“Raise me this beggar, and _deny’t_ that lord.”
Warburton reads “denude.”
I cannot see the necessity of this alteration. The editors and
commentators are, all of them, ready enough to cry out against
Shakespeare’s laxities and licenses of style, forgetting that he is not
merely a poet, but a dramatic poet; that, when the head and the heart are
swelling with fulness, a man does not ask himself whether he has
grammatically arranged, but only whether (the context taken in) he has
conveyed his meaning. “Deny” is here clearly equal to “withhold;” and the
“it,” quite in the genius of vehement conversation, which a syntaxist
explains by ellipses and _subauditurs_ in a Greek or Latin classic, yet
triumphs over as ignorances in a contemporary, refers to accidental and
artificial rank or elevation, implied in the verb “raise.” Besides, does
the word “denude” occur in any writer before, or of, Shakespeare’s age?
“Romeo And Juliet.”
I have previously had occasion to speak at large on the subject of the
three unities of time, place, and action, as applied to the drama in the
abstract, and to the particular stage for which Shakespeare wrote, as far
as he can be said to have written for any stage but that of the universal
mind. I hope I have in some measure succeeded in demonstrating that the
former two, instead of being rules, were mere inconveniences attached to
the local peculiarities of the Athenian drama; that the last alone
deserved the name of a principle, and that in the preservation of this
unity Shakespeare stood pre-eminent. Yet, instead of unity of action, I
should greatly prefer the more appropriate, though scholastic and uncouth,
words homogeneity, proportionateness, and totality of
interest,—expressions, which involve the distinction, or rather the
essential difference, betwixt the shaping skill of mechanical talent, and
the creative, productive, life-power of inspired genius. In the former
each part is separately conceived, and then by a succeeding act put
together;—not as watches are made for wholesale—(for there each part
supposes a pre-conception of the whole in some mind),—but more like
pictures on a motley screen. Whence arises the harmony that strikes us in
the wildest natural landscapes,—in the relative shapes of rocks, the
harmony of colours in the heaths, ferns, and lichens, the leaves of the
beech and the oak, the stems and rich brown branches of the birch and
other mountain trees, varying from verging autumn to returning
spring,—compared with the visual effect from the greater number of
artificial plantations?—From this, that the natural landscape is effected,
as it were, by a single energy modified _ab intra_ in each component part.
And as this is the particular excellence of the Shakespearian drama
generally, so is it especially characteristic of the _Romeo and Juliet_.
The groundwork of the tale is altogether in family life, and the events of
the play have their first origin in family feuds. Filmy as are the eyes of
party-spirit, at once dim and truculent, still there is commonly some real
or supposed object in view, or principle to be maintained; and though but
the twisted wires on the plate of rosin in the preparation for electrical
pictures, it is still a guide in some degree, an assimilation to an
outline. But in family quarrels, which have proved scarcely less injurious
to states, wilfulness, and precipitancy, and passion from mere habit and
custom can alone be expected. With his accustomed judgment, Shakespeare
has begun by placing before us a lively picture of all the impulses of the
play; and, as nature ever presents two sides, one for Heraclitus, and one
for Democritus, he has, by way of prelude, shown the laughable absurdity
of the evil by the contagion of it reaching the servants who have so
little to do with it, but who are under the necessity of letting the
superfluity of sensoreal power fly off through the escape-valve of
wit-combats, and of quarrelling with weapons of sharper edge, all in
humble imitation of their masters. Yet there is a sort of unhired
fidelity, an _ourishness_ about all this that makes it rest pleasant on
one’s feelings. All the first scene, down to the conclusion of the
Prince’s speech, is a motley dance of all ranks and ages to one tune, as
if the horn of Huon had been playing behind the scenes.