"When valor preys on reason it eats the sword
It fights with."
He knew that man is never master of the event, that he is to some extent
the sport or prey of the blind forces of the world, and that
"In the reproof of chance lies the true proof of men."
Feeling that the past is unchangeable, and that that which must happen
is as much beyond control as though it had happened, he says:
"Let determined things to destiny
Hold unbewailed their way."
Shakespeare was great enough to know that every human being prefers
happiness to misery, and that crimes are but mistakes. Looking in
pity upon the human race, upon the pain and poverty, the crimes and
cruelties, the limping travelers on the thorny paths, he was great and
good enough to say:
"There is no darkness but ignorance."
In all the philosophies there is no greater line. This great truth fills
the heart with pity.
He knew that place and power do not give happiness--that the crowned are
subject as the lowest to fate and chance.
"For within the hollow crown,
That rounds the mortal temples of a king,
Keeps death his court; and there the antick sits,
Scoffing his state, and grinning at his pomp;
Allowing him a breath, a little scene
To monarchize, be fear'd, and kill with looks;
Infusing him with self and vain conceit.--
As if this flesh, which walls about our life,
Were brass impregnable; and, humour'd thus;
Comes at the last, and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall, and--farewell king!"
So, too, he knew that gold could not bring joy--that death and
misfortune come alike to rich and poor, because:
"If thou art rich thou art poor;
For like an ass whose back with ingots bows
Thou bearest thy heavy riches but a journey,
And death unloads thee."
In some of his philosophy there was a kind of scorn--a hidden meaning
that could not in his day and time have safely been expressed. You will
remember that Laertes was about to kill the king, and this king was the
murderer of his own brother, and sat upon the throne by reason of his
crime--and in the mouth of such a king Shakespeare puts these words:
"There's such divinity doth hedge a king."
So, in Macbeth:
"How he solicits
Heaven himself best knows; but strangely visited people
All swollen and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye,
The mere despairs of surgery, he cures;
Hanging a golden stamp about their necks,
Put on with holy prayers; and 'tis spoken
To the succeeding royalty--he leaves
The healing benediction.
With this strange virtue
He hath a heavenly gift of prophecy,
And sundry blessings hang about his throne,
That speak him full of grace."
Shakespeare was the master of the human heart--knew all the hopes,
fears, ambitions and passions that sway the mind of man; and thus
knowing, he declared that
"Love is not love that alters
When it alteration finds."
This is the sublimest declaration in the literature of the world.
Shakespeare seems to give the generalization--the result--without the
process of thought. He seems always to be at the conclusion--standing
where all truths meet.
In one of the Sonnets is this fragment of a line that contains the
highest possible truth:
"Conscience is born of love."
If man were incapable of suffering, the words right and wrong never
could have been spoken. If man were destitute of imagination, the flower
of pity never could have blossomed in his heart.
We suffer--we cause others to suffer--those that we love--and of this
fact conscience is born.
Love is the many-colored flame that makes the fireside of the heart. It
is the mingled spring and autumn--the perfect climate of the soul.