THE PLAYS OF THE THIRD PERIOD--TRAGEDY
The Second and Third periods slightly overlap; for _Julius Caesar_, the
first play of the later group, was probably written before _Twelfth
Night_ and _As You Like It_. But the change in the character of the
plays in these two periods is sharp and decisive, like the change from
day to night. Shakespeare has studied the sunlight of human
cheerfulness and found it a most interesting problem; now in the
mysterious starlight and shadow of human suffering he finds a problem
more interesting still.
The three comedies of this period, partly on account of their bitter
and sarcastic tone, are not widely read nor usually very much admired;
but the great tragedies are the poet's finest work and scarcely equaled
in the history of the world.
+Troilus and Cressida+.--Here the story centers around the siege of
ancient Troy by the Greeks. Its hero, Troilus, is a young son of
Priam, high-spirited and enthusiastic, who is in love with Cressida,
daughter of a Trojan priest. Pandarus, Cressida's uncle, acts as
go-between for the lovers. Just as the suit of Troilus is crowned with
success, Cressida, from motives of policy, is forced to join her father
Calchas, who is in the camp of the besieging Greeks. Here her fickle
and sensuous nature reveals itself rapidly. She yields to {173} the
love of the Greek commander Diomed and promises to become his mistress.
Troilus learns of this, consigns her to oblivion, and attempts, but
unsuccessfully, to take revenge on Diomed.
While this love story is progressing, meetings are going on between the
Greek and Trojan warriors; a vivid picture is given of conditions in
the Greek camp during the truce, and particularly of the insolent pride
of Achilles. The story ends with the resumption of hostilities, the
slaying of Hector by Achilles, and the resolution of Troilus to revenge
his brother's death.
It is very difficult to understand what Shakespeare meant by this play.
If it is a tragedy, why do the hero and heroine meet with no special
disaster at the end, and why do we feel so little sympathy for the
misfortunes of any one in the play? If it is a comedy, why is its
sarcastic mirth made more bitter than tears, and why does it end with
the death of its noblest minor character and with the violation of all
poetic justice? From beginning to end it is the story of disillusion,
for it sorts all humanity into two great classes, fools who are cheated
and knaves who cheat. Some people think that Shakespeare wrote it in a
gloomy, pessimistic mood, with the sardonic laughter of a disappointed,
world-wearied man. Others, on rather doubtful grounds, believe it a
covert satire on some of Shakespeare's fellow dramatists.
+Authorship+.--It is generally agreed that a small part of this play is
by another author. The Prologue and most of the Fifth Act are usually
considered non-Shakespearean. They differ from the rest of the play in
many details of vocabulary, meter, and style.
{174}
+Date+.--_Troilus and Cressida_ must have been written before 1603, for
in the spring of that year an entry in regard to it was made in the
Stationers' Register. It must have been written after 1601, for it
alludes (Prologue, ll. 23-25) to the Prologue of Jonson's _Poetaster_,
a play published in that year. Hence the date of composition would
fall during or slightly before 1602. The First Quarto was not
published until 1609.
+Sources+.--The main source of this drama was the narrative poem
_Troilus and Criseyde_ by Chaucer. Contrary to his custom, Shakespeare
has degraded the characters of his original, instead of ennobling them.
The camp scenes are adapted from Caxton's _Recuyell of the Historyes of
Troye_; and the challenge of Hector was taken from some translation of
Homer, probably that by Chapman. An earlier lost play on this subject
by Dekker and Chettle is mentioned in contemporary reference. We do
not know whether Shakespeare drew anything from it or not. Scattered
hints were probably taken from other sources, as the story of Troy was
very popular in the Middle Ages.
+All's Well That Ends Well+.--When a beautiful and noble-minded young
woman falls in love with a contemptible scoundrel, forgives his
rebuffs, compromises her own dignity to win his affection, and finally
persuades him to let her throw herself away on him,--is the result a
romance or a tragedy? This is a nice question; and by the answer to it
we must determine whether _All's Well That Ends Well_ is a romantic
comedy like _Twelfth Night_ or a satirical comedy bitter as tragedy,
like _Troilus and Cressida_.
Helena, a poor orphan girl, has been brought up by the kindly old
Countess of Rousillon, and cherishes a deep affection for the
Countess's son Bertram, though he neither suspects it nor returns it.
She saves the life of the French king, and he in gratitude allows her
{175} to choose her husband from among the noblest young lords of
France. Her choice falls on Bertram. Being too politic to offend the
king, he reluctantly marries her, but forsakes her on their wedding day
to go to the wars. At parting he tells her that he will never accept
her as a wife until she can show him his ring on her finger and has a
child by him. By disguising herself as a young woman whom Bertram is
attempting to seduce, Helena subsequently fulfills the terms of his
hard condition. Later, before the king of France she reminds him of
his promise, shows his ring in her possession, and states that she is
with child by him. The count, outwitted, and in fear of the king's
wrath, repentantly accepts her as his wife; and at the end Helena is
expected to live happily forever after.
Disagreeable as the plot is when told in outline, it is redeemed in the
actual play by the beautiful character given to the heroine. But this,
while it vastly tones down the disgusting side of the story, only
increases the bitter pathos which is latent there. The more lovely and
admirable Helena is, the more she is unfitted for the unworthy part
which she is forced to act and the man with whom she is doomed to end
her days. A modern thinker could easily read into this "comedy" the
world-old bitterness of pearls before swine.
+Date+.--No quarto of this comedy exists, nor is there any mention of
such a play as _All's Well That Ends Well_ before the publication of
the First Folio in 1623. A play of Shakespeare's called _Love's
Labour's Won_ is mentioned by Francis Meres in 1598; and many think
that this was the present comedy under another name. However, the
meter, style, and mood of most of the play seem to indicate a later
date. The {176} most common theory is that a first version was written
before 1598, and that this was rewritten in the early part of the
author's third period. This would put the date of the play in its
present form somewhere around 1602.
+Sources+.--The story is taken from Boccaccio's _Decameron_ (ninth
novel of the third day). It was translated into English by Painter in
his _Palace of Pleasure_, where our author probably read it.
Shakespeare has added the Countess, Parolles, and one or two minor
characters. The conception of the heroine has been greatly ennobled.
It is a question whether the bitter tone of the play is due to the
dramatist's intention or is the unforeseen result of reducing
Boccaccio's improbable story to a living possibility.
+Measure for Measure+.--When Hamlet told his guilty mother that he
would set her up a glass where she might see the inmost part of her, he
was doing for his mother what Shakespeare in _Measure for Measure_ is
doing for the lust-spotted world. The play is a trenchant satire on
the evils of society. Such realistic pictures of the things that are,
but should not be, have always jarred on our aesthetic sense from
Aristophanes to Zola, and _Measure for Measure_ is one of the most
disagreeable of Shakespeare's plays. But no one can deny its power.
Here, as in _All's Well That Ends Well_, we have one beautiful
character, that of Isabella, like a light shining in corruption. Here,
too, the wronged Mariana, in order to win back the faithless Angelo, is
forced to resort to the same device to which Helena had to stoop. But
this play is darker and more savage than its predecessor. Angelo, as a
governor, sentencing men to death for the very sin which he as a
private man is trying to commit, is contemptible on a huger {177} and
more devilish scale than Bertram. Lucio, if not more base than
Parolles, is at least more malignant. And Claudio, attempting to save
his life by his sister's shame, is an incarnation of the healthy animal
joy of life almost wholly divested of the ideals of manhood. In a way,
the play ends happily; but it is about as cheerful as the red gleam of
sunset which shoots athwart a retreating thunderstorm.
+Date+.--The play was first published in the Folio of 1623. It is
generally believed, however, that it was written about 1603. In the
first place, the verse tests and general character of the play seem to
fit that date; secondly, there are two passages, I, i, 68-73 and II,
iv, 27-30, which are usually interpreted as allusions to the attitude
of James I toward the people after he came to the throne in 1603; and,
thirdly, there are many turns of phrase which remind one of _Hamlet_
and which seem to indicate that the two plays were written near
together. Barksted's _Myrrha_ (1607) contains a passage apparently
borrowed from this comedy, which helps in determining the latest
possible date of composition.
+Sources+.--Shakespeare borrowed his material from a writer named
George Whetstone, who in 1578 printed a play, _Promos and Cassandra_,
containing most of the story of _Measure for Measure_. In 1582 the
same author published a prose version of the story in his _Heptameron
of Civil Discourses_. Whetstone in turn borrowed his material, which
came originally from the _Hecatommithi_ of Giraldi Cinthio.
Shakespeare ennobled the underlying thought as far as he could, and
added the character of Mariana.
+Julius Caesar+.--The interest in _Julius Caesar_ does not focus on any
one person as completely as in the other great tragedies. Like the
chronicle plays which had preceded it, it gives rather a grand panorama
of history than the fate of any particular hero. This {178} explains
its title. It is not the story of Julius Caesar the man, but of that
great political upheaval of which Caesar was cause and center. That
upheaval begins with his attempt at despotism and the crown; it reaches
its climax in his death, which disturbs the political equilibrium of
the whole nation; and at last subsides with the decline and downfall of
Caesar's enemies. Shakespeare has departed from history in drawing the
character of the great conqueror, making it more weak, vain, and
pompous than that of the real man. Yet even in the play "the mightiest
Julius" is an impressive figure. Alive, he
"doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus";
and his influence, like an unseen force, shapes the fates of the living
after he himself is dead.
In so far as the tragedy has any individual hero, that hero is Brutus
rather than Caesar himself. Brutus is a man of noble character, but
deficient in practical judgment and knowledge of men. With the best of
motives he allows Cassius to hoodwink him and draw him into the
conspiracy against Caesar. Through the same short-sighted generosity
he allows his enemy Antony to address the crowd after Caesar's death,
with the result that Antony rouses the people against him and drives
him and his fellow conspirators out of Rome. Then when he and Cassius
gather an army in Asia to fight with Antony, we find him too
impractically scrupulous to raise money by the usual means; and for
that reason short of cash and drawn into a quarrel with his brother
general. His subsequent {179} death at Philippi is the logical outcome
of his own nature, too good for so evil an age, too short-sighted for
so critical a position.
Most of the old Roman heroes inspire respect rather than love; and
something of their stern impressiveness lingers in the atmosphere of
this Roman play. Here and there it has very touching scenes, such as
that between Brutus and his page (IV, iii); but in the main it is
great, not through its power to elicit sympathetic tears, but through
its dignity and grandeur. It is one of the stateliest of tragedies,
lofty in language, majestic in movement, logical and cogent in thought.
We can never mourn for Brutus and Portia as we do for Romeo and Juliet,
or for Lear and Cordelia; but we feel that we have breathed in their
company an air which is keen and bracing, and have caught a glimpse of
"The grandeur that was Rome."
+Date+.--We have no printed copy of Julius Caesar earlier than that of
the First Folio. Since it was not mentioned by Meres in 1598 and was
alluded to in 1601 in John Weever's _Mirrour of Martyrs_, it probably
appeared between those two dates. Weever says in his dedication that
his work "some two years ago was made fit for the print." This
apparently means that he wrote the allusion to _Julius Caesar_ in 1599
and that consequently the play had been produced by then. There is a
possible reference to it in Ben Jonson's _Every Man Out of His Humour_,
which came out in 1599. Metrical tests and the general character of
the play agree with these conclusions. Hence we can put the date
between 1599-1601, with a preference for the former year.
+Sources+.--Shakespeare drew his material from North's _Plutarch_,
using the lives of Caesar, Brutus, and Antony. He has {180} enlarged
the parts of Casca and Lepidus, and made Brutus much nobler than in the
original. This last change was a dramatic necessity in order to give
the play a hero with whom we could sympathize.
+Hamlet+.--On the surface the story of Hamlet is a comparatively simple
one. The young prince is heart-broken over the recent death of his
father, and his mother's scandalously hasty marriage to Hamlet's uncle,
the usurping sovereign. In this mood he is brought face to face with
his father's spirit, told that his uncle was his father's murderer, and
given as a sacred duty the task of revenging the crime. To this object
he sacrifices all other aims in life--pleasure, ambition, and love.
But this savage task is the last one on earth for which his
fine-grained nature was fitted. He wastes his energy in feverish
efforts which fail to accomplish his purpose, just as many a man wavers
helplessly in trying to do something for which nature never intended
him. Partly to deceive his enemies, partly to provide a freer
expression for his pent-up emotions than the normal conditions of life
would justify, he acts the role of one who is mentally deranged.
Finally, more by chance than any plan of his own, he achieves his
revenge on the king, but not until he himself is mortally wounded. His
story is the tragedy of a sensitive, refined, imaginative nature which
is required to perform a brutal task in a brutal world.
But around this story as a framework Shakespeare has woven such a
wealth of poetry and philosophy that the play has been called the
"tragedy of thought." It is in Hamlet's brain that the great action of
the drama {181} takes place; the other characters are mere accessories
and foils. Here we are brought face to face with the fear and mystery
of the future life and the deepest problems of this. It is hardly true
to say that Hamlet himself is a philosopher. He gives some very wise
advice to the players; but in the main he is grappling problems without
solving them, peering into the dark, but bringing from it no definite
addition to our knowledge. He represents rather the eternal
questioning of the human heart when face to face with the great
mysteries of existence; and perhaps this accounts largely for the wide
and lasting popularity of the play. Side by side with this
deep-souled, earnest man, moving in the shadow of the unseen, with his
terrible duties and haunting fears, Shakespeare has placed in
intentional mockery the old dotard Polonius, the incarnation of shallow
worldly wisdom.
No other play of Shakespeare's has called forth such a mass of comment
as this or so many varied interpretations. Neither has any other
roused a deeper interest in its readers. The spell which it casts over
old and young alike is due partly to the character of the young prince
himself, partly to the suggestive mystery with which it invests all
problems of life and sorrow.
+Date+.--'A booke called the Revenge of Hamlett' was entered in the
Stationers' Register July, 1602. Consequently, Shakespeare's
Preliminary version, as represented by the First Quarto, though not
printed until 1603, must have been written in or before the spring
months of 1602; the second version 1603-1604.
+Sources+.--The plot came originally from the _Historia Danica_, a
history of Denmark in Latin, written in the twelfth century {182} by
Saxo Grammaticus, a Danish scholar. About 1570 the story was retold in
French in Belleforest's _Histoires Tragiques_. Besides his debt to
Belleforest, it seems almost certain that Shakespeare drew from an
earlier English tragedy of Hamlet by another man. This earlier play is
lost; but Nash, a contemporary writer, alludes to it as early as 1589,
and Henslowe's Diary records its performance in 1494. Somewhat before
1590, an early dramatist, Thomas Kyd, had written a play called _The
Spanish Tragedy_, which, though far inferior to Shakespeare's _Hamlet_,
resembled it in many ways. This likeness has caused scholars to
suspect that Kyd wrote the early Hamlet; and their suspicions are
strengthened by an ambiguous and apparently punning allusion to AEsop's
_Kidde_ in the passage by Nash mentioned above. A crude and brutal
German play on the subject has been discovered, which is believed by
many to be a translation of Kyd's original tragedy. If this is true,
it shows how enormously Shakespeare improved on his source.
+Editions+.--A very badly garbled and crude form of this play was
printed in 1603, and is known as the First Quarto. A much better one,
which contained most of the tragedy as we read it, appeared in 1604,
and is called the Second Quarto. Several other quartos followed, for
the play was exceedingly popular. The Folio omits certain passages
found in the Second Quarto, and introduces certain new ones. Both the
new passages and the omitted ones are included in modern editions; so
that, as has often been said, our modern _Hamlet_ is longer than any
_Hamlet_ which Shakespeare left us. The First Quarto is generally
regarded as a pirated copy of Shakespeare's scenario, or first rough
draft, of the play.
+Othello+.--This play has often been called the tragedy of jealousy,
but that is a misleading statement. Othello, as Coleridge pointed out,
is not a constitutionally jealous man, such as Leontes in _The Winter's
Tale_. His distrust of his wife is the natural suspicion of a man lost
amid new and inexplicable surroundings. {183} Women are proverbially
suspicious in business, not because nature made them so, but because,
as they are in utter ignorance of standards by which to judge, they
feel their helplessness in the face of deceit. Othello feels the same
helplessness. Trained up in wars from his cradle, he could tell a true
soldier from a traitor at a glance, with the calm confidence of a
veteran; but women and their motives are to him an uncharted sea.
Suddenly a beautiful young heiress falls in love with him, and leaves
home and friends to marry him. He stands on the threshold of a new
realm, happy but bewildered. Then comes Iago, his trusted subordinate,
--who, as Othello knows, possesses that knowledge of women and of
civilian life which he himself lacks,--and whispers in his ear that his
bride is false to him; that under this fair veneer lurks the eternal
feminine as they had seen it in the common creatures of the camp; that
she has fooled her husband as these women have so often fooled his
soldiers; and that the rough-and-ready justice of the camp should be
her reward. Had Othello any knowledge or experience in such matters to
fall back on, he might anchor to that, and become definitely either the
trusting husband or the Spartan judge. But as it is, he is whirled
back and forth in a maelstrom of agonized doubt, until compass,
bearings, and wisdom lost, he ends all in universal shipwreck.
The character of Iago is one of the subtlest studies of intelligent
depravity ever created by man. Ostensibly his motive is revenge; but
in reality his wickedness seems due rather to a perverted mental
activity, unbalanced by heart or conscience. As Napoleon enjoyed
manoeuvring armies or Lasker studying chess, so {184} Iago enjoys the
sense of his own mental power in handling his human pawns, in feeling
himself master of the situation. If he ever had natural affections,
they have been atrophied in the pursuit of this devilish game.
With Desdemona the feminine element, which had been negligible in
_Julius Caesar_ and thrown into the background in _Hamlet_, becomes a
prominent feature, and remains so through the later tragedies. There
is a pathetic contrast between the beautiful character of Desdemona and
her undeserved fate, just as there is between the real nobility of
Othello and the mad act by which he ruins his own happiness. For that
reason this is perhaps the most touching of all Shakespeare's tragedies.
+Date+.--The play was certainly published after 1601, for it contains
several allusions to Holland's translation of the Latin author Pliny,
which appeared in that year. Malone, one of the early editors of
Shakespeare, says that _Othello_ was acted at Hallowmas, 1604. We not
know on what evidence he based this assertion; but since the metrical
tests all point to the same date, his statement is generally accepted.
The First Quarto did not appear until 1622, six years after Shakespeare
died and one year before the appearance of the First Folio. This was
the only play published in quarto between Shakespeare's death and 1623.
There are frequent oaths in the Quarto which have been very much
modified in the Folio, and this strengthens our belief that the
manuscript from which the Quarto was printed was written about 1604,
for shortly after that date an act was passed against the use of
profanity in plays.
+Sources+.--The plot was taken from Giraldi Cinthio's _Hecatommithi_
(seventh novel of the third decade). A French translation of the
Italian was made in 1583-1584, and this Shakespeare may have used. We
know of no English translation until {185} years after Shakespeare
died. Many details are changed in the play, and the whole story is
raised to a far nobler plane. In the original the heroine is beaten to
death with a stocking filled with sand; Othello is tortured, but
refuses to confess, and later is murdered by his wife's revengeful
kinsmen. This crude, bloody, and long-drawn-out story is in striking
contrast with the masterly ending of the tragedy.
+King Lear+.--As _Romeo and Juliet_ shows the tragedy of youth, so
_Lear_ shows the tragedy of old age. King Lear has probably been a
good and able man in his day; but now time has impaired his judgment,
and he is made to suffer fearfully for those errors for which nature,
and not he, is to blame. Duped by the hypocritical smoothness of his
two elder daughters, he gives them all his lands and power; while his
youngest daughter Cordelia, who truly loves him, is turned away because
she is too honest to humor an old man's whim. The result is what might
have been expected. Lear has put himself absolutely into the power of
his two older daughters, who are the very incarnation of heartlessness
and ingratitude. By their inhuman treatment he is driven out into the
night and storm, exposing his white head to a tempest so fierce that
even the wild beasts refuse to face it. As a result of exposure and
mental suffering, his mind becomes unhinged. At last his daughter
Cordelia finds him, gives him refuge, and nurses him back to reason and
hope. But this momentary gleam of light only makes darker by contrast
the end which closely follows, where Cordelia is killed by treachery
and Lear dies broken-hearted.
The fate of Lear finds a parallel in that of {186} Gloucester in the
underplot. Like his king, this nobleman has proved an unwise father,
favoring the treacherous child and disowning the true. He also is made
to pay a fearful penalty for his mistakes, ending in his death. But he
is represented as more justly punished, less excusable through the
weaknesses of age; and for this reason his grief appeals to us as an
intensifying reflection of Lear's misery rather than as a rival for
that in our sympathy. The character of Edmund shows some likeness to
that of Richard III; and a comparison of the two will show how
Shakespeare has developed in the interval. Both are stern, able, and
heartless; but Edmund unites to these more complex feelings known only
to the close student of life. Weakness and passion mingle in his love;
superstition and some faint, abortive motion of conscience unite to
torment him when dying.
There is a strangely lyric element about this great tragedy, an element
of heart-broken emotion hovering on the edge of passionate song. It is
like a great chorus in which the victims of treachery and ingratitude
blend their denouncing cries. The tremulous voice of Lear rises
terrible above all the others; and to his helpless curses the plaintive
satire of the fool answers like a mocking echo in halls of former
enjoyment. Thunder and lightning are the fearful accompaniment of the
song; and like faint antiphonal responses from the underplot come the
voices of the wronged Edgar and the outraged Gloucester.
+Date+.--The date of _King Lear_ lies between 1603 and 1606. In 1603
appeared a book (Harsnett's _Declaration of Egregious Popish
Impostures_) from which Shakespeare afterward drew {187} the names of
the devils in the pretended ravings of Edgar, together with similar
details. In 1606, as we know from an entry in the Stationers'
Register, the play was performed at Whitehall at Christmas. A late
edition of the old _King Leir_ (not Shakespeare's) was entered on the
Register May 8, 1605; and it is very plausible that Shakespeare's
tragedy was then having a successful run and that the old play was
revived to take advantage of an occasion when its story was popular.
Hence the date usually given for the composition of _King Lear_ is
1604-5. A quarto, with a poor text, and carelessly printed, appeared
in 1608; another, (bearing the assumed date of 1608) in 1619. The
First Folio text is much the best. Three hundred lines lacking in it
are made up for by a hundred lines absent from the quartos.
+Sources+.--The story of Lear in some form or another had appeared in
many writers before Shakespeare. The sources from which he drew
chiefly were probably the early accounts by Geoffrey of Moumouth, a
composite poem called _The Mirrour for Magistrates_, Holinshed's
_Chronicles_, Spenser's _Faerie Queene_, and lastly an old play of
_King Leir_, supposed to be the one acted in 1594. This old play ended
happily; Shakespeare first introduced the tragic ending. He also
invented Lear's madness, the banishment and disguise of Kent, and the
characters of Burgundy and the fool. The underplot he drew from the
story of the blind king of Paphlagonia in _Arcadia_, a long, rambling
novel of adventure by Sir Philip Sidney.
+Macbeth+.--Macbeth, one of the great Scottish nobles of early times,
is led, partly by his own ambition, partly by the instigation of evil
supernatural powers, to murder King Duncan and usurp his place on the
throne of Scotland. In this bloody task he is aided and encouraged by
his wife, a woman of powerful character, whose conscience is
temporarily smothered by her frantic desire to advance her husband's
career. We are forced to sympathize with this guilty pair, wicked as
they {188} are, because we are made to feel that they are not naturally
criminals, that they are swept into crime by the misdirection of
energies which, if directed along happier lines, might have been
praiseworthy. Macbeth, vigorous and imaginative, has a poet's or
conqueror's yearning toward a larger fullness of life, experience, joy.
It is the woeful misdirection of this splendid energy through unlawful
channels which makes him a murderer, not the callous, animal
indifference of the born criminal. Similarly, his wife is a woman of
great executive ability, reaching out instinctively for a field large
enough in which to make that ability gain its maximum of
accomplishment. Nature meant her for a queen; and it is the
instinctive effort to find her natural sphere of action,--an effort
common to all humanity--which blinds her conscience at the fatal
moment. Once entered on their career of evil, they find no chance for
turning back. Suspicions are aroused, and Macbeth feels himself forced
to guard himself from the effects of the first. The ghosts of his
victims haunt his guilty conscience; his wife dies heart-broken with
remorse which comes too late; and he himself is killed in battle by his
own rebellious countrymen.
Between the characters of Macbeth and his wife the dramatist has drawn
a subtle but vital distinction. Macbeth is an unprincipled but
imaginative man, with a strong tincture of reverence and awe. Hitherto
he has been restrained in the straight path of an upright life by his
respect for conventions. When once that barrier is broken down, he has
no purely moral check in his own nature to replace it, and rushes like
a flood, with ever growing impetus, from, crime to crime. His {189}
wife, on the other hand, has a conscience; and conscience, unlike awe
for conventions, can be temporarily suppressed, but not destroyed. It
reawakes when the first great crime is over, drives the unhappy queen
from her sleepless couch night after night, and hounds her at last to
death.
This is the shortest of all Shakespeare's plays in actual number of
lines; and no other work of his reveals such condensation and
lightning-like rapidity of movement. It is the tragedy of eager
ambition, which allows a man no respite after the first fatal mistake,
but hurries him on irresistibly through crime after crime to the final
disaster. Over all, like a dark cloud above a landscape, hovers the
presence of the supernatural beings who are training on the sinful but
unfortunate monarch to his ruin.
+Authorship+.--The speeches of Hecate and the dialogue connected with
them in III, v and IV, i, 39-47 are suspected by many to be the work of
Thomas Middleton, a well-known contemporary playwright. They are
unquestionably inferior to most of the play. Messrs. Clark and Wright
have assigned several other passages to Middleton; but these are now
generally regarded as Shakespeare's, and some of them are considered as
by no means below his usual high level.
+Date+.--We find no copy of _Macbeth_ earlier than the First Folio. It
was certainly written before 1610, however; for Dr. Simon Forman saw it
acted that year and records the fact in his _Booke of Plaies_. The
allusion to "two-fold balls and treble sceptres" (IV, i, 121) shows
that the play was written after 1603 when James I became king of both
Scotland and England. So does the allusion to the habit of touching
for the king's evil (IV, iii, 140-159),--a custom which James revived.
The reference to an equivocator in the porter's soliloquy (II, iii) may
allude to Henry Garnet, who was tried in 1606 for complicity in the
{190} famous Gunpowder Plot, and who is said to have upheld the
doctrine of equivocation. The date of composition is usually placed
1605-6.
+Sources+.--The plot is borrowed from Holinshed's _Historie of
Scotland_. Most of the material is taken from the part relating to the
reigns of Duncan and Macbeth; but other incidents, such as the drugging
of the grooms, are from the murder of Duncan's ancestor Duffe, which is
described in another part of Holinshed.
+Antony and Cleopatra+.--There is no other passion in mankind which
makes such fools of wise men, such weaklings of brave ones, as that of
sinful love. For this very reason it is the most tragic of all human
passions; and from this comes the dramatic power of _Antony and
Cleopatra_. The ruin of a contemptible man is never impressive; but
the ruin of an imposing character like Antony's through the one weak
spot in his powerful nature has all the somber impressiveness of a
burning city or some other great disaster.
Like _Julius Caesar_, this play is founded on Roman history. It begins
in Egypt with a picture of Antony fascinated by the Egyptian queen.
The urgent needs of the divided Roman world call him away to Italy.
Here, once free of Cleopatra's presence, he becomes his old self, a
reveler, yet diplomatic and self-seeking. From motives of policy he
marries Octavia, sister of Octavius Caesar, and for a brief space seems
assured of a brilliant future. But the old spell draws him back. He
returns to Cleopatra, and Octavius in revenge for Octavia's wrongs
makes war upon him. Cleopatra proves still Antony's evil genius. Her
seduction has already drawn him into war; now her cowardice in the
crisis of the battle decides the war {191} against him. From that
point the fate of both is one headlong rush to inevitable ruin.
In the character of Cleopatra, Shakespeare has made a wonderful study
of the fascination which beauty and charm exert, even when coupled with
moral worthlessness. We do not love her, we do not pity her when she
dies; but we feel that in spite of her idle love of power and pleasure,
she has given life a richer meaning. We are fascinated by her as by
some beautiful poison plant, the sight of which causes an aesthetic
thrill, its touch, disease and death.
Powerful as is this play, and in many ways tragic, it by no means stirs
our sympathies as do _Macbeth, King Lear_, and _Othello_. Sin for
Antony and Cleopatra is not at all the unmixed cup of woe which it
proves for Macbeth and his lady. Here at the end the lovers pay the
price of lust and folly; but before paying that price, they have had
its adequate equivalent in the voluptuous joy of life. Moreover, death
loses half its terrors for Antony through the very military vigor of
his character; and for Cleopatra, because of the cunning which renders
it painless. What impresses us most is not the pathos of their fate,
but rather the sublime folly with which, deliberately and open-eyed,
they barter a world for the intoxicating joy of passion. Impulsive as
children, powerful as demigods, they made nations their toys, and life
and death a game. Prudence could not rob them of that heritage of
delight which they considered their natural birthright, nor death, when
it came, undo what they had already enjoyed. Folly on so superhuman a
scale becomes, in the highest sense of the word, dramatic.
{192}
+Date+.--In May, 1608, there was entered in the Stationers' Register 'A
Book called Antony and Cleopatra'; and this was probably the play under
discussion. The internal evidence agrees with this; hence the date is
usually set at 1607-8. In spite of the above entry, the book does not
appear to have been printed at that time; and the first copy which has
come down to us is that in the 1623 Folio.
+Sources+.--Shakespeare's one source appears to have been the _Life of
Marcus Antonius_ in North's _Plutarch_; and he followed that very
closely. The chief changes in the play consist in the omission of
certain events which would have clogged the dramatic action.
+Coriolanus+.--Here follows the tragedy of overweening pride. The
trouble with Coriolanus is not ambition, as is the case with Macbeth.
He cares little for crowns, office, or any outward honor.
Self-centered, self-sufficient, contemptuous of all mankind outside of
his own immediate circle of friends, he dies at last because he refuses
to recognize those ties of sympathy which should bind all men and all
classes of men together. He leads his countrymen to battle, and shows
great courage at the siege of Corioli. On his return he becomes a
candidate for consul. But to win this office, he must conciliate the
common people whom he holds in contempt; and instead of conciliating
them, he so exasperates them by his overbearing scorn that he is driven
out of Rome. With the savage vindictiveness characteristic of insulted
pride, he joins the enemies of his country, brings Rome to the edge of
ruin, and spares her at last only at the entreaties of his mother.
Then he returns to Corioli to be killed there by treachery.
Men like Coriolanus are not lovable, either in real life or fiction;
but, despite his faults, he commands {193} our admiration in his
success, and our sympathy in his death. We must remember that ancient
Rome had never heard our new doctrine of the freedom and equality of
man; that the common people, as drawn by Shakespeare, were objects of
contempt and just cause for exasperation. Again, we must remember that
if Coriolanus had a high opinion of himself, he also labored hard to
deserve it. He was full of the French spirit of _noblesse oblige_.
Cruel, arrogant, harsh, he might be; but he was never cowardly,
underhanded, or mean. He was a man whose ideals were better than his
judgment, and whose prejudiced view of life made his character seem
much worse than it was. The lives of such men are usually tragic.
+Date+.--The play was not printed until the appearance of the First
Folio, and external evidence as to its date is almost worthless. On
the strength of internal evidence, meter, style, etc., which mark it
unquestionably as a late play, it is usually assigned to 1609.
+Sources+.--Shakespeare's source was Plutarch's _Life of Coriolanus_
(North's translation). As in _Julius Caesar_ and _Antony and
Cleopatra_, he followed Plutarch closely.
+Timon of Athens+.--As _Coriolanus_ was the tragedy of a man who is too
self-centered, so _Timon_ is the tragedy of a man who is not
self-centered enough. His good and bad traits alike, generosity and
extravagance, friendship and vanity, combine to make him live and
breathe in the attitude of other men toward him. From this comes his
unbounded prodigality by which in a few years he squanders an enormous
fortune in giving pleasure to his friends. From this lack of
self-poise, too, comes the tremendous reaction later, {194} when he
learns that his imagined world of love and friendship and popular
applause was a mirage of the desert, and finds himself poverty-stricken
and alone, the dupe of sharpers, the laughing-stock of fools.
Yet in spite of his lack of balance, he is full of noble qualities.
Apemantus has the very thing which he lacks, yet Apemantus is
contemptible beside him. The churlish philosopher is like some dingy
little scow, which rides out the tempest because the small cargo which
it has is all in its hold; Timon is like some splendid, but top-heavy,
battleship, which turns turtle in the storm through lack of ballast.
There is something lionlike and magnificent, despite its unreason, in
the way he accepts the inevitable, and later, after the discovery of
the gold, spurns away both the chance of wealth and the human jackals
whom it attracts. The same lordly scorn persists after him in the
epitaph which he leaves behind:--
"Here lie I, Timon; who alive all living men did hate.
Pass by and curse thy fill, but pass, and stay not here thy gait."
Yet this very epitaph of the dead misanthrope shows the same lack of
self-sufficiency which characterized the living Timon. He despises the
opinion of men, but he must let them know that he despises it.
Coriolanus would have laughed at them from Elysium and scorned to write
any epitaph.
No other Shakespearean play, with the exception of _Troilus and
Cressida_, shows the human race in a light so contemptible as this.
Aside from Timon and his faithful steward, there is not one person in
the play {195} who seems to have a single redeeming trait. All of the
others are selfish, and most of them are treacherous and cowardly.
+Authorship+.--It is generally believed that some parts of the play are
not by Shakespeare, although opinion is still somewhat divided as to
what is and is not his. The scenes and parts of scenes in which
Apemantus and some of the minor characters appear are most strongly
suspected.
+Date+.--This play was not printed until the publication of the First
Folio, and the only evidence which we have for its date is in the meter
and style and in the fact that some of the speeches show a strong
resemblance to certain ones in _King Lear_. The date most generally
approved is 1607-8.
+Sources+.--The direct source was probably a short account of Timon in
Plutarch's _Life of Marcus Antonius_. The same story also appears in
Painter's _Palace of Pleasure_, where Shakespeare may have read it.
Both of these accounts, however, contain but a small part of the
material found in the play. Certain details missing in them, such as
the discovery of the gold, etc., are found in _Timon or the
Misanthrope_, a dialogue by Lucian, one of the later of the ancient
Greek writers. As far as we know, Lucian had not been translated into
English at this time; but there were copies of his works in Latin,
French, and Italian. We cannot say whether Shakespeare had read them
or not. In 1842 a play on Timon was printed from an old manuscript
which is supposed to have been written about 1000. This contains a
banquet scene, a faithful steward, and the finding of the gold. This
has the appearance of an academic play rather than one meant for the
public theaters, so it is probable that Shakespeare never heard of it;
but it is barely possible that he knew it and used it as a source.
The most helpful book yet written on the period is: _Shakespearean
Tragedy_, by A. C. Bradley (London, Macmillan, 1910 (1st ed. 1904)).
{196}