were written by Shakespeare in his earliest period. But instead of the
text—
“Revenge, _which makes the foul offenders quake._
_Tit. Art thou_ Revenge? and art thou sent to me?”—
the words in italics ought to be omitted.
“Troilus And Cressida.”
“Mr. Pope (after Dryden) informs us that the story of _Troilus and
Cressida_ was originally the work of one Lollius, a Lombard: but
Dryden goes yet further; he declares it to have been written in
Latin verse, and that Chaucer translated it. _Lollius was a
historiographer of Urbino in Italy._”—Note in Stockdale’s edition,
1807.
“Lollius was a historiographer of Urbino in Italy.” So affirms the notary
to whom the Sieur Stockdale committed the _disfaciménto_ of Ayscough’s
excellent edition of Shakespeare. Pity that the researchful notary has not
either told us in what century, and of what history, he was a writer, or
been simply content to depose, that Lollius, if a writer of that name
existed at all, was a somewhat somewhere. The notary speaks of the _Troy
Boke_ of Lydgate, printed in 1513. I have never seen it; but I deeply
regret that Chalmers did not substitute the whole of Lydgate’s works from
the MSS. extant, for the almost worthless Gower.
The _Troilus and Cressida_ of Shakespeare can scarcely be classed with his
dramas of Greek and Roman history; but it forms an intermediate link
between the fictitious Greek and Roman histories, which we may call
legendary dramas, and the proper ancient histories,—that is, between the
_Pericles_ or _Titus Andronicus_, and the _Coriolanus_ or _Julius Cæsar_.
_Cymbeline_ is a _congener_ with _Pericles_, and distinguished from _Lear_
by not having any declared prominent object. But where shall we class the
_Timon of Athens_? Perhaps immediately below _Lear_. It is a _Lear_ of the
satirical drama; a _Lear_ of domestic or ordinary life;—a local eddy of
passion on the high road of society, while all around is the week-day
goings on of wind and weather; a _Lear_, therefore, without its
soul-searching flashes, its ear-cleaving thunder-claps, its meteoric
splendours,—without the contagion and the fearful sympathies of nature,
the fates, the furies, the frenzied elements, dancing in and out, now
breaking through and scattering,—now hand in hand with,—the fierce or
fantastic group of human passions, crimes, and anguishes, reeling on the
unsteady ground, in a wild harmony to the shock and the swell of an
earthquake. But my present subject was _Troilus and Cressida_; and I
suppose that, scarcely knowing what to say of it, I by a cunning of
instinct ran off to subjects on which I should find it difficult not to
say too much, though certain after all that I should still leave the
better part unsaid, and the gleaning for others richer than my own
harvest.
Indeed, there is no one of Shakespeare’s plays harder to characterise. The
name and the remembrances connected with it, prepare us for the
representation of attachment no less faithful than fervent on the side of
the youth, and of sudden and shameless inconstancy on the part of the
lady. And this is, indeed, as the gold thread on which the scenes are
strung, though often kept out of sight and out of mind by gems of greater
value than itself. But as Shakespeare calls forth nothing from the
mausoleum of history, or the catacombs of tradition, without giving, or
eliciting, some permanent and general interest, and brings forward no
subject which he does not moralise or intellectualise,—so here he has
drawn in Cressida the portrait of a vehement passion, that, having its
true origin and proper cause in warmth of temperament, fastens on, rather
than fixes to, some one object by liking and temporary preference.
“There’s language in her eye, her cheek, her lip,
Nay, her foot speaks; her wanton spirit looks out
At every joint and motive of her body.”
This Shakespeare has contrasted with the profound affection represented in
Troilus, and alone worthy the name of love;—affection, passionate
indeed,—swoln with the confluence of youthful instincts and youthful
fancy, and growing in the radiance of hope newly risen, in short, enlarged
by the collective sympathies of nature;—but still having a depth of calmer
element in a will stronger than desire, more entire than choice, and which
gives permanence to its own act by converting it into faith and duty.
Hence, with excellent judgment, and with an excellence higher than mere
judgment can give, at the close of the play, when Cressida has sunk into
infamy below retrieval and beneath hope, the same will, which had been the
substance and the basis of his love, while the restless pleasures and
passionate longings, like sea-waves, had tossed but on its surface,—this
same moral energy is represented as snatching him aloof from all
neighbourhood with her dishonour, from all lingering fondness and
languishing regrets, whilst it rushes with him into other and nobler
duties, and deepens the channel, which his heroic brother’s death had left
empty for its collected flood. Yet another secondary and subordinate
purpose Shakespeare has inwoven with his delineation of these two
characters,—that of opposing the inferior civilisation, but purer morals,
of the Trojans to the refinements, deep policy, but duplicity and sensual
corruptions of the Greeks.
To all this, however, so little comparative projection is given,—nay, the
masterly group of Agamemnon, Nestor, and Ulysses, and, still more in
advance, that of Achilles, Ajax, and Thersites, so manifestly occupying
the fore-ground, that the subservience and vassalage of strength and
animal courage to intellect and policy seems to be the lesson most often
in our poet’s view, and which he has taken little pains to connect with
the former more interesting moral impersonated in the titular hero and
heroine of the drama. But I am half inclined to believe, that
Shakespeare’s main object, or shall I rather say his ruling impulse, was
to translate the poetic heroes of paganism into the not less rude, but
more intellectually vigorous, and more _featurely_, warriors of Christian
chivalry,—and to substantiate the distinct and graceful profiles or
outlines of the Homeric epic into the flesh and blood of the romantic
drama;—in short, to give a grand history-piece in the robust style of
Albert Durer.
The character of Thersites, in particular, well deserves a more careful
examination, as the Caliban of demagogic life;—the admirable portrait of
intellectual power deserted by all grace, all moral principle, all not
momentary impulse;—just wise enough to detect the weak head, and fool
enough to provoke the armed fist of his betters;—one whom malcontent
Achilles can inveigle from malcontent Ajax, under the one condition, that
he shall be called on to do nothing but abuse and slander, and that he
shall be allowed to abuse as much and as purulently as he likes, that is,
as he can;—in short, a mule,—quarrelsome by the original discord of his
nature;—a slave by tenure of his own baseness,—made to bray and be brayed
at, to despise and be despicable. “Aye, Sir, but say what you will, he is
a very clever fellow, though the best friends will fall out. There was a
time when Ajax thought he deserved to have a statue of gold erected to him
and handsome Achilles, at the head of the Myrmidons, gave no little credit
to his _friend Thersites_!”