THAT a procession of men and women--statesmen and warriors--kings and
clowns--issued from Shakespeare's brain! What women!
_Isabella_--in whose spotless life love and reason blended into perfect
truth.
_Juliet_--within whose heart passion and purity met like white and red
within the bosom of a rose.
_Cordelia_--who chose to suffer loss, rather than show her wealth of
love with those who gilded lies in hope of gain.
_Hermione_--"tender as infancy and grace"--who bore with perfect hope
and faith the cross of shame, and who at last forgave with all her
heart.
_Desdemona_--so innocent, so perfect, her love so pure, that she was
incapable of suspecting that another could suspect, and who with dying
words sought to hide her lover's crime--and with her last faint breath
uttered a loving lie that burst into a perfumed lily between her pallid
lips.
_Perdita_--"a violet dim, and sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes"--"The
sweetest low-born lass that ever ran on the green sward." And
_Helena_--who said:
"I know I love in vain, strive against hope--
Yet in this captious and intenable sieve
I still pour in the waters of my love,
And lack not to lose still,
Thus, Indian-like,
Religious in mine error, I adore
The sun that looks upon his worshiper,
But knows of him no more."
_Miranda_--who told her love as gladly as a flower gives its bosom to
the kisses of the sun. And _Cordelia_--whose kisses cured and whose
tears restored. And stainless
_Imogen_--who cried: "What is it to be false?" And here is the
description of the perfect woman:
"To feed for aye her lamp and flames of love;
To keep her constancy in plight and youth--
Outliving beauty's outward with a mind
That doth renew swifter than blood decays."
Shakespeare has done more for woman than all the other dramatists of the
world.
For my part, I love the Clowns. I love _Launce_ and his dog Crabb, and
_Gobbo_, whose conscience threw its arms around the neck of his heart,
and _Touchstone_, with his lie seven times removed; and dear old
_Dogberry_--a pretty piece of flesh, tedious as a king. And _Bottom_,
the very paramour for a sweet voice, longing to take the part to tear
a cat in; and _Autolycus_, the snapper-up of unconsidered trifles,
sleeping out the thought for the life to come. And great _Sir John_,
without conscience, and for that reason unblamed and enjoyed--and who
at the end babbles of green fields, and is almost loved. And ancient
_Pistol_, the world his oyster. And _Bardolph_, with the flea on his
blazing nose, putting beholders in mind of a damned soul in hell. And
the poor _Pool_, who followed the mad king, and went "to bed at
noon." And the clown who carried the worm of Nilus, whose "biting was
immortal." And _Corin_, the shepherd--who described the perfect man:
"I am a true laborer: I earn that I eat--get that I wear--owe no man
aught--envy no man's happiness--glad of other men's good--content."
And mingling in this motley throng, Lear, within whose brain a tempest
raged until the depths were stirred, and the intellectual wealth of a
life was given back to memory?--and then by madness thrown to storm and
night--and when I read the living lines I feel as though I looked upon
the sea and saw it wrought by frenzied whirlwinds, until the buried
treasures and the sunken wrecks of all the years were cast upon the
shores.
And _Othello_--who like the base Indian threw a pearl away richer than
all his tribe.
And _Hamlet_--thought-entangled--hesitating between two worlds.
And _Macbeth_--strange mingling of cruelty and conscience, reaping
the sure harvest of successful crime--"Curses not loud but
deep--mouth-honor--breath."
And _Brutus_, falling on his sword that Cæsar might be still.
And _Romeo_, dreaming of the white wonder of Juliet's hand. And
_Ferdinand_, the patient log-man for Miranda's sake. And _Florizel_,
who, "for all the sun sees, or the close earth wombs, or the
profound seas hide," would not be faithless to the low-born lass. And
_Constance_, weeping for her son, while grief "stuffs out his vacant
garments with his form."
And in the midst of tragedies and tears, of love and laughter and crime,
we hear the voice of the good friar, who declares that in every human
heart, as in the smallest flower, there are encamped the opposed hosts
of good and evil--and our philosophy is interrupted by the garrulous old
nurse, whose talk is as busily useless as the babble of a stream that
hurries by a ruined mill.
From every side the characters crowd upon us--the men and women born of
Shakespeare's brain. They utter with a thousand voices the thoughts of
the "myriad-minded" man, and impress themselves upon us as deeply and
vividly as though they really lived with us.
Shakespeare alone has delineated love in every possible phase--has
ascended to the very top, and actually reached heights that no other has
imagined. I do not believe the human mind will ever produce or be in a
position to appreciate, a greater love-play than "Romeo and Juliet." It
is a symphony in which all music seems to blend. The heart bursts into
blossom, and he who reads feels the swooning intoxication of a divine
perfume.
In the alembic of Shakespeare's brain the baser metals were turned to
gold--passions became virtues--weeds became exotics from some diviner
land--and common mortals made of ordinary clay outranked the Olympian
Gods. In his brain there was the touch of chaos that suggests
the infinite--that belongs to genius. Talent is measured and
mathematical--dominated by prudence and the thought of use. Genius is
tropical. The creative instinct runs riot, delights in extravagance and
waste, and overwhelms the mental beggars of the world with uncounted
gold and unnumbered gems.
Some things are immortal: The plays of Shakespeare, the marbles of the
Greeks, and the music of Wagner.