‘Be that you are,
That is, a woman; if you be more, you’re none.’
Note the terrible, gasping brevity of the dialogue between Lady Macbeth
and her husband after the murder:
_Lady M._ ‘Did not you speak?
_M._ When?
_Lady M._ Now.
_M._ As I descended?
_Lady M._ Ay.’
Macbeth’s speech beginning just before he hears of Lady Macbeth’s death,
and ending after he hears of it, should be interpreted and spoken as
follows. He had just said he ‘will laugh a siege to scorn.’ Then a cry
of women within.
‘What is that noise?
_Seyton_. It is the cry of women, my good lord.
[_Exit_.
_Macbeth_ (musing). I have almost forgot the taste of fears.
The time has been, my senses would have cool’d
To hear a night-shriek; and my fell of hair
Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir
As life were in ’t: I have supp’d full with horrors;
Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts,
Cannot once start me.
_Re-enter Seyton_.
Wherefore was that cry?
_Seyton_. The queen, my lord, is dead.
_Macbeth_ (with a touch of impatience). She should have died
hereafter:
There would have been a time for such a word.’
He makes no inquiry about his wife, but goes on with his reverie, which
does not specially refer to her.
‘To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.’
The ‘_petty_ pace,’ coming from Macbeth! The ‘out, out, brief candle,’
should be spoken in the same musing tone.
Johnson says of a learned apology by Heath for a line in _Macbeth_ which
is defective in metre: ‘This is one of the effects of literature in minds
not naturally perspicacious’—a criticism which might be extended to much
Shakespearean comment.
* * * * *
_Cymbeline_.—The wager is loathsome. If any man with whom we were
acquainted had laid it, should we not scorn and brand him? It was a
crime to mention Imogen’s name in such society as that which met at
Philario’s house. The only excuse is Boccaccio, but what shall we say of
Iachimo’s interview with Imogen, invented by Shakespeare! After his
beastly experiment upon her, he excuses himself:
‘I have spoke this, to know if your affiance
Were deeply rooted.’
She begs him to prolong his visit! The apology is worse than the
original insult.
The royal behaviour, or what Shakespeare means us to take for royal
behaviour, in the two youths is overdone and sometimes repulsive.
Arviragus goes out of his way to put his love for Imogen higher than that
for his supposed father, Belarius, who is present.
‘The bier at door,
And a demand who is’t shall die, I’d say
My father, not this youth.’
Yet the point of the scene is the nobility of blood in these youths!
Lucius, who had protected Imogen, hopes she will plead for his life, and
she turns on him:
‘No, no; alack!
There’s other work in hand: I see a thing
Bitter to me as death: your life, good master,
Must shuffle for itself.’
In the fifth act Posthumus believes his wife to be guilty, and yet breaks
out into strains like these:
‘So I’ll die,
For thee, O Imogen! even for whom my life
Is every breath a death.
. . .
For Imogen’s dear life take mine; and though
’Tis not so dear, yet ’tis a life; you coin’d it.’
Shakespeare surely ought to have made Posthumus revert to perfect faith.
He ought to have borrowed something from his own Beatrice. Posthumus
wishes Imogen saved, because, if her life had been spared, she might have
repented.
Iachimo is impossible, simple blackness, worse than Iago. He is
unactable, for some motivation is necessary.
Shakespeare’s genius is so immense that it overpowers us, and we must be
on our guard lest it should twist our instinct for what is true and
right. The errors of a fool are not dangerous, but those of a
Shakespeare, Goethe, or Byron it is almost impossible to resist.
* * * * *
_Twelfth Night_.—The play is two plays in one without much connection.
The Viola play is improbable. Why did Shakespeare omit that part of the
story which tells us that Silla (Viola) had seen the Duke when he was
shipwrecked on Cyprus where she lived, and had fallen in love with him?
In the play, hearing of the Duke, she discloses a design to make her ‘own
occasion mellow.’