her

bereavement:

_Boy._ Good aunt, you wept not for our father's death;

How can we aid you with our kindred tears?

_Girl._ Our fatherless distress was left unmoan'd;

Your widow-dolour likewise be unwept!

[=ii.= ii. 74, &c.]

The death of the King, so unexpectedly linked to that of Clarence,

removes from the Queen and her kindred the sole bulwark to the hated

Woodville family, and leaves them at the mercy of their enemies.

[_Hastings._] A third nemesis Action has Hastings for its subject. [=i.=

i. 66; =iii.= ii. 58, &c.] Hastings is the head of the court-faction

which is opposed to the Queen and her allies, and he passes all bounds

of decency in his exultation at the fate which overwhelms his

adversaries:

But I shall laugh at this a twelvemonth hence,

That they who brought me in my master's hate,

I live to look upon their tragedy.

He even forgets his dignity as a nobleman, and stops on his way to the

Tower to chat with a mere officer of the court, [=iii.= ii. 97.] in

order to tell him the news of which he is full, that his enemies are to

die that day at Pomfret. Yet this very journey of Hastings is his

journey to the block; the same cruel fate which had descended upon his

opponents, from the same agent and by the same unscrupulous doom, is

dealt out to Hastings in his turn. [_Buckingham._] In this treacherous

casting off of Hastings when he is no longer useful, Buckingham has been

a prime agent. [=iii.= ii, from 114.] Buckingham amused himself with the

false security of Hastings, adding to Hastings's innocent expression of

his intention to stay dinner at the Tower the aside

And supper too, although thou know'st it not;

while in the details of the judicial murder he plays second to Richard.

By precisely similar treachery he is himself cast off when he hesitates

to go further with Richard's villainous schemes; [=iv.= ii, from 86.]

and in precisely similar manner the treachery is flavoured with

contempt.

_Buck._ I am thus bold to put your grace in mind

Of what you promised me.

_K. Rich._ Well, but what's o'clock?

_Buck._ Upon the stroke of ten.

_K. Rich._ Well, let it strike.

_Buck._ Why let it strike?

_K. Rich._ Because that, like a Jack, thou keep'st the stroke

Betwixt thy begging and my meditation.

I am not in the giving vein to-day.

_Buck._ Why, then resolve me whether you will or no.

_K. Rich._ Tut, tut.

Thou troublest me; I am not in the vein.

[_Exeunt all but Buckingham._

_Buck._ Is it even so? rewards he my true service

With such deep contempt? made I him king for this?

O, let me think on Hastings, and be gone

To Brecknock, while my fearful head is on!

[_The four nemeses formed into a system by nemesis as a link._]

These four Nemesis Actions, it will be observed, are not separate trains

of incident going on side by side, they are linked together into a

system, the law of which is seen to be that those who triumph in one

nemesis become the victims of the next; so that the whole suggests a

'chain of destruction,' like that binding together the orders of the

brute creation which live by preying upon one another. When Clarence

perished it was the King who dealt the doom and the Queen's party who

triumphed: the wheel of Nemesis goes round and the King's death follows

the death of his victim, the Queen's kindred are naked to the vengeance

of their enemies, and Hastings is left to exult. Again the wheel of

Nemesis revolves, and Hastings at the moment of his highest exultation

is hurled to destruction, while Buckingham stands by to point the moral

with a gibe. Once more the wheel goes round, and Buckingham hears

similar gibes addressed to himself and points the same moral in his own

person. Thus the portion of the drama we have so far considered yields

us a pattern within a pattern, a series of Nemesis Actions woven into a

complete underplot by a connecting-link which is also Nemesis.

[_The 'Enveloping Action' a nemesis._]

Following out the same general idea we may proceed to notice how the

dramatic pattern is surrounded by a fringe or border. The picture of

life presented in a play will have the more reality if it be connected

with a life wider than its own. There is no social sphere, however

private, but is to some extent affected by a wider life outside it, this

by one wider still, until the great world is reached the story of which

is History. The immediate interest may be in a single family, but it

will be a great war which, perhaps, takes away some member of this

family to die in battle, or some great commercial crisis which brings

mutation of fortune to the obscure home. The artists of fiction are

solicitous thus to suggest connections between lesser and greater; it is

the natural tendency of the mind to pass from the known to the unknown,

and if the artist can derive the movements in his little world from the

great world outside, he appears to have given his fiction a basis of

admitted truth to rest on. This device of enclosing the incidents of the

actual story in a framework of great events--technically, the

'Enveloping Action'--is one which is common in Shakespeare; it is enough

to instance such a case as _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, in which play a

fairy story has a measure of historic reality given to it by its

connection with the marriage of personages so famous as Theseus and

Hippolyta. In the present case, the main incidents and personages belong

to public life; nevertheless the effect in question is still secured,

and the contest of factions with which the play is occupied is

represented as making up only a few incidents in the great feud of

Lancaster and York. This Enveloping Action of the whole play, the War of

the Roses, is marked with special clearness: two personages are

introduced for the sole purpose of giving it prominence. [=ii.= ii. 80.]

The Duchess of York is by her years and position the representative of

the whole house; the factions who in the play successively triumph and

fall are all descended from herself; she says:

Alas, I am the mother of these moans!

Their woes are parcell'd, mine are general.

[=i.= iii, from 111; and =iv.= iv. 1-125.]

And probabilities are forced to bring in Queen Margaret, the head and

sole rallying-point of the ruined Lancastrians: when the two aged women

are confronted the whole civil war is epitomised. It is hardly necessary

to point out that this Enveloping Action is itself a Nemesis Action. All

the rising and falling, the suffering and retaliation that we actually

see going on between the different sections of the Yorkist house,

constitute a detail in a wider retribution: [esp. =ii.= ii; =iv.= i;

=iv.= iv.] the presence of the Duchess gives to the incidents a unity,

[=ii.= iii; and =iv.= iv.] Queen Margaret's function is to point out

that this unity of woe is only the nemesis falling on the house of York

for their wrongs to the house of Lancaster. Thus the pattern made up of

so many reiterations of nemesis is enclosed in a border which itself

repeats the same figure.

[_The Enveloping Nemesis carried on into indefiniteness._]

The effect is carried further. Generally the Enveloping Action is a sort

of curtain by which our view of a drama is bounded; in the present case

the curtain is at one point lifted, and we get a glimpse into the world

beyond. Queen Margaret has surprised the Yorkist courtiers, and her

prophetic denunciations are still ringing, in which she points to the

calamities her foes have begun to suffer as retribution for the woes of

which her fallen greatness is the representative--[=i.= iii. 174-194.]

when Gloster suddenly turns the tables upon her.

The curse my noble father laid on thee,

When thou didst crown his warlike brows with paper

And with thy scorns drew'st rivers from his eyes,

And then, to dry them, gavest the duke a clout

Steep'd in the faultless blood of pretty Rutland,--

His curses, then from bitterness of soul

Denounced against thee, are all fall'n upon thee;

And God, not we, hath plagu'd thy bloody deed.

And the new key-note struck by Gloster is taken up in chorus by the

rest, who find relief from the crushing effect of Margaret's curses by

pressing the charge home upon her. This is only a detail, but it is

enough to carry the effect of the Enveloping Action a degree further

back in time: the events of the play are nemesis on York for wrongs done

to Lancaster, but now, it seems, these old wrongs against Lancaster were

retribution for yet older crimes Lancaster had committed against York.

As in architecture the vista is contrived so as to carry the general

design of the building into indefiniteness, so here, while the grand

nemesis, of which Margaret's presence is the representative, shuts in

the play like a veil, the momentary lifting of the veil opens up a vista

of nemeses receding further and further back into history.

[_The one attempt to reverse the nemesis confirms it._]

Once more. All that we have seen suggests it as a sort of law to the

feud of York and Lancaster that each is destined to wreak vengeance on

the other, and then itself suffer in turn. [=i.= ii.] But at one notable

point of the play an attempt is made to evade the hereditary nemesis by

the marriage of Richard and Lady Anne. Anne, daughter to Warwick--the

grand deserter to the Lancastrians and martyr to their cause--widow to

the murdered heir of the house and chief mourner to its murdered head,

is surely the greatest sufferer of the Lancastrians at the hands of the

Yorkists. Richard is certainly the chief avenger of York upon Lancaster.

When the chief source of vengeance and the chief sufferer are united in

the closest of all bonds, the attempt to evade Nemesis becomes ideal.

Yet what is the consequence? This attempt of Lady Anne to evade the

hereditary curse proves the very channel by which the curse descends

upon herself. [=iv.= i. 66-87.] We see her once more: she is then on her

way to the Tower, and we hear her tell the strange story of her wooing,

and wish the crown were 'red hot steel to sear her to the brain'; never,

she says, since her union with Richard has she enjoyed the golden dew

of sleep; she is but waiting for the destruction, by which, no doubt,

Richard will shortly rid himself of her.

[_To counteract the effect of repetition the nemeses are specially

emphasised:_]

An objection may, however, here present itself, that continual

repetition of an idea like Nemesis, tends to weaken its artistic effect,

until it comes to be taken for granted. No doubt it is a law of taste

that force may be dissipated by repetition if carried beyond a certain

point. But it is to be noted, on the other hand, what pains Shakespeare

has taken to counteract the tendency in the present instance. The force

of a nemesis may depend upon a fitness that addresses itself to the

spectator's reflection, or it may be measured by the degree to which the

nemesis is brought into prominence in the incidents themselves. [_by

recognition,_] In the incidents of the present play special means are

adopted to make the recognition of the successive nemeses as they arise

emphatic. In the first place the nemesis is in each case pointed out at

the moment of its fulfilment. [=i.= iv, from 18.] In the case of

Clarence his story of crime and retribution is reflected in his dream

before it is brought to a conclusion in reality; and wherein the

bitterness of this review consists, we see when he turns to his

sympathising jailor and says:

[=i.= iv. 66.]

O Brackenbury, I have done those things,

Which now bear evidence against my soul,

For Edward's sake: and see how he requites me!

The words have already been quoted in which the King recognises how

God's justice has overtaken him for his part in Clarence's death, and

those in which the children of Clarence taunt the Queen with her having

herself to bear the bereavement she has made them suffer. As the Queen's

kindred are being led to their death, one of them exclaims:

[=iii.= iii. 15.]

Now Margaret's curse is fall'n upon our heads

For standing by when Richard stabb'd her son.

Hastings, when his doom has wakened him from his infatuation, recollects

a priest he had met on his way to the Tower, with whom he had stopped

to talk about the discomfiture of his enemies:

[=iii.= iv. 89.]

O, now I want the priest that spake to me!

Buckingham on his way to the scaffold apostrophises the souls of his

victims:

[=v.= i. 7.]

If that your moody discontented souls

Do through the clouds behold this present hour,

Even for revenge mock my destruction.

[=iv.= iv. 1, 35.] And such individual notes of recognition are

collected into a sort of chorus when Margaret appears the second time to

point out the fulfilment of her curses, and sits down beside the old

Duchess and her daughter-in-law to join in the 'society of sorrow' and

'cloy her' with beholding the revenge for which she has hungered.

[_by prophecy,_]

Again, the nemeses have a further emphasis given to them by prophecy.

[=i.= iii, from 195.] As Queen Margaret's second appearance is to mark

the fulfilment of a general retribution, so her first appearance

denounced it beforehand in the form of curses. And the effect is carried

on in individual prophecies: the Queen's friends as they suffer foresee

that the turn of the opposite party will come:

[=iii.= iii. 7.]

You live that shall cry woe for this hereafter;

and Hastings prophesies Buckingham's doom:

[=iii.= iv. 109.]

They smile at me that shortly shall be dead.

It is as if the atmosphere cleared for each sufferer with the approach

of death, and they then saw clearly the righteous plan on which the

universe is constructed, and which had been hidden from them by the dust

of life.

[_and especially by irony._]

But there is a third means, more powerful than either recognition or

prophecy, which Shakespeare has employed to make his Nemesis Actions

emphatic. The danger of an effect becoming tame by repetition he has met

by giving to each train of nemesis a flash of irony at some point of its

course. In the case of Lady Anne we have already seen how the exact

channel Nemesis chooses by which to descend upon her is the attempt she

made to avert it. She had bitterly cursed her husband's murderer:

[=iv.= i. 75.]

And be thy wife--if any be so mad--

As miserable by the life of thee

As thou hast made me by my dear lord's death!

In spite of this she had yielded to Richard's mysterious power, and so,

as she feels, proved the _subject of her own heart's curse_. Again, it

was noticed in the preceding study how the Queen, less hard than the

rest in that wicked court, or perhaps softened by the spectacle of her

dying husband, essayed to reverse, when too late, what had been done

against Clarence; [=ii.= i. 134.] Gloster skilfully turned this

compunction of conscience into a ground of suspicion on which he traded

to bring all the Queen's friends to the block, and thus a moment's

relenting was made into a means of destruction. [=i.= iv. 187, 199, 200,

206.] In Clarence's struggle for life, as one after another the threads

of hope snap, as the appeal to law is met by the King's command, the

appeal to heavenly law by the reminder of his own sin, [=i.= iv. 232.]

he comes to rest for his last and surest hope upon his powerful brother

Gloster--and the very murderers catch the irony of the scene:

_Clar._ If you be hired for meed, go back again,

And I will send you to my brother Gloster,

Who shall reward you better for my life

Than Edward will for tidings of my death.

_Sec. Murd._ You are deceived, your brother Gloster hates you.

_Clar._ O, no, he loves me, and he holds me dear:

Go you to him from me.

_Both._ Ay, so we will.

_Clar._ Tell him, when that our princely father York

Bless'd his three sons with his victorious arm,

And charg'd us from his soul to love each other,

He little thought of this divided friendship:

Bid Gloster think of this, and he will weep.

_First Murd._ Ay, millstones; as he lesson'd us to weep.

_Clar._ O, do not slander him, for he is kind.

_First Murd._ Right,

As snow in harvest. Thou deceivest thyself:

'Tis he that sent us hither now to slaughter thee.

_Clar._ It cannot be; for when I parted with him,

He hugg'd me in his arms, and swore, with sobs,

That he would labour my delivery.

_Sec. Murd._ Why, so he doth, now he delivers thee

From this world's thraldom to the joys of heaven.

[=ii.= i. 95.]

In the King's case a special incident is introduced into the scene to

point the irony. Before Edward can well realise the terrible

announcement of Clarence's death, the decorum of the royal chamber is

interrupted by Derby, who bursts in, anxious not to lose the portion of

the king's life that yet remains, in order to beg a pardon for his

follower. The King feels the shock of contrast:

Have I a tongue to doom my brother's death,

And shall the same give pardon to a slave?

The prerogative of mercy that exists in so extreme a case as the murder

of a 'righteous gentleman,' and is so passionately sought by Derby for a

servant, is denied to the King himself for the deliverance of his

innocent brother. [=iii.= ii, from 41.] The nemesis on Hastings is

saturated with irony; he has the simplest reliance on Richard and on

'his servant Catesby,' who has come to him as the agent of Richard's

treachery; and the very words of the scene have a double significance

that all see but Hastings himself.

_Hast._ I tell thee, Catesby,--

_Cate._ What, my lord?

_Hast._ Ere a fortnight make me elder

I'll send some packing that yet think not on it.

_Cate._ 'Tis a vile thing to die, my gracious lord,

When men are unprepared, and look not for it.

_Hast._ O monstrous, monstrous! and so falls it out

With Rivers, Vaughan, Grey: and so 'twill do

With some men else, who think themselves as safe

As thou and I.

As the scenes with Margaret constituted a general summary of the

individual prophecies and recognitions, [=ii.= i.] so the Reconciliation

Scene around the King's dying bed may be said to gather into a sort of

summary the irony distributed through the play; for the effect of the

incident is that the different parties pray for their own destruction.

[=ii.= i. 32.] In this scene Buckingham has taken the lead and struck

the most solemn notes in his pledge of amity; [=v.= i, from 10.] when

Buckingham comes to die, his bitterest thought seems to be that the day

of his death is All Souls' Day.

_This is the day_ that, in King Edward's time,

I wish'd might fall on me, when I was found

False to his children or his wife's allies;

This is the day wherein I wish'd to fall

By the false faith of him I trusted most; ...

That high All-Seer that I dallied with

Hath turn'd my feigned prayer on my head

And given in earnest what I begg'd in jest.

By devices, then, such as these; by the sudden revelation of a remedy

when it is just too late to use it; by the sudden memory of clear

warnings blindly missed; by the spectacle of a leaning for hope upon

that which is known to be ground for despair; by attempts to retreat or

turn aside proving short cuts to destruction; above all by the

sufferer's perception that he himself has had a chief share in bringing

about his doom:--by such irony the monotony of Nemesis is relieved, and

fatality becomes flavoured with mockery.

[_This multiplication of Nemesis a dramatic background for the villainy

of Richard._]

Dramatic design, like design which appeals more directly to the eye, has

its perspective: to miss even by a little the point of view from which

it is to be contemplated is enough to throw the whole into distortion.

So readers who are not careful to watch the harmony between Character

and Plot have often found in the present play nothing but wearisome

repetition. Or, as there is only a step between the sublime and the

ridiculous, this masterpiece of Shakespearean plot has suggested to them

only the idea of Melodrama,--that curious product of dramatic feeling

without dramatic inventiveness, with its world in which poetic justice

has become prosaic, in which conspiracy is never so superhumanly secret

but there comes a still more superhuman detection, and however

successful villainy may be for a moment the spectator confidently relies

on its being eventually disposed of by a summary 'off with his head.'

The point of view thus missed in the present play is that this network

of Nemesis is all needed to give dramatic reality to the colossal

villainy of the principal figure. When isolated, the character of

Richard is unrealisable from its offence against an innate sense of

retribution. Accordingly Shakespeare projects it into a world of which,

in whatever direction we look, retribution is the sole visible pattern;

in which, as we are carried along by the movement of the play, the

unvarying reiteration of Nemesis has the effect of _giving rhythm to

fate_.

[_The motive force of the whole play is another nemesis: the Life and

Death of Richard._]

What the action of the play has yielded so far to our investigation has

been independent of the central personage: we have now to connect

Richard himself with the plot. Although the various Nemesis Actions have

been carried on by their own motion and by the force of retribution as a

principle of moral government, yet there is not one of them which

reaches its goal without at some point of its course receiving an

impetus from contact with Richard. Richard is thus the source of

movement to the whole drama, communicating his own energy through all

parts. It is only fitting that the motive force to this system of

nemeses should be itself a grand Nemesis Action, the _Life and Death_,

or crime and retribution, _of Richard III_. The hero's rise has been

sufficiently treated in the preceding study; it remains to trace his

fall.

[_The fall of Richard: not a shock but a succession of stages._]

This fall of Richard is constructed on Shakespeare's favourite plan; its

force is measured, not by suddenness and violence, but by protraction

and the perception of distinct stages--the crescendo in music as

distinguished from the fortissimo. Such a fall is not a mere passage

through the air--one shock and then all is over--but a slipping down the

face of the precipice, with desperate clingings and consciously

increasing impetus: its effect is the one inexhaustible emotion of

suspense. If we examine the point at which the fall begins we are

reminded that the nemesis on Richard is different in its type from the

others in the play. [_Not a nemesis of equality but of sureness._] These

are (like that on Shylock) of the _equality_ type, of which the motto is

measure for measure: [=iii.= iii. 15.] and, with his usual exactness,

Shakespeare gives us a turning-point in the precise centre of the play,

where, as the Queen's kindred are being borne to their death, we get the

first recognition that the general retribution denounced by Margaret has

begun to work. But the turning-point of Richard's fate is reserved till

long past the centre of the play; his is the nemesis of _sureness_, in

which the blow is delayed that it may accumulate force. Not that this

turning-point is reserved to the very end; [_The turning-point: irony of

its delay._] the change of fortune appears just when Richard has

_committed himself_ to his final crime in the usurpation--the murder of

the children--the crime from which his most unscrupulous accomplice has

drawn back. [=iv.= ii, from 46.] The effect of this arrangement is to

make the numerous crimes which follow appear to come by necessity; he is

'so far in blood that sin will pluck on sin'; he is forced to go on

heaping up his villainies with Nemesis full in his view. This

turning-point appears in the simple announcement that 'Dorset has fled

to Richmond.' There is an instantaneous change in Richard to an attitude

of defence, which is maintained to the end. His first instinct is

action: but as soon as we have heard the rapid scheme of measures--most

of them crimes--by which he prepares to meet his dangers, then he can

give himself up to meditation; [from 98.] and we now begin to catch the

significance of what has been announced. The name of Richmond has been

just heard for the first time in this play. But as Richard meditates we

learn how Henry VI prophesied that Richmond should be a king while he

was but a peevish boy. Again, Richard recollects how lately, while

viewing a castle in the west, the mayor, who showed him over it,

mispronounced its name as 'Richmond'--and he had started, for a bard of

Ireland had told him he should not live long after he had seen Richmond.

Thus the irony that has given point to all the other retributions in the

play is not wanting in the chief retribution of all: Shakespeare

compensates for so long keeping the grand Nemesis out of sight by thus

representing Richard as gradually realising that _the finger of Nemesis

has been pointing at him all his life and he has never seen it_!

[_Tantalising mockery in Richard's fate._]

From this point fate never ceases to tantalise and mock Richard. He

engages in his measures of defence, and with their villainy his spirits

begin to recover:

[=iv.= iii. 38.]

The sons of Edward sleep in Abraham's bosom,

And Anne my wife hath bid the world good night;

young Elizabeth is to be his next victim, and

To her I go, a jolly thriving wooer.

[comp. 49. =iv.= iii. 45.]

Suddenly the Nemesis appears again with the news that Ely, the shrewd

bishop he dreads most of all men, is with Richmond, and that Buckingham

has raised an army. Again, his defence is completing, and the wooing of

Elizabeth--his masterpiece, since it is the second of its kind--has been

brought to an issue that deserves his surprised exultation:

[=iv.= iv. 431.]

Relenting fool, and shallow, changing woman!

Suddenly the Nemesis again interrupts him, and this time is nearer: a

puissant navy has actually appeared on the west. And now his equanimity

begins at last to be disturbed. [_His equanimity affected._] He storms

at Catesby for not starting, forgetting that he has given him no message

to take. [=iv.= iv. 444-540.] More than this, a little further on

_Richard changes his mind_! Through the rest of the long scene destiny

is openly playing with him, giving him just enough hope to keep the

sense of despair warm. Messenger follows messenger in hot haste:

Richmond is on the seas--Courtenay has risen in Devonshire--the

Guildfords are up in Kent.--But Buckingham's army is dispersed--But

Yorkshire has risen.--But, a gleam of hope, the Breton navy is

dispersed--a triumph, Buckingham is taken.--Then, finally, Richmond has

landed! The suspense is telling upon Richard. In this scene he strikes a

messenger before he has time to learn that he brings good tidings. [=v.=

iii. 2, 5, 8, &c.] When we next see him he wears a forced gaiety and

scolds his followers into cheerfulness; but with the gaiety go sudden

fits of depression:

Here will I lie to-night;

But where to-morrow?

[=v.= iii, from 47.]

A little later he becomes nervous, and we have the minute attention to

details of the man who feels that his all depends upon one cast; he will

not sup, but calls for ink and paper to plan the morrow's fight, he

examines carefully as to his beaver and his armour, selects White Surrey

to ride, and at last calls for wine and _confesses_ a change in himself:

I have not that alacrity of spirit,

Nor cheer of mind, that I was wont to have.

[_Climax of Richard's fate: significance of the apparitions._]

Then comes night, and with it the full tide of Nemesis. By the device of

the apparitions the long accumulation of crimes in Richard's rise are

made to have each its due representation in his fall. It matters not

that they are only apparitions. [=v.= iii, from 118.] Nemesis itself is

the ghost of sin: its sting lies not in the physical force of the blow,

but in the close _connection_ between a sin and its retribution. So

Richard's victims rise from the dead only to secure that the weight of

each several crime shall lie heavy on his soul in the morrow's doom.

This point moreover must not be missed--that the climax of his fate

comes to Richard in his _sleep_. [_Significance of Richard's sleep._]

The supreme conception of resistance to Deity is reached when God is

opposed by God's greatest gift, the freedom of the will. God, so it is

reasoned, is omnipotent, but God has made man omnipotent in setting no

bounds to his will; and God's omnipotence to punish may be met by man's

omnipotence to endure. Such is the ancient conception of Prometheus,

and such are the reasonings Milton has imagined for his Satan: to whom,

though heaven be lost,

All is not lost, the unconquerable will ...

And courage never to submit or yield.

But when that strange bundle of greatness and littleness which makes up

man attempts to oppose with such weapons the Almighty, how is he to

provide for those states in which the will is no longer the governing

force in his nature; for the sickness, in which the mind may have to

share the feebleness of the body, or for the daily suspension of will in

sleep? Richard can to the last preserve his will from faltering. But,

like all the rest of mankind, he must some time sleep: that which is the

refuge of the honest man, when he may relax the tension of daily care,

sleep, is to Richard his point of weakness, when the safeguard of

invincible will can protect him no longer. It is, then, this weak moment

which a mocking fate chooses for hurling upon Richard the whole

avalanche of his doom; as he starts into the frenzy of his half-waking

soliloquy we see him, as it were, tearing off layer after layer of

artificial reasonings with which the will-struggles of a lifetime have

covered his soul against the touch of natural remorse. With full waking

his will is as strong as ever: but meanwhile his physical nature has

been shattered to its depths, and it is only the wreck of Richard that

goes to meet his death on Bosworth Field.

[_Remaining stages of the fall._]

There is no need to dwell on the further stages of the fall: to the last

the tantalising mockery continues. [=v.= iii. 303.] Richard's spirits

rise with the ordering of the battle, and there comes the mysterious

scroll to tell him he is bought and sold. [=v.= iii. 342.] His spirits

rise again as the fight commences, and news comes of Stanley's long

feared desertion. [=v.= iv. 11.] Five times in the battle he has slain

his foe, and five times it proves a false Richmond. Thus slowly the cup

is drained to its last dregs and Richard dies. [=i.= i, from 1.] The

play opened with the picture of peace, the peace which led Richard's

turbid soul, no longer finding scope in physical warfare, to turn to

the moral war of villainy; from that point through all the crowded

incidents has raged the tumultuous battle between Will and Nemesis; with

Richard's death it ceases, and the play may return to its keynote:

[=v.= v. 40.]

Now civil wounds are stopp'd, peace lives again.

VI.

HOW NEMESIS AND DESTINY ARE INTERWOVEN IN MACBETH.

_A further Study in Plot._

[_Macbeth as a study of subtlety in Plot._]

THE present study, like the last, is a study in Plot. The last

illustrated Shakespeare's grandeur of conception, how a single principle

is held firm amidst the intricacies of history, and reiterated in every

detail. The present purpose is to give an example of Shakespeare's

_subtlety_, and to exhibit the incidents of a play bound together not by

one, [_Its threefold action._] but by three, distinct threads of

connection--or, if a technical term may be permitted, three Forms of

Dramatic Action--all working harmoniously together into a design equally

involved and symmetrical. One of these forms is Nemesis; the other two

are borrowed from the ancient Drama: it thus becomes necessary to

digress for a moment, in order to notice certain differences between the

ancient and modern Drama, and between the ancient and modern thought of

which the Drama is the expression.

[_In the passage from ancient to modern, Destiny changes into

Providence._]

In the ancient Classical Drama the main moral idea underlying its action

is the idea of Destiny. The ancient world recognised Deity, but their

deities were not supreme in the universe; Zeus had gained his position

by a revolution, and in his turn was to be overthrown by revolution;

there was thus, in ancient conception, behind Deity a yet higher force

to which Deity itself was subject. The supreme force of the universe has

by a school of modern thought been defined as a stream of tendency in

things not ourselves making for righteousness: if we attempt to adapt

this formula to the ideas of antiquity the difficulty will be in finding

anything to substitute for the word 'righteousness.' Sometimes the sum

of forces in the universe did seem, in the conception of the ancients,

to make for righteousness, and Justice became the highest law. At other

times the world seemed to them governed by a supernatural Jealousy, and

human prosperity was struck down for no reason except that it was

prosperity. In such philosophy as that of Lucretius, again, the tendency

of all things was towards Destruction; while in the handling of legends

such as that of Hippolytus there is a suggestion of a dark interest to

ancient thought in conceiving Evil itself as an irresistible force. It

appears, then, that the ancient mind had caught the idea of _force_ in

the universe, without adding to it the further idea of a motive by which

that force was guided: _blind_ fate was the governing power over all

other powers. With this simple conception of force as ruling the world,

modern thought has united as a motive righteousness or law: the

transition from ancient to modern thought may be fairly described by

saying that Destiny has become changed into Providence as the supreme

force of the universe. [_The change reflected in ancient and modern

Nemesis._] The change may be well illustrated by comparing the ancient

and modern conception of Nemesis. To ancient thought Nemesis was simply

one phase of Destiny; the story of Polycrates has been quoted in a

former study to illustrate how Nemesis appeared to the Greek mind as

capricious a deity as Fortune, a force that might at any time, heedless

of desert, check whatever happiness was high enough to attract its

attention. But in modern ideas Nemesis and justice are strictly

associated: Nemesis may be defined as the artistic side of justice.

So far as Nemesis then is concerned, it has, in modern thought, passed

altogether out of the domain of Destiny and been absorbed into the

domain of law: it is thus fitted to be one of the regular forms into

which human history may be represented as falling, in harmony with our

modern moral conceptions. But even as regards Destiny itself, while the

notion as a whole is out of harmony with the modern notion of law and

Providence as ruling forces of the world, yet certain minor phases of

Destiny as conceived by antiquity have survived into modern times and

been found not irreconcilable with moral law. [_Nemesis and Destiny

interwoven in the plot of Macbeth_.] Two of these minor phases of

Destiny are, it will be shown, illustrated in _Macbeth_: and we may thus

take as a general description of its plot, the interweaving of Destiny

with Nemesis.

[_The whole plot a Nemesis Action,_]

That the career of Macbeth is an example of Nemesis needs only to be

stated. As in the case of _Richard III_, we have the rise and fall of a

leading personage; the rise is a crime of which the fall is the

retribution. Nemesis has just been defined as the artistic aspect of

justice; we have in previous studies seen different artistic elements in

different types of Nemesis. Sometimes, as with Richard III, the

retribution becomes artistic through its sureness; its long delay

renders the effect of the blow more striking when it does come. [_of the

type of equality._] More commonly the artistic element in Nemesis

consists in the perfect equality between the sin and its retribution;

and of the latter type the Nemesis in the play of _Macbeth_ is perhaps

the most conspicuous illustration. The rise and fall of Macbeth, to

borrow the illustration of Gervinus, constitute a perfect arch, with a

turning-point in the centre. Macbeth's series of successes is unbroken

till it ends in the murder of Banquo; his series of failures is unbroken

from its commencement in the escape of Fleance. Success thus

constituting the first half and failure the second half of the play, the

transition from the one to the other is the expedition against Banquo

and Fleance, in which success and failure are mingled: [=iii.= iii.] and

this expedition, the keystone to the arch, is found to occupy the exact

middle of the middle Act.

But this is not all: not only the play as a whole is an example of

nemesis, but if its two halves be taken separately they will be found to

constitute each a nemesis complete in itself. [_The rise of Macbeth a

separate Nemesis action._] To begin with the first half, that which is

occupied with the rise of Macbeth. If the plan of the play extended no

further than to make the hero's fall the retribution upon his rise, it

might be expected that the turning-point of the action would be reached

upon Macbeth's elevation to the throne. As a fact, however, Macbeth's

rise does not stop here; he still goes on to win one more success in his

attempt upon the life of Banquo. What the purpose of this prolonged flow

of fortune is will be seen when it is considered that this final success

of the hero is in reality the source of his ruin. In Macbeth's progress

to the attainment of the crown, while of course it was impossible that

crimes so violent as his should not incur suspicion, yet circumstances

had strangely combined to soothe these suspicions to sleep. But--so

Shakespeare manipulates the story--when Macbeth, seated on the throne,

goes on to the attempt against Banquo, this additional crime not only

brings its own punishment, but has the further effect of unmasking the

crimes that have gone before. This important point in the plot is

brought out to us in a scene, specially introduced for the purpose, in

which Lennox and another lord represent the opinion of the court.

[=iii.= vi. i.]

_Lennox._ My former speeches have but hit your thoughts,

Which can interpret further: only, I say,

Things have been strangely borne. The gracious Duncan

Was pitied of Macbeth: marry, he was dead:

And the right-valiant Banquo walk'd too late;

Whom, you may say, if't please you, Fleance kill'd,

For Fleance fled: men must not walk too late.

Who cannot want the thought how monstrous

It was for Malcolm and for Donalbain

To kill their gracious father? damned fact!

How it did grieve Macbeth! did he not straight

In pious rage the two delinquents tear,

That were the slaves of drink and thralls of sleep?

Was not that nobly done? Ay, and wisely too;

For 'twould have anger'd any heart alive

To hear the men deny't. So that, I say,

He has borne all things well: and I do think

That had he Duncan's sons under his key--

As, an't please heaven, he shall not--they should find

What 'twere to kill a father; so should Fleance.

Under the bitter irony of this speech we can see clearly enough that

Macbeth has been exposed by his _series_ of suspicious acts; he has

'done all things well;' and in particular by peculiar resemblances

between this last incident of Banquo and Fleance and the previous

incident of Duncan and his son. It appears then that Macbeth's last

successful crime proves the means by which retribution overtakes all his

other crimes; the latter half of the play is needed to develop the steps

of the retribution, but, in substance, Macbeth's fall is latent in the

final step of his rise. Thus the first half of the play, that which

traces the rise of Macbeth, is a complete Nemesis Action--a career of

sins in which the last sin secures the punishment of all.

[_The fall of Macbeth a separate Nemesis Action._]

The same reasoning applies to the latter half of the play: the fall of

Macbeth not only serves as the retribution for his rise, but further

contains in itself a crime and its nemesis complete. What Banquo is to

the first half of the play Macduff is to the latter half; the two

balance one another as, in the play of _Julius Cæsar_, Cæsar himself is

balanced by Antony; and Macduff comes into prominence upon Banquo's

death as Antony upon the fall of Cæsar. Now Macduff, when he finally

slays Macbeth, is avenging not only Scotland, but also his own wrongs;

and the tyrant's crime against Macduff, with its retribution, just gives

unity to the second half of the play, in the way in which the first half

was made complete by the association between Macbeth and Banquo, [=iii.=

i. 57-72.] from their joint encounter with the Witches on to the murder

of Banquo as a consequence of the Witches' prediction. Accordingly we

find that no sooner has Macbeth, by the appearance of the Ghost at the

banquet, realised the turn of fate, than his first thoughts are of

Macduff:

[=iii.= iv. 128.]

_Macbeth._ How say'st thou, that Macduff denies his person

At our great bidding?

_Lady M._ Did you send to him, sir?

_Macbeth._ I hear it by the way; but I will send.

When the Apparitions bid Macbeth 'beware Macduff,' he answers,

[=iv.= i. 74.]

Thou hast harp'd my fear aright!

[=iv.= i, from 139.] On the vanishing of the Apparition Scene, the first

thing that happens is the arrival of news that Macduff has fled to

England, and is out of his enemy's power; then Macbeth's bloody thoughts

devise a still more cruel purpose of vengeance to be taken on the

fugitive's family.

Time, thou anticipatest my dread exploits:

The flighty purpose never is o'ertook

Unless the deed go with it....

The castle of Macduff I will surprise;

Seize upon Fife; give to the edge o' the sword

His wife, his babes, and all unfortunate souls

That trace him in his line.

[=iv.= ii, iii.] In succeeding scenes we have this diabolical massacre

carried out, and see the effect which the news of it has in rousing

Macduff to his revenge; [=v.= vii. 15.] until in the final scene of all

he feels that if Macbeth is slain and by no stroke of his, his wife and

children's ghosts will for ever haunt him. Thus Macduff's function in

the play is to be the agent not only of the grand nemesis which

constitutes the whole plot, but also of a nemesis upon a private wrong

which occupies the latter half of the play. And, putting our results

together, we find that a Nemesis Action is the description alike of the

whole plot and of the rise and fall which are its two halves.

[_The Oracular as one phase of Destiny: its partial revelation._]

With Nemesis is associated in the play of _Macbeth_ Destiny in two

distinct phases. The first of these is _the Oracular_. In ancient

thought, as Destiny was the supreme governor of the universe, so oracles

were the revelation of Destiny; and thus the term 'the Oracles of God'

is appropriately applied to the Bible as the Christian revelation. With

the advent of Christianity the oracles became dumb. But the triumph of

Christianity was for centuries incomplete; heathen deities were not

extirpated, but subordinated to the supernatural personages of the new

religion; [_A minor form of the Oracular in modern oracular beings._]

and the old oracles declined into oracular beings such as witches and

wizards, and oracular superstitions, such as magic mirrors, dreams,

apparitions--all means of dimly revealing hidden destiny. Shakespeare is

never wiser than the age he is pourtraying; and accordingly he has

freely introduced witches and apparitions into the machinery of

_Macbeth_, though in the principles that govern the action of this, as

of all his other plays, he is true to the modern notions of Providence

and moral law. [_The Oracular Action: Destiny working from mystery to

clearness;_] An oracle and its fulfilment make up a series of events

eminently fitted to constitute a dramatic interest; and no form of

ancient Drama and Story is more common than this of the 'Oracular

Action.' Its interest may be formulated as Destiny working from mystery

to clearness. At the commencement of an oracular story the fated future

is revealed indeed, but in a dress of mystery, as when the Athenians are

bidden to defend themselves with only wooden walls; but as the story of

Themistocles develops itself, the drift of events is throwing more and

more light on to the hidden meaning of the oracle, until by the naval

victory over the Persians the oracle is at once clear and fulfilled.

The Oracular Action is so important an element in plot, that it may be

worth while to prolong the consideration of it by noting the three

principal varieties into which it falls, all of which are illustrated in

the play of _Macbeth_. In each case the interest consists in tracing the

working of Destiny out of mystery into clearness: the distinction

between the varieties depends upon the agency by which Destiny works,

and the relation of this agency to the original oracle. [(1) _by the

agency of blind obedience;_] In the first variety Destiny is fulfilled

by the agency of blind obedience. The Spartans, unfortunate in their

war with the Messenians, enquire of an oracle, and receive the strange

response that they must apply for a general to the Athenians, their

hereditary enemies. But they resolve to obey the voice of Destiny,

though to all appearance they obey at their peril; and the Athenians

mock them by selecting the most unfit subject they can find--a man whose

bodily infirmities had excluded him from the military exercises

altogether. Yet in the end the faith of the Spartans is rewarded. It had

been no lack of generalship that had caused their former defeats, but

discord and faction in their ranks; now Tyrtæus turned out to be a lyric

poet, whose songs roused the spirit of the Spartans and united them as

one man, and when united, their native military talent led them to

victory. Thus in its fulfilment the hidden meaning of the oracle breaks

out into clearness: and blind obedience to the oracle is the agency by

which it has been fulfilled.

[(2) _by the agency of free will;_]

In the second variety the oracle is fulfilled by the agency of

indifference and free will: it is neither obeyed nor disobeyed, but

ignored. One of the best illustrations is to be found in the plot of Sir

Walter Scott's novel, _The Betrothed_. Its heroine, more rational than

her age, resists the family tradition that would condemn her to sleep in

the haunted chamber; overborne, however, by age and authority, she

consents, and the lady of the bloody finger appears to pronounce her

doom:

Widow'd wife, and wedded maid;

Betrothed, Betrayer, and Betrayed.

This seems a mysterious destiny for a simple and virtuous girl. The

faithful attendant Rose declares in a burst of devotion that betrayed

her mistress may be, but betrayer never; the heroine herself braces her

will to dismiss the foreboding from her thoughts, and resolves that she

will not be influenced by it on the one side or on the other. Yet it all

comes about. Gratitude compels her to give her hand to the elderly

Constable, who on the very day of betrothal is summoned away to the

Crusade, from which, as it appears, he is never to return, leaving his

spouse at once a widowed wife and a wedded maid. In the troubles of that

long absence, by a perfectly natural series of events, gratitude again

leads the heroine to admit to her castle her real deliverer and lover in

order to save his life, and in protecting him amidst strange

circumstances of suspicion to bid defiance to all comers. Finally the

castle is besieged by the royal armies, and the heroine has to hear

herself proclaimed a traitor by the herald of England; from this

perplexity a deliverance is found only when her best friend saves her by

betraying the castle to the king. So every detail in the unnatural doom

has been in the most natural manner fulfilled: and the woman by whose

action it has been fulfilled has been all the while maintaining the

freedom of her will and persistently ignoring the oracle.

[(3) _by the agency of opposing will._]

But the supreme interest of the Oracular Action is reached when the

oracle is fulfilled by an agency that has all the while set itself to

oppose and frustrate it. A simple illustration of this is seen in the

Eastern potentate who, in opposition to a prophecy that his son should

be killed by a lion, forbad the son to hunt, but heaped upon him every

other indulgence. In particular he built him a pleasure-house, hung with

pictures of hunting and of wild beasts, on which all that art could do

was lavished to compensate for the loss of the forbidden sport. One day

the son, chafing at his absence from the manly exercise in which his

comrades were at that moment engaged, wandered through his

pleasure-house, until, stopping at a magnificent picture of a lion at

bay, he began to apostrophise it as the source of his disgrace, and

waxing still more angry, drove his fist through the picture. A nail,

hidden behind the canvas entered his hand; the wound festered, and he

died. So the measures taken to frustrate the destiny proved the means of

fulfilling it. But in this third variety of the Oracular Action the

classical illustration is the story of Oedipus: told fully, it presents

three examples woven together. Laius of Thebes learns from an oracle

that the son about to be born to him is destined to be his murderer;

accordingly he refuses to rear the child, and it is cast out to perish.

A herdsman, Polybus, takes pity on the infant, carries it away to

Corinth, and brings it up in secret. In due time this Oedipus becomes

weary of the humble life of his supposed father; quitting Corinth, he

seeks advice of the oracle as to his future career, and receives the

startling response that he is destined to slay his own father. Resolved

to frustrate so terrible a fate, he will not return to Corinth, but, as

it happens, _takes the road to Thebes_, where he falls in accidentally

with Laius, and, in ignorance of his person, quarrels with him and slays

him. Now if Laius had not resisted the oracle by casting out the infant,

it would have grown up like other sons, and every probability would have

been against his committing so terrible a crime as parricide. Again, if

Polybus had not by his removal to Corinth sought to keep the child in

ignorance of his fate, he would have known the person of Laius and

spared him. Once more, if Oedipus had not, in opposition to the oracle,

avoided his supposed home, Corinth, he would never have gone to Thebes

and fallen in with his real father. Three different persons acting

separately seek to frustrate a declared destiny, and their action unites

in fulfilling it.

The plot of _Macbeth_, both as a whole and in its separate parts, is

constructed upon this form of the Oracular Action, in combination with

the form of Nemesis. The play deals with the rise and fall of Macbeth:

the rise, and the fall, and again the two taken together, present each

of them an example of an Oracular Action. [_The rise of Macbeth an

Oracular Action,_] Firstly, the former half of the play, the rise of

Macbeth, taken by itself, consists in an oracle and its fulfilment--the

Witches' promise of the crown and the gradual steps by which the crown

is attained. Amongst the three varieties of the Oracular Action we have

just distinguished, the present example wavers between the first and the

second. [_varying between the second and first type._] After his first

excitement has passed away, Macbeth resolves that he will have nothing

to do with the temptation that lurked in the Witches' words; in his

disjointed meditation we hear him saying:

[=i.= iii. 143.]

If chance will have me king, why chance may crown me

Without my stir;

and again:

[=i.= iii. 146.]

Come what come may,

Time and the hour runs through the roughest day;

in which last speech the very rhyming may, according to Shakespeare's

subtle usage, be pointed to as marking a mind made up. So far then we

appear to be following an Oracular Action of the second type, that of

indifference and ignoring. But in the very next scene the proclamation

of a Prince of Cumberland--that is, of an heir-apparent like our Prince

of Wales--takes away Macbeth's 'chance':

[=i.= iv. 48.]

_Macb._ [_Aside_]. The prince of Cumberland! that is a step

On which I must fall down, or else o'erleap,

For in my way it lies.

He instantly commits himself to the evil suggestion, and thus changes

the type of action to the first variety, that in which the oracle is

fulfilled by the agency of obedience.

[_The fall an Oracular Action of the first type._]

Similarly Macbeth's fall, taken by itself, constitutes an Oracular

Action, consisting as it does of the ironical promises by the

Apparitions which the Witches raise for Macbeth on his visit to them,

and the course of events by which these promises are fulfilled. Its type

is a highly interesting example of the first variety, that of blind

obedience. [=iv.= i. 71-100.] The responses of the Apparitions lay down

impossible conditions, and as long as these conditions are unfulfilled

Macbeth is to be secure; he will fall only when one not born of woman

shall be his adversary, only when Birnam Wood shall come to Dunsinane.

Macbeth trusts blindly to these promises; further he obeys them, so far

as a man can be said to obey an oracle which enjoins no command: he

obeys in the sense of relying on them, and making that reliance his

ground of action. But this reliance of Macbeth on the ironical promises

is an agency in fulfilling them in their real meaning. [=iv.= i.

144-156.] In his reckless confidence he strikes out right and left, and

amongst others injures one to whom the description 'not born of woman'

applies. In his reliance on the Apparitions he proceeds, when threatened

by the English, to _shut himself up in Dunsinane Castle_; but for this

fact the English army would not have approached Dunsinane Castle by the

route of Birnam Wood, and the incident of the boughs would never have

taken place. Thus Macbeth's fate was made to depend uponi mpossibilities:

by his action in reliance on these impossibilities he is all the while

giving them occasion to become possible. In this way an ironical oracle

comes to be fulfilled by the agency of blind obedience.

[_The whole plot an Oracular Action of the third type._]

Thirdly, the rise and fall of Macbeth are so linked together as to

constitute the whole plot another example of the Oracular Action. [=i.=

iii. 48-50, 62-66.] The original oracle given by the Witches on the

blasted heath was a double oracle: besides the promise of the thaneships

and the crown there was another revelation of destiny, that Banquo was

to be lesser than Macbeth and yet greater, that he was to get kings

though to be none. In this latter half of the oracle is found the link

which binds together the rise and fall of Macbeth. When the first half

of the Witches' promise has been fulfilled in his elevation to the

throne, Macbeth sets himself to prevent the fulfilment of the second

half by his attempt upon Banquo and Fleance. Now we have already seen

how this attempt has the effect of drawing attention, not only to

itself, but also to Macbeth's other crimes, and proves indeed the

foundation of his ruin. Had Macbeth been content with the attainment of

the crown, all might yet have been well: the addition of just one more

precaution renders all the rest vain. It appears, then, that that which

binds together the rise and the fall, that which makes the fall the

retribution upon the rise, is the expedition against the Banquo family;

and the object of this crime is to frustrate the second part of the

Witches' oracle. So the original oracle becomes the motive force to the

whole play, setting in motion alike the rise and fall of the action. The

figure of the whole plot we have taken as a regular arch; its movement

might be compared to that terrible incident of mining life known as

'overwinding,' in which the steam engine pulls the heavy cage from the

bottom to the top of the shaft, but, instead of stopping then, winds on

till the cage is carried over the pulley and dashed down again to the

bottom. So the force of the Witches' prediction is not exhausted when it

has tempted Macbeth on to the throne, but carries him on to resist its

further clauses, and in resisting to bring about the fall by which they

are fulfilled. Not only then are the rise and the fall of Macbeth taken

separately oracular, but the whole plot, compounded of the two taken

together, constitutes another Oracular Action; and the last is of that

type in which Destiny is fulfilled by the agency of a will that has been

opposing it.

[_Irony a phase of malignant Destiny._]

A second phase of Destiny enters into the plot of _Macbeth_: this is

Irony. Etymologically the word means no more than _saying_. Pressing the

idea of saying as distinguished from meaning we get at the ordinary

signification, ambiguous speech; from which the word widens in its usage

to include double-dealing in general, such as the 'irony of Socrates,'

his habit of assuming the part of a simple enquirer in order to entangle

the pretentious sophists in their own wisdom. The particular extension

of meaning with which we are immediately concerned is that by which

irony comes to be applied to a double-dealing in Destiny itself; the

link between this and the original sense being no doubt the ambiguous

wording of oracular responses which has become proverbial. In ancient

conception Destiny wavered between justice and malignity; a leading

phase of malignant destiny was this Irony or double-dealing; Irony was

the laughter or mockery of Fate. It is illustrated in the angry measures

of Oedipus for penetrating the mystery that surrounds the murder of

Laius in order to punish the crime, impunity for which has brought the

plague upon his city: when at last it is made clear that Oedipus himself

has been unknowingly the culprit, there arises an irresistible sensation

that Destiny has been all the while playing with the king, and using his

zeal as a means for working his destruction. In modern thought the

supreme force of the universe cannot possibly be represented as

malignant. [_A modified Irony: Justice in a mocking humour._] But

mockery, though it may not be enthroned in opposition to justice, may

yet, without violating modern ideas, be made to appear in the _mode of

operation_ by which justice is brought about; here mockery is no longer

malignant, but simply an index of overpowering force, just as we smile

at the helpless stubbornness of a little child, whereas a man's

opposition makes us angry. For such a reconciliation of mockery with

righteousness we have authority in the imagery of Scripture.

Why do the heathen rage?

And the people imagine a vain thing?

The kings of the earth set themselves

And the rulers take counsel together

Against the Lord

And against His Anointed:

Saying, Let us break their bonds,

And cast away their cords from us.

He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh:

The Lord shall have them in derision.

Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath;

And vex them in his sore displeasure.

There could not be a more perfect type of Irony, in that form of it

which harmonises with justice, than this picture in three touches, of

the busy security of the wicked, of justice pausing to mock their idle

efforts, and then with a burst of wrath and displeasure annihilating

their projects at a stroke.

In modern thought, then, Irony is Justice in a mocking humour. The

mockery that suddenly becomes apparent in the mysterious operations of

Providence, and is a measure of their overpowering force, is clearly

capable of giving a highly dramatic interest to a train of events, and

so is fitted to be a form of dramatic action. [_Irony in the plot of

Macbeth: obstacles converted into stepping-stones._] The operation of

Destiny as exhibited in the plot of _Macbeth_ is throughout tinctured

with irony: the element of mockery appearing always in this, that

apparent checks to Destiny turn out the very means Destiny chooses by

which to fulfil itself. Irony of this kind is regularly attached to what

I have called the third variety of the Oracular Action, that in which

the oracle is fulfilled by the agency of attempts to oppose it; but in

the play under consideration the destiny, whether manifesting itself in

that type of the Oracular Action or not, is never dissociated from the

attitude of mockery to resistance which converts obstacles into

stepping-stones. It remains to show how the rise of Macbeth, the fall of

Macbeth, and again the rise and the fall taken together, are all of them

Irony Actions.

[_The rise of Macbeth an Irony Action._]

The basis of Macbeth's rise is the Witches' promise of the crown.

Scarcely has it been given when an obstacle starts up to its fulfilment

in the proclamation of Malcolm as heir-apparent. I have already pointed

out that it is this very proclamation which puts an end to Macbeth's

wavering, and leads him to undertake the treasonable enterprise which

only in the previous scene he had resolved he would have nothing to do

with. Later in the history a second obstacle appears: [=ii.= iii. 141.]

the king is slain, but his two sons, this heir-apparent and his brother,

escape from Macbeth's clutches and place two lives between him and the

fulfilment of his destiny. But, as events turn out, it is this very

flight of the princes that, by diverting suspicion to them for a moment,

causes Macbeth to be named as Duncan's successor. A conversation in the

play itself is devoted to making this point clear.

[=ii.= iv. 22.]

_Ross._ Is't known who did this more than bloody deed?

_Macduff._ Those that Macbeth hath slain.

_Ross._ Alas, the day!

What good could they pretend?

_Macduff._ They were suborn'd:

Malcolm and Donalbain, the king's two sons,

Are stol'n away and fled; which puts upon them

Suspicion of the deed.

_Ross._ 'Gainst nature still!

Thriftless ambition, that will ravin up

Thine own life's means! Then 'tis most like

The sovereignty will fall upon Macbeth.

_Macduff._ He is already named, and gone to Scone

To be invested.

[_The fall an Irony Action._]

Twice, then, in the course of the rise Destiny allows obstacles to

appear only for the sake of using them as an unexpected means of

fulfilment. The same mockery marks the fall of the action. The security

against a fall promised by the Apparitions to Macbeth had just one

drawback--'beware Macduff'; [=iv.= i. 71.] and [=iv.= ii, &c.] we have

already had occasion to notice Macbeth's attempt to secure himself

against this drawback in the completest manner by extirpating the

dangerous thane and his family to the last scion of his stock, and also

how this cruel purpose succeeded against all but Macduff himself. Now it

is to be noted that this attempt against the fulfilment of the destined

retribution proves the very source of the fulfilment, without which it

would never have come about. For at one point of the story Macduff, the

only man who, according to the decrees of Fate, can harm Macbeth,

resolves to abandon his vengeance against him. In his over-cautious

policy Macduff was unwilling to move without the concurrence of Malcolm

the rightful heir. [=iv.= iii.] In one of the most singular scenes in

all Shakespeare Macduff is represented as urging Malcolm to assert his

rights, while Malcolm (in reality driven by the general panic to

suspect even Macduff) discourages his attempts, and affects to be a

monster of iniquity, surpassing the tyrant of Scotland himself. [=iv.=

iii, from 100.] At last he succeeds in convincing Macduff of his

villainies, and in a burst of despair the fate-appointed avenger

renounces vengeance.

_Macduff._ Fit to govern?

No, not to live.... Fare thee well!

These evils thou repeat'st upon thyself

Have banish'd me from Scotland. O my breast

Thy hope ends here!

Malcolm, it is true, then drops the pretence of villainy, but he does

not succeed in reassuring his companion.

[=iv.= iii. 138.]

_Macduff._ Such welcome and unwelcome things at once

'Tis hard to reconcile.

At this moment enters Ross with the news of Macbeth's expedition against

Fife, and tells how all Macduff's household, 'wife, children, servants,

all,' have been cut off 'at one swoop': before the agony of a

bereavement like this hesitation flies away for ever.

[=iv.= iii. 231.]

Gentle heavens,

Cut short all intermission; front to front

Bring thou this fiend of Scotland and myself;

Within my sword's length set him: if he 'scape,

Heaven forgive him too!

The action taken by Macbeth with a view to prevent Macduff's being the

instrument of retribution, is brought by a mocking Fate to impel Macduff

to his task at the precise moment he had resolved to abandon it.

[_The plot as a whole an Irony Action._]

Finally, if the rise and the fall be contemplated together as

constituting one action, this also will be found animated by the same

spirit of irony. The original promise of the Witches, as well as the

later promise of the Apparition, [=i.= iii. 62-66.] had its drawback in

the destiny that Banquo was to be lesser than Macbeth and yet greater,

to get kings though to be none; and to secure against this drawback is

Macbeth's purpose in his plot against Banquo and Fleance, by which the

rival family would be extirpated. The plot only _half succeeds_, and by

its half-success contributes to the exactness with which the destiny is

fulfilled. Had Macbeth's attempt fully succeeded, Banquo would neither

have got kings nor been one; had no such attempt at all been made, then,

for anything we see to the contrary in the play, Banquo would have

preceded his sons on the throne, and so again the oracle would not have

been fulfilled which made Banquo lesser than Macbeth. But by the mixture

of success and failure in Macbeth's plot Banquo is slain before he can

attain the crown, and Fleance lives to give a royal house to Scotland.

Once more, then, mockery appears a characteristic of the Destiny that

finds in human resistance just the one peculiar device needed for

effecting the peculiar distribution of fortune it has promised.

[_Summary._]

Such is the subtlety with which Shakespeare has constructed this plot of

_Macbeth_, and interwoven in it Nemesis and Destiny. To outward

appearance it is connected with the rise and fall of a sinner: the

analysis that searches for inner principles of construction traces

through its incidents three forms of action working harmoniously

together, by which the rise and fall of Macbeth are so linked as to

exhibit at once a crime with its Nemesis, an Oracle with its fulfilment,

and the Irony which works by the agency of that which resists it. Again

the separate halves of the play, the rise and the fall of the hero, are

found to present each the same triple pattern as the whole. Once more,

with the career of Macbeth are associated the careers of Banquo and

Macduff, and these also reflect the threefold spirit. Macbeth's rise

involves Banquo's fall: this fall is the subject of oracular prediction,

it is the starting-point of nemesis on Macbeth, and it has an element of

irony in the fact that Banquo _all but_ escaped. With Macbeth's fall is

bound up Macduff's rise: this also had been predicted in oracles, it is

an agency in the main nemesis, and Macduff's fate has the irony that he

_all but_ perished at the outset of his mission. Through all the

separate interests of this elaborate plot, the three forms of

action--Nemesis, the Oracular, Irony--are seen perfectly harmonised and

perfectly complete. And over all this is thrown the supernatural

interest of the Witches, who are agents of nemesis working by the means

of ironical oracles.

VII.

MACBETH, LORD AND LADY.

_A Study in Character-Contrast._

CONTRASTS of character form one of the simplest elements of dramatic

interest. Such contrasts are often obvious; at other times they take

definitiveness only when looked at from a particular point of view. The

contrast of character which it is the object of the present study to

sketch rests upon a certain distinction which is one of the fundamental

ideas in the analysis of human nature--[_The antithesis of the outer and

inner life._] the distinction between the outer life of action and the

inner life of our own experience. The recognition of the two is as old

as the _Book of Proverbs_, which contrasts the man that ruleth his

spirit with the man that taketh a city. The heathen oracle, again,

opened out to an age which seemed to have exhausted knowledge a new

world for investigation in the simple command, Know thyself. The Stoics,

who so despised the busy vanity of state cares, yet delighted to call

their ideal man a king; and their particular tenet is universalised by

Milton when he says:

Therein stands the office of a king,

His honour, virtue, merit, and chief praise,

That for the public all this weight he bears:

Yet he who reigns within himself, and rules

Passions, desires, and fears, is more a king.

And the modern humourist finds the idea indispensable for his pourtrayal

of character and experience. 'Sir,' says one of Thackeray's personages,

'a distinct universe walks about under your hat and under mine ... You

and I are but a pair of infinite isolations with some fellow-islands

more or less near to us.' And elsewhere the same writer says that 'each

creature born has a little kingdom of thought of his own, which it is a

sin in us to invade.'

This antithesis of the practical and inner life is so accepted a

commonplace of the pulpit and of the essayist on morals and culture that

it may seem tedious to expound it. But for the very reason that it

belongs to all these spheres, and that these spheres overlap, the two

sides of the antithesis are not kept clearly distinct, nor are the terms

uniformly used in the same sense. For the present purpose the exact

distinction is between the outer world, the world of practical action,

the sphere of making and doing, in which we mingle with our fellow men,

join in their enterprises, and influence them to our ideas, in which we

investigate nature and society, or seek to build up a fabric of power:

and, on the other hand, the inner intellectual life, in which our powers

as by a mirror are turned inwards upon ourselves, finding a field for

enterprise in self-discipline and the contest with inherited notions and

passions, exploring the depths of our consciousness and our mysterious

relations with the unseen, until the thinker becomes familiar with

strange situations of the mind and at ease in the presence of its

problems. The antithesis is thus not at all the same as that between

worldly and religious, for the inner life may be cultivated for evil:

self-anatomy, as Shelley says,

Shall teach the will

Dangerous secrets: for it tempts our powers.

Knowing what must be thought and may be done,

Into the depth of darkest purposes.

Still less is it the antithesis between intellectual and commonplace;

the highest intellectual powers find employment in practical life. The

various mental and moral qualities belong to both spheres, but have a

different meaning for each. Practical experience is a totally different

thing from what the religious thinker means by his 'experience.' The

discipline given by the world often consists in the dulling of those

powers which self-discipline seeks to develope. Knowledge of affairs,

with its rapid and instinctive grasp, is often possessed in the highest

degree by the man who is least of all men versed in the other knowledge,

which could explain and analyse the processes by which it operated. And

every observer is struck by the different forms which courage takes in

the two spheres, courage in action, and courage where nothing can be

done and men have only to endure and wait. Macaulay in a well-known

passage contrasts the active and passive courage as one of the

distinctions between the West and the East.

An European warrior, who rushes on a battery of cannon with a loud

hurrah, will sometimes shriek under the surgeon's knife, and fall

into an agony of despair at the sentence of death. But the Bengalee,

who would see his country overrun, his house laid in ashes, his

children murdered or dishonoured, without having the spirit to

strike one blow, has yet been known to endure torture with the

firmness of Mucius, and to mount the scaffold with the steady step

and even pulse of Algernon Sidney.

The two lives are complete, each with its own field, its own qualities,

culture, and fruit.

[_The antithesis an element in Character-Interpretation._]

It is obvious that relation to these two lives will have a very great

effect in determining individual character. In the same man the two

sides of experience may be most unequally developed; an intellectual

giant is often a child in the affairs of the world, and a moral hero may

be found in the person of some bedridden cripple. On the other hand, to

some the inner life is hardly known: familiar perhaps with every other

branch of knowledge they go down to their graves strangers to

themselves.

All things without, which round about we see,

We seek to know and how therewith to do;

But that whereby we reason, live, and be

Within ourselves, we strangers are thereto.

We seek to know the moving of each sphere,

And the strange cause of the ebbs and flows of Nile:

But of that clock within our breasts we bear,

The subtle motions we forget the while.

We, that acquaint ourselves with every zone,

And pass both tropics, and behold each pole,

When we come home, are to ourselves unknown,

And unacquainted still with our own soul.

The antithesis then between the outer and inner life will be among the

ideas which lie at the root of Character-Interpretation.

[_In a simple age it coincides with the distinction of the sexes._]

When the idea is applied to an age like that of Macbeth, the antithesis

between the two lives almost coincides with the distinction of the

sexes: amid the simple conditions of life belonging to such an age the

natural tendency would be for genius in men to find scope in the outer

and practical world, while genius in women would be restricted to the

inner life. And this is the idea I am endeavouring to work out in the

present study:--[_The antithesis the key to the characters of Macbeth

and Lady Macbeth._] that the key to Shakespeare's portraiture of Macbeth

and Lady Macbeth will be found in regarding the two as illustrations of

the outer and inner life. Both possess force in the highest degree, but

the two have been moulded by the exercise of this force in different

spheres; their characters are in the play brought into sharp contrast by

their common enterprise, and the contrast of practical and intellectual

mind is seen maintained through the successive stages of their descent

to ruin.

[_Macbeth as the practical man._]

Thus Macbeth is essentially the practical man, the man of action, of the

highest experience, power, and energy in military and political command,

accustomed to the closest connection between willing and doing. He is

one who in another age would have worked out the problem of free trade,

or unified Germany, or engineered the Suez Canal. On the other hand, he

has concerned himself little with things transcendental; he is poorly

disciplined in thought and goodness; prepared for any emergency in which

there is anything to be _done_, yet a mental crisis or a moral problem

afflicts him with the shock of an unfamiliar situation. This is by no

means a generally accepted view: amongst a large number of readers the

traditional conception of Macbeth lingers as a noble disposition dragged

down by his connection with the coarser nature of his wife. [_His

nobility conventional._] According to the view here suggested the

nobility of Macbeth is of the flimsiest and most tawdry kind. The lofty

tone he is found at times assuming means no more than virtuous education

and surroundings. When the purely practical nature is examined in

reference to the qualities which belong to the intellectual life, the

result is not a blank but ordinariness: the practical nature will

reflect current thought and goodness as they appear from the outside. So

Macbeth's is the morality of inherited notions, retained just because he

has no disposition to examine them; he has all the practical man's

distrust of wandering from the beaten track of opinion, which gives the

working politician his prejudice against doctrinaires, and has raised up

stout defenders of the Church amongst men whose lives were little

influenced by her teaching. And the traditionary morality is more than

merely retained. When the seed fell into stony ground forthwith it

sprang up _because_ it had no deepness of earth: the very shallowness of

a man's character may lend emphasis to his high professions, just as, on

the other hand, earnestness in its first stage often takes the form of

hesitation. So Macbeth's practical genius takes in strongly what it

takes in at all, and gives it out vigorously. But that the nobility has

gone beyond the stage of passive recognition, that it has become

absorbed into his inner nature, there is not a trace; on the contrary,

it is impossible to follow Macbeth's history far without abundant

evidence that real love of goodness for its own sake, founded on

intelligent choice or deep affection, has failed to root a single fibre

in his nature.

First, we have the opportunity of studying Macbeth's character in the

analysis given of it in the play itself by the one person who not only

saw Macbeth in his public life, but knew also the side of him hidden

from the world.

[_Lady Macbeth's analysis of her husband's character._]

[=i.= v. 16-31.]

_Lady Macbeth._ I fear thy nature;

It is too full o' the milk of human kindness

To catch the nearest way.

I believe that this phrase, the 'milk of human kindness,' divorced from

its context and become the most familiar of all commonplaces, has done

more than anything else towards giving a false twist to the general

conception of Macbeth's character. The words _kind, kindness_ are

amongst the most difficult words in Shakespeare. The wide original

signification of the root, _natural, nature_, still retained in the noun

_kind_, has been lost in the adjective, which has been narrowed by

modern usage to one sort of naturalness, tender-heartedness; though in a

derivative form the original sense is still familiar to modern ears in

the expression 'the _kindly_ fruits of the earth.' In Elizabethan

English, however, the root signification still remained in all usages of

_kind_ and its derivatives. In Schmidt's analysis of the adjective, two

of its four significations agree with the modern use, the other two are

'keeping to nature, natural,' and 'not degenerate and corrupt, but such

as a thing or person ought to be.' Shakespeare delights to play upon the

two senses of this family of words: [_Much Ado,_ =i.= i. 26.] tears of

joy are described as a 'kind overflow of kindness'; the Fool says of

Regan that she will use Lear 'kindly,' i.e. according to her nature;

[_Lr._ =i.= v. 15.] 'the worm will do his kind,' i.e. bite. [_Ant. and

Cleop._ =v.= ii. 264.] How far the word can wander from its modern sense

is seen in a phrase of the present play, [=ii.= i. 24.] 'at your kind'st

leisure,' where it is simply equivalent to 'convenient.' Still more will

the wider signification of the word obtain, when it is associated with

the word _human_; 'humankind' is still an expression for human nature,

and the sense of the passage we are considering would be more obvious if

the whole phrase were printed as one word, not 'human kindness,' but

'humankind-ness':--that shrinking from what is not natural, which is a

marked feature of the practical nature. The other part of the clause,

_milk_ of humankind-ness, no doubt suggests absence of hardness: but it

equally connotes natural, inherited, traditional feelings, imbibed at

the mother's breast. The whole expression of Lady Macbeth, then, I take

to attribute to her husband an instinctive tendency to shrink from

whatever is in any way unnatural. That this is the true sense further

appears, not only from the facts--[=i.= ii. 54.] for nothing in the play

suggests that Macbeth, 'Bellona's bridegroom,' was distinguished by

kindness in the modern sense--but from the context. The form of Lady

Macbeth's speech makes the phrase under discussion a summing up of the

rest of her analysis, or rather a general text which she proceeds to

expand into details. Not one of these details has any connection with

tender-heartedness: on the other hand, if put together the details do

amount to the sense for which I am contending, that Macbeth's character

is a type of commonplace morality, the shallow unthinking and unfeeling

man's lifelong hesitation between God and Mammon.

Thou would'st be great;

Art not without ambition, but without

The illness should attend it: what thou would'st highly

That would'st thou holily; would'st not play false,

And yet would'st wrongly win: thou'ldst have, great Glamis,

That which cries 'Thus thou must do, if thou have it,

And that which _rather thou dost fear to do

Than wishest should be undone._'

If the delicate balancing of previous clauses had left any doubt as to

the meaning, the last two lines remove it, and assert distinctly that

Macbeth has no objection to the evil itself, but only a fear of evil

measures which must be associated to a practical mind with failure and

disgrace. [=i.= iv. 48-53.] It is striking that at the very moment Lady

Macbeth is so meditating, her husband is giving a practical confirmation

of her description in its details as well as its general purport. [=i.=

iii. 143, 146.] He had resolved to take no steps himself towards the

fulfilment of the Witches' prophecy, but to leave all to chance; then

the proclamation of Malcolm, removing all apparent chance of succession,

led him to change his mind and entertain the scheme of treason and

murder: the words with which he surrenders himself seem like an echo of

his wife's analysis.

Stars, hide your fires;

Let not light see my black and deep desires:

The eye wink at the hand; _yet let that be

Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see._

[_Macbeth's soliloquy: of an eminently practical character._]

But we are not left to descriptions of Macbeth by others. We have him

self-displayed; and that in a situation so framed that if there were in

him the faintest sympathy with goodness it must here be brought into

prominence. [=i.= vii. 1-28.] Macbeth has torn himself away from the

banquet, and, his mind full of the desperate danger of the treason he is

meditating, he ponders over the various motives that forbid its

execution. A strong nobility would even amid incentives _to_ crime feel

the attraction of virtue and have to struggle against it; but surely the

weakest nobility, when facing motives _against_ sin, would be roused to

some degree of virtuous passion. Yet, if Macbeth's famous soliloquy be

searched through and through, not a single thought will be found to

suggest that he is regarding the deep considerations of sin and

retribution in any other light than that of immediate practical

consequences. First, there is the thought of the sureness of retribution

even in this world. It may be true that hope of heaven and fear of hell

are not the highest of moral incentives, but at least they are a degree

higher than the thought of worldly prosperity and failure; Macbeth

however is willing to take his chance of the next world if only he can

be guaranteed against penalties in this life.

If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well

It were done quickly: if the assassination

Could trammel up the consequence, and catch

With his surcease success; that but this blow

Might be the be-all and the end-all here,

But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,

We'ld jump the life to come. But in these cases

We still have judgement here; that we but teach

Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return

To plague the inventor: this even-handed justice

Commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice

To our own lips.

So far he has reached no higher consideration, in reference to treason

and murder, than the fear that he may be suggesting to others to use

against himself the weapon he is intending for Duncan. Then his thoughts

turn to the motives against crime which belong to the softer side of our

nature.

He's here in double trust,

First, as I am his kinsman and his subject,

Strong both against the deed; then, as his host,

Who should against his murderer shut the door,

Not bear the knife myself. Besides, this Duncan,

Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been

So clear in his great office, that his virtues

Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against

The deep damnation of his taking-off;

And pity--

At all events it is clear this is no case of a man blinded for the

moment to the emotions which resist crime; and as we hear him passing in

review kinship, loyalty, hospitality, pity, we listen for the burst of

remorse with which he will hurl from him the treachery he had been

fostering. But, on the contrary, his thoughts are still practical, and

the climax to which this survey of motives is to lead up is no more than

the effect they will have on others: pity

Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,

That tears shall drown the wind.

And then he seems to regret that he cannot find more incentives to his

villainy.

I have no spur

To prick the sides of my intent, but only

Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself

And falls on the other.

So Macbeth's searching self-examination on topics of sin and

retribution, amid circumstances specially calculated to rouse

compunction, results in thoughts not more noble than these--that murder

is a game which two parties can play at, that heartlessness has the

effect of drawing general attention, that ambition is apt to defeat its

own object.

[_Macbeth rises with external deeds and sinks with internal conflicts._]

Again: that Macbeth's union of superficial nobility with real moral

worthlessness is connected with the purely practical bent of his mind

will be the more evident the wider the survey which is taken of his

character and actions. It may be observed that Macbeth's spirits always

rise with evil deeds: however he may have wavered in the contemplation

of crime, its execution strings him up to the loftiest tone. [=ii.= i,

from 31; and =iii.= ii, from 39.] This is especially clear in the Dagger

Scene, and in the scene in which he darkly hints to his wife the murder

of Banquo, which is in a brief space to be in actual perpetration. As he

feels the moment of crime draw near, his whole figure seems to dilate,

the language rises, and the imagery begins to flow. Like a poet invoking

his muse, Macbeth calls on seeling night to scarf up the tender eye of

pitiful day. He has an eye to dramatic surroundings for his dark deeds.

Now, o'er the one half-world

Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse

The curtain'd sleep; witchcraft celebrates

Pale Hecate's offerings, and wither'd murder,

Alarum'd by his sentinel, the wolf,

Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace,

With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design

Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth,

Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear

The very stones prate of my whereabout,

_And take the present horror from the time,

Which now suits with it._

The man who had an hour or two before been driven from the table of his

guests by the mere thought of a crime moves to the deed itself with the

exalted language of a Hebrew prophet. On the other hand, in his

spiritual struggles there is a simpleness that sometimes suggests

childishness. [=ii.= ii. 31.] His trouble is that he could not say

'Amen' when the sleepers cried 'God bless us'; his conscience seems a

voice outside him; [=ii.= ii. 35-46.] finally, the hardened warrior dare

not return to the darkness and face the victim he had so exultingly done

to death.

Macbeth, then, is the embodiment of one side of the antithesis with

which we started; his is pre-eminently the practical nature, moulded in

a world of action, but uninfluenced by the cultivation of the inner

life. Yet he is not perfect as a man of action: for the practical cannot

reach its perfection without the assistance of the inner life. [_Two

flaws in Macbeth as an embodiment of the practical: his superstition;_]

There are two flaws in Macbeth's completeness. For one, his lack of

training in thought has left him without protection against the

superstition of his age. He is a passive prey to supernatural

imaginings. [=v.= v. 10.] He himself tells us he is a man whose senses

would cool to hear a night-shriek, and his fell of hair rouse at a

dismal treatise. And we see throughout the play how he never for an

instant doubts the reality of the supernatural appearances: [e.g. =iii.=

iv. 60; =i.= iii. 107, 122.] a feature the more striking from its

contrast with the scepticism of Lady Macbeth, and the hesitating doubt

of Banquo. [_and his helplessness under suspense._] [=iii.= i. 6.]

Again: no active career can be without its periods when action is

impossible, and it is in such periods that the training given by the

intellectual life makes itself felt, with its self-control and passive

courage. All this Macbeth lacks: in suspense he has no power of

self-restraint. [compare =i.= iii. 137, and =iii.= ii. 16.] When we come

to trace him through the stages of the action we shall find that one of

these two flaws springing out of Macbeth's lack of the inner life, his

superstition and his helplessness in suspense, is at every turn the

source of his betrayal.

In the case of Lady Macbeth, the old-fashioned view of her as a second

Clytæmnestra has long been steadily giving way before a conception

higher at least on the intellectual side. [_Lady Macbeth as an

embodiment of the inner life._] The exact key to her character is given

by regarding her as the antithesis of her husband, and an embodiment of

the inner life and its intellectual culture so markedly wanting in him.

She has had the feminine lot of being shut out from active life, and her

genius and energy have been turned inwards; [=v.= i. 58.] her soul--like

her 'little hand'--is not hardened for the working-day world, but is

quick, delicate, sensitive. She has the keenest insight into the

characters of those around her. She is accustomed to moral loneliness

and at home in mental struggles. She has even solved for herself some of

their problems. In the very crisis of Duncan's murder she gives

utterance to the sentiment:

[=ii.= ii. 53.]

the sleeping and the dead

Are but as pictures.

When we remember that she must have started with the superstitions of

her age such an expression, simple enough in modern lips, opens up to us

a whole drama of personal history: we can picture the trembling

curiosity, the struggle between will and quivering nerves, the triumph

chequered with awe, the resurrection of doubts, the swayings between

natural repulsion and intellectual thirst, the growing courage and the

reiterated victories settling down into calm principle. Accordingly,

Lady Macbeth has won the grand prize of the inner life: in the kingdom

of her personal experience her WILL is unquestioned king. It may seem

strange to some readers that Lady Macbeth should be held up as the type

of the inner life, so associated is that phrase to modern ears with the

life fostered by religion. But the two things must not be

confused--religion and the sphere in which religion is exercised. 'The

kingdom of God is within you,' was the proclamation of Christ, but the

world within _may_ be subjugated to other kings than God. Mental

discipline and perfect self-control, like that of Lady Macbeth, would

hold their sway over evil passions, but they would also be true to her

when she chose to contend against goodness, and even against the deepest

instincts of her feminine nature. [_A struggle against not absence of

the softer qualities._] This was ignored in the old conception of the

character, and a struggle _against_ the softer side of her nature was

mistaken for its total absence. But her intellectual culture must have

quickened her finer sensibilities at the same time that it built up a

will strong enough to hold them down; nor is the subjugation so perfect

but that a sympathetic insight can throughout trace a keen delicacy of

nature striving to assert itself. [=i.= v. 41.] In particular, when she

calls upon the spirits that tend on mortal thoughts to unsex and fill

her from crown to toe with direst cruelty, she is thrilling all over

with feminine repugnance to the bloody enterprise, which nevertheless

her royal will insists upon her undertaking. Lady Macbeth's career in

the play is one long mental civil war: and the strain ends, as such a

strain could only end, in madness.

[_The Character-Contrast traced through the action._]

Such is the general conception of Lord and Lady Macbeth from the point

of view of the antithesis between the outer and inner life. We have now

to turn from character to action, and trace the contrasted pair through

the stages of their common career.

[_Situation at the opening of the play._]

The two opposing natures have been united in a happy marriage, the

happier because a link between characters so forceful and so antithetic,

if it held at all, must be a source of interest: [compare =i.= v. 55-60;

=i.= vii. 38; =iii.= ii. 27, 29, 36, 45; =iii.= iv. 141.] the dark

tragedy of this unhappy pair is softened by the tenderness of demeanour

which appears on both sides. Another source of marriage happiness is

added: there is not a trace of self-seeking in Lady Macbeth. Throughout

the play she is never found meditating upon what she is to gain by the

crown; wife-like, she has no sphere but the career of her husband. [_The

original impulse to evil came from Macbeth._] In a picture of human

characters, great in their scale, overwhelmed in moral ruin, the

question of absorbing interest is the commencement of the descent, and

the source from which the impulse to evil has come. This, in the present

case, Shakespeare has carefully hidden from us: before the play opens

the essential surrender of spirit has taken place, and all that we are

allowed to see is its realisation in life and fact. If, however, we use

the slight material afforded us for speculation on this point, it would

appear that the original choice for evil has for both been made by

Macbeth. In the partnership of man and wife it is generally safe to

assume that the initiative of action has come from the husband, if

nothing appears to the contrary. [=i.= vii. 48.] In the present case we

are not left to assumptions, Lady Macbeth distinctly speaks of her

husband as first breaking to her the enterprise of treacherous ambition.

What beast was't, then,

Which made you break this enterprise to me?

... Nor time nor place

Did then adhere, and yet you would make both.

The reference can only be to a period before the commencement of the

play; and the general drift of the passage suggests that it was no mere

choice, made by Macbeth with deliberation during which he would be open

to conviction, but an impulse of uncontrollable passion that it would

have been vain for his wife to resist, supposing that she had had the

desire to resist it--so uncontrollable, indeed, [=i.= vii. 54.] that it

appears to Lady Macbeth stronger than the strongest of feminine

passions, a mother's love.

I have given suck, and know

How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me:

I would, while it was smiling in my face,

Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums,

And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn as you

Have done to this.

The only sense in which Lady Macbeth can be pronounced the ruin of her

husband is that her firm nature holds him in the path to which he has

committed them both, and will not allow his fatal faltering to lose

both the virtue he has renounced and the price for which he has bartered

it. Denied by her feminine position, the possibility--even if she had

had the desire--of directing the common lot for good, she has recognised

before we make her acquaintance that this lot has been cast for evil,

and she is too well-trained in self-knowledge to attempt the

self-deception her husband tries to keep up. [=i.= vii. 54.] And to this

evil lot she applies her full force. Her children have died, and this

natural outlet for passion is wanting; the whole of her energy is

brought to bear upon her husband's ambition, and she is waiting only an

occasion for concentrating her powers upon some definite project.

[_Four stages in the action._]

With such mutual relations between the hero and the heroine the play

opens: we are to watch the contrasted characters through the successive

stages of the Temptation, the Deed, the Concealment, the Nemesis.

[_The Temptation._]

The Temptation accosts the two personages when separated from one

another, and we thus have the better opportunity of watching the

different forms it assumes in adapting itself to the different

characters. The expedition, which has separated Macbeth from his wife,

is one which must have led him to brood over his schemes of ambition.

Certainly it exhibits to him an example of treason and shows him the

weakness of his sovereign. Probably he sees events shaping in a

direction that suggests opportunity; he may have known that the king

must pass in the direction of his castle, or in some other way may have

anticipated a royal visit; at all events the king's intimation of this

visit in the play itself--

[=i.= iv. 42.]

From hence to Inverness,

And bind us further to you,--

does not look like a first mention of it. [=i.= iii. 38-78.] To a mind

so prepared the supernatural solicitation brings a shock of temptation;

and as the Witches in their greeting reach the promise, 'Thou shalt be

KING hereafter,' Macbeth gives a start that astonishes Banquo:

Good sir, why do you start; and seem to fear

Things that do sound so fair?

To Banquo this prediction of the Witches seems no more than curious; for

it must be remembered that Macbeth's position in the kingdom was not

such as to exclude hope of succession to the crown, though the hope was

a remote one. But Macbeth's start tells a tale of his inner thoughts at

the time. This alone should be sufficient to vindicate Shakespeare from

the charge sometimes brought against him of turning a great character

from virtue to vice by demoniac agency; his is the higher conception

that a soul which has commenced the surrender to evil will find in the

powers of darkness agencies ready to expedite its descent, it matters

not what form these agencies assume. Macbeth has been for years playing

with the idea of treason, while never bracing himself up to the point of

acting it: suddenly the thought he fancied so safe within his bosom

appears outside him in tangible form, gleaming at him in the malignant

glances of recognition the Witches are casting at him. To a mind utterly

undefended by culture against superstitious terror this objective

presentation of his own thought proves a Rubicon of temptation which he

never attempts to recross. [=i.= v. 1-55.] On Lady Macbeth the

supernatural incident makes not the slightest impression of any kind; we

see her reading her husband's excited account of the interview with the

most deliberate calmness, weighing its suggestions only with reference

to the question how it can be used upon her husband. To her temptation

comes with the suggestion of _opportunity_. The messenger enters during

her quiet meditation;

_Mess._ The king comes here to-night.

_Lady M._ Thou 'rt mad to say it!

The shock that passes over her is like the shock of chemical change. In

an instant her whole nature is strung up to a single end; the

long-expected occasion for the concentration of a whole life's energy

upon a decisive stroke is come. So rapidly does her imagination move

that she sees the deed before her as already done, and, as she casts her

eyes upwards, the very ravens over her head seem to be croaking the

fatal entrance of Duncan under her battlements.

[_The meeting afterwards._]

[=i.= v, from 55: =i.= vii.]

The stage of Temptation cannot be considered complete without taking in

that important section of the play which intervenes between the meeting

of the two personages after their separate temptations and the

accomplishment of the treason. This is essentially a period of suspense,

and accordingly exhibits Macbeth at his weakest. As he enters his castle

his tell-tale face is as a book where men may read strange matters; and

his utter powerlessness of self-control throws upon his wife's firm will

the strongest of all strains, that of infusing her own tenacity into a

vacillating ally. I have already dealt with the point at which Macbeth's

suspense becomes intolerable, and he leaves the supper-table; and I have

drawn attention to the eminently practical nature of his thoughts even

at this crisis. The scene which follows, when his wife labours to hold

him to the enterprise he has undertaken, illustrates perhaps better than

any other incident in the play how truly this practical bent is the key

to Macbeth's whole character. At first he takes high ground, and rests

his hesitation on considerations of gratitude. Lady Macbeth appeals to

consistency, to their mutual love, and, her anger beginning to rise at

this wavering of will in a critical moment, she taunts her husband with

cowardice. Then it is that Macbeth, irritated in his turn, speaks the

noble words that have done so much to gain him a place in the army of

martyrs to wifely temptations.

Prithee, peace:

I dare do all that may become a man;

Who dares do more is none.

But it is difficult to share Macbeth's self-deception long. At his

wife's reminder how he had been the one to first moot the undertaking,

and swear to it in spite of overwhelming obstacles, already the noble

attitude looks more like the sour grapes morality of the man who begins

to feel indignation against sin at the precise moment when the sin

becomes dangerous. And the whole truth comes sneaking out at Macbeth's

next rejoinder: 'If we should fail?' Here is the critical point of the

scene. [=i.= vii, from 61.] At its beginning Macbeth is for abandoning

the treason, at its end he prepares for his task of murder with

animation: where does the change come? _The practical man is nerved by

having the practical details supplied to him._ Lady Macbeth sketches a

feasible scheme: how that the King will be wearied, his chamberlains can

by means of the banquet be easily drugged, their confusion on waking can

be interpreted as guilt--before she has half done her husband interrupts

her with a burst of enthusiasm, and completes her scheme for her. The

man who had thought it was manliness that made him shrink from murder

henceforward never hesitates till he has plunged his dagger in his

sovereign's bosom.

[_The Deed_]

[=ii.= i. 31 to =ii.= ii.]

In the perpetration of the Deed itself we have the woman passing from

weakness to strength, the man from strength to weakness. To Lady Macbeth

this actual contact with a deed of blood is the severest point of the

strain, the part most abhorrent to her more delicate nature. For a

single moment she feels herself on the verge of the madness which

eventually comes upon her:

[=ii.= ii. 33.]

These deeds must not be thought

After these ways; so, it will make us mad!

And at the beginning of the scene she has been obliged to have recourse

to stimulants in order to brace her failing nerves:

[=ii.= ii. 1.]

That which hath made them drunk hath made me bold.

And in part the attempt to bring her delicate nature to the repugnant

deed does fail. It is clear that, knowing how little her husband could

be depended upon, she had intended to have a hand in the murder itself:

[=i.= vii. 69; compare =i.= v. 68.]

What cannot _you and I_ perform upon

The unguarded Duncan?

But the will which was strong enough to hold down conscience gave way

for a moment before an instinct of feminine tenderness:

[=ii.= ii. 13.]

Had he not resembled

My father as he slept, I had done 't.

The superiority, however, of the intellectual mind is seen in this, that

it can nerve itself from its own agitation, it can draw strength out of

the weakness surrounding it, or out of the necessities of the situation:

_must_ is the most powerful of spells to a trained will. And so it is

that Lady Macbeth rises to the occasion when her husband fails. At first

Macbeth in the perpetration of the murder appears in his proper sphere

of action, and we have already noticed how the Dagger Soliloquy shows no

shrinking, but rather excitement on the side of exultation. The change

in him comes with a moment of suspense, caused by the momentary waking

of the grooms: [=ii.= ii. 24.] 'I stood and heard them.' With this, no

longer sustained by action, he utterly breaks down under the unfamiliar

terrors of a fight with his conscience. His prayer sticks in his throat;

his thoughts seem so vivid that his wife can hardly tell whether he did

not take them for a real voice outside him.

Who was it that thus cried? Why, worthy thane,

You do unbend your noble strength, to think

So brainsickly of things.

In his agitation he forgets the plan of action, brings away the daggers

instead of leaving them with the grooms, and finally dares not return to

finish what he has left uncompleted. And accordingly his wife has to

make another demand upon her overwrought nature: with one hysterical

jest,

If he do bleed,

I'll _gild_ the faces of the grooms withal,

For it must seem their _guilt_,

her nature rallies, and the strength derived from the inner life fills

up a gap in action where the mere strength of action had failed.

[_The first Shock of Concealment._ =ii.= iii, from 68.]

The Concealment of the murder forms a stage of the action which falls

into two different parts: the single effort which faces the first shock

of discovery, and the very different strain required to meet the slowly

gathering evidence of guilt. In the Scene of the Discovery Macbeth is

perfectly at home: energetic action is needed, and he is dealing with

men. His acted innocence appears to me better than his wife's; Lady

Macbeth goes near to suggesting a personal interest in the crime by her

over-anxiety to disclaim it.

_Macduff._ O Banquo, Banquo,

Our royal master's murder'd!

_Lady M._ Woe, alas!

What, in our house?

_Banquo._ Too cruel anywhere.

Yet in this scene, as everywhere else, the weak points in Macbeth's

character betray him: for one moment he is left to himself, and that

moment's suspense ruins the whole episode. In the most natural manner in

the world Macbeth had, on hearing the announcement, rushed with Lennox

to the scene of the murder. Lennox quitted the chamber of blood first,

and for an instant Macbeth was alone, facing the grooms still heavy with

their drugged sleep, and knowing that in another moment they would be

aroused and telling their tale: the sense of crisis proves too much for

him, and under an ungovernable impulse he stabs them. He thus wrecks the

whole scheme. How perfectly Lady Macbeth's plan would have served if it

had been left to itself is seen by Lennox's account of what he had seen,

and how the grooms

stared, and were distracted; no man's life

Was to be trusted with them.

Nothing, it is true, can be finer than the way in which Macbeth seeks to

cover his mistake and announces what he has done. But in spite of his

brilliant outburst,

Who can be wise, amazed, temperate and furious,

Loyal and neutral, in a moment?

and his vivid word-picture of his supposed sensations, his efforts are

in vain, and at the end of his speech we feel that there has arisen in

the company of nobles the indescribable effect known as 'a sensation,'

and we listen for some one to speak some word that shall be irrevocable.

[=ii.= iii. 124.] The crisis is acute, but Lady Macbeth comes to the

rescue _and faints_! It matters little whether we suppose the fainting

assumed, or that she yields to the agitation she has been fighting

against so long. The important point is that she chooses this exact

moment for giving way: she holds out to the end of her husband's speech,

then falls with a cry for help; there is at once a diversion, and she is

carried out. [=ii.= iii. 132.] But the crisis has passed, and a moment's

consideration has suggested to the nobles the wisdom of adjourning for a

fitter occasion the enquiry into the murder they all suspect: [=ii.= iv.

24-32.] before that occasion arrives the flight of the king's sons has

diverted suspicion into an entirely new channel. Lady Macbeth's fainting

saved her husband.

[_The long Strain of Concealment._ =iii.= i, ii.]

To convey dramatically the continuous strain of keeping up appearances

in face of steadily accumulating suspicion is more difficult than to

depict a single crisis. Shakespeare manages it in the present case

chiefly by presenting Macbeth to us on the eve of an important council,

at which the whole truth is likely to come out.

[= iii.= i. 30.]

We hear, our bloody cousins are bestowed

In England and in Ireland, not confessing

Their cruel parricide, filling their hearers

With strange invention: but of that to-morrow.

It is enough to note here that Macbeth takes the step--the fatal step,

as was pointed out in the last study--of contriving Banquo's murder

simply because he cannot face the suspense of waiting for the morrow,

and hearing the defence of the innocent princes made in presence of

Banquo, who knows the inducement he had to such a deed. That he feels

the danger of the crime, which nevertheless he cannot hold himself back

from committing, is clear from the fact that he will not submit it to

the calmer judgment of his wife. [=iii.= ii. 45.] The contrast of the

two characters appears here as everywhere. Lady Macbeth can _wait_ for

an opportunity of freeing themselves from Banquo:

[=iii.= ii. 37.]

_Macb._ Thou know'st that Banquo, and his Fleance, lives.

_Lady M._ But in them nature's copy's not eterne.

To Macbeth the one thing impossible is to wait; and once more his

powerlessness to control suspense is his ruin.

[_The first Shock of Nemesis._]

We have reviewed the contrasted characters under Temptation, in the Deed

of sin itself, and in the struggle for Concealment: [=iii.= iv.] it

remains to watch them face to face with their Nemesis. In the present

play Shakespeare has combined the nemesis which takes the form of a

sudden shock with the yet severer nemesis of a hopeless resistance

through the stages of a protracted fall. The first Shock of Nemesis

comes in the Banquet Scene. Macbeth has surrendered himself to the

supernatural, and from the supernatural his retribution comes. This is

not the place to draw out the terrible force of this famous scene; for

its bearing on the contrast of character under delineation it is to be

remarked that Macbeth faces his ghostly visitation with unflinching

courage, yet without a shadow of doubt as to the reality of what

nevertheless no one sees but himself. Lady Macbeth is equally true to

her character, and fights on to the last in the now hopeless

contest--her double task of keeping up appearances for herself and for

her husband. Her keen tact in dealing with Macbeth is to be noted. At

first she rallies him angrily, and seeks to shame him into self-command;

a moment shows that he is too far gone to be reached by such motives.

Instantly she changes her tactics, and, employing a device so often

effective with patients of disordered brain, she endeavours to recall

him to his senses by assuming an ordinary tone of voice; hitherto she

has whispered, now, in the hearing of all, she makes the practical

remark:

[=iii.= iv. 83.]

My worthy lord,

Your noble friends do lack you.

The device proves successful, his nerves respond to the tone of everyday

life, and recovering himself he uses all his skill of deportment to

efface the strangeness of the episode, until the reappearance of his

victim plunges the scene in confusion past recovery. In the moment of

crisis Lady Macbeth had used roughness to rouse her husband; [=iii.= iv,

from 122.] when the courtiers are gone she is all tenderness. She utters

not a word of reproach: perhaps she is herself exhausted by the strain

she has gone through; more probably the womanly solicitude for the

physical sufferer thinks only how to procure for her husband 'the season

of all natures, sleep.'

[_The full Nemesis._]

At last the end comes. The final stage, like the first, is brought to

the two personages separately. Lady Macbeth has faced every crisis by

sheer force of nerve; [=v.= i.] the nemesis comes upon her fitly in

madness, the brain giving way under the strain of contest which her will

has forced upon it. In the delirium of her last appearance before us we

can trace three distinct tones of thought working into one another as if

in some weird harmony. There is first the mere reproduction of the

horrible scenes she has passed through.

One: two: why then 'tis time to do 't.... Yet who would have thought

the old man to have had so much blood in him.... The thane of Fife

had a wife: where is she now?

Again there is an inner thought contending with the first, the struggle

to keep her husband from betraying himself by his irresolution.

No more o' that, my lord, no more o' that: you mar all with this

starting.... Wash your hands, put on your night-gown; look not so

pale.... Fie! a soldier and afear'd?

And there is an inmost thought of all: the uprising of her feminine

nature against the foulness of the violent deed.

Out, damned spot!... Here's the smell of blood still: all the

perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand--

and the 'sorely charged heart' vents itself in a sigh which the

attendants shudder to hear. On Macbeth Nemesis heaps itself in double

form. The purely practical man, without resources in himself, finds

nemesis in an old age that receives no honour from others.

[=v.= iii. 22.]

My way of life

Is fall'n into the sear, the yellow leaf;

And that which should accompany old age,

As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,

I must not look to have, but, in their stead,

Curses, not loud, but deep.

Again, as the drunkard finds his refuge in drink, so the victim of

superstition longs for deeper draughts of the supernatural. [=iv.= i.]

Macbeth seeks the Witches, forces himself to hear the worst, [=iv.= i.

110-135.] and suffers nemesis in anticipation in viewing future

generations which are to see his foes on his throne. [from =iv.= i. 80.]

Finally from the supernatural comes the climax of retribution when

Macbeth is seen resting in unquestioning reliance on an ironical oracle:

[=v.= v, from 33; =v.= viii, from 13.] till the shock of revelation

comes, the pledge of his safety is converted into the sign of his doom,

and the brave Macbeth, hero of a hundred battles, [=v.= viii. 22.]

throws down his sword and refuses to fight.

VIII.

JULIUS CÆSAR BESIDE HIS MURDERERS AND HIS AVENGER.

_A Study in Character-Grouping._

[_Character-Grouping._]

EVERY lover of art feels that the different fine arts form not a crowd

but a family; the more familiar the mind becomes with them the more it

delights to trace in them the application of common ideas to different

media of expression. We are reminded of this essential unity by the way

in which the arts borrow their terms from one another. 'Colour' is

applied to music, 'tone' to painting; we speak of costume as 'loud,' of

melody as 'bright,' of orchestration as 'massive.' Two classes of

oratorical style have been distinguished as 'statuesque' and

'picturesque'; while the application of a musical term, 'harmony,' and a

term of sculpture, 'relief,' to all the arts alike is so common that the

transference is scarcely felt. Such usages are not the devices of a

straitened vocabulary, but are significant of a single _Art_ which is

felt to underlie the special _arts_. So the more Drama is brought by

criticism into the family of the fine arts the more it will be seen to

present the common features. We have already had to notice repeatedly

how the idea of pattern or design is the key to dramatic plot. We are in

the present study to see how contrast of character, such as was traced

in the last study between Lord and Lady Macbeth, when applied to a

larger number of personages, produces an effect on the mind analogous to

that of _grouping_ in pictures and statuary: the different personages

not only present points of contrast with one another, but their

varieties suddenly fall into a unity of effect if looked at from some

one point of view. [_The grouping in Julius Cæsar rests on the

antithesis of the practical and inner life._] An example of such

Character-Grouping is seen in the play of _Julius Cæsar_, where the four

leading figures, all on the grandest scale, have the elements of their

characters thrown into relief by comparison with one another, and the

contrast stands out boldly when the four are reviewed in relation to one

single idea.

This idea is the same as that which lay at the root of the

Character-Contrast in _Macbeth_--the antithesis of the practical and

inner life. It is, however, applied in a totally different sphere.

Instead of a simple age in which the lives coincide with the sexes we

are carried to the other extreme of civilisation, the final age of Roman

liberty, and all four personages are merged in the busy world of

political life. Naturally, then, the contrast of the two lives takes in

this play a different form. [_This takes the form of individual

sympathies_ v. _public policy._] In the play of _Macbeth_ the inner life

was seen in the force of will which could hold down alike bad and good

impulses; while the outer life was made interesting by its confinement

to the training given by action, and an exhibition of it devoid of the

thoughtfulness and self-control for which the life of activity has to

draw upon the inner life. But there is another aspect in which the two

may be regarded. The idea of the inner life is reflected in the word

'individuality,' or that which a man has not in common with others. The

cultivation of the inner life implies not merely cultivation of our own

individuality, but to it also belongs sympathy with the individuality of

others; whereas in the sphere of practical life men fall into classes,

and each person has his place as a member of these classes. Thus

benevolence may take the form of enquiring into individual wants and

troubles and meeting these by personal assistance; but a man has an

equal claim to be called benevolent who applies himself to such sciences

as political economy, studies the springs which regulate human society,

and by influencing these in the right direction confers benefits upon

whole classes at a time. Charity and political science are the two forms

benevolence assumes correspondent to the inner life of individual

sympathies and the outer life of public action. Or, if we consider the

contrast from the side of rights as distinguished from duties, the

supreme form in which the rights of individuals may be summed up is

justice; the corresponding claim which public life makes upon us is (in

the highest sense of the term) policy: wherever these two, justice and

policy, seem to clash, the outer and inner life are brought into

conflict. It is in this form that the conflict is raised in the play of

_Julius Cæsar_. To get it in its full force, the dramatist goes to the

world of antiquity, for one of the leading distinctions between ancient

and modern society is that the modern world gives the fullest play to

the individual, while in ancient systems the individual was treated as

existing solely for the state. 'Liberty' has been a watchword in both

ages; but while we mean by liberty the least amount of interference with

personal activity, the liberty for which ancient patriots contended was

freedom of the government from external or internal control, and the

ideal republic of Plato was so contrived as to reduce individual liberty

to a minimum. And this subordination of private to public was most fully

carried out in Rome. 'The common weal,' says Merivale, 'was after all

the grand object of the heroes of Roman story. Few of the renowned

heroes of old had attained their eminence as public benefactors without

steeling their hearts against the purest instincts of nature. The deeds

of a Brutus or a Manlius, of a Sulla or a Cæsar, would have been branded

as crimes in private citizens; it was the public character of the actors

that stamped them with immortal glory in the eyes of their countrymen.'

Accordingly, the opposition of outer and inner life is brought before us

most keenly when, in Roman life, a public policy, the cause of

republican freedom, seems to be bound up with the supreme crime against

justice and the rights of the individual, assassination.

[_Brutus's character so evenly developed that the antithesis

disappears._]

Brutus is the central figure of the group: in his character the two

sides are so balanced that the antithesis disappears. This evenness of

development in his nature is the thought of those who in the play gather

around his corpse; giving prominence to the quality in Brutus hidden

from the casual observer they say:

[=v.= v. 73.]

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!'

Of another it would be said that he was a poet, a philosopher; of Brutus

the only true description was that he was a man! It is in very few

characters that force and softness are each carried to such perfection.

[_Force of his character._] The strong side of Brutus's character is

that which has given to the whole play its characteristic tone. It is

seen in the way in which he appreciates the issue at stake. Weak men sin

by hiding from themselves what it is they do; Brutus is fully alive to

the foulness of conspiracy at the moment in which he is conspiring.

[=ii.= i. 77.]

O conspiracy,

Shamest thou to show thy dangerous brow by night,

When evils are most free? O, then by day

Where wilt thou find a cavern dark enough

To mask thy monstrous visage?

His high tone he carries into the darkest scenes of the play. The use of

criminal means has usually an intoxicating effect upon the moral sense,

and suggests to those once committed to it that it is useless to haggle

over the amount of the crime until the end be obtained. [=ii.= i. 162.]

Brutus resists this intoxication, setting his face against the proposal

to include Antony in Cæsar's fate, and resolving that not one life shall

be unnecessarily sacrificed. He scorns the refuge of suicide; and with

warmth adjures his comrades not to stain--

[=ii.= i. 114.]

The even virtue of our enterprise,

Nor the insuppressive mettle of our spirits,

To think that or our cause or our performance

Did need an oath; when every drop of blood

That every Roman bears, and nobly bears,

Is guilty of a several bastardy,

If he do break the smallest particle

Of any promise that hath pass'd from him.

The scale of Brutus's character is again brought out by his relations

with other personages of the play. Casca, with all his cynical

depreciation of others, has to bear unqualified testimony to Brutus's

greatness:

[=i.= iii. 157.]

O, he sits high in all the people's hearts;

And that which would appear offence in us,

His countenance, like richest alchemy,

Will change to virtue and to worthiness.

[=ii.= i, fin.]

We see Ligarius coming from a sick-bed to join in he knows not what: 'it

sufficeth that Brutus leads me on.' And the hero's own thought, when at

the point of death he pauses to take a moment's survey of his whole

life, [=v.= v. 34.] is of the unfailing power with which he has swayed

the hearts of all around him:

My heart doth joy that yet in all my life

I found no man but he was true to me.

Above all, contact with Cassius throws into relief the greatness of

Brutus. [=i.= ii.] At the opening of the play it is Cassius that we

associate with the idea of force; but his is the ruling mind only while

Brutus is hesitating; as soon as Brutus has thrown in his lot with the

conspirators, Cassius himself is swept along with the current of

Brutus's irresistible influence. [Cf. =ii.= i. 162-190; =iii.= i.

140-146, 231-243; =iv.= iii. 196-225, &c.] In the councils every point

is decided--and, so far as success is concerned, wrongly

decided--against Cassius's better judgment. In the sensational moment

when Popilius Lena enters the Senate-house and is seen to whisper Cæsar,

Cassius's presence of mind fails him, [=iii.= i. 19.] and he prepares in

despair for suicide; Brutus retains calmness enough to _watch faces_:

Cassius, be constant:

Popilius Lena speaks not of our purposes;

For, look, he smiles, and Cæsar doth not change.

[=iv.= iii.]

In the Quarrel Scene Cassius has lost all pretensions to dignity of

action in the impatience sprung from a ruined cause; Brutus maintains

principle in despair. Finally, at the close of the scene, when it is

discovered that under all the hardness of this contest for principle

Brutus has been hiding a heart broken by the loss of Portia, [=iv.= iii,

from 145.] Cassius is forced to give way and acknowledge Brutus's

superiority to himself even in his own ideal of impassiveness:

[=iv.= iii. 194.]

I have as much of this in art as you,

But yet my nature could not bear it so.

[_Its softness._]

The force in Brutus's character is obvious: it is rather its softer side

that some readers find difficulty in seeing. But this difficulty is in

reality a testimony to Shakespeare's skill, for Brutus is a Stoic, and

what gentleness we see in him appears in spite of himself. It may be

seen in his culture of art, music, and philosophy, which have such an

effect in softening the manners. Nor is this in the case of the Roman

Brutus a mere conventional culture: these tastes are among his strongest

passions. [=iv.= iii. 256.] When all is confusion around him on the eve

of the fatal battle he cannot restrain his longing for the refreshing

tones of his page's lyre; and, the music over, he takes up his

philosophical treatise at the page he had turned down. [=iv.= iii. 242.]

Again Brutus's considerateness for his dependants is in strong contrast

with the harshness of Roman masters. On the same eve of the battle he

insists that the men who watch in his tent shall lie down instead of

standing as discipline would require. [=iv.= iii, from 252.] An

exquisite little episode brings out Brutus's sweetness of demeanour in

dealing with his youthful page; this rises to womanly tenderness at the

end when, noticing how the boy, wearied out and fallen asleep, is lying

in a position to injure his instrument, he rises and disengages it

without waking him.

_Bru._ Look, Lucius, here's the book I sought for so;

I put it in the pocket of my gown.

_Luc._ I was sure your lordship did not give it me.

_Bru._ Bear with me, good boy; I am much forgetful.

Can'st thou hold up thy heavy eyes awhile,

And touch thy instrument a strain or two?

_Luc._ Ay, my lord, an't please you.

_Bru._ It does, my boy:

I trouble thee too much, but thou art willing.

_Luc._ It is my duty, sir.

_Bru._ I should not urge thy duty past thy might;

I know young bloods look for a time of rest.

_Luc._ I have slept my lord, already.

_Bru._ It was well done; and thou shall sleep again;

I will not hold thee long: if I do live

I will be good to thee. [_Music and a song._

This is a sleepy tune. O murderous slumber,

Lay'st thou thy leaden mace upon my boy,

That plays thee music? Gentle knave, good night;

I will not do thee so much wrong to wake thee.--

If thou dost nod, thou break'st thy instrument;

I'll take it from thee; and, good boy, good night.

[=ii.= i, from 233.]

Brutus's relations with Portia bear the same testimony. Portia is a

woman with as high a spirit as Lady Macbeth, and she can inflict a wound

on herself to prove her courage and her right to share her husband's

secrets. But she lacks the physical nerve of Lady Macbeth; [=ii.= iv.]

her agitation on the morning of the assassination threatens to betray

the conspirators, and when these have to flee from Rome the suspense is

too much for her and she commits suicide. Brutus knew his wife better

than she knew herself, and was right in seeking to withhold the fatal

confidence; yet he allowed himself to be persuaded: no man would be so

swayed by a tender woman unless he had a tender spirit of his own. In

all these ways we may trace an extreme of gentleness in Brutus. [_This

is concealed under stoic imperturbability._] But it is of the essence of

his character that this softer side is concealed behind an

imperturbability of outward demeanour that belongs to his stoic

religion: this struggle between inward and outward is the main feature

for the actor to bring out. [=iii.= ii, from 14.] It is a master stroke

of Shakespeare that he utilises the euphuistic prose of his age to

express impassiveness in Brutus's oration. The greatest of the world has

just been assassinated; the mob are swaying with fluctuating passions;

the subtlest orator of his day is at hand to turn those passions into

the channel of vengeance for his friend: Brutus called on amid such

surroundings to speak for the conspirators still maintains the

artificial style of carefully balanced sentences, such as emotionless

rhetoric builds up in the quiet of a study.

As Cæsar loved me, I weep for him; as he was fortunate, I rejoice at

it; as he was valiant, I honour him: but, as he was ambitious, I

slew him. There is tears for his love; joy for his fortune; honour

for his valour; and death for his ambition.

[_The antithesis reappears for Brutus in the action._]

Brutus's nature then is developed on all its sides; in his character the

antithesis of the outer and inner life disappears. It reappears,

however, in the action; [=ii.= i. 10-85.] for Brutus is compelled to

balance a weighty issue, with public policy on the one side, and on the

other, not only justice to individual claims, but further the claims of

friendship, which is one of the fairest flowers of the inner life. And

the balance dips to the wrong side. If the question were of using the

weapon of assassination against a criminal too high for the ordinary law

to reach, this would be a moral problem which, however doubtful to

modern thought, would have been readily decided by a Stoic. But the

question which presented itself to Brutus was distinctly not this.

[=ii.= i. 18-34.] Shakespeare has been careful to represent Brutus as

admitting to himself that Cæsar has done no wrong: he slays him _for

what he might do_.

The abuse of greatness is, when it disjoins

Remorse from power: and, _to speak truth of Cæsar,

I have not known when his affections sway'd

More than his reason_. But 'tis a common proof,

That lowliness is young ambition's ladder,

Whereto the climber-upward turns his face;

But when he once attains the upmost round,

He then unto the ladder turns his back,

Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees

By which he did ascend. So Cæsar may.

Then, lest he may, prevent. And _since the quarrel

Will bear no colour for the thing he is,_

Fashion it thus; that what he is, augmented,

Would run to these and these extremities:

And therefore think him as a serpent's egg

Which hatch'd, would, as his kind, grow mischievous,

And kill him in the shell.

It is true that Shakespeare, with his usual 'dramatic hedging,' softens

down this immoral bias in a great hero by representing him as both a

Roman, of the nation which beyond all other nations exalted the state

over the individual, and a Brutus, [compare =i.= ii. 159.]

representative of the house which had risen to greatness by leading

violence against tyranny. But, Brutus's own conscience being judge, the

man against whom he moves is guiltless; and so the conscious sacrifice

of justice and friendship to policy is a fatal error which is source

sufficient for the whole tragedy of which Brutus is the hero.

[_Cæsar: discrepancies in his character to be reconciled._]

The character of Cæsar is one of the most difficult in Shakespeare.

Under the influence of some of his speeches we find ourselves in the

presence of one of the master spirits of mankind; other scenes in which

he plays a leading part breathe nothing but the feeblest vacillation and

weakness. It is the business of Character-Interpretation to harmonise

this contradiction; it is not interpretation at all to ignore one side

of it and be content with describing Cæsar as vacillating. The force and

strength of his character is seen in the impression he makes upon

forceful and strong men. The attitude of Brutus to Cæsar seems

throughout to be that of looking up; and notably at one point the

thought of Cæsar's greatness seems to cast a lurid gleam over the

assassination plot itself, and Brutus feels that the grandeur of the

victim gives a dignity to the crime:

[=ii.= i. 173.]

Let's carve him as a dish fit for the gods.

The strength and force of Antony again no one will question; and Antony,

at the moment when he is alone with the corpse of Cæsar and can have no

motive for hypocrisy, apostrophises it in the words--

[=iii.= i. 256.]

Thou art the ruins of the noblest man

That ever lived in the tide of times.

And we see enough of Cæsar in the play to bear out the opinions of

Brutus and Antony. Those who accept vacillation as sufficient

description of Cæsar's character must explain his strong speeches as

vaunting and self-assertion. But surely it must be possible for dramatic

language to distinguish between the true and the assumed force; and

equally surely there is a genuine ring in the speeches in which Cæsar's

heroic spirit, shut out from the natural sphere of action in which it

has been so often proved, leaps restlessly at every opportunity into

pregnant words. We may thus feel certain of his lofty physical courage.

[=ii.= ii. 32.]

Cowards die many times before their deaths;

The valiant never taste of death but once.

Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,

It seems to me most strange that men should fear ...

* * * * *

[=ii.= ii. 44.]

Danger knows full well

That Cæsar is more dangerous than he:

We are two lions litter'd in one day,

And I the elder and more terrible.

A man must have felt the thrill of courage in search of its food,

danger, before his self-assertion finds language of this kind in which

to express itself. In another scene we have the perfect _fortiter in re_

and _suaviter in modo_ of the trained statesman exhibited in the

courtesy with which Cæsar receives the conspirators, [=ii.= ii, from

57.] combined with his perfect readiness to 'tell graybeards the truth.'

[=iii.= i. 35.] Nor could imperial firmness be more ideally painted than

in the way in which Cæsar 'prevents' Cimber's intercession.

Be not fond,

To think that Cæsar bears such rebel blood

That will be thaw'd from the true quality

With that which melteth fools; I mean, sweet words,

Low-crooked court'sies, and base spaniel-fawning.

Thy brother by decree is banished:

If thou dost bend and pray and fawn for him,

I spurn thee like a cur out of my way.

Know, Cæsar doth not wrong, nor without cause

Will he be satisfied.

Commonplace authority loudly proclaims that it will never relent: the

true imperial spirit feels it a preliminary condition to see first that

it never does wrong.

[_Reconciliation: Cæsar the highest type of the practical;_]

It is the antithesis of the outer and inner life that explains this

contradiction in Cæsar's character. Like Macbeth, he is the embodiment

of one side and one side only of the antithesis; he is the complete type

of the practical--though in special qualities he is as unlike Macbeth as

his age is unlike Macbeth's age. Accordingly Cæsar appears before us

perfect up to the point where his own personality comes in. The military

and political spheres, in which he has been such a colossal figure, call

forth practical powers, and do not involve introspection and meditation

on foundation principles of thought.

Theirs not to reason why:

Theirs but to do.

The tasks of the soldier and the statesman are imposed upon them by

external authority and necessities, and the faculties exercised are

those which shape means to ends. But at last Cæsar comes to a crisis

that does involve his personality; he attempts a task imposed on him by

his own ambition. He plays in a game of which the prize is the world and

the stake himself, and to estimate chances in such a game tests

self-knowledge and self-command to its depths. [_but lacking in the

inner life._] How wanting Cæsar is in the cultivation of the inner life

is brought out by his contrast with Cassius. [=i.= ii. 100-128.] The

incidents of the flood and the fever, retained by the memory of Cassius,

illustrate this. The first of these was no mere swimming-match; the

flood in the Tiber was such as to reduce to nothing the difference

between one swimmer and another. [=i.= ii. 102.] It was a trial of

nerve: and as long as action was possible Cæsar was not only as brave as

Cassius, but was the one attracted by the danger. Then some chance wave

or cross current renders his chance of life hopeless, and no buffeting

with lusty sinews is of any avail; that is the point at which the

_passive_ courage born of the inner life comes in, and gives strength to

submit to the inevitable in calmness. This Cæsar lacks, and he calls for

rescue: Cassius would have felt the water close over him and have sunk

to the bottom and died rather than accept aid from his rival. In like

manner the sick bed is a region in which the highest physical and

intellectual activity is helpless; the trained self-control of a Stoic

may have a sphere for exercise even here; but the god Cæsar shakes, and

cries for drink like a sick girl. [_The conception brought out by

personal contact with Cassius._] It is interesting to note how the two

types of mind, when brought into personal contact, jar upon one

another's self-consciousness. The intellectual man, judging the man of

action by the test of mutual intercourse, sees nothing to explain the

other's greatness, and wonders what people find in him that they so

admire him and submit to his influence. On the other hand, the man of

achievement is uneasily conscious of a sort of superiority in one whose

intellectual aims and habits he finds it so difficult to follow--yet

superiority it is not, for what has he _done_? [=i.= ii. 182-214.]

Shakespeare has illustrated this in the play by contriving to bring

Cæsar and his suite across the 'public place' in which Cassius is

discoursing to Brutus. Cassius feels the usual irritation at being

utterly unable to find in his old acquaintance any special qualities to

explain his elevation.

[=i.= ii. 148.]

Now, in the names of all the gods at once,

Upon what meat doth this our Cæsar feed,

That he is grown so great?

Similarly Cæsar, as he casts a passing glance at Cassius, becomes at

once uneasy. 'He thinks too much,' is the exclamation of the man of

action:

He loves no plays,

As thou dost, Antony; he hears no music.

The practical man, accustomed to divide mankind into a few simple types,

is always uncomfortable at finding a man he cannot classify. Finally

there is a climax to the jealousy that exists between the two lives:

Cæsar complains that Cassius '_looks quite through the deeds of men._'

[_A change in Cæsar and a change in Rome itself._ comp. =i.= i, and

=iii.= iii; =i.= ii. 151, 164; =i.= iii. 82, 105; =iii.= i. 66-70; =v.=

v. 69-72, &c.]

There is another circumstance to be taken into account in explaining the

weakness of Cæsar. A change has come over the spirit of Roman political

life itself--such seems to be Shakespeare's conception: Cæsar on his

return has found Rome no longer the Rome he had known. Before he left

for Gaul, Rome had been the ideal sphere for public life, the arena in

which principles alone were allowed to combat, and from which the

banishment of personal aims and passions was the first condition of

virtue. In his absence Rome has gradually degenerated; the mob has

become the ruling force, and introduced an element of uncertainty into

political life; politics has passed from science into gambling. A new

order of public men has arisen, of which Cassius and Antony are the

types; personal aims, personal temptations, and personal risks are now

inextricably interwoven with public action. This is a changed order of

things to which the mind of Cæsar, cast in a higher mould, lacks the

power to adapt itself. His vacillation is the vacillation of

unfamiliarity with the new political conditions. [=i.= ii. 230.] He

refuses the crown 'each time gentler than the other,' showing want of

decisive reading in dealing with the fickle mob; [=i.= ii. 183.] and on

his return from the Capitol he is too untrained in hypocrisy to conceal

the angry spot upon his face; he has tried to use the new weapons which

he does not understand, and has failed. [=ii.= i. 195.] It is a subtle

touch of Shakespeare's to the same effect that Cæsar is represented as

having himself undergone a change _of late_:

For he is superstitious grown of late,

Quite from the main opinion he held once

Of fantasy, of dreams and ceremonies

To come back to a world of which you have mastered the machinery, and to

find that it is no longer governed by machinery at all, that causes no

longer produce their effects--this, if anything, might well drive a

strong intellect to superstition. And herein consists the pathos of

Cæsar's situation. The deepest tragedy of the play is not the

assassination of Cæsar, it is rather seen in such a speech as this of

Decius:

[=ii.= i. 202.]

If he be so resolved,

I can o'ersway him; for he loves to hear

That unicorns may be betray'd with trees,

And bears with glasses, elephants with holes,

Lions with toils and men with flatterers;

But when I tell him, he hates flatterers,

He says he does, being then most flattered.

Assassination is a less piteous thing than to see the giant intellect by

its very strength unable to contend against the low cunning of a

fifth-rate intriguer.

Such, then, appears to be Shakespeare's conception of Julius Cæsar. He

is the consummate type of the practical: emphatically the public man,

complete in all the greatness that belongs to action. On the other hand,

the knowledge of self produced by self-contemplation is wanting, and so

when he comes to consider the relation of his individual self to the

state he vacillates with the vacillation of a strong man moving amongst

men of whose greater intellectual subtlety he is dimly conscious: no

unnatural conception for a Cæsar who has been founding empires abroad

while his fellows have been sharpening their wits in the party contests

of a decaying state.

[_Cassius: his whole character developed and subjected to a

master-passion that is disinterested._]

The remaining members of the group are Cassius and Antony. In Cassius

thought and action have been equally developed, and he has the qualities

belonging to both the outer and the inner life. But the side which in

Brutus barely preponderated, absolutely tyrannises in Cassius; his

public life has given him a grand passion to which the whole of his

nature becomes subservient. Inheriting a 'rash humour' from his mother,

he was specially prepared for impatience of political anomalies; [=iv.=

iii. 120.] republican independence has become to him an ideal dearer

than life.

[=i.= ii. 95.]

I had as lief not be as live to be

In awe of such a thing as I myself.

[=i.= ii, iii; =ii.= i; =iii.= i. 177, &c.]

He has thus become a professional politician. Politics is to him a game,

and men are counters to be used; [=i.= ii. 312-319.] Cassius finds

satisfaction in discovering that even Brutus's 'honourable metal may be

wrought from that it is disposed.' He has the politician's low view of

human nature; while Brutus talks of principles Cassius interposes

appeals to interest: he says to Antony,

[=iii.= i. 177.]

Your voice shall be as strong as any man's

In the disposing of new dignities.

His party spirit is, as usual, unscrupulous; he seeks to work upon his

friend's unsuspecting nobility by concocted letters thrown in at his

windows; [=i.= ii. 319.] and in the Quarrel Scene loses patience at

Brutus's scruples.

[=iv.= iii. 7, 29, &c.]

I'll not endure it: you forget yourself,

To hedge me in; I am a soldier, I,

Older in practice, abler than yourself

To make conditions.

At the same time he has a party politician's tact; his advice throughout

the play is proved by the event to have been right, [=iii.= i. 145.] and

he does himself no more than justice when he says his misgiving 'still

falls shrewdly to the purpose.' [_Antony: his whole character developed

and subjected to selfish passion._] Antony also has all the powers that

belong both to the intellectual and practical life; so far as these

powers are concerned, he has them developed to a higher degree than even

Brutus and Cassius. His distinguishing mark lies in the use to which

these powers are put; like Cassius, he has concentrated his whole nature

in one aim, but this aim is not a disinterested object of public good,

it is unmitigated self-seeking. Antony has greatness enough to

appreciate the greatness of Cæsar; hence in the first half of the play

he has effaced himself, choosing to rise to power as the useful tool of

Cæsar. [esp. =i.= ii, from 190; comp. =ii.= i. 165.] Here, indeed, he is

famed as a devotee of the softer studies, but it is not till his patron

has fallen that his irresistible strength is put forth. There seems to

be but one element in Antony that is not selfish: [=iii.= i, from 254;

comp. 194-213.] his attachment to Cæsar is genuine, and its force is

measured in the violent imagery of the vow with which, when alone for a

moment with the corpse, he promises vengeance till all pity is 'choked

with custom of fell deeds.' And yet this perhaps is after all the best

illustration of his callousness to higher feelings; for the one tender

emotion of his heart is used by him as the convenient weapon with which

to fight his enemies and raise himself to power.

[_The Grouping as a whole surveyed._]

Such, then, is the Grouping of Characters in the play of _Julius Cæsar_.

To catch it they must be contemplated in the light of the antithesis

between the outer and inner life. In Brutus the antithesis disappears

amid the perfect balancing of his character, to reappear in the action,

when Brutus has to choose between his cause and his friend. In Cæsar the

practical life only is developed, and he fails as soon as action

involves the inner life. Cassius has the powers of both outer and inner

life perfect, and they are fused into one master-passion, morbid but

unselfish. Antony has carried to an even greater perfection the culture

of both lives, and all his powers are concentrated in one purpose, which

is purely selfish. In the action in which this group of personages is

involved the determining fact is the change that has come over the

spirit of Roman life, and introduced into its public policy the element

of personal aggrandisement and personal risk. The new spirit works upon

Brutus: the chance of winning political liberty by the assassination of

one individual just overbalances his moral judgment, and he falls. Yet

in his fall he is glorious: the one false judgment of his life brings

him, what is more to him than victory, the chance of maintaining the

calmness of principle amid the ruins of a falling cause, and showing how

a Stoic can fail and die. The new spirit affects Cæsar and tempts him

into a personal enterprise in which success demands a meanness that he

lacks, and he is betrayed to his fall. Yet in his fall he is glorious:

the assassins' daggers purge him from the stain of his momentary

personal ambition, and the sequel shows that the Roman world was not

worthy of a ruler such as Cæsar. The spirit of the age effects Cassius,

and fans his passion to work itself out to his own destruction, and he

falls. Yet in his fall he is glorious: we forgive him the lowered tone

of his political action when we see by the spirit of the new rulers how

desperate was the chance for which he played, and how Cassius and his

loved cause of republican freedom expire together. The spirit of the age

which has wrought upon the rest is controlled and used by Antony, and he

rises on their ruins. Yet in his rise he is less glorious than they in

their fall: he does all for self; he may claim therefore the prize of

success, but in goodness he has no share beyond that he is permitted to

be the passive instrument of punishing evil.

IX.

HOW THE PLAY OF JULIUS CÆSAR WORKS TO A CLIMAX AT THE CENTRE.

_A Study in Passion and Movement._

[_Passion and Movement as elements of dramatic effect._]

THE preceding chapters have been confined to two of the main elements in

dramatic effect, Character and Plot: the third remains to be

illustrated. Amongst other devices of public amusement the experiment

has been tried of arranging a game of chess to be played by living

pieces on a monster board; if we suppose that in the midst of such a

game the real combative instincts of the living pieces should be

suddenly aroused, that the knight should in grim earnest plunge his

spear into his nearest opponent, and that missiles should actually be

discharged from the castles, then the shock produced in the feelings of

the bystanders by such a change would serve to bring out with emphasis

the distinction between Plot and the third element of dramatic effect,

Passion. Plot is an interest of a purely intellectual kind, it traces

laws, principles, order, and design in the incidents of life. Passion,

on the other hand, depends on the human character of the personages

involved; it consists in the effects produced on the spectator's

emotional nature as his sympathy follows the characters through the

incidents of the plot; it is War as distinguished from _Kriegspiel_.

Effects of such Passion are numerous and various: the present study is

concerned with its _Movement_. This Movement comprehends a class of

dramatic effects differing in one obvious particular from the effects

considered so far. Character-Interpretation and Plot are both analytical

in their nature; the play has to be taken to pieces and details selected

from various parts have to be put together to give the idea of a

complete character, or to make up some single thread of design.

[_Passion connected with the movement of a drama._] Movement, on the

contrary, follows the actual order of the events as they take place in

the play itself. The emotional effects produced by such events as they

succeed one another will not be uniform and monotonous; the skill of the

dramatist will lie in concentrating effect at some points and relieving

it at others; and to watch such play of passion through the progress of

the action will be a leading dramatic interest. Now we have already had

occasion to notice the prominence which Shakespeare in his dramatic

construction gives to the central point of a play; symmetry more than

sensation is the effect which has an attraction for his genius, and the

finale to which the action is to lead is not more important to him than

the balancing of the whole drama about a turning-point in the middle.

Accordingly it is not surprising to find that in the Passion-Movement of

his dramas a similar plan of construction is often followed; that all

other variations are subordinated to one great Climax of Passion at the

centre. [_The regular arch-form applicable to Passion-Movement._] To

repeat an illustration already applied to Plot: the movement of the

passion seems to follow the form of a regular arch, commencing in

calmness, rising through emotional strain to a summit of agitation at

the centre, then through the rest of the play declining into a calmness

of a different kind. It is the purpose of the two remaining studies to

illustrate this kind of movement in two very different plays. _Julius

Cæsar_ has the simplest of plots; our attention is engaged with a train

of emotion which is made to rise gradually to a climax at the centre,

and then equally gradually to decline. _Lear_, on the contrary, is

amongst the most intricate of Shakespeare's plays; nevertheless the

dramatist contrives to keep the same simple form of emotional effect,

and its complex passions unite in producing a concentration of emotional

agitation in a few central scenes.

[_In Julius Cæsar the movement follows the justification of the

conspirators to the audience:_]

The passion in the play of _Julius Cæsar_ gathers around the

conspirators, and follows them through the mutations of their fortunes.

If however we are to catch the different parts of the action in their

proper proportions we must remember the character of these conspirators,

and especially of their leaders Brutus and Cassius. These are actuated

in what they do not by personal motives but by devotion to the public

good and the idea of republican liberty; accordingly in following their

career we must not look too exclusively at their personal success and

failure. The exact key to the movement of the drama will be given by

fixing attention upon _the justification of the conspirators' cause_ in

the minds of the audience; [_this rises to the centre and declines from

the centre._] and it is this which is found to rise gradually to its

height in the centre of the play, and from that point to decline to the

end. I have pointed out in the preceding study how the issue at stake in

_Julius Cæsar_ amounts to a conflict between the outer and inner life,

between devotion to a public enterprise and such sympathy with the

claims of individual humanity as is specially fostered by the

cultivation of the inner nature. The issue is reflected in words of

Brutus already quoted:

[=ii.= i. 18.]

The abuse of greatness is, when it disjoins

Remorse from power.

Brutus applies this as a test to Cæsar's action, and is forced to acquit

him: but is not Brutus here laying down the very principle of which his

own error in the play is the violation? The assassin's dagger puts

Brutus and the conspirators in the position of power; while

'remorse'--the word in Shakespearean English means human sympathy--is

the due of their victim Cæsar, whose rights to justice as a man, and to

more than justice as the friend of Brutus, the conspirators have the

responsibility of balancing against the claims of a political cause.

These claims of justice and humanity are deliberately ignored by the

stoicism of Brutus, while the rest of the conspirators are blinded to

them by the mists of political enthusiasm; this outraged human sympathy

asserts itself after Cæsar's death in a monstrous form in the passions

of the mob, which are guided by the skill of Antony to the destruction

of the assassins. Of course both the original violation of the balance

between the two lives and the subsequent reaction are equally corrupt.

The stoicism of Brutus, with its suppression of the inner sympathies,

arrives practically at the principle--destined in the future history of

the world to be the basis of a yet greater crime--that it is expedient

that one man should die rather than that a whole people should perish.

On the other hand, Antony trades upon the fickle violence of the

populace, and uses it as much for personal ends as for vengeance. This

demoralisation of both the sides of character is the result of their

divorce. Such is the essence of this play if its action be looked at as

a whole; but it belongs to the movement of dramatic passion that we see

the action only in its separate parts at different times. Through the

first half of the play, while the justification of the conspirators'

cause is rising, the other side of the question is carefully hidden from

us; from the point of the assassination the suppressed element starts

into prominence, and sweeps our sympathies along with it to its triumph

at the conclusion of the play.

[_First stage: the conspiracy forming. Passion indistinguishable from

mere interest._]

In following the movement of the drama the action seems to divide itself

into stages. In the first of these stages, which comprehends the first

two scenes, the conspiracy is only forming; the sympathy with which the

spectator follows the details is entirely free from emotional agitation;

passion so far is indistinguishable from mere interest. [=i.= i, ii.]

The opening scene strikes appropriately the key-note of the whole

action. [_Starting-point: signs of reaction in the popular worship of

Cæsar._] In it we see the tribunes of the people--officers whose whole

_raison d'être_ is to be the mouthpiece of the commonalty--restraining

their own clients from the noisy honours they are disposed to pay to

Cæsar. [=i.= i.] To the justification in our eyes of a conspiracy

against Cæsar, there could not be a better starting-point than this hint

that the popular worship of Cæsar, which has made him what he is, is

itself reaching its reaction-point. Such a suggestion moreover makes the

whole play one complete _wave_ of popular fickleness from crest to

crest.

[_The Rise begins. The cause seen at its best, the victim at his

worst._]

The second is the scene upon which the dramatist mainly relies for the

_crescendo_ in the justification of the conspirators. It is a long

scene, elaborately contrived so as to keep the conspirators and their

cause before us at their very best, and the victim at his very worst.

[=i.= ii.] Cassius is the life and spirit of this scene, as he is of the

whole republican movement. Cassius is excellent soil for republican

principles. The 'rash humour' his mother gave him would predispose him

to impatience of those social inequalities and conventional distinctions

against which republicanism sets itself. Again he is a hard-thinking

man, to whom the perfect realisation of an ideal theory would be as

palpable an aim as the more practical purposes of other men. He is a

Roman moreover, at once proud of his nation as the greatest in the

world, and aware that this national greatness had been through all

history bound up with the maintenance of a republican constitution. His

republicanism gives to Cassius the dignity that is always given to a

character by a grand passion, whether for a cause, a woman, or an

idea--the unification of a whole life in a single aim, by which the

separate strings of a man's nature are, as it were, tuned into harmony.

In the present scene Cassius is expounding the cause which is his

life-object. Nor is this all. Cassius was politician enough to adapt

himself to his hearers, and could hold up the lower motives to those who

would be influenced by them; but in the present case it is the

'honourable metal' of a Brutus that he has to work upon, and his

exposition of republicanism must be adapted to the highest possible

standard. Accordingly, in the language of the scene we find the idea of

human equality expressed in its most ideal form. Without it Cassius

thinks life not worth living.

[=i.= ii. 95.]

I had as lief not be as live to be

In awe of such a thing as I myself.

I was born free as Cæsar; so were you;

We both have fed as well, and we can both

Endure the winter's cold as well as he.

The examples follow of the flood and fever incidents, which show how the

majesty of Cæsar vanished before the violence of natural forces and the

prostration of disease.

[115.]

And this man

Is now become a god, and Cassius is

A wretched creature and must bend his body,

If Cæsar carelessly but nod on him.

In the eye of the state, individuals are so many members of a class, in

precisely the way that their names are so many examples of the proper

noun.

[142.]

Brutus and Cæsar: what should be in that 'Cæsar'?

Why should that name be sounded more than yours?

Write them together, yours is as fair a name;

Sound them, it doth become the mouth as well;

Weigh them, it is as heavy; conjure with them,

Brutus will start a spirit as soon as Cæsar.

Now, in the names of all the gods at once,

Upon what meat doth this our Cæsar feed,

That he is grown so great?

And this exposition of the conspirators' cause in its highest form is at

the same time thrown into yet higher relief by a background to the

scene, in which the victim is presented at his worst. [from 182.] All

through the conversation between Brutus and Cassius, the shouting of the

mob reminds of the scene which is at the moment going on in the Capitol,

while the conversation is interrupted for a time by the returning

procession of Cæsar. In this action behind the scenes which thus mingles

with the main incident Cæsar is committing the one fault of his life:

this is the fault of 'treason,' which can be justified only by being

successful and so becoming 'revolution,' whereas Cæsar is failing, and

deserving to fail from the vacillating hesitation with which he sins.

Moreover, unfavourable as such incidents would be in themselves to our

sympathy with Cæsar, yet it is not the actual facts that we are

permitted to see, but they are further distorted by the medium through

which they reach us--the cynicism of Casca which belittles and

disparages all he relates.

[=i.= ii. 235.]

_Bru._ Tell us the manner of it, gentle Casca.

_Casca._ I can as well be hanged as tell the manner of it: it was

mere foolery; I did not mark it. I saw Mark Antony offer him a

crown;--yet 'twas not a crown neither, 'twas one of these

coronets:--and, as I told you, he put it by once: but, for all that,

to my thinking, he would fain have had it. Then he offered it to him

again; then he put it by again: but, to my thinking, he was very

loath to lay his fingers off it. And then he offer'd it the third

time; he put it the third time by: and still as he refused it, the

rabblement hooted and clapped their chapped hands and threw up their

sweaty night-caps and uttered such a deal of stinking breath because

Cæsar had refused the crown that it had almost choked Cæsar; for he

swounded and fell down at it: and, for mine own part, I durst not

laugh, for fear of opening my lips and receiving the bad air....

When he came to himself again, he said, If he had done or said

anything amiss, he desired their worships to think it was his

infirmity. Three or four wenches, where I stood, cried, 'Alas, good

soul!' and forgave him with all their hearts; but there's no heed to

be taken of them; if Cæsar had stabbed their mothers they would have

done no less.

[_Second stage: the conspiracy formed and developing. Passion-Strain

begins._]

At the end of the scene Brutus is won, and we pass immediately into the

second stage of the action: the conspiracy is now formed and developing,

and the emotional strain begins. The adhesion of Brutus has given us

confidence that the conspiracy will be effective, and we have only to

_wait_ for the issue. [=i.= iii--=ii.= ii.] This mere notion of

_waiting_ is itself enough to introduce an element of agitation into the

passion sufficient to mark off this stage of the action from the

preceding. [_Suspense one element in the strain of passion._] How

powerful suspense is for this purpose we have expressed in the words of

the play itself:

[=ii.= i. 63.]

Between the acting of a dreadful thing

And the first motion, all the interim is

Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream:

The Genius and the mortal instruments

Are then in council; and the state of man,

Like to a little kingdom, suffers then

The nature of an insurrection.

[_The background of tempest and supernatural portents a device for

increasing the strain._]

But besides the suspense there is a special device for securing the

agitation proper to this stage of the passion: throughout there is

maintained a Dramatic Background of night, storm, and supernatural

portents.

The conception of nature as exhibiting sympathy with sudden turns in

human affairs is one of the most fundamental instincts of poetry. To

cite notable instances: it is this which accompanies with storm and

whirlwind the climax to the _Book of Job_, and which leads Milton to

make the whole universe sensible of Adam's transgression:

Earth trembl'd from her entrails, as again

In pangs, and Nature gave a second groan;

Sky lowr'd, and muttering thunder, some sad drops

Wept at completing of the mortal sin

Original.

So too the other end of the world's history has its appropriate

accompaniments: 'the sun shall be darkened and the moon shall not give

her light, and the stars shall be falling from heaven.' There is a

_vagueness_ of terror inseparable from these outbursts of nature, so

mysterious in their causes and aims. They are actually the most mighty

of forces--for human artillery is feeble beside the earthquake--yet they

are invisible: the wind works its havoc without the keenest eye being

able to perceive it, and the lightning is never seen till it has struck.

Again, there is something weird in the feeling that the most frightful

powers in the material universe are all _soft things_. The empty air

becomes the irresistible wind; the fluid and yielding water wears down

the hard and massive rock and determines the shape of the earth;

impalpable fire that is blown about in every direction can be roused

till it devours the solidest constructions of human skill; while the

most powerful agencies of all, electricity and atomic force, are

imperceptible to any of the senses and are known only by their results.

This uncanny terror attaching to the union between force and softness is

the inspiration of one of Homer's most unique episodes, in which the

bewildered Achilles, struggling with the river-god, finds the strength

and skill of the finished warrior vain against the ever-rising water,

and bitterly feels the violation of the natural order--

That strong might fall by strong, where now weak water's luxury

Must make my death blush.

[=i.= iii; =ii.= ii, &c.]

To the terrible in nature are added portents of the supernatural, sudden

violations of the uniformity of nature, the principle upon which all

science is founded. The solitary bird of night has been seen in the

crowded Capitol; fire has played around a human hand without destroying

it; lions, forgetting their fierceness, have mingled with men; clouds

drop fire instead of rain; graves are giving up their dead; the chance

shapes of clouds take distinctness to suggest tumult on the earth. Such

phenomena of nature and the supernatural, agitating from their appeal at

once to fear and mystery, and associated by the fancy with the terrible

in human events, have made a deep impression upon primitive thought; and

the impression has descended by generations of inherited tradition

until, whatever may be the attitude of the intellect to the phenomena

themselves, their associations in the emotional nature are of agitation.

They thus become appropriate as a Dramatic Background to an agitated

passion in the scenes themselves, calling out the emotional effect by a

vague sympathy, much as a musical note may set in vibration a distant

string that is in unison with it.

This device then is used by Shakespeare in the second stage of the

present play. We see the warning terrors through the eyes of men of the

time, and their force is measured by the fact that they shake the

cynical Casca into eloquence.

[=i.= iii. 3.]

Are not you moved, when all the sway of earth

Shakes like a thing unfirm? O Cicero,

I have seen tempests, when the scolding winds

Have rived the knotty oaks, and I have seen

The ambitious ocean swell and rage and foam,

To be exalted with the threatening clouds:

But never till to-night, never till now,

Did I go through a tempest dropping fire.

Either there is a civil strife in heaven,

Or else the world, too saucy with the gods,

Incenses them to send destruction.

And the idea thus started at the commencement is kept before our minds

throughout this stage of the drama by perpetual allusions, however

slight, to the sky and external nature. [compare =ii.= i. 44, 101, 198,

221, 263; =ii.= ii.] Brutus reads the secret missives by the light of

exhalations whizzing through the air; when some of the conspirators step

aside, to occupy a few moments while the rest are conferring apart, it

is to the sky their thoughts naturally seem to turn, and they with

difficulty can make out the East from the West; the discussion of the

conspirators includes the effect on Cæsar of the night's prodigies.

Later Portia remonstrates against her husband's exposure to the raw and

dank morning, to the rheumy and unpurged air; even when daylight has

fully returned, the conversation is of Calpurnia's dream and the

terrible prodigies.

[=i.= iii.]

Against this background are displayed, first single figures of Cassius

and other conspirators; [=ii.= i. 1-85.] then Brutus alone in calm

deliberation: [=ii.= i. 86-228.] then the whole band of conspirators,

their wild excitement side by side with Brutus's immovable moderation.

[=ii.= i, from 233.] Then the Conspiracy Scene fades in the early

morning light into a display of Brutus in his softer relations; [=ii.=

ii.] and with complete return of day changes to the house of Cæsar on

the fatal morning. Cæsar also is displayed in contact with the

supernatural, as represented by Calpurnia's terrors and repeated

messages of omens that forbid his venturing upon public action for that

day. [_Cæsar still seen at a disadvantage;_] Cæsar faces all this with

his usual loftiness of mind; yet the scene is so contrived that, as far

as immediate effect is concerned, this very loftiness is made to tell

against him. The unflinching courage that overrides and interprets

otherwise the prodigies and warnings seems presumption to us who know

the reality of the danger. [=ii.= ii. 8-56.] It is the same with his

yielding to the humour of his wife. Why should he not? his is not the

conscious weakness that must be firm to show that it is not afraid. Yet

when, upon Decius's explaining away the dream and satisfying Calpurnia's

fears, Cæsar's own attraction to danger leads him to persevere in his

first intention, this change of purpose seems to us, [=ii.= i. 202.] who

have heard Decius's boast that he can o'ersway Cæsar with flattery, a

confirmation of Cæsar's weakness. So in accordance with the purpose that

reigns through the first half of the play the victim is made to appear

at his worst: the _passing_ effect of the scene is to suggest weakness

in Cæsar, while it is in fact furnishing elements which, upon

reflection, go to build up a character of strength. [_and the

justification of the conspirators still rising._] On the other hand,

throughout this stage the justification of the conspirators' cause gains

by their confidence and their high tone; in particular by the way in

which they interpret to their own advantage the supernatural element.

[=i.= iii. 42-79.] Cassius feels the wildness of the night as in perfect

harmony with his own spirit.

[=i.= iii. 46.]

For my part, I have walk'd about the streets,

Submitting me unto the perilous night,

And, thus unbraced, Casca, as you see,

Have bared my bosom to the thunder-stone;

And when the cross blue lightning seem'd to open

The breast of heaven, I did present myself

Even in the aim and very flash of it.

And it needs only a word from him to communicate his confidence to his

comrades.

[=i.= iii. 72.]

_Cassius._ Now could I, Casca, name to thee a man

Most like this dreadful night,

That thunders, lightens, opens graves, and roars

As doth the lion in the Capitol,

A man no mightier than thyself or me

In personal action, yet prodigious grown

And fearful, as these strange eruptions are--

_Casca._ 'Tis Cæsar that you mean; is it not, Cassius?

[_Third stage. The Crisis: the passion-strain rises to a Climax._]

The third stage of the action brings us to the climax of the passion;

the strain upon our emotions now rises to a height of agitation. The

exact commencement of the crisis seems to be marked by the soothsayer's

words at the opening of Act III. [=ii.= iii--=iii.= i. 121.] Cæsar

observes on entering the Capitol the soothsayer who had warned him to

beware of this very day.

_Cæsar._ The ides of March are come.

_Sooth._ Ay, Cæsar; but not gone.

Such words seem to measure out a narrow area of time in which the crisis

is to work itself out. There is however no distinct break between

different stages of a dramatic movement like that in the present play;

[_Devices for working up the agitation._] and two short incidents have

preceded this scene which have served as emotional devices to bring

about a distinct advance in the intensification of the strain.

[_Artemidorus_; =ii.= iii. and =iii.= i. 3.] In the first, Artemidorus

appeared reading a letter of warning which he purposed to present to

Cæsar on his way to the fatal spot. In the Capitol Scene he presents it,

while the ready Decius hastens to interpose another petition to take off

Cæsar's attention. Artemidorus conjures Cæsar to read his first for 'it

touches him nearer'; but the imperial chivalry of Cæsar forbids:

What touches us ourself shall be last served.

[_Portia;_ =ii.= iv.]

The momentary hope of rescue is dashed. In the second incident Portia

has been displayed completely unnerved by the weight of a secret to the

anxiety of which she is not equal; she sends messengers to the Capitol

and recalls them as she recollects that she dare give them no message;

her agitation has communicated itself to us, besides suggesting the fear

that it may betray to others what she is anxious to conceal. Our

sympathy has thus been tossed from side to side, although in its

general direction it still moves on the side of the conspirators.

[_Popilius Lena._] In the crisis itself the agitation becomes painful as

the entrance of Popilius [=iii.= i. 13.] Lena and his secret

communication to Cæsar cause a panic that threatens to wreck the whole

plot on the verge of its success. Brutus's nerve sustains even this

trial, and the way for the accomplishment of the deed is again clear.

Emotional devices like these have carried the passion up to a climax of

agitation; and the conspirators now advance to present their pretended

suit and achieve the bloody deed. To the last the double effect of

Cæsar's demeanour continues. Considered in itself, his unrelenting

firmness of principle exhibits the highest model of a ruler; yet to us,

who know the purpose lurking behind the hypocritical intercession of the

conspirators, Cæsar's self-confidence resembles the infatuation that

goes before Nemesis. [from 58.] He scorns the fickle politicians before

him as mere wandering sparks of heavenly fire, while he is left alone as

a pole-star of true-fixed and resting quality:--and in answer to his

presumptuous boast that he can never be moved come the blows of the

assassins which strike him down; [compare 115.] while there is a flash

of irony as he is seen to have fallen beside the statue of Pompey, and

the marble seems to gleam in cold triumph over the rival at last lying

bleeding at its feet. The assassination is accomplished, the cause of

the conspirators is won: pity notwithstanding we are swept along with

the current of their enthusiasm; [_The justification at its height in

the appeal to all time._] and the justification that has been steadily

rising from the commencement reaches its climax as, their adversaries

dispersing in terror, the conspirators dip their hands in their victim's

blood, and make their triumphant appeal to the whole world and all time.

[111.]

_Cassius_. Stoop, then, and wash. How many ages hence

Shall this our lofty scene be acted over

In states unborn and accents yet unknown!

_Brutus_. How many times shall Cæsar bleed in sport,

That now on Pompey's basis lies along,

No worthier than the dust!

_Cassius._ So oft as that shall be,

So often shall the knot of us be call'd

The men that gave their country LIBERTY!

[_Catastrophe, and commencement of the Reaction._]

_Enter a servant:_ this simple stage-direction is the 'catastrophe,' the

turning-round of the whole action; the arch has reached its apex and the

Reaction has begun. [=iii.= i, from 122.] So instantaneous is the

change, that though it is only the servant of Antony who speaks, yet the

first words of his message ring with the peculiar tone of subtly-poised

sentences which are inseparably associated with Antony's eloquence; it

is like the first announcement of that which is to be a final theme in

music, and from this point this tone dominates the scene to the very

end.

[125.]

Thus he bade me say:

Brutus is noble, wise, valiant, and honest,

Cæsar was mighty, bold, royal, and loving,

Say I love Brutus, and I honour him;

Say I fear'd Cæsar, honour'd him, and lov'd him.

If Brutus will vouchsafe that Antony

May safely come to him, and be resolv'd

How Cæsar hath deserved to lie in death,

Mark Antony shall not love Cæsar dead

So well as Brutus living.

In the whole Shakespearean Drama there is nowhere such a swift swinging

round of a dramatic action as is here marked by this sudden up-springing

of the suppressed individuality in Antony's character, [=ii.= i. 165.]

hitherto so colourless that he has been spared by the conspirators as a

mere limb of Cæsar. [=iii.= i. 144.] The tone of exultant triumph in the

conspirators has in an instant given place to Cassius's 'misgiving' as

Brutus grants Antony an audience; [from 164.] and when Antony enters,

Brutus's first words to him fall into the form of apology. The quick

subtlety of Antony's intellect has grasped the whole situation, and with

irresistible force he slowly feels his way towards using the

conspirators' aid for crushing themselves and avenging their victim.

[=iii.= i. 211, compare 177.] The bewilderment of the conspirators in

the presence of this unlooked-for force is seen in Cassius's unavailing

attempt to bring Antony to the point, as to what compact he will make

with them. Antony, on the contrary, reads his men with such nicety that

he can indulge himself in sailing close to the wind, [from 184.] and

grasps fervently the hands of the assassins while he pours out a flood

of bitter grief over the corpse. It is not hypocrisy, nor a trick to

gain time, this conciliation of his enemies. Steeped in the political

spirit of the age, Antony knows, as no other man, the mob which governs

Rome, and is conscious of the mighty engine he possesses in his oratory

to sway that mob in what direction he pleases; when his bold plan has

succeeded, and his adversaries have consented to meet him in contest of

oratory, then ironical conciliation becomes the natural relief to his

pent-up passion.

[220.]

Friends am I with you all and love you all,

_Upon this hope, that you shall give me reasons_

Why and wherein Cæsar was dangerous.

It is as he feels the sense of innate oratorical power and of the

opportunity his enemies have given to that power, that he exaggerates

his temporary amity with the men he is about to crush: it is the

executioner arranging his victim comfortably on the rack before he

proceeds to apply the levers. Already the passion of the drama has

fallen under the guidance of Antony. The view of Cæsar as an innocent

victim is now allowed full play upon our sympathies when Antony, [from

254.] left alone with the corpse, can drop the artificial mask and give

vent to his love and vengeance. [231-243.] The success of the conspiracy

had begun to decline as we marked Brutus's ill-timed generosity to

Antony in granting him the funeral oration; [=iii.= ii, from 13.] it

crumbles away through the cold unnatural euphuism of Brutus's speech in

its defence; [=iii.= ii, from 78.] it is hurried to its ruin when Antony

at last exercises his spell upon the Roman people and upon the reader.

The speech of Antony, with its mastery of every phase of feeling, is a

perfect sonata upon the instrument of the human emotions. [=iii.= ii.

78.] Its opening theme is sympathy with bereavement, against which are

working as if in conflict anticipations of future themes, doubt and

compunction. [95, 109, &c.] A distinct change of movement comes with the

first introduction of what is to be the final subject, [133.] the

mention of the will. But when this new movement has worked up from

curiosity to impatience, [177.] there is a diversion: the mention of the

victory over the Nervii turns the emotions in the direction of historic

pride, [178.] which harmonises well with the opposite emotions roused as

the orator fingers hole after hole in Cæsar's mantle made by the daggers

of his false friends, [200.] and so leads up to a sudden shock when he

uncovers the body itself and displays the popular idol and its bloody

defacement. [243.] Then the finale begins: the forgotten theme of the

will is again started, and from a burst of gratitude the passion

quickens and intensifies to rage, to fury, to mutiny. [_The mob won to

the Reaction._] The mob is won to the Reaction; [=iii.= iii.] and the

curtain that falls upon the third Act rises for a moment to display the

populace tearing a man to pieces simply because he bears the same name

as one of the conspirators.

[_Last stage. Development of an inevitable fate: passion-strain

ceases._]

The final stage of the action works out the development of an inevitable

fate. The emotional strain now ceases, and, as in the first stage, the

passion is of the calmer order, the calmness in this case of pity

balanced by a sense of justice. From the opening of the fourth Act the

decline in the justification of the conspirators is intimated by the

logic of events. The first scene exhibits to us the triumvirate that now

governs Rome, and shows that in this triumvirate Antony is supreme:

[Acts =iv, v. iv.= i.] with the man who is the embodiment of the

Reaction thus appearing at the head of the world, the fall of the

conspirators is seen to be inevitable. [=iv.= ii. 3.] The decline of our

sympathy with them continues in the following scenes. The Quarrel Scene

shows how low the tone of Cassius has fallen since he has dealt with

assassination as a political weapon; and even Brutus's moderation has

hardened into unpleasing harshness. [=iv.= iii. 148, &c.] There is at

this point plenty of relief to such unpleasing effects: [=iv.= iii. from

239.] there is the exhibition of the tender side of Brutus's character

as shown in his relations with his page, [=iv.= iii.] and the display of

friendship maintained between Brutus and Cassius amid falling fortunes.

But such incidents as these have a different effect upon us from that

which they would have had at an earlier period; the justification of the

conspirators has so far declined that now attractive touches in them

serve only to increase the pathos of a fate which, however, our sympathy

no longer seeks to resist. [=iv.= iii. 275.] We get a supernatural

foreshadowing of the end in the appearance to Brutus of Cæsar's Ghost,

[=v.= i. 80.] and the omen Cassius sees of the eagles that had consorted

his army to Philippi giving place to ravens, crows, and kites on the

morning of battle: this lends the authority of the invisible world to

our sense that the conspirators' cause is doomed. [=iv.= iii. 196-230.]

And judicial blindness overtakes them as Brutus's authority in council

overweighs in point after point the shrewder advice of Cassius. Through

the scenes of the fifth Act we see the republican leaders fighting on

without hope. [_Justification entirely vanishes as the conspirators

recognise Cæsar's victory._] The last remnant of justification for their

cause ceases as the conspirators themselves seem to acknowledge their

error and fate. Cassius as he feels his death-blow recognises the very

weapon with which he had committed the crime:

[=v.= iii. 45.]

Cæsar, thou art revenged,

Even with the sword that kill'd thee.

And at last even the firm spirit of Brutus yields:

[=v.= v. 94.]

O Julius Cæsar, thou art mighty yet!

Thy spirit walks abroad, and turns our swords

In our own proper entrails.

X.

HOW CLIMAX MEETS CLIMAX IN THE CENTRE OF LEAR.

_A Study in more complex Passion and Movement._

[_The plot of Lear highly complex_.]

IN _Julius Cæsar_ we have seen how, in the case of a very simple play, a

few simple devices are sufficient to produce a regular rise and fall in

the passion. We now turn to a highly elaborate plot and trace how,

notwithstanding the elaborateness, a similar concentration of the

passion in the centre of the play can be secured. _King Lear_ is one of

the most complex of Shakespeare's tragedies; its plot is made up of a

number of separate actions, with their combinations accurately carried

out, the whole impressing us with a sense of artistic involution similar

to that of an elaborate musical fugue. Here, however, we are concerned

only indirectly with the plot of the play: we need review it no further

than may suffice to show what distinct interests enter into it, and

enable us to observe how the separate trains of passion work toward a

common climax at the centre.

Starting from the notion of pattern as a fundamental idea we have seen

how Plot presents trains of events in human life taking form and shape

as a crime and its nemesis, an oracle and its fulfilment, the rise and

fall of an individual, or even as simply a story. [_The main plot

exhibits the Problem form of dramatic action._] The particular form of

action underlying the main plot of _King Lear_ is different from any we

have yet noticed. It may be described as a _Problem Action_. A

mathematician in his problem assumes some unusual combination of forces

to have come about, and then proceeds to trace its consequences: so the

Drama often deals with problems in history and life, setting up, before

the commencement of the play or early in the action, some peculiar

arrangement of moral relations, and then throughout the rest of the

action developing the consequences of these to the personages involved.

Thus the opening scene of _King Lear_ is occupied in bringing before us

a pregnant and suggestive state of affairs: imperiousness is represented

as overthrowing conscience and setting up an unnatural distribution of

power. [_The problem stated._] A human problem has thus been enunciated

which the remainder of the play has to work out to its natural solution.

Imperiousness seems to be the term appropriate to Lear's conduct in the

first scene. This is no case of dotage dividing an inheritance according

to public declarations of affection. The division had already been made

according to the best advice: [=i.= i. 3, &c.] in the case of two of the

daughters 'equalities had been so weighed that curiosity in neither

could make choice of either's moiety'; and if the portion of the

youngest and best loved of the three was the richest, this is a

partiality natural enough to absolute power. The opening scene of the

play is simply the court ceremony in which the formal transfer is to be

made. [38.] Lear is already handing to his daughters the carefully drawn

maps which mark the boundaries of the provinces, [49.] when he suddenly

pauses, and, with the yearning of age and authority for testimonies of

devotion, calls upon his daughters for declarations of affection, the

easiest of returns for the substantial gifts he is giving them, and

which Goneril and Regan pour forth with glib eloquence. [84.] Then Lear

turns to Cordelia, and, thinking delightedly of the special prize he has

marked out for the pet of his old age, asks her:

What can you say to draw

A third more opulent than your sisters?

But Cordelia has been revolted by the fulsome flattery of the sisters

whose hypocrisy she knows so well, and she bluntly refuses to be drawn

into any declaration of affection at all. Cordelia might well have found

some other method of separating herself from her false sisters, without

thus flouting her father before his whole court in a moment of

tenderness to herself; or, if carried away by the indignation of the

moment, a sign of submission would have won her a ready pardon. [compare

=i.= i. 131.] But Cordelia, sweet and strong as her character is in

great things, has yet inherited a touch of her father's temper, and the

moment's sullenness is protracted into obstinacy. Cordelia then has

committed an offence of manner; Lear's passion vents itself in a

sentence proper only to a moral crime: now the punishment of a minute

offence with wholly disproportionate severity simply because it is an

offence against personal will is an exact description of imperiousness.

As Lear stands for imperiousness, so conscience is represented by Kent,

who, with the voice of authority derived from lifelong intimacy and

service, interposes to check the King's passion in its headlong course.

[141-190.]

_Kent._ Royal Lear,

Whom I have ever honour'd as my king,

Loved as my father, as my master follow'd,

As my great patron thought on in my prayers,--

_Lear._ The bow is bent and drawn, make from the shaft.

_Kent._ Let it fall rather, though the fork invade

The region of my heart: be Kent unmannerly

When Lear is mad. What wilt thou do, old man?

Think'st thou that duty shall have dread to speak,

When power to flattery bows? To plainness honour's bound,

When majesty stoops to folly. Reverse thy doom....

_Lear._ Kent, on thy life, no more.

_Kent._ My life I never held but as a pawn

To wage against thy enemies, nor fear to lose it,

Thy safety being the motive....

_Lear._ O, vassal! miscreant!

[_Laying his hand on his sword._

_Albany._ } Dear sir, forbear.

_Cornwall._ }

_Kent._ Do:

Kill thy physician, and the fee bestow

Upon thy foul disease. Revoke thy doom;

Or, whilst I can vent clamour from my throat,

I'll tell thee thou dost evil.

In the banishment of this Kent, then, the resistance of Lear's

conscience is overcome, and his imperious passion has full swing in

transferring Cordelia's kingdom to her treacherous sisters.

The opening scene has put before us, not in words but figured in action,

a problem in human affairs: the violation of moral equity has set up an

unnatural arrangement of power--power taken from the good and lodged in

the hands of the bad. Here is, so to speak, a piece of moral unstable

equilibrium, and the rebound from it is to furnish the remainder of the

action. The very structure of the plot corresponds with the simple

structure of a scientific proposition. The latter consists of two

unequal parts: a few lines are sufficient to enunciate the problem,

while a whole treatise may be required for its solution. So in _King

Lear_ a single scene brings about the unnatural state of affairs, the

consequences of which it takes the rest of the play to trace. The

'catastrophe,' or turning-point of the play at which the ultimate issues

are decided, appears in the present case, not close to the end of the

play, nor (as in _Julius Cæsar_) in the centre, but close to the

commencement: at the end of the opening scene Lear's act of folly has in

reality determined the issue of the whole action; the scenes which

follow are only working out a determined issue to its full realisation.

[_The solution of the problem in a triple tragedy._]

We have seen the problem itself, the overthrow of conscience by

imperiousness and the transfer of power from the good to the bad: what

is the solution of it as presented by the incidents of the play? The

consequences flowing from what Lear has done make up three distinct

tragedies, which go on working side by side, and all of which are

essential to the full solution of the problem. First, there is the

nemesis upon Lear himself--the double retribution of receiving nothing

but evil from those he has unrighteously rewarded, [(1) _Tragedy of

Lear._] and nothing but good from her whom, he bitterly feels, he has

cruelly wronged. [(2) _Tragedy of Cordelia and Kent._] But the

punishment of the wrong-doer is only one element in the consequences of

wrong; the innocent also are involved, and we get a second tragedy in

the sufferings of the faithful Kent and the loving Cordelia, who,

through Kent as her representative, watches over her father's safety,

until at the end she appears in person to follow up her devotion to the

death. When, however, the incidents making up the sufferings of Lear, of

Kent, and of Cordelia are taken out of the main plot, there is still a

considerable section left--[(3) _Tragedy of Goneril and Regan._] that

which is occupied with the mutual intrigues of Goneril and Regan,

intrigues ending in their common ruin. This constitutes a third tragedy

which, it will be seen, is as necessary to the solution of our problem

as the other two. To place power in the hands of the bad is an injury

not only to others, but also to the bad themselves, as giving fuel to

the fire of their wickedness: so in the tragedy of Goneril and Regan we

see evil passions placed in improper authority using this authority to

work out their own destruction.

[_An underplot on the same basis as the main plot._]

To this main plot is added an underplot equally elaborate. As in _The

Merchant of Venice_, the stories borrowed from two distinct sources are

worked into a common design: and the interweaving in the case of the

present play is perhaps Shakespeare's greatest triumph of constructive

skill. The two stories are made to rest upon the same fundamental

idea--[compare =i.= i, fin.] that of undutifulness to old age: what

Lear's daughters actually do is that which is insinuated by Edmund as

his false charge against his brother.

[=i.= ii. 76, &c.]

I have heard him oft maintain it to be fit, that, sons at perfect

age, and fathers declining, the father should be as ward to the son,

and the son manage his revenue.

So obvious is this fundamental connection between the main and the

underplot, that our attention is called to it by a personage in the

play itself: [=iii.= vi. 117.] 'he childed as I father'd,' is Edgar's

pithy summary of it when he is brought into contact with Lear. [_The

main and underplot parallel and contrasted throughout._] But in this

double tragedy, drawn from the two families of Lear and of Gloucester,

the chief bond between its two sides consists in the sharp contrast

which extends to every detail of the two stories. In the main plot we

have a daughter, who has received nothing but harm from her father, who

has unjustly had her position torn from her and given to undeserving

sisters: nevertheless she sacrifices herself to save the father who did

the injury from the sisters who profited by it. In the underplot we have

a son, who has received nothing but good from his father, who has,

contrary to justice, been advanced by him to the position of an elder

brother whom he has slandered: nevertheless, he is seeking the

destruction of the father who did him the unjust kindness, when he falls

by the hand of the brother who was wronged by it. Thus as the main and

underplot go on working side by side, they are at every turn by their

antithesis throwing up one another's effect; the contrast is like the

reversing of the original subject in a musical fugue. [_The underplot an

Intrigue Action:_] Again, as the main plot consisted in the initiation

of a problem and its solution, so the underplot consists in the

development of an intrigue and its consequences. The tragedy of the

Gloucester family will, if stated from the point of view of the father,

correspond in its parts with the tragedy in the family of Lear. It must

be remembered, however, that the position of the father is different in

the two cases; Gloucester is not, as Lear, the agent of the crime, but

only a deceived instrument in the hands of the villain Edmund, who is

the real agent; if the proper allowance be made for this difference,

[_involving a triple tragedy parallel with that of the main plot._] it

will be seen that the three tragedies which make up the consequences of

Lear's error have their analogies in the three tragedies which flow from

the intrigue of Edmund. [(1) _Tragedy of Gloucester._] First, we have

the nemesis on Gloucester, and this, in analogy with the nemesis on

Lear, consists in receiving nothing but evil from the son he has so

hastily advanced, and nothing but good from the other son whom, he comes

gradually to feel, he has unintentionally wronged. [(2) _Tragedy of

Edgar._] In the next place we have the sufferings of the innocent Edgar.

[(3) _Tragedy of Edmund._] Then, as we before saw a third tragedy in the

way in which the power conferred upon Goneril and Regan is used to work

out their destruction, so in the underplot we find that the position

which Edmund has gained involves him in intrigues, which by the

development of the play are made to result in a nemesis upon his

original intrigue. And it is a nemesis of exquisite exactness: for he

meets his death in the very moment of his success, at the hands of the

brother he has maligned and robbed, while the father he has deceived and

sought to destroy is the means by which the avenger has been brought to

the scene.

[_Complexity of plot not inconsistent with simplicity of movement._]

We have gone far enough into the construction of the plot to perceive

its complexity and the principal elements into which that complexity can

be analysed. Two separate systems, each consisting of an initial action

and three resulting tragedies, eight actions in all, are woven together

by common personages and incidents, by parallelism of spirit, and by

movement to a common climax; not to speak of lesser Link Actions which

assist in drawing the different stories closer together. As with plot

generally, these separate elements are fully manifest only to the eye of

analysis; in following the course of the drama itself, they make

themselves felt only in a continued sense of involution and harmonious

symmetry. It is with passion, not with plot, that the present study is

concerned; and the train of passion which the common movement of these

various actions calls out in the sympathy of the reader is as simple as

the plot itself is intricate. In the case both of the main plot and the

underplot the emotional effect rises in intensity; moreover at this

central height of intensity the two merge in a common Climax. The

construction of the play resembles, if such a comparison may be allowed,

the patent gas-apparatus, which secures a high illuminating power by

the simple device of several ordinary burners inclined to one another at

such an angle that the apexes of their flames meet in a point. [from

=ii.= iv. 290 to =iii.= vi. with the interruption of =iii.= iii, =iii.=

v.] So the present play contains a Centrepiece of some three scenes,

marked off (at least at the commencement) decisively, in which the main

and underplot unite in a common Climax, with special devices to increase

its effect; [_The different trains of passion focussed in a central

Climax._] the diverse interests to which our sympathy was called out at

the commencement, and which analysis can keep distinct to the end, are

_focussed_, so far as passion is concerned, in this Centrepiece, in

which human emotion is carried to the highest pitch of tragic agitation

that the world of art has yet exhibited.

[_The passions of the main plot gather to a common Climax in the madness

of Lear._]

The emotional effect of the main plot rises to a climax in the madness

of Lear. This, as the highest form of human agitation, is obviously a

climax to the story of Lear himself. It is equally a climax to the story

of Kent and Cordelia, who suffer solely through their devoted watching

over Lear, and to whom the bitterest point in their sufferings is that

they feel over again all that their fallen master has to endure.

Finally, in the madness of Lear the third of the three tragedies, the

Goneril and Regan action, appears throughout in the background as the

cause of all that is happening. If we keep our eye upon this madness of

Lear the movement of the play assumes the form we have so often had to

notice--the regular arch. The first half of the arch, or rise in

emotional strain, we get in symptoms of mental disturbance preparing us

for actual madness which is to come. It is important to note the

difference between passion and madness: passion is a disease of the

mind, madness is a disease extending to the mysterious linking of mind

and body. At the commencement Lear is dominated by the passion of

imperiousness, an imperiousness born of his absolute power as king and

father; he has never learned from discipline restraint of his passion,

but has been accustomed to fling himself upon obstacles and see them

give way before him. Now the tragical situation is prepared for him of

meeting with obstacles which will not give way, but from which his

passion rebounds upon himself with a physical shock. As thus opposition

follows opposition, we see _waves_ of physical, that is of hysterical,

passion, sweeping over Lear, until, as it were, a tenth wave lands him

in the full disease of madness.

[=i.= iv.]

The first case occurs in his interview with Goneril after that which is

the first check he has received in his new life, the insolence shown to

his retinue. Goneril enters his presence with a frown. The wont had been

that Lear frowned and all cowered before him: and now he waits for his

daughter to remember herself with a rising passion ill concealed under

the forced calmness with which he enquires, 'Are you our daughter?'

'Doth any here know me?' But Goneril, on the contrary, calmly assumes

the position of reprover, and details her unfounded charges of insolence

against her father's sober followers, until at last he hears himself

desired

By her, that else will take the thing she begs,

to disquantity his train. Then Lear breaks out:

Darkness and devils!

Saddle my horses; call my train together.

Degenerate bastard! I'll not trouble thee:

Yet have I left a daughter.

In a moment the thought of Cordelia's 'most small fault' and how it had

been visited upon her occurs to condense into a single pang the whole

sense of his folly; and here it is that the first of these waves of

physical passion comes over Lear, its physical character marked by the

physical action which accompanies it:

[=i.= iv. 292.]

O Lear, Lear, Lear!

Beat at this gate, that let thy folly in, [_Striking his head._

And thy dear judgement out.

It lasts but for a moment: but it is a wave, and it will return. [=i.=

v.] Accordingly in the next scene we see Lear on his journey from one

daughter to the other. He is brooding over the scene he is leaving

behind, and he cannot disguise a shade of anxiety, in his awakened

judgment, that some such scene may be reserved for him in the goal to

which he is journeying. He is half listening, moreover, to the Fool, who

harps on the same thought, that the King is suffering what he might have

expected, that the other daughter will be like the first:--until there

comes another of these sudden outbursts of passion, in which Lear for a

moment half foresees the end to which he is being carried.

[=i.= v. 49.]

O, let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven!

Keep me in temper: I would not be mad!

Imperiousness is especially attached to outward signs of reverence:

[=ii.= iv. 4.] it is reserved for Lear when he arrives at Regan's palace

to find the messenger he has sent on to announce him suffering the

indignity of the stocks. At first he will not believe that this has been

done by order of his daughter and son.

[13.]

_Kent._ It is both he and she;

Your son and daughter.

_Lear._ No.

_Kent._ Yes.

_Lear._ No, I say.

_Kent._ I say, yea.

_Lear._ No, no, they would not.

_Kent._ Yes, they have.

_Lear._ By Jupiter, I swear, no.

_Kent._ By Juno, I swear, ay.

_Lear._ They durst not do't;

They could not, would not do't; 'tis worse than murder,

To do upon respect such violent outrage.

But he has to listen to a circumstantial account of the insult, and,

further, reminded by the Fool that

Fathers that wear rags

Do make their children blind,

he comes at last to realise it all,--and then there sweeps over him a

third and more violent wave of hysterical agitation.

[56.]

O, how this mother swells up toward my heart!

Hysterica passio, down, thou climbing sorrow,

Thy element's below!

[=ii.= iv. 89.]

He has mastered the passion by a strong effort: but it is a wave, and it

will return. He has mastered himself in order to confront the culprits

face to face: his altered position is brought home to him when they

refuse to receive him. And the refusal is made the worse by the

well-meant attempt of Gloucester to palliate it, in which he

unfortunately speaks of the 'fiery quality' of the duke.

_Lear._ Vengeance! plague! death! confusion!

Fiery? what quality?

Nothing is harder than to endure what one is in the habit of inflicting

on others; it was Lear's own 'fiery quality' by which he had been

accustomed to scorch all opposition out of his way; now he has to hear

another man's 'fiery quality' quoted to him. But this outburst is only

momentary; the very extremity of the case seems to calm Lear, and he

begins himself to frame excuses for the duke, how sickness and infirmity

neglect the 'office' to which health is bound--until his eye lights

again upon his messenger sitting in the stocks, and the recollection of

this deliberate affront brings back again the wave of passion.

[122.]

O me, my heart, my rising heart! but, down!

Lear had a strange confidence in his daughter Regan. As we see the two

women in the play, Regan appears the more cold-blooded; nothing in

Goneril is more cruel than Regan's

[204.]

I pray you, father, being weak, seem so;

or her meeting Lear's 'I gave you all' with the rejoinder,

[253.]

And in good time you gave it.

But there was something in Regan's personal appearance that belied her

real character; her father says to her in this scene:

[173.]

Her eyes are fierce, but thine

Do comfort and not burn.

Judas betrayed with a kiss, and Regan persecutes her father in tears.

But Regan has scarcely entered her father's presence when the trumpet

announces the arrival of Goneril, and [185.] Lear has to see the Regan

[197.] in whom he is trusting take Goneril's hand before his eyes in

token that she is making common cause with her. When following this the

words 'indiscretion,' 'dotage,' reach his ear there is a momentary

swelling of the physical passion within:

[200.]

O sides, you are too tough;

Will you yet hold?

He has mastered it for the last time: for now his whole world seems to

be closing in around him; he has committed his all to the two daughters

standing before him, [from 233.] and they unite to beat him down, from

fifty knights to twenty-five, from twenty-five to ten, to five, until

the soft-eyed Regan asks, 'What need one?' A sense of crushing

oppression stifles his anger, and Lear begins to answer with the same

calmness with which the question had been asked:

O, reason not the need: our basest beggars

Are in the poorest thing superfluous:

Allow not nature more than nature needs,

Man's life's as cheap as beast's: thou art a lady;

If only to go warm were gorgeous,

Why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear'st,

Which scarcely keeps thee warm. But, for true need,--

He breaks off at finding himself actually pleading: and the blinding

tears come as he recognises that the kingly passion in which he had

found support at every cross has now deserted him in his extremity. He

appeals to heaven against the injustice.

You heavens, give me that patience, patience I need!

You see me here, you gods, a poor old man,

As full of grief as age; wretched in both!

If it be you that stir these daughters' hearts

Against their father, fool me not so much

To bear it tamely; touch me with noble anger,

And let not women's weapons, water-drops,

Stain my man's cheeks!

The prayer is answered; the passion returns in full flood, and at last

brings Lear face to face with the madness which has threatened from a

distance.

No, you unnatural hags,

I will have such revenges on you both,

That all the world shall--I will do such things,--

What they are, yet I know not; but they shall be

The terrors of the earth. You think I'll weep;

No, I'll not weep:

I have full cause of weeping; but this heart

Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws,

Or ere I'll weep. O fool, I SHALL go mad!

[=ii.= iv. 290. _The storm marks off the Centrepiece of the play._]

As Lear with these words rushes out into the night, we hear the first

sound of the storm--the storm which here, as in _Julius Cæsar_, will be

recognised as the dramatic background to the tempest of human emotions;

it is the signal that we have now entered upon the mysterious

Centrepiece of the play, in which the gathering passions of the whole

drama are to be allowed to vent themselves without check or bound. And

it is no ordinary storm: it is a night of bleak winds sorely ruffling,

of cataracts and hurricanoes, of curled waters swelling above the main,

of thought-executing fires and oak-cleaving thunderbolts; a night

[=iii.= i. 12, &c.]

wherein the cub-drawn bear would couch,

The lion and the belly-pinched wolf

Keep their fur dry.

And all of it is needed to harmonise with the whirlwind of human

passions which finds relief only in outscorning its fury. The purpose of

the storm is not confined to this of marking the emotional climax: it is

one of the agencies which assist in carrying it to its height. Experts

in mental disease have noted amongst the causes which convert mere

mental excitement into actual madness two leading ones, external

physical shocks and imitation. Shakespeare has made use of both in the

central scenes of this play. [=iii.= i. 3: =iii.= ii. &c.] For the

first, Lear is exposed without shelter to the pelting of the pitiless

storm, and he waxes wilder with its wildness. [=iii.= iv, from 39.]

Again when all this is at its height he is suddenly brought into contact

with a half-naked Tom o'Bedlam. This gives the final shock. So far he had

not gone beyond ungovernable rage; he had not lost self-consciousness,

and could say, 'My wits begin to turn'; [=iii.= iv. 66.] but the sight

of Edgar completely unhinges his mind, and hallucinations set in; a

moment after he has seen him the spirit of imitation begins to work, and

Lear commences to strip off his clothes. Thus perfect is the regular

arch of effect which is connected with Lear's madness. We have its

gradual rise in the waves of hysterical passion which ebbed after they

had flowed, until, at the point separating the Centrepiece from the rest

of the play, Lear's 'O fool I _shall_ go mad' seems to mark a change

from which he never goes back. Through these central scenes exposure to

the storm is fanning his passion more and more irretrievably into

madness; [=iii.= iii. 39.] at the exact centre of all, imitation of

Edgar comes to make the insanity acute. [_Decline after the Centrepiece

from violent madness to shattered intellect._] After the Centrepiece

Lear disappears for a time, and when we next see him agitation has

declined into what is more pathetic: the acute mania has given place to

the pitiful spectacle of a shattered intellect; there is no longer sharp

suffering, [=iv.= vi. 81.] but the whole mind is wrecked, gleams of

coherence coming at intervals to mark what a fall there has been;

[compare =iv.= vi. 178; =v.= iii. 314.] the strain upon our emotions

sinks into the calm of hopelessness.

He hates him much

That would upon the rack of this tough world

Stretch him out longer.

[_The passions of the underplot gather to a common Climax in the madness

of Edgar._]

But who is this madman with whom Lear meets at the turning-point of the

play? It is Edgar, the victim of the underplot, whose life has been

sought by his brother and father until he can find no way of saving

himself but the disguise of feigned madness. This feigned madness of

Edgar, as it appears in the central scenes, serves as emotional climax

to the underplot, just as the madness of Lear is the emotional climax of

the main plot. Edgar's madness is obviously the climax to the tragedy of

his own sufferings, but it is also a central point to the movement of

the other two tragedies which with that of Edgar make up the underplot.

One of these is the nemesis upon Gloucester, and this, we have seen, is

double, that he receives good from the son he has wronged and evil from

the son he has favoured. [=iii.= iv. 170.] The turning-point of such a

nemesis is reached in the Hovel Scene, where Gloucester says:

I'll tell thee, friend,

I am almost mad myself: I had a son,

Now outlaw'd from my blood; he sought my life,

But lately, very late: I loved him, friend:

No father his son dearer: truth to tell thee,

This grief hath crazed my wits!

He says this in the presence of the very Edgar, disguised under the form

of the wretched idiot he hardly marks. Edgar now learns how his father

has been deceived; [compare =iii.= iii. 15.] in his heart he is

re-united to him, and from this point of re-union springs the devotion

he lavishes upon his father in the affliction that presently falls upon

him. [=iii.= iii. 22; =iii.= vii.] On the other hand, that which brings

Gloucester to this Hovel Scene, the attempt to save the King, is

betrayed by Edmund, who becomes thereby the cause of the vengeance which

puts out his father's eyes. Thus from this meeting of the mad Edgar with

the mad Lear there springs at once the final stroke in the misery

Gloucester suffers from the son he has favoured, and the beginning of

the forgiving love he is to experience from the son he has wronged: that

meeting then is certainly the central climax to the double nemesis which

makes up the Gloucester action. The remaining tragedy of the underplot

embraces the series of incidents by the combination of which the success

of Edmund's intrigue becomes gradually converted into the nemesis which

punishes it. Now the squalid wretchedness of a Bedlamite, together with

the painful strain of supporting the assumed character amidst the

conflicting emotions which the unexpected meeting of the Hovel Scene has

aroused, represent the highest point to which the misery resulting from

the intrigue can rise. [=iv.= i, &c.] At the same time the use Edgar

makes of this madness after hearing Gloucester's confession is to fasten

himself in attendance upon his afflicted father, and proves in the

sequel the means by which he is brought to be the instrument of the

vengeance that overtakes Edmund. The central climax of a tragedy like

this of intrigue and nemesis cannot be more clearly marked than in the

incident in which are combined the summit of the injury and the

foundation of the retribution. Thus all three tragedies which together

make up the resultant of the intrigue constituting the underplot reach

their climax of agitation in the scene in which Lear and Edgar meet.

[_The Centrepiece a duet, or by the addition of the Fool, a trio of

madness.]_

It appears, then, that the Centrepiece of the play is occupied with the

contact of two madnesses, the madness of Lear and the madness of Edgar;

that of Lear gathering up into a climax trains of passion from all the

three tragedies of the main plot, and that of Edgar holding a similar

position to the three tragedies of the underplot. Further, these

madnesses do not merely go on side by side; as they meet they mutually

affect one another, and throw up each other's intensity. By the mere

sight of the Bedlamite, Lear, already tottering upon the verge of

insanity, is driven really and incurably mad; while in the case of

Edgar, the meeting with Lear, and through Lear with Gloucester, converts

the burden of feigning idiocy from a cruel stroke of unjust fate into a

hardship voluntarily undergone for the sake of ministering to a father

now forgiven and pitied. And so far as the general effect of the play is

concerned this central Climax presents a terrible _duet of madness_, the

wild ravings and mutual interworkings of two distinct strains of

insanity, each answering and outbidding the other. The distinctness is

the greater as the two are different in kind. In Lear we have the

madness of passion, exaggeration of ordinary emotions; Edgar's is the

madness of idiocy, as idiocy was in early ages when the cruel neglect of

society added physical hardship to mental affliction. In Edgar's frenzy

we trace rapid irrelevance with gleams of unexpected relevance, just

sufficient to partly answer a question and go off again into wandering;

a sense of ill-treatment and of being an outcast; remorse and thoughts

as to close connection of sin and retribution; visions of fiends as in

bodily presence; cold, hunger: these alternating with mere gibberish,

and all perhaps within the compass of a few lines.

[=iii.= iv. 51.]

Who gives anything to poor Tom? whom the foul fiend hath led through

fire and through flame, and through ford and whirlipool, o'er bog

and quagmire; that hath laid knives under his pillow, and halters in

his pew; set ratsbane by his porridge; made him proud of heart, to

ride on a bay trotting-horse over four-inched bridges, to course his

own shadow for a traitor. Bless thy five wits! Tom's a-cold,--O, do

de, do de, do de. Bless thee from whirlwinds, star-blasting, and

taking! Do poor Tom some charity, whom the foul fiend vexes: there

could I have him now,--and there,--and there again, and there.

But this is not all. When examined more closely this Centrepiece

exhibits not a duet but a _trio of madness_; with the other two there

mingles a third form of what may be called madness, the professional

madness of the court fool. [_Institution of the court fool._] This court

fool or jester is an institution of considerable interest. It seems to

rest upon three mediæval and ancient notions. The first is the barbarism

of enjoying personal defects, illustrated in the large number of Roman

names derived from bodily infirmities, Varus the bandy-legged, Balbus

the stammerer, and the like; this led our ancestors to find fun in the

incoherence of natural idiocy, and finally made the imitation of it a

profession. A second notion underlying the institution of a jester is

the connection to the ancient mind between madness and inspiration; the

same Greek word _entheos_ stands for both, and to this day the idiot of

a Scotch village is believed in some way to see further than sane folk.

A third idea to be kept in mind is the mediæval conception of wit. With

us wit is weighed by its intrinsic worth; the old idea, appearing

repeatedly in Shakespeare's scenes, was that wit was a mental game, a

sort of battledore and shuttlecock, in which the jokes themselves might

be indifferent since the point of the game lay in keeping it up as

smartly and as long as possible. The fool, whose title and motley dress

suggested the absence of ordinary sense or propriety, combines in his

office all three notions: from the last he was bound to keep up the fire

of badinage, even though it were with witless nonsense; from the second

he was expected at times to give utterance to deep truths; and in virtue

of the first he had license to make hard hits under protection of the

'folly' which all were supposed to enjoy.

He that hath a fool doth very wisely hit,

Doth very foolishly, although he smart,

Not to seem senseless of the bob.

[_The institution adapted to modern times in Punch._]

The institution, if it has died out as a personal office attached to

kings or nobles, has perhaps been preserved by the nation as a whole in

a form analogous to other modern institutions: the all-embracing

newspaper has absorbed this element of life, and Mr. Punch is the

national jester. His figure and face are an improvement on the old

motley habit; his fixed number of pages have to be filled, if not always

with wit, yet with passable padding: no one dare other than enjoy the

compliment of his notice, under penalty of showing that 'the cap has

fitted'; and certainly Mr. Punch finds ways of conveying to statesmen

criticisms to which the proprieties of parliament would be impervious.

The institution of the court fool is eagerly utilised by Shakespeare,

and is the source of some of his finest effects: he treats it as a sort

of chronic Comedy, the function of which may be described as that of

translating deep truths of human nature into the language of laughter.

In applying, then, this general view of the court fool to the present

case we must avoid two opposite errors. We must not pass over all his

utterances as unmeaning folly, nor, on the other hand, must we insist

upon seeing a meaning in everything that he says: what truth he speaks

must be expected to make its appearance amidst a cloud of nonsense.

[_The function of the Fool in Lear is to keep before us the original

problem:_] Making this proviso we may lay down that the function of the

Fool in _King Lear_ is to keep vividly before the minds of the audience

(as well as of his master) the idea at the root of the main plot--that

unstable moral equilibrium, that unnatural distribution of power which

Lear has set up, and of which the whole tragedy is the rebound. [=i.=

iv.] In the first scene in which he appears before us he is, amid all

his nonsense, harping upon the idea that Lear has committed the folly of

trusting to the gratitude of the ungrateful, and is reaping the

inevitable consequences. As he enters he hands his coxcomb, the symbol

of folly, to the King, and to Kent for taking the King's part. His first

jingling song,

Have more than thou showest,

Speak less than thou knowest,

Lend less than thou owest, &c.,

is an expansion of the maxim, Trust nobody. And however irrelevant he

becomes, he can in a moment get back to this root idea. They tell him

his song is nothing:

_Fool._ Then 'tis like the breath of an unfee'd lawyer; you gave me

nothing for 't. Can you make no use of nothing, nuncle?

_Lear._ Why, no, boy; nothing can be made out of nothing.

_Fool_ [_to Kent_]. Prithee, tell him, so much the rent of his land

comes to: he will not believe a fool.

[=i.= i. 92.]

'Nothing will come of nothing' had been the words Lear had used to

Cordelia; now he is bidden to see how they have become the exact

description of his own fortune. No wonder Lear exclaims, 'A bitter

fool!'

_Fool._ Dost thou know the difference, my boy, between a bitter fool

and a sweet one?

_Lear._ No, lad; teach me.

_Fool._ That lord that counsell'd thee

To give away thy land,

Come place him here by me,

Do thou for him stand:

The sweet and bitter fool

Will presently appear;

The one in motley here.

The other found out there.

_Lear._ Dost thou call me fool, boy?

_Fool._ All thy other titles thou hast given away; that thou wast

born with.

Again and again he turns to other topics and comes suddenly back to the

main thought.

[=i.= iv. 195.]

_Fool._ Prithee, nuncle, keep a schoolmaster that can teach thy fool

to lie: I would fain learn to lie.

_Lear._ An you lie, sirrah, we'll have you whipped.

_Fool._ I marvel what kin thou and thy daughters are: they'll have

me whipped for speaking true, thou'lt have me whipped for lying; and

sometimes I am whipped for holding my peace. I had rather be any

kind o' thing than a fool: and yet I would not be thee, nuncle; thou

hast pared thy wit o' both sides, and left nothing i' the middle:

here comes one o' the parings.

[=i.= iv. 207.]

It is Goneril who enters, and who proceeds to state her case in the tone

of injury, detailing how the order of her household state has been

outraged, but ignoring the source from which she has received the power

to keep up state at all: what she has omitted the Fool supplies in

parable, as if continuing her sentence--

For, you trow, nuncle,

The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long,

That it's had it head bit off by it young,

and then instantly involves himself in a cloud of irrelevance,

So, out went the candle, and we were left darkling.

[=i.= v.]

In the scene which follows, the Fool is performing a variation on the

same theme: the sudden removal from one sister to the other is no real

escape from the original foolish situation.

[=i.= v. 8.]

_Fool._ If a man's brains were in 's heels, were 't not in danger of

kibes?

_Lear._ Ay, boy.

_Fool._ Then, I prithee, be merry; thy wit shall ne'er go slip-shod.

To say that Lear is in no danger of suffering from brains in his heels

is another way of saying that his flight is folly. He goes on to insist

that the other daughter will treat her father 'kindly,' that 'she's as

like this as a crab's like an apple.' His laying down that the reason

why the nose is in the middle of the face is to keep the eyes on either

side of the nose, and that the reason why the seven stars are no more

than seven is 'a pretty reason--because they are not eight,' suggests

(if it be not pressing it too far) that we must not look for depth where

there is only shallowness--the mistake Lear has made in trusting to the

gratitude of his daughters. And the general thought of Lear's original

folly he brings out, true to the fool's office, from the most unlikely

beginnings.

[=i.= v. 26.]

_Fool._ Canst tell how an oyster makes his shell?

_Lear._ No.

'Nor I neither,' answers the Fool, with a clown's impudence; 'but,' he

adds, 'I can tell why a snail has a house.'

_Lear._ Why?

_Fool._ Why, to put his head in; not to give it away to his

daughters.

[=ii.= iv. 1-128.]

All through the scene in front of the stocks the Fool is harping on the

folly of expecting gratitude from such as Goneril and Regan. It is

fathers who bear bags that see their children kind; the wise man lets go

his hold on a great wheel running down hill, but lets himself be drawn

after by the great wheel that goes up the hill; he himself, the Fool

hints, is a fool for staying with Lear; to cry out at Goneril and

Regan's behaviour is as unreasonable as for the cook to be impatient

with the eels for wriggling; to have trusted the two daughters with

power at all was like the folly of the man that, 'in pure kindness to

his horse, buttered his hay.'

The one idea, then, stationary amidst all the Fool's gyrations of folly

is the idea of Lear's original sin of passion, from the consequences of

which he can never escape; [_but in an emotional form as adapted to the

agitation of the Centrepiece._] only the idea is put, not rationally,

but translated into an emotional form which makes it fit to mingle with

the agitation of the central scenes. The emotional form consists partly

in the irrelevance amid which the idea is brought out, producing

continual shocks of surprise. But more than this an emotional form is

given to the utterances of the Fool by his very position with reference

to Lear. [=iii.= i. 16; =iii.= ii. 10, 25, 68; =iii.= iv. 80, 150.]

There is a pathos that mingles with his humour, where the Fool, a tender

and delicate youth, is found the only attendant who clings to Lear amid

the rigour of the storm, labouring with visibly decreasing vigour to

out-jest his master's heart-struck injuries, and to keep up holiday

abandon amidst surrounding realities. [=i.= iv. 107; =iii.= ii. 68, 72,

&c.] Throughout he is Lear's best friend, and epithets of endearment are

continually passing between them: he has been Cordelia's friend (as

Touchstone was the friend of Rosalind), [=i.= iv. 79.] and pined for

Cordelia after her banishment. Nevertheless he is the only one who can

deliver hard thrusts at Lear, and bring home to him, under protection of

his double relation to wisdom and folly, Lear's original error and sin.

So faithful and so severe, the Fool becomes an outward conscience to his

master: he keeps before Lear the unnatural act from which the whole

tragedy springs, but he converts the thought of it into the emotion of

self-reproach.

[_Summary._]

Our total result then is this. The intricate drama of _King Lear_ has a

general movement which centres the passion of the play in a single

Climax. Throughout a Centrepiece of a few scenes, against a background

of storm and tempest is thrown up a tempest of human passion--a madness

trio, or mutual play of three sorts of madness, the real madness of

passion in Lear, the feigned madness of idiocy in Edgar, and the

professional madness of the court fool. When the elements of this

madness trio are analysed, the first is found to gather up into itself

the passion of the three tragedies which form the main plot; the second

is a similar climax to the passion of the three tragedies which make up

the underplot; the third is an expression, in the form of passion, of

the original problem out of which the whole action has sprung. Thus

intricacy of plot has been found not inconsistent with simplicity of

movement, and from the various parts of the drama the complex trains of

passion have been brought to a focus in the centre.

PART SECOND.

SURVEY OF DRAMATIC CRITICISM AS AN INDUCTIVE SCIENCE.

XI.

TOPICS OF DRAMATIC CRITICISM.

[_Purpose: to survey Dramatic Criticism as an inductive science._]

IN the Introduction to this book I pleaded that a regular inductive

science of literary criticism was a possibility. In the preceding ten

chapters I have endeavoured to exhibit such a regular method at work on

the dramatic analysis of leading points in Shakespeare's plays. The

design of the whole work will not be complete without an attempt to

present our results in complete form, in fact to map out a Science of

Dramatic Art. I hope this may not seem too pretentious an undertaking in

the case of a science yet in its infancy; while it may be useful at all

events to the young student to have suggested to him a methodical

treatment with which he may exercise himself on the literature he

studies. Moreover the reproach against literary criticism is, not that

there has not been plenty of inductive work done in this department, but

that the assertion of its inductive character has been lacking; and I

believe a critic does good service by throwing his results into a formal

shape, however imperfectly he may be able to accomplish his task. It

will be understood that the survey of Dramatic Science is here attempted

only in the merest outline: it is a glimpse, not a view, of a new

science that is proposed. Not even a survey would be possible within the

limits of a few short chapters except by confining the matter introduced

to that previously laid before the reader in a different form. The

leading features of Dramatic Art have already been explained in the

application of them to particular plays: they are now included in a

single view, so arranged that their mutual connection may be seen to be

building up this singleness of view. Such a survey, like a microscopic

lens of low power, must sacrifice detail to secure a wider field. Its

compensating gain will consist in what it can contribute to the orderly

product of methodised enquiry which is the essence of science, and the

interest in which becomes associated with the interest of curiosity when

the method has been applied in a region not usually acknowledging its

reign.

[_Definition of Dramatic Criticism:_]

The starting-point in the exposition of any science is naturally its

definition. But this first step is sufficient to divide inductive

criticism from the treatment of literature mostly in vogue. I have

already protested against the criticism which starts with the assumption

of some 'object' or 'fundamental purpose' in the Drama from which to

deduce binding canons. Such an all-embracing definition, if it is

possible at all, will come as the final, not the first, step of

investigation. [_as to its field and its method._] Inductive criticism,

on the contrary, will seek its point of departure from outside. On the

one hand it will consider the relation of the matter which it proposes

to treat to other matter which is the subject of scientific enquiry; on

the other hand it will fix the nature of the treatment it proposes to

apply by a reference to scientific method in general. That is to say,

its definition will be based upon differentiation of matter and

development in method.

[_Stages of development in inductive method._]

To begin with the latter. There are three well-marked stages in the

development of sciences. The first consists in the mere observation of

the subject-matter. The second is distinguished by arrangement of

observations, by analysis and classification. The third stage reaches

systematisation--the wider arrangement which satisfies our sense of

explanation, that curiosity as to causes which is the instinct specially

developed by scientific enquiry. Astronomy remained for long ages in the

first stage, while it was occupied with the observation of the heavenly

bodies and the naming of the constellations. It would pass into the

second stage with division of labour and the study of solar, lunar,

planetary, and cometary phenomena separately. But by such discoveries as

that of the laws of motion, or of gravitation, the great mass of

astronomical knowledge was bound together in a system which at the same

time satisfied the sense of causation, and astronomy was fully developed

as an inductive science. Or to take a more modern instance: comparative

philology has attained completeness in our own day. Philology was in its

first stage at the Renaissance, when 'learning' meant the mere

accumulation of detailed knowledge connected with the Classical

languages; Grimm's Law may illustrate the second stage, a classification

comprehensive but purely empiric; the principle of phonetic decay with

its allied recuperative processes has struck a unity through the laws of

philology which stamps it as a full-grown science. [_Dramatic Criticism

in the intermediate_] Applying this to our present subject, I do not

pretend that Literary Criticism has reached the third of these three

stages: but materials are ready for giving it a secure place in the

second stage. In time, no doubt, literary science must be able to

explain the modus operandi of literary production, and show how

different classes of writing come to produce their different effects.

But at present such explanation belongs mostly to the region of

speculation; and before the science of criticism is ripe for this final

stage much work has to be done in the way of methodising observation as

to literary matter and form.

Dramatic Criticism, then, is still in the stage of provisional

arrangement. [_or 'topical' stage._] Its exact position is expressed by

the technical term 'topical.' Where accumulation of observations is

great enough to necessitate methodical arrangement, yet progress is

insufficient to suggest final bases of arrangement which will

crystallise the whole into a system, science takes refuge in 'topics.'

These have been aptly described as intellectual pigeon-holes--convenient

headings under which materials may be digested, with strict adherence to

method, yet only as a provisional arrangement until further progress

shall bring more stable organisation. This topical treatment may seem an

unambitious stage in scientific advance, the goal and reward of which is

insight into wide laws and far-reaching systematisations. Still it is a

stage directly in the line of sound method: and the judicious choice of

main and subordinate topics is systematisation in embryo. The present

enquiry looks no further than this stage in its analysis of Dramatic

Art. It endeavours to find convenient headings under which to set forth

its observations of Shakespeare's plays. It also seeks an arrangement of

these topics that will at once cover the field of the subject, and also

carry on the face of it such an economy of mutual connection as may make

the topics, what they ought to be, a natural bridge between the general

idea which the mind forms of Drama and the realisation of this idea in

the details of actual dramatic works.

[_Continuous differentiation of scientific subject-matter._]

But the definition of our subject involves further that we should

measure out the exact field within which this method is to be applied.

Science, like every other product of the human mind, marks its progress

by continuous differentiation: the perpetual subdivision of the field of

enquiry, the rise of separate and ever minuter departments as time goes

on. Originally all knowledge was one and undivided. The name of Socrates

is connected with a great revolution which separated moral science from

physics, the study of man from the study of nature. With Aristotle and

inductive method the process became rapid: and under his guidance

ethics, as the science of conduct, became distinct from mental science;

and still further, political science, treating man in his relations with

the state, was distinguished from the more general science of conduct.

When thought awoke at the Renaissance after the sleep of the Dark Ages,

political science threw off as a distinct branch political economy; and

by our own day particular branches of economy, finance, for example,

have practically become independent sciences. This characteristic of

science in general, the perpetual tendency to separate more confined

from more general lines of investigation, will apply in an especial

degree to literature, [_Dramatic Criticism branches off on the one side

from the wider Literary Criticism._] which covers so wide an area of the

mind and is the meeting-ground of so many separate interests. Thus

Shakespeare is a poet, and his works afford a field for considering

poetry in general, both as a mode of thought and a mode of expression.

Again, no writer could go so deeply into human nature as Shakespeare has

done without betraying his philosophy and moral system. Once more,

Shakespeare must afford a specimen of literary tendencies in general,

and that particular modification of them we call Elizabethan; besides

that the language which is the vehicle of this literature has an

interest of its own over and above that of the thought which it conveys.

All this and more belongs properly to 'Shakespeare-Criticism': but from

Literary Criticism as a whole a branch is being gradually

differentiated, Dramatic Criticism, and its province is to deal with the

question, how much of the total effect of Shakespeare's works arises

from the fact of his ideas being conveyed to us in the form of dramas,

and not of lyric or epic poems, of essays or moral and philosophical

treatises. It is with this branch alone that the present enquiry is

concerned.

[_On the other side from the allied art of Stage-Representation._]

But more than this goes to the definition of Dramatic Criticism. Drama

is not, like Epic, merely a branch of literature: it is a compound art.

The literary works which in ordinary speech we call dramas, are in

strictness only potential dramas waiting for their realisation on the

stage. And this stage-representation is not a mere accessory of

literature, but is an independent art, having a field where literature

has no place, in dumb show, in pantomime, in mimicry, and in the lost

art of Greek 'dancing.'

The question arises then, what is to be the relation of Dramatic

Criticism to the companion art of Stage-Representation? Aristotle, the

father of Dramatic Criticism, made Stage-Representation one of the

departments of the science; but we shall be only following the law of

differentiation if we separate the two. This is especially appropriate

in the case of the Shakespearean Drama. The Puritan Revolution, which

has played such a part in its history, was in effect an attack rather on

the Theatre than on the Drama itself. No doubt when the movement became

violent the two were not discriminated, and the Drama was made a

'vanity' as well as the Stage. Still the one interest was never so

thoroughly dropped by the nation and was more readily taken up again

than the other; so that from the point of view of the Stage our

continuity with the Elizabethan age has been severed, from the point of

view of the literary Drama it has not. The Shakespearean Drama has made

a field for itself as a branch of literature quite apart from the Stage;

and, however we may regret the severance and look forward to a completer

appreciation of Shakespeare, yet it can hardly be doubted that at the

present moment as earnest and comprehensive an interest in our great

dramatist is to be found in the study as in the theatre.

Dramatic Criticism, then, is to be separated, on the one side, from the

wider Literary Criticism which must include a review of language,

ethics, philosophy, and general art; and, on the other hand, from the

companion art of Stage-Representation. But here caution is required; for

all these are so closely and so organically connected with the Drama

that there cannot but exist a mutual reaction. [_Topics common to Drama

and art in general._] Thus we have already had to treat of topics which

belong to the Drama only as a part of literature and art in general. In

the first chapter we had occasion to notice how even the raw material

out of which the Shakespearean Drama is constructed itself forms another

species in literature. When we proceeded to watch the process of working

up this Story into dramatic form we were led on to what was common

ground between Drama and the other arts. In such process we saw

illustrated the 'hedging,' or double process which leaves monstrosity

to produce its full impression and yet provides by special means against

any natural reaction; the reduction of improbabilities, by which

difficulties in the subject-matter are evaded or met; the utilisation of

mechanical details to assist more important effects; the multiplication

and interweaving of different interests by which each is made to assist

the rest. Such points of Mechanical Construction, together with the

general principles of balance and symmetry, are not special to any one

branch of art: in all alike the artist will contrive not wholly to

conceal his processes, but by occasional glimpses will add to higher

effects the satisfaction of our sense of neat workmanship.

[_Drama and its Representation separate in exposition, not in idea._]

Similarly, it may be convenient to make Literary Drama and

Stage-Representation separate branches of enquiry: it is totally

inadmissible and highly misleading to divorce the two in idea. The

literary play must be throughout read _relatively_ to its

representation. In actual practice the separation of the two has

produced the greatest obstacles in the way of sound appreciation.

Amongst ordinary readers of Shakespeare Character-Interest, which is

largely independent of performance, has swallowed up all other

interests; and most of the effects which depend upon the connection and

relative force of incidents, and on the compression of the details into

a given space, have been completely lost. Shakespeare is popularly

regarded as supreme in the painting of human nature, but careless in the

construction of Plot: and, worst of all, Plot itself, which it has been

the mission of the English Drama to elevate into the position of the

most intellectual of all elements in literary effect, has become

degraded in conception to the level of a mere juggler's mystery. It must

then be laid down distinctly at the outset of the present enquiry that

the Drama is to be considered throughout relatively to its acting. Much

of dramatic effect that is special to Stage-Representation will be here

ignored: the whole mechanism of elocution, effects of light, colour and

costume, the greater portion of what constitutes _mise-en-scène_. But in

dealing with any play the fullest scope is assumed for ideal acting. The

interpretation of a character must include what an actor can put into

it; in dealing with effects regard must be had to surroundings which a

reader might easily overlook, but which would be present to the eye of a

spectator; and no conception of the movement of a drama will be adequate

which has not appreciated the rapid sequence of incidents that crowds

the crisis of a life-time or a national revolution into two or three

hours of actual time. The relation of Drama to its acting will be

exactly similar to that of music to its performance, the two being

perfectly separable in their exposition, but never disunited in idea.

[_Fundamental division of Dramatic Criticism into Human Interest and

Action._]

Dramatic Art, then, as thus defined, is to be the field of our enquiry,

and its method is to be the discovery and arrangement of topics. For a

fundamental basis of such analysis we shall naturally look to the other

arts. Now all the arts agree in being the union of two elements,

abstract and concrete. Music takes sensuous sounds, and adds a purely

abstract element by disposing these sounds in harmonies and melodies;

architecture applies abstract design to a concrete medium of stone and

wood; painting gives us objects of real life arranged in abstract

groupings: in dancing we have moving figures confined in artistic bonds

of rhythm; sculpture traces in still figures ideas of shape and

attitude. So Drama has its two elements of Human Interest and Action: on

the one hand life _presented in action_--so the word 'Drama' may be

translated; on the other hand the _action_ itself, that is, the

concurrence of all that is presented in an abstract unity of design. The

two fundamental divisions of dramatic interest, and consequently the two

fundamental divisions of Dramatic Criticism, will thus be Human Interest

and Action. But each of these has its different sides, the distinction

of which is essential before we can arrive at an arrangement of topics

that will be of practical value in the methodisation of criticism.

[_Twofold division of Human Interest._] The interest of the life

presented is twofold. There is our interest in the separate personages

who enter into it, as so many varieties of the _genus homo_: this is

Interest of _Character_. There is again our interest in the experience

these personages are made to undergo, their conduct and fate:

technically, Interest of _Passion_.

Human Interest { Character.

{ Passion.

[_Threefold division of Action._]

It is the same with the other fundamental element of art, the working

together of all the details so as to leave an impression of unity: while

in practice the sense of this unity, say in a piece of music or a play,

is one of the simplest of instincts, yet upon analysis it is seen to

imply three separate mental impressions. The mind, it implies, must be

conscious of a unity. It must also be conscious of a complexity of

details without which the unity could not be perceptible. But the mere

perception of unity and of complexity would give no art-pleasure unless

the unity were seen to be _developed_ out of the complexity, and this

brings in a third idea of progress and gradual _Movement_.

{ Unity.

Action { Complexity.

{ Development or Movement.

[_Application of the threefold division of Action to the twofold

division of Human Interest._]

Now if we apply the threefold idea involved in Action to the twofold

idea involved in Human Interest we shall get the natural divisions of

dramatic analysis. One element of Human Interest was Character: looking

at this in the threefold aspect which is given to it when it is

connected with Action we shall have to notice the interest of single

characters, or _Character-Interpretation_, the more complex interest of

_Character-Contrast_, and in the third place _Character-Development_.

Applying a similar treatment to the other side of Human Interest,

Passion, we shall review single elements of Passion, that is to say,

_Incidents and Effects_; the mixture of various passions to express which

the term _Passion-Tones_ will be used; and again _Passion-Movement_. But

Action has an interest of its own, considered in the abstract and as

separate from Human Interest. This is _Plot_; and it will lend itself to

the same triple treatment, falling into the natural divisions of _Single

Action_, _Complex Action_, and that development of Plot which

constitutes dramatic _Movement_ in the most important sense. At this

point it is possible only to name these leading topics of Dramatic

Criticism: to explain each, and to trace them further into their lesser

ramifications will be the work of the remaining three chapters.

[_Elementary Topics of Dramatic Criticism._]

+--Single Character-Interest, or

| _Character-Interpretation_.

+--Character +--Complex Character-Interest, or

| | _Character-Contrast_.

| +--_Character-Development._

|

| +--Single Passion-Interest, or

The Literary | | _Incident and Effect_.

Drama +--Passion +--Complex Passion-Interest, or

| | _Passion-Tone_.

| +--_Passion-Movement._

|

| +--_Single Action._

+--Plot (or Pure +--_Complex Action._

Action) +--_Plot-Movement._

XII.

Interest of Character.

[_Unity applied to Character: Character Interpretation._]

OF the main divisions of dramatic interest Character stands first for

consideration: and we are to view it under the three aspects of unity,

complexity, and movement. The application of the idea unity to the idea

character suggests at once our interest in single personages. This

interest becomes more defined when we take into account the medium

through which the personages are presented to us: characters in Drama

are not brought out by abstract discussion or description, but are

presented to us concretely, self-pourtrayed by their own actions without

the assistance of comments from the author.

Accordingly, the leading interest of character is _Interpretation_, the

mental process of turning from the concrete to the abstract: from the

most diverse details of conduct and impression Interpretation extracts a

unity of conception which we call a character. [_Interpretation of the

nature of an hypothesis._] Interpretation when scientifically handled

must be, we have seen, of the nature of an hypothesis, the value of

which depends upon the degree in which it explains whatever details have

any bearing upon the character. Such an hypothesis may be a simple idea:

and we have seen at length how the whole portraiture of Richard

precipitates into the notion of Ideal Villainy, ideal on the subjective

side in an artist who follows crime for its own sake, and on the

objective side in a success that works by fascination. But the student

must beware of the temptation to grasp at epigrammatic labels as

sufficient solutions of character; in the great majority of cases

Interpretation can become complete only by recognising and harmonising

various and even conflicting elements.

[_Canons of Interpretation._]

Incidentally we have noticed some of the principles governing careful

Interpretation. [_It must be Exhaustive._] One of these principles is

that it must take into consideration all that is presented of a

personage. It is unscientific on the face of it to say (as is repeatedly

said) that Shakespeare is 'inconsistent' in ascribing deep musical

sympathies to so thin a character as Lorenzo. Such allegation of

inconsistency means that the process of Interpretation is unfinished; it

can be paralleled only by the astronomer who should complain of eclipses

as 'inconsistent' with his view of the moon's movements. In the

particular case we found no difficulty in harmonising the apparent

conflict: the details of Lorenzo's portraiture fit in well with the not

uncommon type of nature that is so deeply touched by art sensibilities

as to have a languid interest in life outside art. [_It must take in

indirect evidence;_] Again: Interpretation must look for _indirect_

evidence of character, such as the impression a personage seems to have

made on other personages in the story, or the effect of action outside

the field of view. It is impatient induction to pronounce Bassanio

unworthy of Portia merely from comparison of the parts played by the two

in the drama itself. It happens from the nature of the story that the

incidents actually represented in the drama are such as always display

Bassanio in an exceptional and dependent position; but we have an

opportunity of getting to the other side of our hero's character by

observing the attitude held to him by others in the play, an attitude

founded not on the incidents of the drama alone, but upon the sum total

of his life and behaviour in the Venetian world. This gives a very

different impression; and when we take into consideration the force with

which his personality sways all who approach him, from the strong

Antonio and the intellectual Lorenzo to giddy Gratiano and the rough

common sense of Launcelot, then the character comes out in its proper

scale. [_and the degree to which the character is displayed._] As a

third principle, it is perhaps too obvious to be worth formulating that

Interpretation must allow for the degree to which the character is

displayed by the action: that Brutus's frigid eloquence at the funeral

of Cæsar means not coldness of feeling but stoicism of public demeanour.

[_Interpretation reacting on the details._] It is a less obvious

principle that the very details which are to be unified into a

conception of character may have a different complexion given to them

when they are looked at in the light of the whole. It has been noticed

how Richard seems to manifest in some scenes a slovenliness of intrigue

that might be a stumbling-block to the general impression of his

character. But when in our view of him as a whole we see what a large

part is played by the invincibility that is stamped on his very

demeanour, it becomes clear how this slovenliness can be interpreted by

the analyst, and represented by the actor, not as a defect of power, but

as a trick of bearing which measures his own sense of his

irresistibility. Principles like these flow naturally from the

fundamental idea of character and its unity. Their practical use however

will be mainly that of tests for suggested interpretations: to the

actual reading of character in Drama, as in real life, the safest guide

is sympathetic insight.

[_Complexity applied to Character._]

The second element underlying all dramatic effect was complexity; when

complexity is applied to Character we get Character-Contrast.

[_Character-Foils._] In its lowest degree this appears in the form of

_Character-Foils_: by the side of some prominent character is placed

another of less force and interest but cast in the same mould, or

perhaps moulded by the influence of its principal, just as by the side

of a lofty mountain are often to be seen smaller hills of the same

formation. Thus beside Portia is placed Nerissa, beside Bassanio

Gratiano, beside Shylock Tubal; Richard's villainy stands out by

comparison with Buckingham, Hastings, Tyrrel, Catesby, any one of whom

would have given blackness enough to an ordinary drama. It is quite

possible that minute examination may find differences between such

companion figures: but the general effect of the combination is that the

lesser serves as foil to throw up the scale on which the other is

framed. The more pronounced effects of Character-Contrast depend upon

differences of kind as distinguished from differences of degree.

[_Character-Contrast._] In this form it is clear how _Character-Contrast_

is only an extension of Character-Interpretation: it implies that some

single conception explains, that is, gives unity to, the actions of more

than one person. A whole chapter has been devoted to bringing out such

contrast in the case of Lord and Lady Macbeth: to accept these as types

of the practical and inner life, cast in such an age and involved in

such an undertaking, furnishes a conception sufficient to make clear and

intelligible all that the two say and do in the scenes of the drama.

[_Duplication._] Character-Contrast is especially common amongst the

minor effects in a Shakespearean drama. In the case of personages

demanded by the necessities of the story rather than introduced for

their own sake Shakespeare has a tendency to double the number of such

personages for the sake of getting effects of contrast. We have two

unsuccessful suitors in _The Merchant of Venice_ bringing out, the one

the unconscious pride of royal birth, the other the pride of intense

self-consciousness; two wicked daughters of Lear, Goneril with no

shading in her harshness, Regan who is in reality a degree more

calculating in her cruelty than her sister, but conceals it under a

charm of manner, 'eyes that comfort and not burn.' [=iii.= i.] Of the

two princes in _Richard III_ the one has a gravity beyond his years,

while York overflows with not ungraceful pertness. Especially

interesting are the two murderers in that play. [=i.= iv, from 84.] The

first is a dull, 'strong-framed' man, without any better nature. The

second has had culture, and been accustomed to reflect; his better

nature has been vanquished by love of greed, and now asserts itself to

prevent his sinning with equanimity. [110.] It is the second murderer

whose conscience is set in activity by the word 'judgment'; and he

discourses on conscience, deeply, [124-157.] yet not without humour, as

he recognises the power of the expected reward over the oft-vanquished

compunctions. [167.] He catches, as a thoughtful man, the irony of the

duke's cry for wine when they are about to drown him in the butt of

malmsey. [165.] Again, instead of hurrying to the deed while Clarence is

waking he cannot resist the temptation to argue with him, and so, as a

man open to argument, [263.] he feels the force of Clarence's unexpected

suggestion:

He that set you on

To do this deed will hate you for the deed.

Thus he exhibits the weakness of all thinking men in a moment of action,

the capacity to see two sides of a question; and, trying at the critical

moment to alter his course, [284.] he ends by losing the reward of crime

without escaping the guilt.

[_Character-Grouping._]

Character-Contrast is carried forward into _Character-Grouping_ when the

field is still further enlarged, and a single conception is found to

give unity to more than two personages of a drama. A chapter has been

devoted to showing how the same antithesis of outer and inner life which

made the conception of Macbeth and his wife intelligible would serve,

when adapted to the widely different world of Roman political life, to

explain the characters of the leading conspirators in _Julius Cæsar_, of

their victim and of his avenger: while, over and above the satisfaction

of Interpretation, the Grouping of these four figures, so colossal and

so impressive, round a single idea is an interest in itself. [_Dramatic

Colouring._] The effect is carried a stage further still when some

single phase of human interest tends, in a greater or less degree, to

give a common feature to all the personages of a play; the whole

dramatic field is _coloured_ by some idea, though of course the

interpretative significance of such an idea is weakened in proportion to

the area over which it is distributed. The five plays to which our

attention is confined do not afford the best examples of Dramatic

Colouring. It is a point, however, of common remark how the play of

_Macbeth_ is coloured by the superstition and violence of the Dark Ages.

The world of this drama seems given over to powers of darkness who can

read, if not mould, destiny; witchcraft appears as an instrument of

crime and ghostly agency of punishment. We have rebellion without any

suggestion of cause to ennoble it, terminated by executions without the

pomp of justice; we have a long reign of terror in which massacre is a

measure of daily administration and murder is a profession. With all

this there is a total absence of relief in any picture of settled life:

there is no rallying-point for order and purity. The very agent of

retribution gets the impulse to his task in a reaction from a shock of

bereavement that has come down upon him as a natural punishment for an

act of indecisive folly.

[compare =iv.= iii. 26; =iv.= ii. 1-22.]

There are, then, three different effects that arise when complexity

enters into Character-Interest. The complexity is one never separable

from the unity which binds it together: in the first effect the

diversity is stronger than the unity, and the whole manifests itself as

Character-Contrast; in Character-Grouping the contrast of the separate

figures is an equal element with the unity which binds them all into a

group; in the third case the diversity is lost in the unity, and a

uniformity of colouring is seized by the dramatic sense as an effect

apart from the individual varieties without which such colouring would

not be remarkable.

[_Movement applied to Character: Character-Development._]

When to Character-Interpretation, the formation of a single conception

out of a multitude of concrete details, the further idea of growth and

progress is added, we get the third variety of Character-Interest--

_Character-Development_. In the preceding chapters this has received

only negative notice, its absence being a salient feature in the

portraiture of Richard. For a positive illustration no better example

could be desired than the character of Macbeth. Three features, we have

seen, stand out clear in the general conception of Macbeth. There is his

eminently practical nature, which is the key to the whole. And the

absence in him of the inner life adds two special features: one is his

helplessness under suspense, the other is the activity of his

imagination with its susceptibility to supernatural terrors. Now, if we

fix our attention on these three points they become three threads of

development as we trace Macbeth through the stages of his career. His

practical power developes as capacity for crime. Macbeth undertook his

first crime only after a protracted and terrible struggle; the murder of

the grooms was a crime of impulse; the murder of Banquo appears a thing

of contrivance, in which Macbeth is a deliberate planner directing the

agency of others, [=iii.= ii. 40, &c.] while his dark hints to his wife

suggest the beginning of a relish for such deeds. This capacity for

crime continues to grow, until slaughter becomes an end in itself:

[=iv.= iii. 4.]

Each new morn

New widows howl, new orphans cry:

and then a mania:

[=v.= ii. 13.]

Some say he's mad; others that lesser hate him

Do call it valiant fury.

We see a parallel development in Macbeth's impatience of suspense. Just

after his first temptation he is able to brace himself to suspense for

an indefinite period:

[=i.= iii. 143.]

If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me,

Without my stir.

[=i.= vii.]

On the eve of his great crime the suspense of the few hours that must

intervene before the banquet can be despatched and Duncan can retire

becomes intolerable to Macbeth, and he is for abandoning the treason.

In the next stage it is the suspense of a single moment that impels him

to stab the grooms. From this point suspense no longer comes by fits and

starts, but is a settled disease: [=iii.= ii. 13, 36, &c.] his mind is

as scorpions; it is tortured in restless ecstasy. Suspense has

undermined his judgment and brought on him the gambler's fever--the

haunting thought that just one more venture will make him safe; in spite

of the opposition of his reason--[=iii.= ii. 45.] which his

unwillingness to confide the murder of Banquo to his wife betrays--he is

carried on to work the additional crime which unmasks the rest. And

finally suspense intensifies to a panic, and he himself feels that his

deeds--

[=iii.= iv. 140.]

must be acted ere they may be scann'd.

The third feature in Macbeth is the quickening of his sensitiveness to

the supernatural side by side with the deadening of his conscience.

Imagination becomes, as it were, a pictorial conscience for one to whom

its more rational channels have been closed: the man who 'would jump the

world to come' accepts implicitly every word that falls from a witch.

Now this imagination is at first a restraining force in Macbeth: [=i.=

iii. 134.] the thought whose image unfixes his hair leads him to abandon

the treason. When later he has, under pressure, delivered himself again

to the temptation, there are still signs that imagination is a force on

the other side that has to be overcome:

[=i.= iv. 50.]

Stars, hide your fires;

Let not light see my black and deep desires:

The eye wink at the hand.

Once passed the boundary of the accomplished deed he becomes an absolute

victim to terrors of conscience in supernatural form. [=ii.= ii. 22-46.]

In the very first moment they reach so near the boundary that separates

subjective and objective that a real voice appears to be denouncing the

issue of his crime:

_Macbeth._ Methought I heard a voice cry 'Sleep no more.'...

_Lady M._ Who was it that thus cried?

In the reaction from the murder of Banquo the supernatural

appearance--which no eye sees but his own--[=iii.= iv.] appears more

real to him than the real life around him. And from this point he

_seeks_ the supernatural, [=iv.= i. 48.] forces it to disclose its

terrors, and thrusts himself into an agonised vision of generations that

are to witness the triumph of his foes.

XIII.

INTEREST OF PASSION.

[PASSION.]

HUMAN Interest includes not only varieties of human nature, or

Character, but also items of human experience, or Passion. Passion is

the second great topic of Dramatic Criticism. It is concerned with the

life that is lived through the scenes of the story, as distinguished

from the personages who live it; not treating this with the abstract

treatment that belongs to Plot, but reviewing it in the light of its

human interest; it embraces conduct still alive with the motives which

have actuated it--fate in the process of forging. The word 'passion'

signifies primarily what is suffered of good or bad; secondarily the

emotions generated by suffering, whether in the sufferer or in

bystanders. Its use as a dramatic term thus suggests how in Drama an

experience can be grasped by us through our emotional nature, through

our sympathy, our antagonism, and all the varieties of emotional

interest that lie between. To this Passion we have to apply the

threefold division of unity, complexity, and movement.

[_Unity applied to Passion._]

When unity is applied to Passion we get a series of details bound

together into a singleness of impression as an Incident, a Situation, or

an Effect. The distinction of the three rests largely on their different

degrees of fragmentariness. [_Incident._] _Incidents_ are groups of

continuous details forming a complete interest in themselves as

ministering to our sense of story. The suit of Shylock against Antonio

in the course of which fate swings right round; the murder of Clarence

with its long-drawn agony; Richard and Buckingham with the Lord Mayor

and Citizens exhibiting a picture of political manipulation in the

fifteenth century; the startling sight of a Lady Anne wooed beside the

bier of her murdered husband's murdered father, by a murderer who rests

his suit on the murders themselves; Banquo's Ghost appearing at the

feast at which Banquo's presence had been so vehemently called for;

Lear's faithful Gloucester so brutally blinded and so instantly

avenged:--all these are complete stories presented in a single view, and

suggest how Shakespeare's dramas are constructed out of materials which

are themselves dramas in miniature. [_Situation._] In _Situation_, on

the other hand, a series of details cohere into a single impression

without losing the sense of incompleteness. The two central personages

of _The Merchant of Venice_, around whom brightness and gloom have been

revolving in such contrast, at last brought to face one another from the

judgment-seat and the dock; Lorenzo and Jessica wrapped in moonlight and

music, with the rest of the universe for the hour blotted out into a

background for their love; Margaret like an apparition of the sleeping

Nemesis of Lancaster flashed into the midst of the Yorkist courtiers

while they are bickering through very wantonness of victory; Shylock

pitted against Tubal, Jew against Jew, the nature not too narrow to mix

affection with avarice, mocked from passion to passion by the nature

only wide enough to take in greed; Richard waking on Bosworth morning,

and miserably piecing together the wreck of his invincible will which a

sleeping vision has shattered; Macbeth's moment of rapture in following

the airy dagger, while the very night holds its breath, to break out

again presently into voices of doom; the panic mist of universal

suspicion amidst which Malcolm blasts his own character to feel after

the fidelity of Macduff; Edgar from his ambush of outcast idiocy

watching the sad marvel of his father's love restored to him:--all these

brilliant Situations are fragments of dramatic continuity in which the

fragmentariness is a part of the interest. Just as the sense of

sculpture might seek to arrest and perpetuate a casual moment in the

evolutions of a dance, so in Dramatic Situation the mind is conscious of

isolating something from what precedes and what follows so as to extract

out of it an additional impression; the morsel has its purpose in

ministering to a complete process of digestion, but it gets a sensation

of its own by momentary delay in contact with the palate.

[_Effect._]

Of a still more fragmentary nature is _Dramatic Effect_--Effect strictly

so called, and as distinguished from the looser use of the term for

dramatic impressions in general. Such Effect seems to attach itself to

single momentary details, though in reality these details owe their

impressiveness to their connection with others: the final detail has

completed an electric circle and a shock is given. No element of the

Drama is of so miscellaneous a character and so defies analysis: all

that can be done here is to notice three special Dramatic Effects.

[_Irony as an Effect._] _Dramatic Irony_ is a sudden appearance of

double-dealing in surrounding events: a dramatic situation accidentally

starts up and produces a shock by its bearing upon conflicting states of

affairs, both known to the audience, but one of them hidden from some of

the parties to the scene. This is the special contribution to dramatic

effect of Greek tragedy. The ancient stage was tied down in its

subject-matter to stories perfectly familiar to the audience as sacred

legends, and so almost excluding the effect of surprise: in Irony it

found some compensation. The ancient tragedies harp upon human blindness

to the future, and delight to exhibit a hero speculating about, or

struggling with, or perhaps in careless talk stumbling upon, the final

issue of events which the audience know so well--Oedipus, for example,

through great part of a play moving heaven and earth to pierce the

mystery of the judgment that has come upon his city, while according to

the familiar sacred story the offender can be none other than himself.

Shakespeare has used to almost as great an extent as the Greek

dramatists this effect of Irony. His most characteristic handling of it

belongs to the lighter plays; yet in the group of dramas dealt with in

this work it is prominent amongst his effects. It has been pointed out

how _Macbeth_ and _Richard III_ are saturated with it. There are casual

illustrations in _Julius Cæsar_, as when the dictator bids his intended

murderer

[=ii.= ii. 123.]

Be near me, that I may remember you;

or in _Lear_, when Edmund, intriguing guiltily with Goneril, in a chance

expression of tenderness unconsciously paints the final issue of that

intrigue:

[=iv.= ii. 25.]

Yours in the ranks of death!

A comic variety of Irony occurs in the Trial Scene of _The Merchant of

Venice_, [=iv.= i. 282.] when Bassanio and Gratiano in their distracted

grief are willing to sacrifice their new wives if this could save their

friend--little thinking these wives are so near to record the vow. The

doubleness of Irony is one which attaches to a situation as a whole:

[=iii.= ii. 60-73.] the effect however is especially keen when a scene

is so impregnated with it that the very language is true in a double

sense.

_Catesby._ 'Tis a vile thing to die, my gracious lord,

When men are unprepared and look not for it.

_Hastings._ O monstrous, monstrous! and so falls it out

With Rivers, Vaughan, Grey: _and so 'twill do

With some men else, who think themselves as safe

As thou and I._

[_Nemesis as an Effect._]

_Nemesis_, though usually extending to the general movement of a drama,

and so considered below, may sometimes be only an effect of detail--a

sign connecting very closely retribution with sin or reaction with

triumph. [=v.= iii. 45.] Such a Nemesis may be seen where Cassius in the

act of falling on his sword recognises the weapon as the same with which

he stabbed Cæsar. [_Dramatic Foreshadowing._] Another special variety of

effect is _Dramatic Foreshadowing_--mysterious details pointing to an

explanation in the sequel, a realisation in action of the saying that

coming events cast their shadows before them. [=i.= i. 1.] The

unaccountable 'sadness' of Antonio at the opening of _The Merchant of

Venice_ is a typical illustration. [=iii.= i. 68.] Others will readily

suggest themselves--[=i.= i. 39.] the Prince's shuddering aversion to

the Tower in _Richard III_, [=v.= i. 77-90.] the letter G that of

Edward's heirs the murderer should be, the crows substituted for

Cassius's eagles on the morning of the final battle. A more elaborate

example is seen in _Julius Cæsar_, [=i.= ii. 18.] where the soothsayer's

vague warning 'Beware the Ides of March'--a solitary voice that could

yet arrest the hero through the shouting of the crowd--is later on

found, not to have become dissipated, but to have gathered definiteness

as the moment comes nearer:

[=iii.= i. 1.]

_Cæsar._ The Ides of March are come.

_Soothsayer._ Ay, Cæsar; but not gone.

These three leading Effects may be sufficient to illustrate a branch of

dramatic analysis in which the variety is endless.

[_Complexity applied to Passion._]

We are next to consider the application of complexity to Passion, and

the contrasts of passion that so arise. Here care is necessary to avoid

confusion with a complexity of passion that hardly comes within the

sphere of dramatic criticism. [=iii.= i.] In the scene in which Shylock

is being teased by Tubal it is easy to note the conflict between the

passions of greed and paternal affection: such analysis is outside

dramatic criticism and belongs to psychology. In its dramatic sense

Passion applies to experience, not decomposed into its emotional

elements, but grasped as a whole by our emotional nature: there is still

room for complexity of such passion in the appeal made _to different

sides of our emotional nature, the serious and the gay_.

[_Passion-Tone._] In dealing with this element of dramatic effect a

convenient technical term is _Tone_. The deep insight of metaphorical

word-coining has given universal sanction to the expression of emotional