Scene 2:--

"_Hamlet_. Look you, how cheerfully my mother looks, and my

father died within's two hours.

"_Ophelia_. Nay, 'tis twice two months, my lord.

"_Ham_. So long? Nay, then, let the devil wear black, for

I'll have a suit of sables. O heavens! die two months ago,

and not forgotten yet? Then there's hope a great man's

memory may outlive his life half a year; _but by'r lady,

he must build churches then_, or else shall he suffer not

thinking on, with the hobby-horse; whose epitaph is, 'For O!

for, O! the hobby-horse is forgot.'"

In _All's Well that Ends Well_ Shakespeare has his sanctimonious

enemies constantly in mind. He makes the Clown jeer at the fanatics in

both the Protestant and the Catholic camp. They may be of different

faiths, but they are alike in being unlucky husbands. The Clown says

(i. 3):--

"Young Charbon the Puritan, and old Poysam the Papist, how

soe'er their hearts are severed in religion, their heads are

both one; they may joll horns together, like any deer i' the

herd."

A little farther on he continues:--

"Though honesty be no Puritan, yet it will do no hurt; it

will wear the surplice of humility over the black gown of a

big heart."

When Lafeu (ii. 3) is talking to Parolles of the marvellous cure of the

King of France which Helena has undertaken, he has a hit at those who

will find matter in it for a pious treatise:--

"_Lafeu_. I may truly say, it is a novelty to the world.

"_Parolles_. It is, indeed: if you will have it in showing,

you shall read it in--what do you call there?--

"_Laf._ A showing of a heavenly effect in an earthly actor."

Shakespeare clearly took a mischievous pleasure in imitating the title

of a Puritanic work of edification.

This polemical tendency, which extends from _Hamlet_ through _All's

Well that Ends Well_ to _Measure for Measure_, in the form of an

increasingly marked opposition to the growing religious strictness and

sectarianism of the day, with its accompaniment of hypocrisy, proves

plainly that Shakespeare at this time shared the animosity of the

Government towards both Puritanism and Catholicism.

Though there is little true mirth to be found in _All's Well that Ends

Well_, the piece reminds us in various ways of some of Shakespeare's

real comedies. The story resembles in several details that of _The

Merchant of Venice_. Portia in disguise persuades the unwilling

Bassanio to give up his ring to her; and Helena, in the darkness of

night mistaken for another, coaxes Bertram out of the ring which he

had made up his mind she should never obtain from him. In the closing

scenes, both Bertram and Bassanio are minus their rings; both are

wretched because they have not got them; and in both cases the knot

is unravelled by their wives being found in possession of them.

There is a more essential relation--that of direct contrast--between

the story of _All's Well that Ends Well_ and that of _The Taming of

the Shrew_. The earlier comedy sets forth in playful fashion how a

man by means of the attributes of his sex--physical superiority,

boldness, and coolness--helped out by imperiousness, bluster, noise,

and violence, wins the devotion of a passionately recalcitrant young

woman. _All's Well that Ends Well_ shows us how a woman, by means of

the attributes of her sex--gentleness, goodness of heart, cunning, and

finesse--conquers a vehemently recalcitrant man. And in both cases the

pair are married before the action proper of the play begins.

Seeing that Shakespeare in _The Taming of the Shrew_ followed the older

play on the same subject, and that he took the story of _All's Well

that Ends Well_ from Boccaccio's Gilette of Narbonne, a translation

of which appeared as early as 1566 in Paynter's _Palace of Pleasure_,

this contrast cannot be said to have been devised by the poet. But it

is evident that one of the chief attractions of the latter subject

for Shakespeare was the opportunity it offered him of delineating

that rare phenomenon: a woman wooing a man and yet possessing and

retaining all the charm of her sex. Shakespeare has worked out the

figure of Helena with the tenderest partiality. Pity and admiration in

concert seem to have guided his pen. We feel in his portraiture a deep

compassion for the pangs of despised love--the compassion of one who

himself has suffered--and over the whole figure of Helena he has shed a

Raphael-like beauty. She wins all, charms all, wherever she goes--old

and young, women and men--all except Bertram, the one in whom her life

is bound up. The King and the old Lafeu are equally captivated by her,

equally impressed by her excellences. Bertram's mother prizes her as

if she were her daughter; more highly, indeed, than she prizes her own

obstinate son. The Italian widow becomes so devoted to her that she

follows her to a foreign country in order to vouch for her statement

and win her back her husband.

She ventures all that she may gain her well-beloved, and in the pursuit

of her aim shows an inventive capacity not common among women. For

the real object of her journey to cure the King is, as she frankly

confesses, to be near Bertram. As in the tale, she obtains the King's

promise that she may, if she is successful in curing him, choose

herself a husband among the lords of his court; but in Boccaccio it is

the King who, in answer to her question as to the reward, gives her

this promise of his own accord; in the play it is she who first states

her wish. So possessed is she by her passion for one who does not give

her a thought or a look. But when he rejects her (unlike Gilette in the

tale), she has no desire to attain her object by compulsion; she simply

says to the King with noble resignation--

"That you are well restored, my lord,

I'm glad; let the rest go."

She offers no objection when Bertram, immediately after the wedding,

announces his departure, alleging pretexts which she does not choose

to see through; she suffers without a murmur when, at the moment

of parting, he refuses her a kiss. When she has learnt the whole

truth, she can at first utter nothing but short ejaculations (iii.

2): "My lord is gone, for ever gone." "This is a dreadful sentence!"

"Tis bitter!"--and presently she leaves her home, that she may be

no hindrance to his returning to it. Predisposed though she is to

self-confidence and pride, no one could possibly love more tenderly and

humbly.

All the most beautiful passages of her part show by the structure of

the verse and the absence of rhyme that they belong to the poet's riper

period. Note, for example, the lines (i. I) in which Helena tells how

the remembrance of her dead father has been effaced in her mind by the

picture of Bertram:--

"My imagination

Carries no favour in't but Bertram's.

I am undone: there is no living, none,

If Bertram be away. It were all one

That I should love a bright particular star,

And think to wed it; he is so above me:

In his bright radiance and collateral light

Must I be comforted, not in his sphere.

The ambition in my love thus plagues itself:

The hind that would be mated by the lion

Must die for love. 'Twas pretty, though a plague,

To see him every hour: to sit and draw

His arched brows, his hawking eye, his curls,

In our heart's table; heart too capable

Of every line and trick of his sweet favour:

But now he's gone, and my idolatrous fancy

Must sanctify his relics."

If we compare the style of this passage with that which prevails

in Helena's rhymed speeches, with their euphuistic word-plays

and antitheses, the difference is very striking, and we feel

what a distance Shakespeare has traversed since the days of his

apprenticeship. Here we find no glitter of wit, but the utterance of a

heart that loves simply and deeply.

Though the play as a whole was evidently not one of those which

Shakespeare cared most about, and though he has allowed things to stand

in it which preclude the possibility of a satisfactory and harmonious

end, yet he has evidently concentrated his whole poetic strength on the

development and perfection of Helena's most winning character. These

are the terms (i. 3) in which, speaking to Bertram's mother, she makes

confession of her love:--

"Be not offended, for it hurts not him,

That he is lov'd of me. I follow him not

By any token of presumptuous suit;

Nor would I have him till I do deserve him,

Yet never know how that desert should be.

I know I love in vain, strive against hope;

Yet, in this captious and intenible 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 worshipper,

But knows of him no more."

There is something in her nature which anticipates the charm,

earnestness, and boundless devotion with which Shakespeare afterwards

endows Imogen. When Bertram goes off to the war, simply to escape

acknowledging her and living with her as his wife, she exclaims (iii.

2)--

"Poor lord! is't I

That chase thee from thy country, and expose

Those tender limbs of thine to the event

Of the none-sparing war? . . .

O you leaden messengers,

That ride upon the violent speed of fire,

Fly with false aim; move the still-'pearing air,

That sings with piercing, do not touch my lord!

Whoever shoots at him, I set him there;

Whoever charges on his forward breast,

I am the caitiff that do hold him to it."

In this there is a fervour and a glow that we do not find in the

earlier comedies. When one reads these verses, one understands how it

is that Coleridge calls Helena, "Shakespeare's loveliest character."

Pity that this deep passion should have been inspired by so unworthy

an object. It undoubtedly lessens the interest of the play that

Shakespeare should not have given Bertram some more estimable qualities

along with the all too youthful and unchivalrous ones which he

possesses. The poet has here been guilty of a certain negligence, which

shows that it was only to parts of the play that he gave his whole

mind. Bertram is right enough in refusing to have a wife thrust upon

him against his will, simply because the King has a debt of gratitude

to pay. But this first motive for refusing gives place to one with

which we have less sympathy: to wit, pride of rank, which makes him

look down on Helena as being of inferior birth, though king, courtiers,

and his own mother consider her fit to rank with the best. Even this,

however, need not lower Bertram irretrievably in our esteem; but he

adds to it traits of unmanliness, even of baseness. For instance, he

enjoins Helena, through Parolles, to invent some explanation of his

sudden departure which will make the King believe it to have been a

necessity; and then he leaves her, not, as he falsely declares, for

two days, but for ever. His readiness to marry a daughter of Lafeu

the moment the report of Helena's death has reached him is a very

extraordinary preparation for the reunion of the couple at the end of

the play, and reminds us unpleasantly of the exactly similar incident

in _Much Ado About Nothing_ (p. 217). But, worst of all, and an

indisputable dramatic mistake, is his entangling himself, just before

the final reconciliation, in a web of mean lies with reference to the

Italian girl to whom he had laid siege in Tuscany.

It was to make Helena's position more secure, and to avoid any

suspicion of the adventuress about her, that Shakespeare invented the

character of the Countess, that motherly friend whose affection sets a

seal on all her merits. In the same way Parolles was invented with the

purpose of making Bertram less guilty. Bertram is to be considered as

ensnared by this old "fool, notorious liar, and coward" (as Helena at

once calls him), who figures in the play as his evil genius.

Parolles in _Love's Labours Won_ was doubtless a gay and purely

farcical figure--the first slight sketch for Falstaff. Coming after

Falstaff, he necessarily seems a weak repetition; but this is no

fault of the poet's. Still, it is very plain that in the re-writing

Shakespeare's attempt at gaiety missed fire. His frame of mind was too

serious; the view of the subject from the moral standpoint displaces

and excludes pure pleasure in its comicality. Parolles, who has

Falstaff's vices without a gleam of his genius, brings anything but

unmixed merriment in his train. The poet is at pains to impress on us

the lesson we ought to learn from Parolles's self-stultification, and

the shame that attends on his misdeeds. Thus the Second Lord (iv. 3),

speaking of the rascality he displays in his outpourings when he is

blindfolded, says--

"I will never trust a man again for keeping his sword clean, nor

believe he can have everything in him by wearing his apparel neatly."

And Parolles himself says when his effrontery is crushed (iv. 3)--

"If my heart were great,

'Twould burst at this. Captain I'll be no more;

But I will eat and drink, and sleep as soft

As captain shall: simply the thing I am

Shall make me live. _Who knows himself a braggart,_

_Let him fear this; for it will come to pass_

_That every braggart shall be found an ass_"

The other comic figure, the Clown, witty as he is, has not the serene

gaiety of the earlier comedies. He speaks here and there, as already

noted (p. 49), in the youthfully whimsical style of the

earliest comedies; but as a humoristic house-fool he does not rank with

such a sylvan fool as Touchstone, a creation of a few years earlier,

nor with the musical court-fool in _Twelfth Night_.

A single passage in _All's Well that Ends Well_ has always struck me

as having a certain personal note. It is one of those which were quite

evidently added at the time of the re-writing. The King is speaking of

Bertram's deceased father, and quotes his words (i. 2)--

"'Let me not live,'--

Thus his good melancholy oft began,

On the catastrophe and heel of pastime,

When it was out,--'Let me not live,' quoth he,

'After my flame lacks oil, to be the snuff

Of younger spirits, whose apprehensive senses

All but new things disdain.'...

This he wish'd:

I, after him, do after him wish too."

A courtier objects to this despondent utterance--

"You are lov'd, sir;

They that least lend it you shall lack you first."

Whereupon the King replies with proud humility--

"I fill a place, I know't."

These words could not have been written save by a mature man, who has

seen impatient youth pressing forward to take his place, and who has

felt the sting of its criticism. The disposition of mind which here

betrays itself foretells that overpowering sense of the injustice of

men and of things which is soon to take possession of Shakespeare's

soul.

XX

_MEASURE FOR MEASURE--ANGELO AND TARTUFFE_

A covert polemical intention could be vaguely divined here and there

in _All's Well that Ends Well_. It contained, as we have seen, some

incidental mockery of the increasing Puritanism of the time, with its

accompaniment of self-righteousness, moral intolerance, and unctuous

hypocrisy. The bent of thought which gave birth to these sallies

reappears still more clearly in the choice of the theme treated in

_Measure for Measure_.

The plot of _All's Well that Ends Well_ turns on the incident, familiar

in every literature, of one woman passing herself off for another at a

nocturnal rendezvous, without the substitution being detected by the

man--an incident so fruitful in dramatic situations, that even its

gross improbability has never deterred poets from making use of it.

A standing variation of this theme, also to be found in the most

diverse literatures, is as follows:--A man is condemned to death. His

mistress, his wife, or his sister implores the judge to pardon him. The

judge promises, on condition that she shall pass a night with him, to

let the prisoner go free, but afterwards has him executed all the same.

This subject has been treated over and over again from mediæval times

down to our own days, its latest appearances, probably, being in Paul

Heyse's novel, _Der Kinder Sünde der Väter Fluch_, and in Victorien

Sardou's play _La Tosca_. In Shakespeare's time it appeared in the form

of an Italian novella in Giraldi Cinthio's _Hecatommithi_ (1565), on

which an English dramatist, George Whetstone, founded his play, _The

Right Excellent and Famous History of Promos and Cassandra_ (1578), and

also a prose story in his _Heptameron of Civil Discourses_, published

in 1582. Whetstone's utterly lifeless and characterless comedy is the

immediate source from which Shakespeare derived the outlines of the

story. He is indebted to Whetstone for nothing else.

What attracted Shakespeare to this unpleasant subject was clearly his

indignation at the growing Pharisaism in matters of sexual morality

which was one outcome of the steady growth of Puritanism among the

middle classes. It was a consequence of his position as an actor and

theatrical manager that he saw only the ugliest side of Puritanism--the

one it turned towards him.

Its estimable sides well deserved a poet's sympathy. Small wonder,

indeed, that independent and pious men should seek the salvation of

their souls without the bounds of the Anglican State Church, with its

Thirty-Nine Articles, to which all clergymen and state officials were

bound to swear, and to which all citizens must make submission. It was

a punishable offence to use any other ritual than the official one, or

even to refuse to go to church. The Puritans, who dreamed of leading

the Christian Church back to its original purity, and who had returned

home after their banishment during the reign of Mary with the ideal

of a democratic Church before their eyes, could not possibly approve

of a State Church subject to the crown, or of such an institution as

Episcopacy. Some of them looked to Scottish Presbyterianism as a worthy

model, and desired to see Church government by laymen, the elders of

the congregation, introduced into England, in place of the spiritual

aristocracy of the bishops. Others went still farther, denied the

necessity of one common form of worship for all, and desired to have

the Church broken up into independent congregations, in which any

believer might officiate as priest. We have here the germs of the great

party division in Cromwell's time into Presbyterians and Independents.

So far as we can see, Shakespeare took no interest whatever in any of

these ecclesiastical or religious movements. He came into contact with

Puritanism only in its narrow and fanatical hatred of his art, and

in its severely intolerant condemnation and punishment of moral, and

especially of sexual, frailties. All he saw was its Pharisaic aspect,

and its often enough only simulated virtue.

It was his indignation at this hypocritical virtue that led him to

write _Measure for Measure_. He treated the subject as he did, because

the interests of the theatre demanded that the woof of comedy should

be interwoven with the severe and sombre warp of tragedy. But what

a comedy! Dark, tragic, heavy as the poet's mood--a tragi-comedy,

in which the unusually broad and realistic comic scenes, with their

pictures of the dregs of society, cannot relieve the painfulness of

the theme, or disguise the positively criminal nature of the action.

One feels throughout, even in the comic episodes, that Shakespeare's

burning wrath at the moral hypocrisy of self-righteousness underlies

the whole structure like a volcano, which every moment shoots up its

flames through the superficial form of comedy and the interludes of

obligatory merriment.

And yet it is not really against hypocrisy that his attack is aimed.

At this stage of his development he is far too great a psychologist to

depict a ready-made, finished hypocrite. No, he shows us how weak even

the strictest Pharisee will prove, if only he happens to come across

the temptation which really tempts him; and how such a man's desire,

if it meets with opposition, reveals in him quite another being--a

villain, a brute beast--who allows himself actions worse a hundredfold

than those which, in the calm superiority of a spotless conscience, he

has hitherto punished in others with the utmost severity.

It is not a type of Shakespeare's opponents that he here unmasks and

brands--it is a man in many ways above the average type, as he saw

it. The chief character in _Measure for Measure_ is the judge of

public morality, the hard and stern _Censor morum_, who in his moral

fanaticism believes that he can root out vice by persecuting its tools,

and imagines that he can purify and reform society by punishing every

transgression, however natural and comparatively harmless, as a capital

crime. The play shows us how this man, as soon as a purely sensual

passion takes possession of him, does not hesitate to commit, under

the mask of piety, a crime against real morality so revolting and so

monstrous that no expression of loathing and contempt would be too

severe for it, and scarcely any punishment too rigorous.

From its nature such a drama ought to end by appeasing in some

satisfactory manner the craving for justice awakened in the spectator.

But comedy was what Shakespeare's company wanted; and besides, it would

have been unwise, and perhaps even dangerous, to carry to extremities

this question of the punishment of moral hypocrisy. So the knot in the

play was summarily loosed, without any great expenditure of pathos,

by the provident care and timely intervention of a wise and invisibly

omnipresent prince, an occidental Haroun-al-Raschid. Fastidious in

his choice of means this prince was not. With an ingenuity which is

profoundly unsatisfactory to any one of the least delicacy of feeling,

he substitutes a lovable girl, whom the iniquitous judge had at one

time promised to marry, for the beautiful young woman who is the object

of his bestial desire.

The Duke, wishing to test his servants, gives out that he is leaving

Vienna on a long journey. He intrusts the regency during his absence to

Angelo, an official of high standing and reputation.

No sooner does Angelo come into power than he begins a regular crusade

against licentiousness and all laxity in the domain of morals. In the

first place, he decrees that all houses of ill-fame in the city of

Vienna are to be pulled down. In the older drama by Whetstone, which

Shakespeare used as a foundation for his play, there was a whole troop

of disreputable personages, procuresses, prostitutes, bullies, improper

characters of every description. Shakespeare retains part of this

company; he has a single procuress, Mistress Overdone, who reminds

us slightly of Doll Tearsheet, a single bully, that very amusing

personage, Pompey; and he adds to them an extremely entertaining

character, the utterly dissolute but witty tattler and liar, Lucio.

But the chief alteration he makes in the subject-matter of the play is

that the Duke, disguised as a friar, is witness from the beginning of

Angelo's abuse of his power as ruler and judge. Among other advantages

resulting from this modification, we must reckon the fact that the

spectators are thus reassured in advance as to the final issue. On the

Duke's disguise, moreover, depends most of the comic effect arising

out of the character of Lucio, who is constantly repeating to him the

most absurd slanders about himself, as if he had them from the best

authority. Further, the Duke's concealed presence is essential to the

other great change made in the story, namely, that Isabella is not

really required to sacrifice herself for her brother, her place being

filled, as in _All's Well that Ends Well_, by a woman who has old

claims on the man concerned. In this manner the too revoltingly painful

part of the subject is avoided.

Shakespeare has imagined one of the men who were the bitterest enemies

of his art and his calling invested with absolute power, and using

it to proceed against immorality with cruel rigour. The first step

is his attack on common prostitution, which he persuades himself he

can exterminate. This vain imagination is repeatedly ridiculed. "What

shall become of me?" says Mistress Overdone. "Come; fear not you: good

counsellors lack no clients." In the Act ii. sc. I we read:--

"_Escalus_. How would you live, Pompey? by being a bawd?

What do you think of the trade, Pompey? is it a lawful trade?

"_Pompey_. If the law would allow it, sir.

"_Escal_. But the law will not allow it, Pompey; nor it

shall not be allowed in Vienna.

"_Pomp_. Does your worship mean to geld and splay all the

youth of the city.

"_Escal_. No, Pompey.

"_Pomp_. Truly, sir, in my poor opinion, they will to't

then."

And Lucio (iii. 2) also ridicules Angelo's severity as fruitless:--

"_Lucio_. A little more lenity to lechery would do no harm

in him: something too crabbed that way, friar.

"_Duke_. It is too general a vice, and severity must cure it.

"_Lucio_. Yes, in good sooth, the vice is of a great

kindred: it is well allied; but it is impossible to extirp

it quite, friar, till eating and drinking be put down. They

say, this Angelo was not made by man and woman, after this

downright way of creation: is it true, think you?"

But besides taking strict proceedings against actual debauchery, Angelo

revives an old law which has long been in disuse--according to the Duke

for fourteen, according to Claudio for nineteen years--making death the

punishment of all sexual commerce without marriage; and by this law

young Claudio is condemned to death for his relation to Juliet.

It was an innocent relation. He says (i. 3):--

"She is fast my wife

Save that we do the denunciation lack

Of outward order: this we came not to,

Only for propagation of a dower

Remaining in the coffer of her friends."

But this avails nothing. An example is to be made. It is in vain that

even the highly respectable Provost feels compassion for him, and says

(ii. 2):--

"All sects, all ages smack of this vice, and he

To die for it!"

The young men of the town cannot explain this insane severity in any

other way than by the supposition that Lord Angelo is a man with

"snow-broth" in his veins in place of blood.

It soon appears, however, that he is not the man of ice he is taken to

be.

Escalus, an old, honourable nobleman, bids him bear in mind that

though his own virtue be of the straitest, it has, perhaps, never been

tempted; had it been exposed to temptations, it might not have stood

the test better than that of others. Angelo answers haughtily that

to be tempted is one thing, to fall another. But now comes Claudio's

sister, Isabella, young, charming, and intelligent, and beseeches him

to spare her brother's life (ii. 2):--

"Good, good my lord, bethink you:

Who is it that hath died for this offence?

There's many have committed it."

He is inexorable. She shows the unreason of punishing so stringently

the errors of love:

"_Isab_. Could great men thunder

As Jove himself does, Jove would ne'er be quiet,

For every pelting, petty officer

Would use his heaven for thunder; nothing but thunder.--

Merciful heaven!

Thou rather with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt

Splitt'st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak,

Than the soft myrtle."

And she continues in such a strain, that we cannot but hear the poet's

voice through hers:--

"But man, proud man!

Drest in a little brief authority,

Most ignorant of what he's most assur'd,

His glassy essence,--like an angry ape,

Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven

As make the angels weep; who, with our spleens,

Would all themselves laugh mortal."

And she appeals to his own self-knowledge:--

"Go to your bosom;

Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know

That's like my brother's fault."

He invites her to come again the next day; and hardly is she gone when,

in a monologue, he reveals his hateful passion, and even hints at his

still more hateful purpose of forcing her to gratify it in payment for

her brother's release.

He makes her his proposal. She is appalled; she now sees, like Hamlet,

what life can be, what undreamt-of horrors can happen, to what a pitch

villainy can be carried, even on the judgment-seat:--

"O, 'tis the cunning livery of hell,

The damned'st body to invest and cover

In princely guards! Dost thou think, Claudio?--

If I would yield him my virginity,

Thou mightst be freed."

She cannot even denounce him, for, as he himself points out to her,

no one will believe her; his stainless name, his strict life and high

rank, will stifle the accusation if she dares to make it. Feeling

himself safe, he is doubly audacious. Thus, when, at the conclusion of

the play (v. 3), she lays her indictment before the reinstated Duke,

Angelo says brazenly, "My lord, her wits, I fear me, are not firm."

Then follows, as if in continuation of Isabella's just-quoted speech,

the fiery protest springing from the poet's intensest conviction:--

"Make not impossible

That which but seems unlike. 'Tis not impossible,

But one, the wicked'st caitiff on the ground,

May seem as shy, as grave, as just, as absolute,

As Angelo."

(See p. 241.)

But the protest has no immediate result. Isabella is, for the time

being, sent to prison for slandering a man of unblemished honour.

And the irony is kept up to the last. The Duke, in his character as

a friar, has learnt bitter lessons; amongst others, that there is

hardly enough honesty in the world to hold society together. But when

he himself, in his disguise, relates what he has witnessed, his own

faithful servants are on the point of sending him also to prison. In

his rôle of Haroun-al-Raschid, he has seen and realised that law is

made to serve as a screen for might. Thus he says--

"My business in this state

Made me a looker-on here in Vienna,

Where I have seen corruption boil and bubble

Till it o'er-run the stew: laws for all faults,

But faults so countenanc'd, that the strong statutes

Stand like the forfeits in a barber's shop,

As much in mock as mark.

_'Escal_. Slander to the state! Away with him to prison."

As a play, _Measure for Measure_ rests entirely on three scenes: the

one in which Angelo is tempted by Isabella's beauty; that in which

he makes the shameless, proposal that she shall give her honour in

exchange for her brother's life; and, thirdly, that most dramatic one

in which Claudio, after first hearing with fortitude and indignation

what his sister has to tell him of Angelo's baseness, breaks down, and,

like Kleist's Prince of Homburg two centuries later, begins meanly

to beg for his life. Round these principal scenes are grouped the

many excellent and vigorously realistic comic passages, treated in a

spirit which afterwards revived in Hogarth and Thackeray; and other

scenes designed solely to retard the dramatic wheel a little, which,

therefore, jar upon us as conventional. It is, for example, an entirely

unjustifiable experiment which the Duke tries on Isabella in the fourth

act, when he falsely assures her that her brothers head has already

been cut off and sent to Angelo. This is introduced solely for the sake

of an effect at the end.

In this very unequally elaborated play, it is evident that Shakespeare

cared only for the main point--the blow he was striking at hypocrisy.

And it is probable that he here ventured as far as he by any means

dared. It is a giant stride from the stingless satire on Puritanism

in the character of Malvolio to this representation of a Puritan

like Angelo. Probably for this very reason, Shakespeare has tried

in every way to shield himself. The subject is treated entirely as

a comedy. There is a threat of executing first Claudio, then the

humorous scoundrel Barnardine, whose head is to be delivered instead

of Claudio's; Barnardine is actually brought on the scene directly

before execution, and the spectators sit in suspense; but all ends

well at last, and the head of a man already dead is sent to Angelo. A

noble maiden is threatened with dishonour; but another woman, Mariana,

who was worthy of a better fate, keeps tryst with Angelo in her stead,

and this danger is over. Finally, threats of retribution close round

Angelo, the villain, himself; but after all he escapes unpunished,

being merely obliged to marry the amiable girl whom he had at an

earlier period deserted. In this way the play's terrible impeachment

of hypocrisy is most carefully glozed over, and along with it the

pessimism which animates the whole.

For it is remarkable how deeply pessimistic is the spirit of this play.

When the Duke is exhorting Claudio (iii. I) not to fear his inevitable

fate, he goes farther in his depreciation of human life than Hamlet

himself when his mood is blackest:--

"Reason thus with life:--

If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing

That none but fools would keep; a breath thou art,

Servile to all the skyey influences,

That do this habitation, where thou keep'st,

Hourly afflict. Merely, thou art death's fool;

For him thou labour'st by thy flight to shun,

And yet runn'st toward him still.

. . . . . . . . .

Happy thou art not;

For what thou hast not, still thou striv'st to get,

And what thou hast, forgett'st. Thou art not certain;

For thy complexion shifts to strange effects,

After the moon. If thou art rich, thou'rt poor;

For, like an ass, whose back with ingots bows,

Thou bear'st thy heavy riches but a journey,

And death unloads thee. Friends hast thou none;

For thine own bowels, which do call thee sire,

The mere effusion of thy proper loins,

Do curse the gout, serpigo, and the rheum,

For ending thee no sooner. Thou hast nor youth, nor age,

But, as it were, an after-dinner's sleep,

Dreaming on both; for all thy blessed youth

Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms

Of palsied eld: and when thou art old and rich,

Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty

To make thy riches pleasant. What's yet in this,

That bears the name of life? Yet in this life

Lie hid more thousand deaths; yet death we fear,

That makes these odds all even."

Note with what art and care everything is here assembled that can

confound and abash the normal instinct that makes for life. Here for

the first time Shakespeare anticipates Schopenhauer.

It is clear that in this play the poet was earnestly bent on proving

his own standpoint to be the moral one. In hardly any other play do we

find such persistent emphasis laid, with small regard for consistency

of character, upon the general moral.

For example, could there be a more direct utterance than the Duke's

monologue at the end of Act iii.:--

"He who the sword of heaven will bear

Should be as holy as severe;

Pattern in himself to know,

Grace to stand, and virtue go;

More nor less to others paying,

Than by self-offences weighing.

Shame to him whose cruel striking

Kills for faults of his own liking!

Twice treble shame on Angelo,

To weed my vice, and let his grow!"

Similarly, and in a like spirit, the moral pointer comes into play

wherever there is an opportunity of showing how apt princes and rulers

are to be misjudged, and how recklessly they are disparaged and

slandered.

Thus the Duke says towards the close of Act iii.:--

"No might nor greatness in mortality

Can censure scape: black-wounding calumny

The whitest virtue strikes. What king so strong

Can tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue?"

And later (iv. I), again:--

"O place and greatness! millions of false eyes

Are stuck upon thee. Volumes of report

Run with these false and most contrarious quests

Upon thy doings."

It is quite remarkable how this dwelling on baseless criticism by

subjects is accompanied by a constant tendency to invoke the protection

of the sovereign, or, in other words, of James I., who had just

ascended the throne, and who, with his long-accumulated bitterness

against Scottish Presbyterianism, was already showing himself hostile

to English Puritanism. Hence the politic insistence, at the close,

upon a point quite irrelevant to the matter of the play: all other

sins being declared pardonable, save only slander or criticism of

the sovereign. Lucio alone, who, to the great entertainment of the

spectators, has told lies about the Duke, and, though only in jest, has

spoken ill of him, is to be mercilessly punished. To the last moment

it seems as if he were to be first whipped, then hanged. And even

after this sentence is commuted in order that the tone of comedy may

be preserved, and he is commanded instead to marry a prostitute, it is

expressly insisted that whipping and hanging ought by rights to have

been his punishment. "Slandering a prince deserves it," says the Duke,

at the beginning of the final speech.

This attitude of Shakespeare's presents an exact parallel to that of

Molière in the concluding scene of _Tartuffe_, sixty years later. The

prince, in accordance with James of Scotland's theories of princely

duty, appears as the universally vigilant guardian of his people;

he alone chastises the hypocrite, whose lust of power and audacity

distinguish him from the rest. The appeal to the prince in _Measure

for Measure_ answers exactly to the great Deus-ex-machinâ speech in

_Tartuffe_, which relieves the leading characters from the nightmare

that has oppressed them:--

"Nous vivons sous un prince, ennemi de la fraude,

Un prince dont les yeux se font jour dans les cœurs

Et que ne peut tromper tout l'art des imposteurs."

In the seventeenth century kings were still the protectors of art and

artists against moral and religious fanaticism.

XXI

_ACCESSION OF JAMES AND ANNE--RALEIGH'S FATE--SHAKESPEARE'S COMPANY

BECOME HIS MAJESTY'S SERVANTS--SCOTCH INFLUENCE_.

In _Measure for Measure_ it is not only the monarchical tone of the

play, but some quite definite points, that mark it out as having been

produced at the time of James's accession to the throne in 1603. In the

very first scene there is an allusion to the new king's nervous dislike

of crowds. This peculiarity, which caused much surprise on the occasion

of his entrance into England, is here placed in a flattering light. The

Duke says:--

"I'll privily away: I love the people,

But do not like to stage me to their eyes.

Though it do well, I do not relish well

Their loud applause and Aves vehement,

Nor do I think the man of safe discretion

That does affect it."

It is also with unmistakable reference to James's antipathy for a

throng that Angelo, in Act ii. sc. 4, describes the crowding of the

people round a beloved sovereign as an inadmissible intrusion:--

"So play the foolish throngs with one that swoons,

Come all to help him, and so stop the air

By which he should revive: and even so

The general, subject to a well-wish'd king,

Quit their own part, and in obsequious fondness

Crowd to his presence, where their untaught love

Must needs appear offence."

Elizabeth had breathed her last on the 24th of March 1603. On her

deathbed, when she could no longer speak, she had made the shape of a

crown above her head with her hands, to signify that she chose as her

successor one who was already a king. Her ministers had long been in

secret negotiation with James VI. of Scotland, and had promised him

the succession, in spite of a provision in Henry VIII.'s will which

excluded his elder sister's Scottish descendants from the throne.

This had to be set aside; for there was not in the younger line any

personage of sufficient distinction to be at all eligible. There was

obvious advantage, too, in uniting the crowns of England and Scotland

on one head; too long had the neighbour kingdoms wasted each other's

energies in mutual feuds. All parties in the nation agreed with the

ministers in looking to James as Elizabeth's natural successor. The

Protestants felt confidence in him as a Protestant; the Catholics

looked for better treatment from the son of the Catholic martyr-queen;

the Puritans hoped that he, as a new and peace-loving king, would

sanction such alterations in the statutory form of worship as should

enable them to take part in it without injury to their souls. Great

expectations greeted him.

Hardly was the breath out of Queen Elizabeth's body when Sir Robert

Carey, a gentleman on whom she had conferred many benefits, but who, in

his anxiety to ensure the new King's favour, had post-horses standing

ready at every station, galloped off to be the first to bring the

news to James in Edinburgh. On the way he was thrown from his horse,

which kicked him on the head; but in spite of this he reached Holyrood

on the evening of the 26th of March, just after the King had gone to

bed. He was hurriedly conducted into the bed-chamber, where he knelt

and greeted James by the title of King of England, Scotland, France,

and Ireland. "Hee gave mee his hand to kisse," writes Carey, "and

bade me welcome." He also promised Carey a place as Gentleman of the

Bed-Chamber, and various other things, in reward for his zeal; but

forgot all these promises as soon as he stood on English ground.

In London all preparations had been carefully made. A proclamation of

James as King had been drawn up by Cecil during Elizabeth's lifetime,

and sent to Scotland for James's sanction. This the Prime Minister

read, a few hours after the Queen's death, to an assembly of the

Privy Council and chief nobility, and a great crowd, of the people,

amidst universal approbation. Three heralds with a trumpeter repeated

the proclamation in the Tower, "whereof as well prysoners as others

rejoyced, namely, the Earle of Southampton, in whom all signes of

great gladnesse appeared." Not without reason; for almost the first

order James gave was that a courier should convey to Southampton the

King's desire that he should at once join him and accompany him on his

progress through England to London, where he was to receive the oath of

allegiance and to be crowned.

On the 5th of April 1603, James I. of Great Britain left Edinburgh to

take possession of his new kingdom. His royal progress was a very slow

one, for every nobleman and gentleman whose house he passed invited

him to enter; he accepted all invitations, spent day after day in

festivities, and rewarded hospitality by distributing knighthoods in

unheard-of and excessive numbers. One of his actions was unequivocally

censured. At Newark "was taken a cutpurse doing the deed," and James

had him hanged without trial or judgment. The displeasure shown made

it plain to him that he could not thus assume superiority to the

laws of England. In Scotland there had been a general demand for a

strong monarchy, which could hold the nobles and the clergy in check;

in England the day for this was over, and the new King's successors

learned to their cost the futility of trying to carry on the traditions

of despotism on English soil.

James himself was received with the naïve, disinterested joy with

which the mass of the people are apt to greet a new monarch, of whose

real qualities nothing is yet known, and with the less disinterested

flatteries by which every one who came into contact with the King

sought personal favour in his eyes.

There was nothing kingly or even winning in King James's exterior.

Strange that the handsome Henry Darnley and the beautiful Mary Stuart

should have had such an insignificant and ungainly son! He was

something over middle height, indeed, but his figure was awkward, his

head lumpish, and his eyes projecting. His language was the broadest

Scotch, and when he opened his mouth it was rather to spit out the

words than to speak; he hustled them out so that they stumbled over

each other. He talked, ate, and dressed like a peasant, and, in

spite of his apparently decorous life, was addicted to the broadest

improprieties of talk, even in the presence of ladies. He walked

like one who has no command over his limbs, and he could never keep

still, even in a room, but was always pacing up and down with clumsy,

sprawling movements. His muscles were developed by riding and hunting,

but his whole appearance was wanting in dignity.

The shock inflicted on his mother during her pregnancy, by Rizzio's

assassination, probably accounts for his dread of the sight of drawn

steel. The terrorism in which he was brought up had increased his

natural timidity. While he was yet but a youth, the French ambassador,

Fontenay, summed up his description of him thus: "In one word, he is an

old young man."

Now, in the thirty-sixth year of his age, he was a learned personage,

full of prejudices, wanting neither in shrewdness nor in wit, but

with two absorbing passions--the one for conversation on theological

and ecclesiastical matters, and the other for hunting expeditions, to

which he sometimes gave up so much as six consecutive days. He had

not Elizabeth's political instinct; she had chosen her councillors

among men of the most different parties; he admitted to his council

none but those whose opinions agreed with his own. But his vanity was

quite equal to hers. He had the pedant's boastfulness; he was fond

of bragging, for instance, that he could do more work in one hour

than others in a day; and he was especially proud of his learning.

Some Shakespeare students have, as already observed, seen in him the

prototype of Hamlet. He was certainly no Hamlet, but rather what

Alfred Stern somewhere calls him--a Polonius on the throne. We have

a description by Sir John Harington of an audience James gave him

in 1604. The King "enquyrede muche of lernynge" in such a way as to

remind him of "his examiner at Cambridge aforetyme," quoted scraps of

Aristotle which he hardly understood himself, and made Harington read

aloud part of a canto of Ariosto. Then he asked him what he "thoughte

pure witte was made of," and whom it best became, and thereupon

inquired whether he did not think a king ought to be "the beste clerke"

in his country. Farther, "His Majestie did much presse for my opinion

touchinge the power of Satane in matter of witchcraft, and ... why the

Devil did worke more with anciente women than others." This question

Sir John boldly and wittily answered by reminding him of the preference

for "walking in dry places" ascribed in Scripture to the Devil. James

then told of the apparition of "a bloodie heade dancinge in the

aire," which had been seen in Scotland before his mother's death, and

concluded: "Now, sir, you have seen my wisdome in some sorte, and I

have pried into yours. I praye you, do me justice in your reporte, and,

in good season, I will not fail to add to your understandinge, in suche

pointes as I may find you lacke amendmente." Perhaps only one European

sovereign since James has so plumed himself on his own omniscience.

James's relations with England during Elizabeth's reign had not been

invariably friendly. Nourishing a lively ill-will to the Presbyterian

clergy, who were always trying to interfere in matters of state, he had

in 1584, at the age of eighteen, appealed to the Pope for assistance

for himself and his imprisoned mother. But the very next year, in

consideration of the payment of a pension of £4000 a year, he concluded

a treaty with Elizabeth. When this was ratified in 1586, his mother

disinherited him and nominated Philip II. her successor. At the very

time when the trial of Mary Stuart was going on, James made application

to have his title as heir to the throne of England acknowledged. This

unworthy, unchivalrous proceeding made it impossible for him in any way

to interfere with the carrying out of whatever sentence the English

Government chose to pronounce in his mother's case. Nevertheless her

execution naturally affected him painfully, and it was his resentment

that made him hasten on his long-planned marriage with the Danish

princess Anne, daughter of Frederick II.--an alliance which he knew to

be disagreeable to Elizabeth. He gained a political advantage by it,

Denmark waiving her claim to the Orkney Islands.

His bride, born at Skanderborg towards the close of 1574, was at the

time of her marriage not fifteen years old--a pretty, fair-skinned,

golden-haired girl. Daughter of a Lutheran father and the Lutheran

Sophia of Mecklenburg, she had been brought up in Lutheran orthodoxy.

She had received some instruction in chemistry from Tycho Brahe; but

her education, on the whole, had been rather that of a spoilt child.

Great ideas had been instilled into her of what it meant to belong to

the royal house of Denmark, so that she agreed with her future husband

in a conviction of the importance of kingly state. Other features of

her character were good-humour, inborn wit, and a superficial gaiety

which sometimes went to unguarded lengths. Her behaviour, only three

years after her marriage, gave rise to a scandal--public opinion

(doubtless unjustly) making James accessory to the assassination of

the Earl of Murray, whom it was supposed that he had good reasons for

wishing out of the way.

The difficulties which beset Anne's voyage from Denmark to Scotland in

1589 are well known. A storm, for raising which many Danish "witches"

and no fewer than two hundred luckless Scottish crones had to suffer at

the stake, drove the bride to Oslo in Norway. The impatient bridegroom

then undertook the one romantic adventure of his life and set off in

search of her. He found her at Oslo, was married there, and spent the

winter in Denmark.

As Queen of Scotland, Anne already showed herself possessed by the same

mania for building which characterised her brother, Christian IV. As

Queen of England she aroused dissatisfaction by her constant coquetting

with Roman Catholicism. By her own wish, the Pope sent her gifts of all

sorts of Catholic gimcracks; they were taken from her, and the bearer

was consigned to the Tower. She showed a certain amiable independence

in the sympathy and good-will which she displayed towards Sir Walter

Raleigh, whom her husband imprisoned in the Tower; but on the whole

she was an insignificant woman, pleasure-loving and pomp-loving

(consequently a patroness of those poets who, like Ben Jonson, wrote

masques for court festivals), and, in contrast to the economical

Elizabeth, so extravagant that she was always in debt. Very soon after

her arrival in England, she owed enormous sums to jewellers and other

merchants.

The new King soon disappointed the hopes which Puritans and Catholics

had cherished as to his tolerance. Even during the course of his

journey from Edinburgh to London numerous petitions for the better

treatment of Dissenters had been handed to him, and he seemed to give

good promises to both parties. But as early as January 1604, on the

occasion of a conference he summoned at Hampton Court, there was a

rupture between him and the Puritans--the very mention of the word

"Presbyter" making him furious. The formula, "No bishop, no king,"

though not invented by him, expressed his principles. And when the

House of Commons favoured measures of a Puritan tendency, he retaliated

by proroguing Parliament, after rebuking the House in undignified and

boastful terms. He complained in this speech that whereas in Scotland

he had been regarded "not only as a king but as a counsellor," in

England, on the contrary, there was "nothing but curiosity from morning

to evening to find fault with his propositions." "There all things

warranted that came from me. Here all things suspected," &c.

&c. The Puritan clergy, who refused to accept the Anglican ritual,

were driven from their livings.

The Catholics fared still worse. James had at first intended to lighten

the heavy penalties to which they were subject, but the discovery of

Catholic conspiracies led him to change his mind. The Catholic priests

and the pupils of the Jesuit schools were banished. After the discovery

of Guy Fawkes's great Gunpowder Plot in 1605, the position of the

Catholics naturally became as bad as possible.

One of the most marked traits in James's political character was his

eagerness to bring about and preserve peace with Spain. While yet on

the way to London, he ordered a cessation of all hostilities, and

by 1604 he had concluded peace. One of the reasons for his at once

assuming a hostile attitude towards Raleigh was that he was well

acquainted with Raleigh's hatred of Spain and disinclination to peace

with that country; and Raleigh increased the King's displeasure during

the following months by constantly urging upon him a war policy. But

there were other and less impersonal reasons for the King's hostility.

Raleigh had been Elizabeth's favourite, and had in 1601 presented to

her a state-paper drawn up by himself on "The Dangers of a Spanish

Faction in Scotland," the rumoured contents of which had so alarmed

James that he offered Elizabeth the assistance of three thousand

Scottish troops against Spain. Raleigh had been an opponent of Essex,

who had sought support from James and attached himself to his fortunes.

And what was worse, he had an enemy, though he scarcely knew it, in the

person of a man who had opposed Essex much more strongly than he, but

who had, even before the Queen's death, assured James of his absolute

devotion. This was Robert Cecil, who feared Raleigh's ambition and

ability.

Raleigh was in the West of England when the Queen died, and could not

at once join in the great rush northwards to meet King James, which

emptied London of all its nobility. By the time he started, with a

large retinue, to wait on the King, he had already received a kind of

command not to do so, in the shape of one of the orders dispensing the

recipient from attendance on the King, which James had sent in blank to

Cecil, to be filled in with the names of those whom Cecil thought he

should keep at a distance. James received Raleigh ungraciously, and at

once told him, with a bad pun on his name, that he had been prejudiced

against him: "On my soul, man, I have heard but _rawly_ of thee." A

few weeks later he was deprived (though not without compensation)

of the office of Captain of the Guard, which was given to a Scotchman, Sir

Thomas Erskine; and within the same month he was ordered immediately to

give up to the Bishop of Durham the town palace of that See, which he

had occupied, and on which he had spent great sums of money.

At last, one day in July 1603, as he was standing ready to ride out

with the King, he was arrested and imprisoned on a charge of high

treason. This was the beginning of a long series of base proceedings

against this eminent man, who had deserved so well of his country. He

was a prisoner in the Tower for thirteen years, and the persecution

ended only with the judicial murder which was committed when, in 1618,

after making the most beautiful speech ever heard from the scaffold, he

laid his head on the block with incomparable courage and calm dignity.

It is difficult for us to-day to understand how a man of Raleigh's

worth could at that time be the best-hated man in England. For us he

is simply, as Gardiner has expressed it, "the man who had more genius

than all the Privy Council put together;" or, as Gosse has called him,

"the figure which takes the same place in the field of action which

Shakespeare takes in that of imagination and Bacon in that of thought."

But that he was generally hated at the time of his imprisonment is

certain.

Many disliked him as the enemy of Essex. It was said that in Essex's

last hours Raleigh had jeered at him. Raleigh himself wrote in 1618:--

"It is said I was a persecutor of my Lord of Essex; that I

puffed out tobacco in disdain when he was on the scaffold.

But I take God to witness I shed tears for him when he died.

I confess I was of a contrary faction, but I knew he was a

noble gentleman. Those that set me up against him [evidently

Cecil] did afterwards set themselves against me."

But what mattered the falseness of the accusation if it was believed?

And there were other, much less reasonable, grounds of hatred. From

one of Raleigh's letters, written in the last days of Queen Elizabeth,

we learn that the tavern-keepers throughout the country held him

responsible for a tax imposed on them, which was in fact due solely

to the Queen's rapacity. In this letter he prays Cecil to prevail on

Elizabeth to remit the tax, for, says he: "I cannot live, nor show my

face out of my doors, without it, nor dare ride through the towns where

these taverners dwell." It seems as if his very greatness had marked

him out for universal hatred; and, being conscious of his worth, he

would not stoop to a truckling policy.

There was much that was popularly winning about the tall, vigorous,

rather large-boned Raleigh, with his bright complexion and his open

expression; but, like a true son of the Renaissance, he challenged

dislike by his pride and magnificence. His dress was always splendid,

and he loved, like a Persian Shah or Indian Rajah of our day, to cover

himself, down to his shoes, with the most precious jewels. When he was

arrested in 1603, he had gems to the value of £4000 (about £20,000 in

modern money) on his breast, and when he was thrown into prison for the

last time in 1618, his pockets were found full of jewels and golden

ornaments which he had hastily stripped off his dress.

He was worshipped by those who had served under him; they valued his

qualities of heart as well as his energy and intellect. But the crowd,

whom he treated with disdain, and the courtiers and statesmen with

whom he had competed for Elizabeth's favour, saw nothing in him but

matchless effrontery and unscrupulousness. In spite of the favour he

enjoyed, his rivals prevented his ever attaining any of the highest

posts. On those naval expeditions in which he most distinguished

himself, his place was always second in command. He was baulked even

in the desire which he cherished during Elizabeth's later years for a

place in the Privy Council.

He was now over fifty, and aged before his time. His untrustworthy

friend, Lord Cobham, was suspected of complicity in Watson's Catholic

plot; and this suspicion extended to Raleigh, who was thought to have

been a party to intrigues for the dethronement of James in favour of

his kinswoman, Arabella Stuart. He was tried for high treason; and as

the law then stood in England, any man accused of such a crime was as

good as lost, however innocent he might be. "A century later," says

Mr. Gardiner, "Raleigh might well have smiled at the evidence which

was brought against him." Then the law was as cruel as it was unjust.

The accused was considered guilty until he proved his innocence; no

advocate was allowed to plead his cause; unprepared, at a moment's

notice, he had to refute charges which had been carefully accumulated

and marshalled against him during a long period. That a man should be

suspected of such an enormity as desiring to bring Spanish armies on

to the free soil of England was enough to deprive him at once of all

sympathy. Little wonder that Raleigh, a few days after his indictment,

tried to commit suicide. His famous letter to his wife, written before

the attempt, gives consummate expression to a great man's despair in

face of a destiny which he does not fear, yet cannot master.

While this tragedy was being enacted in the Tower, London was making

magnificent preparations for the state entrance of King James and Queen

Anne into their new capital. Seven beautiful triumphal arches were

erected; "England's Cæsar," as Henry Petowe in his coronation ode with

some little exaggeration entitled James, was exalted and glorified by

the poets of the day with as great enthusiasm as though his exploits

had already rivalled those of "mightiest Julius."

Henry Chettle wrote _The Shepheard's Spring Song for the Entertainment

of King James, our most potent Sovereign_; Samuel Daniel, _A Panegyrike

Congratulatorie to the Kings Majestie_; Michael Drayton, _To the

Majestie of King James, a Gratulatorie Poem._ The actor Thomas Greene

composed _A Poet's Vision and a Prince's Glorie. Dedicated to the

high and mightie Prince James, King of England, Scotland, France and

Ireland_; and scores of other poets lifted up their voices in song.

Daniel wrote a masque which was acted at Hampton Court; Dekker, a

description of the King's "Triumphant Passage," with poetic dialogues;

Ben Jonson, a similar description; and Drayton, a _Pæan Triumphall_.

Ben Jonson also produced a masque called _Penates_, and another

entitled _The Masque of Blackness_; while a host of lesser lights

wrote poems in the same style. The unobtrusive, mildly flattering

allusions to James, which we have found and shall presently find in

Shakespeare's plays of this period, produce an exceedingly feeble,

almost imperceptible effect amid this storm of adulation. To have

omitted them altogether, or to have made them in the slightest degree

less deferential, would have been gratuitously and indefensibly

churlish, in view of the favour which James had made haste to extend to

Shakespeare's company.

It is most interesting to-day to read the programme of the royal

procession from the Tower to Whitehall in 1604, in which all the

dignitaries of the realm took part, and all the privileged classes,

court, nobility, clergy, royal guard, were fully represented.

In the middle of the enormous procession rides the King under a canopy.

Immediately before him, the dukes, marquises, eldest sons of dukes,

earls, &c. &c. Immediately behind him comes the Queen, and after

her all the first ladies of the kingdom--duchesses, marchionesses,

countesses, viscountesses, &c. Among the ladies mentioned by name

is Lady Rich, with the note, "by especiall comandement." At the

foot of the page, another note runs thus: "To go as a daughter to

Henry Bourchier, Earl of Essex." James desired to honour in her the

memory of her ill-fated brother. Among the lawyers in the procession

Sir Francis Bacon has a place of honour; he is described as "the

King's Counsell at Lawe." Bacon's learning and obsequious pliancy,

James's pedantry and monarchical arrogance, quickly brought these two

together. But among "His Majesty's Servants," at the very head of the

procession, immediately after the heralds and the Prince's and Queen's

men-in-waiting, William Shakespeare was no doubt to be seen, dressed

in a suit of red cloth, which the court accounts show to have been

provided for him.

James was a great lover of the play, but Scotland had neither

drama nor actors of her own. Not long before this, in 1599; he had

vigorously opposed the resolution of his Presbyterian Council to forbid

performances by English actors.

As early as May 17, 1603, he had granted the patent _Pro Laurentio

Fletcher et Willielmo Shakespeare et aliis_, which promoted the Lord

Chamberlain's company to be the King's own actors.

The fact that Lawrence Fletcher is named first gives us a clue to the

reasons for this proceeding on the part of the King. In the records of

the Town Council of Aberdeen for October 1601, there is an entry to the

effect that, by special recommendation of the King, a gratuity was paid

to a company of players for their performances in the town, and that

the freedom of the city was conferred on one of these actors, Lawrence

Fletcher. There can be hardly any doubt that Charles Knight, in spite

of Elze's objections in his _Essays on Shakespeare_, is correct in his

opinion that this Fletcher was an Englishman, and that he was closely

connected with Shakespeare; for the actor Augustine Philipps, who,

in 1605, bequeaths thirty shillings in gold to his "fellowe" William

Shakespeare, likewise bequeaths twenty shillings to his "fellowe"

Lawrence Fletcher.

James arrived in London on the 7th of May 1603, removed to Greenwich

on account of the plague on the 13th, and, as already mentioned, dated

the patent from there on the 17th. It can scarcely be supposed that, in

so short a space of time, the Lord Chamberlain's men should not only

have played before James, but so powerfully impressed him that he at

once advanced them to be his own company. He must evidently have known

them before; perhaps he already, as King of Scotland, had some of them

in his service. This supposition is supported by the fact that, as

we have seen, some members of Shakespeare's company were in Aberdeen

in the autumn of 1601. It is even probable that Shakespeare himself

was in Scotland with his comrades. In _Macbeth_, he has altered the

meadow-land, which Holinshed represents as lying around Inverness,

into the heath which is really characteristic of the district; and

the whole play, with its numerous allusions to Scottish affairs,

bears the impress of having been conceived on Scottish soil. Possibly

Shakespeare's thoughts were hovering round the Scottish tragedy while

he passed along in the procession with the royal arms on his red

dress.[1]

[1] S. R. Gardiner: _History of England_, vol. i. Thomas

Milner: _The History of England_. Alfred Stern: _Geschichte der

Revolution in England_. Gosse: _Raleigh._ J. Nicols: _The Progresses,

Processions, and Magnificent Festivities of King James the First_, vol.

i. Disraeli: _An Inquiry into the Literary and Political Character of

James the First_. _Dictionary of National Biography: James, Anne_.

Nathan Drake: _Shakespeare and his Times_.

XXII

_MACBETH--MACBETH AND HAMLET--DIFFICULTIES ARISING FROM THE STATE OF

THE TEXT_

Dowden somewhere remarks that if Shakespeare had died at the age of

forty, posterity would have said that this was certainly a great loss,

but would have found comfort in the thought that _Hamlet_ marked the

zenith of his productive power--he could hardly have written another

such masterpiece.

And now follow in rapid succession _Macbeth, Othello, King Lear, Antony

and Cleopatra_, and the rest. _Hamlet_ was not the conclusion of a

career; _Hamlet_ was the spring-board from which Shakespeare leaped

forth into a whole new world of mystery and awe. Dowden has happily

compared the tragic figures that glide one after the other across his

field of vision between 1604 and 1610 with the bloody and threatening

apparitions that pass before Macbeth in the witches' cavern.

The natural tendency of his youth had been to see good everywhere.

He had even felt, with his King Henry, that "there is some soul of

goodness in things evil." Now, when the misery of life, the problem of

evil, presented itself to his inward eye, it was especially the potency

of wickedness that impressed him as strange and terrible. We have seen

him brooding over it in _Hamlet_ and _Measure for Measure_. He had

of course recognized it before, and represented it on the grandest

scale; but in _Richard III_. the main emphasis is still laid on outward

history; Richard is the same man from his first appearance to his last.

What now fascinates Shakespeare is to show how the man into whose veins

evil has injected some drops of its poison, becomes bloated, gangrened,

foredoomed to self-destruction or annihilation, like Macbeth,

Othello, Lear. Lady Macbeth's ambition, Iago's malice, the daughters'

ingratitude, lead, step by step, to irresistible, ever-increasing

calamity.

It is my conviction that _Macbeth_ was the first of these subjects

which Shakespeare took in hand. All we know with certainty, indeed, is

that the play was acted at the Globe Theatre in 1610. Dr. Simon Forman,

in his _Booke of Plaies and Notes thereon_, gave a detailed account of

a performance of it at which he was present on the 20th of April of

this year. But in the comedy of _The Puritan_, dating from 1607, we

find an unmistakable allusion to Banquo's ghost; and the lines in the

play itself (iv. I)--

"And some I see

That twofold balls and treble sceptres carry,"

--a reference to the union of England and Scotland, and their

conjunction with Ireland under James--would have had little effect

unless spoken from the stage shortly after the event. As James was

proclaimed King of Great Britain and Ireland on the 20th of October

1604, we may conclude that _Macbeth_ was not produced later than

1604-1605.

At James's accession a breath of Scottish air blew over England;

we feel it in _Macbeth_. The scene of the tragedy is laid in the

country from which the new king came, and most true to nature is the

reproduction in this dark drama of Scotland's forests and heaths and

castles, her passions and her poetry.

There is much to indicate that an unbroken train of thought led

Shakespeare from _Hamlet_ to _Macbeth_. The personality of Macbeth

is a sort of counterpart to that of Hamlet. The Danish prince's

nature is passionate, but refined and thoughtful. Before the deed of

vengeance which is imposed upon him he is restless, self-reproachful,

and self-tormenting; but he never betrays the slightest remorse for a

murder once committed, though he kills four persons before he stabs

the King. The Scottish thane is the rough, blunt soldier, the man of

action. He takes little time for deliberation before he strikes; but

immediately after the murder he is attacked by hallucinations both

of sight and hearing, and is hounded on, wild and vacillating and

frenzied, from crime to crime. He stifles his self-reproaches and falls

at last, after defending himself with the hopeless fury of the "bear

tied to the stake."

Hamlet says:--

"And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought."

Macbeth, on the contrary, declares (iv. I)--

"From this moment

The very firstlings of my heart shall be

The firstlings of my hand."

They stand at opposite poles--Hamlet, the dreamer; Macbeth, the

captain, "Bellona's bridegroom." Hamlet has a superabundance of

culture and of intellectual power. His strength is of the kind that

wears a mask; he is a master in the art of dissimulation. Macbeth is

unsophisticated to the point of clumsiness, betraying himself when

he tries to deceive. His wife has to beg him not to show a troubled

countenance, but to "sleek o'er his rugged looks."

Hamlet is the born aristocrat: very proud, keenly alive to his worth,

very self-critical--too self-critical to be ambitious in the common

acceptation of the word. To Macbeth, on the contrary, a sounding title

is honour, and a wreath on the head, a crown on the brow, greatness.

When the Witches on the heath, and another witch, his wife in the

castle, have held up before his eyes the glory of the crown and the

power of the sceptre, he has found his great goal--a tangible prize in

this life, for which he is willing to risk his welfare in "the life to

come." Whilst Hamlet, with his hereditary right, hardly gives a thought

to the throne of which he has been robbed, Macbeth murders his king,

his benefactor, his guest, that he may plunder him and his sons of a

chair with a purple canopy.

And yet there is a certain resemblance between Macbeth and Hamlet. One

feels that the two tragedies must have been written close upon each

other. In his first monologue (i. 7) Macbeth stands hesitating with

Hamlet-like misgivings:--

"If it were done, when't is done, then't were well

It were done quickly: if the assassination

Could trammel up the consequence, and catch

With his surcease success; that but this blow

Might be the be-all and the end-all here,

But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,--

We'd jump the life to come.--But in these cases

We still have judgment here."

Hamlet says: Were we sure that there is no future life, we should seek

death. Macbeth thinks: Did we not know that judgment would come upon us

here, we should care little about the life to come. There is a kinship

in these contradictory reflections. But Macbeth is not hindered by

his cogitations. He pricks the sides of his intent, as he says, with

the spur of ambition, well knowing that it will o'erleap itself and

fall. He cannot resist when he is goaded onward by a being superior to

himself, a woman.

Like Hamlet, he has imagination, but of a more timorous and visionary

cast. It is through no peculiar faculty in Hamlet that he sees his

father's ghost; others had seen it before him and see it with him.

Macbeth constantly sees apparitions that no one else sees, and hears

voices that are inaudible to others.

When he has resolved on the king's death he sees a dagger in the air:--

"Is this a dagger which I see before me,

The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee:--

I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.

Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible

To feeling, as to sight? or art thou but

A dagger of the mind, a false creation,

Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?"

Directly after the murder he has an illusion of hearing:--

"Methought I heard a voice cry, 'Sleep no more!

Macbeth does murder sleep.'"

And, very significantly, Macbeth hears this same voice give him the

different titles which are his pride:--

"Still it cried, 'Sleep no more!' to all the house:

'Glamis hath murder'd sleep, and therefore Cawdor

Shall sleep no more, Macbeth shall sleep no more!'"

Yet another parallel shows the kinship between the Danish and the

Scottish tragedy. It is in these dramas alone that the dead leave their

graves and reappear on the scene of life; in them alone a breath from

the spirit-world reaches the atmosphere of the living. There is no

trace of the supernatural either in _Othello_ or in _King Lear_.

No more here than in _Hamlet_ are we to understand by the introduction

of supernatural elements that an independently working superhuman

power actively interferes in human life; these elements are

transparent symbols. Nevertheless the supernatural beings that make

their appearance are not to be taken as mere illusions; they are

distinctly conceived as having a real existence outside the sphere of

hallucination. As in _Hamlet_, the Ghost is not seen by the prince

alone, so in _Macbeth_ it is not only Macbeth himself who sees the

Witches; they even appear with their queen, Hecate, when there is no

one to see them except the spectators of the play.

It must not be forgotten that this whole spirit--and witchworld meant

something quite different to Shakespeare's contemporaries from what

it means to us. We cannot even be absolutely certain that Shakespeare

himself did not believe in the possible existence of such beings. Great

poets have seldom been consistent in their incredulity--even Holberg

believed that he had seen a ghost. But Shakespeare's own attitude of

mind matters less than that of the public for whom he wrote.

In the beginning of the seventeenth century the English people still

believed in a great variety of evil spirits, who disturbed the order

of nature, produced storms by land and sea, foreboded calamities and

death, disseminated plague and famine. They were for the most part

pictured as old, wrinkled women, who brewed all kinds of frightful

enormities in hellish cauldrons; and when such beldams were thought to

have been detected, the law took vengeance on them with fire and sword.

In a sermon preached in 1588, Bishop Jewel appealed to Elizabeth to

take strong measures against wizards and witches. Some years later,

one Mrs. Dyer was accused of witchcraft for no other reason than that

toothache had for some nights prevented the Queen from sleeping. In

the small town of St. Osees in Essex alone, seventy or eighty witches

were burnt. In a book called "The Discoverie of Witchcraft," published

in 1584, Reginald Scott refuted the doctrine of sorcery and magic with

wonderful clearness and liberal-mindedness; but his voice was lost in

the chorus of the superstitious. King James himself was one of the most

prominent champions of superstition. He was present in person at the

trial by torture of two hundred witches who were burnt for occasioning

the storm which prevented his bride's crossing to Scotland. Many of

them confessed to having ridden through the air on broomsticks or

invisible chariots drawn by snails, and admitted that they were able to

make themselves invisible--an art of which they, strangely enough, did

not avail themselves to escape the law. In 1597 James himself produced

in his _Dæmonologie_ a kind of handbook or textbook of witchcraft in

all its developments, and in 1598 he caused no fewer than 600 old women

to be burnt. In the Parliament of 1604 a bill against sorcery was

brought in by the Government and passed.

Shakespeare produced wonderful effects in _Hamlet_ by drawing on this

faith in spirits; the apparition on the castle platform is sublime

in its way, though the speech of the Ghost is far too long. Now, in

_Macbeth_, with the Witches' meeting, he strikes the keynote of the

drama at the very outset, as surely as with a tuning-fork; and wherever

the Witches reappear the same note recurs. But still more admirable,

both psychologically and scenically, is the scene in which Macbeth sees

Banquo's ghost sitting in his own seat at the banquet-table. The words

run thus:--

"_Rosse_. Please it your highness

To grace us with your royal company?

_Macbeth_. The table's full.

_Lennox_. Here is a place reserv'd, sir.

_Macb_. Where?

_Len_. Here, my good lord. What is't that moves your highness?

_Macb_. Which of you have done this?

_Lords_. What, my good lord?

_Macb._ Thou canst not say I did it: never shake

Thy gory locks at me."

The grandeur, depth, and extraordinary dramatic and theatrical effect

of this passage are almost unequalled in the history of the drama.

The same may be said of well-nigh the whole outline of this

tragedy--from a dramatic and theatrical point of view it is beyond

all praise. The Witches on the heath, the scene before the murder of

Duncan, the sleep-walking of Lady Macbeth--so potent is the effect

of these and other episodes that they are burnt for ever on the

spectator's memory.

No wonder that _Macbeth_ has become in later times Shakespeare's most

popular tragedy--his typical one, appreciated even by those who, except

in this instance, have not been able to value him as he deserves.

Not one of his other dramas is so simple in composition as this, no

other keeps like this to a single plane. There is no desultoriness or

halting in the action as in _Hamlet_, no double action as in _King

Lear_. All is quite simple and according to rule: the snowball is set

rolling and becomes the avalanche. And although there are gaps in it on

account of the defective text, and although there may here and there

be ambiguities--in the character of Lady Macbeth, for instance--yet

there is nothing enigmatic, there are no riddles to perplex us. Nothing

lies concealed between the lines; all is grand and clear--grandeur and

clearness itself.

And yet I confess that this play seems to me one of Shakespeare's

less interesting efforts; not from the artistic, but from the purely

human point of view. It is a rich, highly moral melodrama; but only at

occasional points in it do I feel the beating of Shakespeare's heart.

My comparative coolness of feeling towards _Macbeth_ may possibly be

due in a considerable degree to the shamefully mutilated form in which

this tragedy has been handed down to us. Who knows what it may have

been when it came from Shakespeare's own hand! The text we possess,

which was not printed till long after the poet's death, is clipped,

pruned, and compressed for acting purposes. We can feel distinctly

where the gaps occur, but that is of no avail.

The abnormal shortness of the play is in itself an indication of what

has happened. In spite of its wealth of incident, it is distinctly

Shakespeare's shortest work. There are 3924 lines in _Hamlet_, 3599 in

_Richard III_., &c., &c., while in _Macbeth_ there are only 1993.

It is plain, moreover, that the structure of the piece has been

tampered with. The dialogue between Malcolm and Macduff (iv. 3),

which, strictly speaking, must be called superfluous from the dramatic

point of view, is so long as to form about an eighth part of the whole

tragedy. It may be presumed that the other scenes originally stood in

some sort of proportion to this; for there is no other instance in

Shakespeare's work of a similar disproportion.

In certain places omissions are distinctly felt. Lady Macbeth (i.

5) proposes to her husband that he shall murder Duncan. He gives no

answer to this. In the next scene the King arrives. In the next again,

Macbeth's deliberations as to whether or not he is to commit the murder

are all over, and he is only thinking how it can be done with impunity.

When he wavers, and says to his wife, "I dare do all that may become a

man; who dares do more is none," her answer shows how much is wanting

here:--

"When you durst do it, then you were a man;

And, to be more than what you were, you would

Be so much more the man. Nor time nor place

Did then adhere, and yet you would make both."

We spectators or readers know nothing of all this. There has not even

been time for the shortest conversation between husband and wife.

Shakespeare took the material for his tragedy from the same source on

which he drew for all his English histories--Holinshed's Chronicle

to wit. In this case Holinshed, at no time a trustworthy historian,

simply reproduced a passage of Hector Boece's _Scotorum Historiæ_.

Macdonwald's rebellion and Sweno's Viking invasion are fables; Banquo

and Fleance, as founders of the race of Stuart, are inventions of

the chroniclers. There was a blood-feud between the house of Duncan

and the house of Macbeth. Lady Macbeth, whose real name was Gruoch,

was the grand-daughter of a king who had been killed by Malcolm II.,

Duncan's grandfather. Her first husband had been burnt in his castle

with fifty friends. Her only brother was killed by Malcolm's order.

Macbeth's father also, Finlegh or Finley, had been killed in a contest

with Malcolm. Therefore they both had the right to a blood-revenge on

Duncan. Nor did Macbeth sin against the laws of hospitality in taking

Duncan's life. He attacked and killed him in the open field. It is

further to be observed that by the Scottish laws of succession he had a

better right to the throne than Duncan. After having seized the throne

he ruled firmly and justly. There is a quite adequate psychological

basis for the real facts of the year 1040, though it is much simpler

than that underlying the imaginary events of Holinshed's Chronicle,

which form the subject of the tragedy.

Shakespeare on the whole follows Holinshed with great exactitude,

but diverges from him in one or two particulars. According to the

Chronicle, Banquo was accessory to the murder of Duncan; Shakespeare

alters this in order to give King James a progenitor of unblemished

reputation. Instead of using the account of the murder which is

given in the Chronicle, Shakespeare takes and applies to Duncan's

case all the particulars of the murder of King Duffe, Lady Macbeth's

grandfather, as committed by the captain of the castle of Forres, who

"being the more kindled in wrath by the words of his wife, determined

to follow her advice in the execution of so heinous an act." It is

hardly necessary to remark that the finest parts of the drama, such

as the appearance of Banquo's ghost and Lady Macbeth's sleep-walking

scene, are due to Shakespeare alone.

Some sensation was made in the year 1778 by the discovery of the

manuscript of _The Witch_, a play by Shakespeare's contemporary

Middleton, containing in their entirety two songs which are only

indicated in _Macbeth_ by the quotation of their first lines. These are

"Come away, come away" (iii. 5), and "Black spirits, &c." (iv. I).

A very idle dispute arose as to whether Shakespeare had here made use

of Middleton or Middleton of Shakespeare. The latter is certainly the

more probable assumption, if we must assume either to have borrowed

from the other. It is likely enough, however, that single lines of the

lesser poet have here and there been interpolated in the witch scenes

of Shakespeare's text as contained in the Folio edition.

Shakespeare has employed in the treatment of this subject a style that

suits it--vehement to violence, compressed to congestion--figures

treading upon each other's heels, while general philosophic reflections

occur but rarely. It is a style eminently fitted to express and to

awaken terror; its tone is not altered, but only softened, even in the

painfully touching conversation between Lady Macduff and her little

son. It is sustained throughout with only one break--the excellent

burlesque monologue of the Porter.

The play centres entirely round the two chief characters, Macbeth and

Lady Macbeth; in their minds the essential action takes place. The

other personages are only outlined.

The Witches' song, with which the tragedy opens, ends with that

admirable line, in which ugliness and beauty are confounded:--

"Fair is foul, and foul is fair."

And it is significant that Macbeth, who has not heard this refrain,

recalls it in his very first speech:--

"So foul and fair a day I have not seen."

It seems as if these words were ringing in his ears; and this

foreshadows the mysterious bond between him and the Witches. Many of

these delicate consonances and contrasts may be noted in the speeches

of this tragedy.

After Lady Macbeth, who is introduced to the spectator already

perfected in wickedness, has said to herself (i. 5)--

"The raven himself is hoarse,

That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan

Under my battlements,"

the next scene opens serenely with the charming pictures of the

following dialogue:--

"_Duncan_. This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air

Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself

Unto our gentle senses.

_Banquo_. This guest of summer,

The temple-haunting martlet, does approve,

By his lov'd mansionry, that the heaven's breath

Smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze,

Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird

Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle:

Where they most breed and haunt, I have observ'd

The air is delicate."

Then the poet immediately plunges anew into the study of this lean,

slight, hard woman, consumed by lust of power and splendor. Though by

no means the impassive murderess she fain would be, she yet goads her

husband, by the force of her far stronger will, to commit the crime

which she declares he has promised her:--

"I have given suck, and know

How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me:

I would, while it was smiling in my face,

Have pluck'd my nipple from its boneless gums.

And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn as you

Have done to this."

So coarsely callous is she! And yet she is less hardened than she would

make herself out to be; for when, just after this, she has laid the

daggers ready for her husband, she says:--

"Had he not resembled

My father as he slept, I had done't."

The absolutely masterly, thrilling scene between husband and wife after

the murder, is followed, in horrible, humoristic contrast, by the

fantastic interlude of the Porter. He conceives himself to be keeping

watch at hell-gate, and admitting, amongst others, an equivocating

Jesuit, with his casuistry and _reservatio mentalis_; and his soliloquy

is followed by a dialogue with Macduff on the influence of drink upon

erotic inclination and capacity. It is well known that Schiller, in

accordance with classical prejudices, omitted the monologue in his

translation, and replaced it by a pious morning-song. What seems more

remarkable is that an English poet like Coleridge should have found

its effect disturbing and considered it spurious. Without exactly

ranking with Shakespeare's best low-comedy interludes, it affords a

highly effective contrast to what goes before and what follows, and is

really an invaluable and indispensable ingredient in the tragedy. A

short break in the action was required at this point, to give Macbeth

and his wife time to dress themselves in their nightclothes; and what

interruption could be more effective than the knocking at the castle

gate, which makes them both thrill with terror, and gives occasion to

the Porter episode?

Another of the gems of the play is the scene (iv. 2) between Lady

Macduff and her wise little son, before the murderers come and kill

them both. All the witty child's sayings are interesting, and the

mother's bitterly pessimistic speeches are not only wonderfully

characteristic of her, but also of the poet's own present frame of

mind:--

"Whither should I fly?

I have done no harm. But I remember now

I am in this earthly world, where, to do harm,

Is often laudable; to do good, sometime,

Accounted dangerous folly: why then, alas!

Do I put up that womanly defence,

To say I have done no harm?"

Equally despairing is Macduff's ejaculation when he learns of the

slaughter in his home: "Did heaven look on, and would not take their

part?" The beginning of this lengthy scene (iv. 3), with its endless

dialogue between Malcolm and Macduff, which Shakespeare has transcribed

literally from his Holinshed, is weak and flagging. It presents hardly

any point of interest except the far-fetched account of King Edward the

Confessor's power of curing the king's evil, evidently dragged in for

the sake of paying King James a compliment which the poet knew he would

value, in the lines--

"'Tis spoken,

To the succeeding royalty he leaves

The healing benediction."

But the close of the scene is admirable, when Rosse breaks the news to

Macduff of the attack on his castle and the massacre of his family:--

"_Macd_. My children too?

_Rosse_. Wife, children, servants, all

That could be found.

_Macd_. And I must be from thence!

My wife kill'd too?

_Rosse_ I have said.

_Mal_. Be comforted:

Let's make us medicines of our great revenge,

To cure this deadly grief.

_Macd_. He has no children.--All my pretty ones?

Did you say, all?--O hell-kite!--All?

What, all my pretty chickens, and their dam,

At one fell swoop?

_Mai_. Dispute it like a man.

_Macd_. I shall do so;

But I must also feel it as a man:

I cannot but remember such things were,

That were most precious to me.--_Did Heaven look on,_

_And would not take their part?_"

The voice of revolt makes itself heard in these words, the same

voice that sounds later through the despairing philosophy of _King

Lear_: "As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods: They kill us for

their sport." But immediately afterwards Macduff falls back on the

traditional sentiment:--

"Sinful Macduff!

They are all struck for thee. Naught that I am,

Not for their own demerits, but for mine,

Fell slaughter on their souls."

Among these horror-stricken speeches there is one in particular that

gives matter for reflection--Macduff's cry, "He has no children."

At the close of the third part of _Henry VI._ there is a similar

exclamation of quite different import. There, when King Edward,

Gloucester, and Clarence have stabbed Margaret of Anjou's son before

her eyes, she says:--

"You have no children, butchers! if you had,

The thought of them would have stirr'd up remorse."

Many interpreters have attributed the same sense to Macduff's cry of

agony; but their mistake is plain; for the context undeniably shows

that the one thought of the now childless father is the impossibility

of an adequate revenge.

But there is another noticeable point about this speech, "He has no

children," which is, that elsewhere we are led to believe that he has

children. Lady Macbeth says, "I have given suck, and know how tender

'tis to love the babe that milks me;" and we have neither learned that

these children are dead nor that they were born of an earlier marriage.

Shakespeare never mentions the former marriage of the historical Lady

Macbeth. Furthermore, not only does she talk of children, but Macbeth

himself seems to allude to sons. He says (iii. I):--

"Upon my head they plac'd a fruitless crown,

And put a barren sceptre in my gripe,

Thence to be wrench'd with an unlineal hand,

No son of mine succeeding. If't be so,

For Banquo's issue have I filed my mind."

If he had no children of his own, the last line is meaningless. Had

Shakespeare forgotten these earlier speeches when he wrote that

ejaculation of Macduff's? It is improbable; and, in any case, they

must have been constantly brought to his mind again at rehearsals and

performances of the play. We have here one of the difficulties which

would be solved if we were in possession of a complete and authentic

text.

The crown which the Witches promised to Macbeth soon becomes his fixed

idea. He murders his king--and sleep. He slays, and sees the slain for

ever before him. All that stand between him and his ambition are cut

down, and afterwards raise their bloody heads as bodeful visions on

his path. He turns Scotland into one great charnel-house. His mind is

"full of scorpions;" he is sick with the smell of all the blood he has

shed. At last life and death become indifferent to him. When, on the

day of battle, the tidings of his wife's death are brought to him, he

speaks those profound words in which Shakespeare has embodied a whole

melancholy life-philosophy:--

"She should have died hereafter:

There would have been a time for such a word.--

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."

This is the final result arrived at by Macbeth, the man who staked all

to win power and glory. Without any underlining on the part of the

poet, a speech like this embodies an absolute moral lesson. We feel

its value all the more strongly, as Shakespeare's study of humanity in

other parts of this play does not seem to have been totally unbiassed,

but rather influenced by the moral impression which he desired to

produce on the audience. The drama is even a little marred by the

constant insistence on the _fabula docet_, the recurrent insinuation

that "such is the consequence of grasping at power by the aid of

crime." Macbeth, not by nature a bad man, might in the drama, as in

real life, have tried to reconcile the people to that crime, which,

after all, he had reluctantly committed, by making use of his power to

rule well. The moral purport of the play excludes this possibility.

The ice-cold, stony Lady Macbeth might be conceived as taking the

consequences of her counsel and action as calmly as the high-born

Locustas of the Renaissance, Catherine de' Medici, or the Countess

of Somerset. But in this case we should have missed the moral lesson

conveyed by her ruin, and, what would have been worse, the incomparable

sleep-walking scene, which--whether it be perfectly motived or

not--shows us in the most admirable manner how the sting of an evil

conscience, even though it may be blunted by day, is sharpened again at

night, and robs the guilty one of sleep and health.

In dealing with the plays immediately preceding _Macbeth_, we observed

that Shakespeare at this period frequently gives a formal exposition

of the moral to be drawn from his scenes. Possibly there is some

connection between this tendency of his and the steadily-growing

animosity of public opinion to the stage. In the year 1606, an edict

was issued absolutely prohibiting the utterance of the name of God on

the profane boards of the theatre. Not even a harmless oath was to be

permitted. In view of the state of feeling which produced such an Act

of Parliament, it must have been of vital importance to the tragic poet

to prove as clearly as possible the strictly moral character of his

works.

XXIII

_OTHELLO--THE CHARACTER AND SIGNIFICANCE OF IAGO_

When we consider how _Macbeth_ explains life's tragedy as the result of

a union of brutality and malignity, or rather of brutality envenomed by

malignity, we feel that the step from this to _Othello_ is not a long

one. But in _Macbeth_ the treatment of life's tragedy as a whole, of

wickedness as a factor in human affairs, lacks firmness, and is not in

the great style.

In a very much grander and firmer style do we find the same subject

treated in _Othello_.

_Othello_ is, in the popular conception, simply the tragedy of

jealousy, as _Macbeth_ is simply the tragedy of ambition. Naïve readers

and critics fancy in their innocence that Shakespeare, at a certain

period of his life, determined to study one or two interesting and

dangerous passions, and to put us on our guard against them. Following

out this intention, he wrote a play on ambition and its dangers, and

another of the same kind on jealousy and all the evils that attend

it. But that is not how things happen in the inner life of a creative

spirit. A poet does not write exercises on a given subject. His

activity is not the result of determination or choice. A nerve in him

is touched, vibrates, and reacts.

What Shakespeare here attempts to realise is neither jealousy nor

credulity, but simply and solely the tragedy of life; whence does it

arise? what are its causes? what its laws?

He was deeply impressed with the power and significance of evil.

_Othello_ is much less a study of jealousy than a new and more powerful

study of wickedness in its might. The umbilical cord that connects the

master with his work leads, not to the character of Othello, but to

that of Iago.

Simple-minded critics have been of opinion that Shakespeare constructed

Iago on the lines of the historic Richard III.--that is to say, found

him in literature, in the pages of a chronicler.

Believe me, Shakespeare met Iago in his own life, saw portions and

aspects of him on every hand throughout his manhood, encountered him

piecemeal, as it were, on his daily path, till one fine day, when he

thoroughly felt and understood what malignant cleverness and baseness

can effect, he melted down all these fragments, and out of them cast

this figure.

Iago--there is more of the grand manner in this figure than in the

whole of _Macbeth_. Iago--there is more depth, more penetrating

knowledge of human nature in this one character than in the whole of

_Macbeth_. Iago is the very embodiment of the grand manner.

He is not the principle of evil, not an old-fashioned, stupid devil;

nor a Miltonic devil, who loves independence and has invented firearms;

nor a Goethe's Mephistopheles, who talks cynicism, makes himself

indispensable, and is generally in the right. Neither has he the

magnificently foolhardy wickedness of a Cæsar Borgia, who lives his

life in open defiance and reckless atrocity.

Iago has no other aim than his own advantage. It is the circumstance

that not he, but Cassio, has been appointed second in command to

Othello, which first sets his craft to work on subtle combinations. He

coveted this post, and he will stick at nothing in order to win it. In

the meantime, he takes advantage of every opportunity of profit that

offers itself; he does not hesitate to fool Roderigo out of his money

and his jewels. He is always masked in falsehood and hypocrisy; and

the mask he has chosen is the most impenetrable one, that of rough

outspokenness, the straightforward, honest bluntness of the soldier

who does not care what others think or say of him. He never flatters

Othello or Desdemona, or even Roderigo. He is the free-spoken, honest

friend.

He does not seek his own advantage without side-glances at others.

He is mischievousness personified. He does evil for the pleasure of

hurting, and takes active delight in the adversity and anguish of

others. He is that eternal envy which merit or success in others never

fails to irritate--not the petty envy which is content with coveting

another's honours or possessions, or with holding itself more deserving

of another's good fortune. No; he is an ideal personification. He is

blear-eyed rancour itself, figuring as a great power--nay, as _the_

motive force--in human life. He embodies the detestation for others'

excellences which shows itself in obstinate disbelief, suspicion, or

contempt; the instinct of hatred for all that is open, beautiful,

bright, good, and great.

Shakespeare not only knew that such wickedness exists; he seized it and

set his stamp on it, to his eternal honour as a psychologist.

Every one has heard it said that this tragedy is magnificent in so

far as the true and beautiful characters of Othello and Desdemona

are concerned; but Iago--who knows him?--what motive underlies his

conduct?--what can explain such wickedness? If only he had even been

frankly in love with Desdemona and therefore hated Othello, or had had

some other incentive of a like nature!

Yes, if he had been the ordinary amorous villain and slanderer,

everything would undoubtedly have been much simpler; but, at the same

time, everything would have sunk into banality, and Shakespeare would

here have been unequal to himself.

No, no! precisely in this lack of apparent motive lies the profundity

and greatness of the thing. Shakespeare understood this. Iago in his

monologues is incessantly giving himself reasons for his hatred.

Elsewhere, in reading Shakespeare's monologues, we learn what the

person really is; he reveals himself directly to us; even a villain

like Richard III. is quite honest in his monologues. Not so Iago. This

demi-devil is always trying to give himself reason for his malignity,

is always half fooling himself by dwelling on half motives, in which

he partly believes, but disbelieves in the main. Coleridge has aptly

designated this action of his mind: "The motive-hunting of a motiveless

malignity." Again and again he expounds to himself that he believes

Othello has been too familiar with his wife, and that he will avenge

the dishonour. He now and then adds, to account for his hatred of

Cassio, that he suspects him too of tampering with Emilia.[1] He even

thinks it worth while to allege, as a secondary motive, that he himself

is enamoured of Desdemona. His words are (ii. I):--

"Now, I do love her too;

Not out of absolute lust, (though, peradventure,

I stand accountant for as great a sin,)

But partly led to diet my revenge,

For that I do suspect the lusty Moor

Hath leap'd into my seat."

These are half-sincere attempts at self-understanding, sophistical

self-justifications. Yellow-green, venomous envy has always a motive in

its own eyes, and tries to make its malignity towards the better man

pass muster as a desire for righteous vengeance. But Iago, who, a few

lines before, has himself said of Othello that he is "of a constant,

loving, noble nature," is a thousand times too clever to believe that

he has been wronged by him. The Moor is, to his eyes, transparent as

glass.

An ordinary human capacity for love or hatred springing from a definite

cause would degrade and detract from Iago's supremacy in evil. In the

end, he is sentenced to torture, because he will not vouchsafe a word

of explanation or enlightenment. Hard and, in his way, proud as he

is, he will certainly keep his lips tightly closed under the torture;

but even if he wanted to speak, it would not be in his power to give

any real explanation. He has slowly, steadily poisoned Othello's

nature. We watch the working of the venom on the simple-hearted man,

and we see how the very success of the poisoning process brutalises

and intoxicates Iago more and more. But to ask whence the poison came

into Iago's soul would be a foolish question, and one to which he

himself could give no answer. The serpent is poisonous by nature; it

gives forth poison as the silkworm does its thread and the violet its

fragrance.

Towards the close of the tragedy (iv. 2) there occurs one of its

profoundest passages, which shows us how Shakespeare must have dwelt

upon and studied the potency of evil during these years. After Emilia

has witnessed the breaking out of Othello's mad rage against Desdemona,

she says--

"_Emil_. I will be hang'd, if some eternal villain,

Some busy and insinuating rogue,

Some cogging, cozening slave, to get some office,

Have not devis'd this slander; I'll be hang'd else.

_Iago_. Fie! there is no such man: it is impossible.

_Des_. If any such there be, Heaven pardon him!

_Emil_. A halter pardon him, and hell gnaw his bones!"

All three characters stand out in clear relief in these short speeches.

But Iago's is the most significant. His "Fie! there is no such man; it

is impossible," expresses the thought under shelter of which he has

lived and is living: other people do not believe that such a being

exists.

Here we meet once more in Shakespeare the astonishment of Hamlet at

the paradox of evil, and once more, too, the indirect appeal to the

reader which formed the burden, as it were, of _Hamlet_ and _Measure

for Measure_, the now thrice-repeated, "Say not, think not, that this

is impossible!" The belief in the impossibility of utter turpitude

is the very condition of existence of such a king as Claudius, such

a magistrate as Angelo, such an officer as Iago. Hence Shakespeare's

"Verily I say unto you, this highest degree of wickedness is possible

in the world."

It is one of the two factors in life's tragedy. Stupidity is the other.

On these two foundations rests the great mass of all this world's

misery.

[1] He says (i. 3):--

"I hate the Moor,

And it is thought abroad, that 'twixt my sheets

'Has done my office. I know not if 't be true;

But I for mere suspicion in that kind

Will do as if for surety."

He adds (ii. 7):--

"I'll have our Michael Cassio on the hip,

Abuse him to the Moor in the rank garb,

For fear Cassio with my night-cap too.

XXIV

_OTHELLO--THE THEME AND ITS TREATMENT--A MONOGRAPH IN THE GREAT STYLE_

A manuscript preserved in the Record Office, of doubtful date, but

probably copied from an authentic document, contains the following

entry:--

The plaiers 1605 The Poets wch

By the Kings Hallamas Day being the mayd the plaies

Maties plaiers First of November A play

in the Banketing house Shaxberd.

Att withal called the

Moore of Venis

Thus _Othello_ was probably produced in the autumn of 1605. After this

we have no proof of its performance till four and a half years later,

when we hear of it again in the journal of Prince Ludwig Friedrich of

Würtemberg, written by his secretary, Hans Wurmsser. The entry for the

30th of April 1610 runs thus:--

"Lundi, 30. S. E[minence] alla au Globe, lieu ordinaire ou l'on Joue

les Commedies, y fut representé l'histoire du More de Venise."

In face of these data it matters nothing that there should appear in

_Othello_, as we have it, a line that must have been written in or

after 1611. The tragedy was printed for the first time in a quarto

edition in 1622, for the second time in the Folio of 1623. The Folio

text contains an additional 160 lines (proving that another manuscript

has been made use of), and all oaths and mentions of the name of God

are omitted. It is not only possible, but certain, that this line

must have been a late interpolation. Its entire discordance with its

position in the play shows this clearly enough, and seems to me to

render it doubtful whether it is by Shakespeare at all.

In the scene where Othello bids Desdemona give him her hand, and loses

himself in reflections upon it (iii. 4), he makes this speech:--

"A liberal hand: the hearts of old gave hands;

But our new heraldry is hands, not hearts."

Here there is an allusion, which could only be understood by

contemporaries, to the title of Baronet, created and sold by James,

which gave its possessors the right of bearing in their coat-of-arms a

bloody hand on a field argent. Most naturally Desdemona replies to this

irrelevant remark: "I cannot speak of this."

In Cinthio's Italian collection of tales, where he had found the plot

of _Measure for Measure_, Shakespeare at the same time (in Decade 3,

Novella 7) came upon the material for _Othello_. The story in the

_Hecatommithi_ runs as follows: A young Venetian lady named Disdemona

falls in love with a Moor, a military commander--"not from feminine

desire," but because of his great qualities--and marries him in spite

of the opposition of her relatives. They live in Venice in complete

happiness; "no word ever passed between them that was not loving." When

the Moor is ordered to Cyprus to take command there, his one anxiety is

about his wife; he is equally unwilling to expose her to the dangers

of the sea voyage and to leave her alone. She settles the question by

declaring that she will rather follow him anywhere, into any danger,

than live in safety apart from him; whereupon he rapturously kisses

her, with the ejaculation: "May God long preserve you so loving, my

dearest wife!" Thus the perfect initial harmony between the pair which

Shakespeare depicts is suggested by his original.

The Ensign undermines their happiness. He is described as remarkably

handsome, but "as wicked by nature as any man that ever lived in the

world." He was dear to the Moor, "who had no idea of his baseness."

For although he was an arrant coward, he managed by means of proud

and blusterous talk, aided by his fine appearance, so to conceal his

cowardice that he passed for a Hector or Achilles. His wife, whom he

had taken with him to Cyprus, was a fair and virtuous young woman, much

beloved by Disdemona, who spent the greater part of the day in her

company. The Lieutenant (_il capo di squadra_) came much to the Moor's

house, and often supped with him and his wife.

The wicked Ensign is passionately in love with Disdemona, but all his

attempts to win her love are entirely unsuccessful, as she has not a

thought for any one but the Moor. The Ensign, however, imagines that

the reason for her rejection of him must be that she is in love with

the Lieutenant, and therefore determines to rid himself of this rival,

while his love for Disdemona is changed into the bitterest hatred. From

this time forward, his object is not only to bring about the death of

the Lieutenant, but to prevent the Moor from finding the pleasure in

Disdemona's love which is denied to himself. He goes to work as in the

drama, though of course with some differences of detail. In the novel,

for example, the Ensign steals Disdemona's handkerchief whilst she is

visiting his wife, and playing with their little girl. Disdemona's

death-scene is more horrible in the tale than in the tragedy. By

command of the Moor, the Ensign hides himself in a room adjoining

Othello's and Disdemona's bed-chamber. He makes a noise, and Disdemona

rises to see what it is; whereupon the Ensign gives her a violent blow

on the head with a stocking filled with sand. She calls to her husband

for help, but he answers by accusing her of infidelity; she in vain

protests her innocence, and dies at the third blow of the stocking. The

murder is concealed, but the Moor now begins to hate his Ensign, and

dismisses him. The Ensign is so exasperated by this, that he lets the

Lieutenant know who is responsible for the night assault that has just

been made upon him. The Lieutenant accuses the Moor before the council,

and Othello is put to torture. He refuses to confess, and is sent into

banishment. The wicked Ensign, who has brought a false accusation of

murder against one of his comrades, is himself in turn accused by the

innocent man, and subjected to torture until he dies.

To the characters in the novel, Shakespeare has added two, Brabantio

and Roderigo. Only one of the names he uses is found in the original.

Disdemona, which seems made to designate the victim of an evil destiny,

Shakespeare has changed into the sweeter-sounding Desdemona. The other

names are of Shakespeare's own choosing. Most of them are Italian

(Othello itself is a Venetian noble name of the sixteenth century);

others, such as Iago and Roderigo, are Spanish.

With his customary adherence to his original, Shakespeare, like

Cinthio, calls his protagonist a Moor; but it is quite unreasonable

to suppose from this that he thought of him as a negro. It was, of

course, inconceivable that a negro should attain the rank of general

and admiral in the service of the Venetian Republic; and Iago's mention

of Mauritania as the country to which Othello intends to retire, shows

plainly enough that the "Moor" ought to be represented as an Arab. It

is no argument against this that men who hate and envy him apply to him

epithets that would befit a negro. Thus Roderigo in the first scene

of the play calls him "thick-lips," and Iago, speaking to Brabantio,

calls him "an old black ram." But a little later Iago compares him with

"a Barbary horse "--that is to say, an Arab from North Africa. It is

always animosity and hate that exaggerate the darkness of his hue, as

when Brabantio talks of his "sooty bosom". That Othello calls himself

_black_ only means that he is dark. In this very play Iago says of dark

women:

"If she be _black_, and thereto have a wit,

She'll find a white that shall her _blackness_ fit."

And we have seen how, in the Sonnets and in _Love's Labours Lost_,

"black" is constantly employed in the sense of dark-complexioned. As

a Moor, Othello has a complexion sufficiently swarthy to form a striking

contrast to the white and even blonde Desdemona, and there is also a

sufficiently marked race-contrast between him, as a Semite, and the

Aryan girl. It is quite conceivable, too, that a Christianised Moor

should reach a high position in the army and fleet of the Republic.

It ought further to be noted that the whole tradition of the Venetian

"Moor" has possibly arisen from a confusion of words. Rawdon Browne,

in 1875, suggested the theory that Giraldi had founded his tale on the

simple misunderstanding of a name. In the history of Venice we read of

an eminent patrician, Christoforo Moro byname, who in 1498 was Podesta

of Ravenna, and afterwards held similar office in Faenza, Ferrara, and

the Romagna; then became Governor of Cyprus; in 1508 commanded fourteen

ships; and later still was Proveditore of the army. When this man was

returning from Cyprus to Venice in 1508, his wife (the third), who is

said to have belonged to the family of Barbarigo (note the resemblance

to Brabantio), died on the voyage, and there seems to have been some

mystery connected with her death. In 1515 he took as his fourth wife a

young girl, who is said to have been nicknamed _Demonio bianco_--the

white demon. From this the name Desdemona may have been derived, in the

same way as Moor from Moro.

The additions which Shakespeare made to the story as he found it in

Cinthio--Desdemona's abduction, the hurried and secret marriage, the

accusation, to us so strange, but in those days so natural and common,

of the girl's heart having been won by witchcraft--these all occur in

the history of Venetian families of the period.

Be this as it may, when Shakespeare proceeds to the treatment of the

subject, he arranges all the conditions and circumstances, so that they

present the most favourable field for Iago's operations, and he so

fashions Othello as to render him more susceptible than any other man

would be to the poison which Iago (like Lucianus in the play-scene in

_Hamlet_) drops into his ear. Then he lets us trace the growth of the

passion from its first germ, through every stage of its development,

until it blasts and shatters the victim's whole character.

Othello's is an inartificial soul, a simple, straightforward, soldier

nature. He has no worldly wisdom, for he has lived his whole life in

camps:

"And little of this great world can I speak,

More than pertains to feats of broil and battle."