King James. Don Diego Sarmiento de Acuna, Count of Gondomar, was one of
the first diplomatists of Spain. He must have lacked the intuitions of
a statesman, in so far as he flattered himself that England could be
brought back to Roman Catholicism, but he was a past-master in the art
of managing men. He knew how to awe by rare firmness of decision and
how to win by exemplary suppleness; he knew when to speak and when to
be silent; and, finally, he understood how to further his master's aims
by the most intelligent means. He had as free access to James as any
English courtier, having acquired it by lively sallies and by talking
bad Latin, in order to give the King an opportunity of correcting him.
Ladies of rank crowded on to their balconies to attract this man's
attention as he rode or drove to his house; and it appears, says
Disraeli, that any one of them would have sold her favours for a good
round sum. Noticeable among these ladies of title, says Wilson, were
many who owned some pretensions to wit, or had charming daughters or
pretty nieces, whose presence attracted many men to their houses.
The following anecdote made considerable noise at the time, and has
been variously repeated. In Drury Lane, Gondomar, one day, passed the
house of a charming widow, a certain Lady Jacob. He saluted her, and
was amazed to find that in return to his greeting she merely moved
her mouth, which she opened, indeed, to a very great extent. He was
profoundly astonished by this lack of courtesy, but reflected that
she had probably been overtaken by a fit of the gapes. The same thing
occurring, however, on the following day, he sent one of his retinue
to inform her that English ladies were usually more gracious than to
return his greeting in such an outrageous manner. She replied, that
being aware that he had acquired several good graces for a handsome
sum, she had wished to prove to him that she also had a mouth which
could be stopped in the same fashion. Whereupon he took the hint, and
immediately despatched her a present.
In all this, however, the women merely followed the example of the men.
The English Ambassador at Madrid had long been aware of, and profited
by, the possibility of buying the secrets of the Spanish Government at
comparatively reasonable prices. In May 1613, however, he discovered
that Spain, in the same manner, annually paid large sums to a whole
series of eminent persons in England. He saw, to his disgust, the name
of the English Admiral, Sir William Monson, among the pensioners of
Spain, and learned, to his consternation, that the late Chancellor of
the Exchequer, Lord Salisbury, had been in her pay up to the moment of
his death. In the following December he obtained a complete list of
men enjoying Spanish pay, and was thunderstruck on reading the names
of men whose integrity he had never doubted, and who were filling the
highest offices of state. Not daring to trust the secret to paper,
correspondence by no means being considered inviolable in those days,
he applied for permission to bring the disgraceful information to James
in person.
V
_ARABELLA STUART AND WILLIAM SEYMOUR_
An event occurring in the royal family (concerning which Gardiner
observes that, in our day, such a thing would rouse the wrath of the
British people from one end of the kingdom to the other) serves to
illustrate both the heartlessness of the King and the lawless condition
of the people.
Arabella Stuart, who was King James's cousin, had possessed her own
appanage from the time of Queen Elizabeth. She had her apartments
in the Palace, and associated with the Queen's ladies. Her letters
show a refined and lovable woman's soul, absolutely untroubled by any
political ambition. She says in a letter to her uncle Shrewsbury that
she wishes to refute the apparent impossibility of a young woman's
being able to preserve her purity and innocence among the follies with
which a court surrounds her. She is alluding, amongst other things, to
one of the eternal masquerades through which the Queen and her ladies
racketed, attired, upon this occasion, "as sea nymphs or nereids, to
the great delight of all beholders" (Arthur Wilson's "History of Great
Britain," 1633). She kept apart as much as possible from this whirl of
gaiety, and the various foreign potentates who applied for her hand
were all dismissed. She would not, she said, wed a man whom she did
not know. Nevertheless it was rumoured that she intended to marry some
foreign prince who would enforce her rights to the English throne.
James sent her to the Tower at Christmas 1609 on account of this
report, and summoned the Council. The misunderstanding was cleared up,
and she was hastily set at liberty, James expressly assuring her that
he would have no objection to her marrying a subject.
A few weeks after she learned to know and love the man to whom she
devoted herself with a passion and fidelity which recalls that of
Imogen for Posthumus in Shakespeare's _Cymbeline_. This was young
William Seymour, a son of Lord Beauchamp, one of the first noblemen in
England. He was received in her apartments, and obtained her promise in
February, the King's assurance to Arabella giving them every security
for the future. Nevertheless, the young Princess's choice could not
have fallen more unfortunately. Lord Beauchamp was the son of the Earl
of Hertford and Catherine Grey, the inheritress of the Suffolk rights
to the throne. The Earl's eldest son was still alive, and William
Seymour had no claim to the crown at the moment; but the fact that his
brother might die childless made him an always possible pretender.
The Suffolk claims had been recognised by Act of Parliament, and the
Parliament which had acknowledged James was powerless to change the
succession. In the face of this notorious fact, James ignored the
consideration that neither Seymour and Arabella, nor any one else,
wanted to deprive him of the throne in favour of the young pair. Both
were summoned before the Council and examined.
Seymour was made to renounce all thought of marriage with Arabella, and
the young couple did not see each other for three months. In May 1610,
however, they were secretly married.
When the news reached James's ears in July, he was furious. Arabella
was detained in custody at Lambeth, and Seymour was sent to the Tower.
Arabella strove in vain to touch the King's heart. Great sympathy was
felt in London, however, for the young couple, and secret meetings
were permitted them by their gaolers. When the correspondence between
them was discovered, Arabella was commanded to travel to Durham and
put herself under the care of its Bishop. On her refusal to quit her
apartments, she was carried away by force. Falling ill on the journey,
she was given permission to pause by the way, and, attiring herself
like one of Shakespeare's heroines, she seized the opportunity to
escape. She drew on a pair of French trousers over her skirt, put on a
man's coat and high boots, wore a manly wig with long curls over her
hair, set a low-flapped black hat upon her head, threw a short cloak,
around her, and fastened a small sword at her side. Thus disguised,
she fled by horse to Blackwall, where a French ship awaited her and
Lord Seymour, the latter having arranged his escape for the same time.
An accident prevented their meeting, and Arabella's friends, growing
impatient, insisted, in spite of her protests, on setting out at once.
When Seymour arrived next day, he learned to his disappointment, that
the ship had set sail. He succeeded, however, in getting put over to
Ostend. Meanwhile, Arabella, a few miles from Calais, induced the
captain to lay-to for an hour or so to give Seymour an opportunity of
overtaking them. They were here surprised by an English cruiser, which
had been sent from Dover to capture the fugitives, and Arabella was
brought back to the Tower. When she implored pardon, James brutally
replied that she had eaten forbidden fruit, and must pay the price of
her disobedience. Despair deprived her of her reason, and she died
miserably, after five years of imprisonment. Not until after her death
was her husband permitted to return to England.
VI
_ROCHESTER AND LADY ESSEX_
It was Rochester who was the real ruler of England all this time. He
was the acknowledged favourite; to him every suitor applied and from
him came every reward. He was made head of the Privy Council after
the death of Lord Dunbar, and was nominated Lord High Treasurer of
Scotland, a title which gave him great prestige in his native country.
He was also made Baron Brandspech, and, in accordance with the general
expectation, Viscount Rochester and Knight of the Garter. The only
decided opposition he had to encounter was that of young Prince
Henry, the nation's darling, who could not endure his arrogant way,
and was, moreover, his rival in fair ladies' favours. After the death
of the Prince, Rochester was more powerful than ever. As principal
Secretary, Carr managed all the King's correspondence, and on more than
one occasion he answered letters without consulting either King or
Council. The King, if he was aware of this, had reached such a pitch of
infatuation that he submitted to everything. Carr was given a new title
in 1613 and the Viscount Rochester was made Earl of Somerset. In 1614
the King made him Lord Chamberlain "because he loved him better than
all men living." In the interim he had been appointed Keeper of the
Seals and Warden of the Cinque Ports.
It was from such a height as this that he fell, and the circumstances
of his overthrow form perhaps the most interesting events, from a
psychological point of view, of James' reign. They made a great
impression on contemporary minds, and occupy a large space in the
letters of the period--letters in which Shakespeare's name is never
mentioned and of whose very existence their historico-polemical writers
do not seem to have been aware.
It was one of James's ambitions on his coming to England to put an end
to the feuds and dissensions which were rife among the great families.
To this end he arranged a match between Essex's son, and a daughter
of the house which had ruined his father and driven him to death. In
January 1608, accordingly, the fourteen-year-old Earl was married to
the Lady Frances Howard, just thirteen years of age, and he thus became
allied with the powerful houses of Howard and Cecil. Mr. Pory wrote
to Sir Robert Cotton on the occasion of the marriage, "The bridegroom
carried himself as gravely and as gracefully as if he were of his
father's age."
The Church in those times sanctioned these marriages between children,
but every sense of fitness demanded that they should be immediately
parted. Young Essex was sent on foreign travel, and did not return to
claim his bride until he was eighteen. He was a solidly built youth,
possessed of a heavy and imperturbably calm disposition. Frances, on
the other hand, was obstinately and stormily passionate in both her
likes and dislikes. She had been brought up by a coarse and covetous
mother, and early corrupted by contact with the vices of the Court.
She took a deep dislike to her youthful bridegroom from the first and
refused to live with him. Her relations, however, compelled her to
accompany him to his estate, Chartley.
She had previously attracted the attention of both Prince Henry and the
favourite Rochester. Expecting more from Rochester, as a contemporary
document explains, than from the unprofitable attentions of the Prince,
she chose the former, a fact which can hardly have failed to augment
the ill-will already existing between the King's son and the King's
friend. From the moment of her choice all the passionate intensity of
her nature was concentrated upon avoiding any intercourse with her
husband and in assuring Rochester that his jealousy on that score was
groundless.
She chose for her confidante a certain Mrs. Turner, a doctor's widow,
who, after leading a dissipated life, was settling down to a reputation
for witchcraft. Lady Essex begged some potion of her which should chill
the Earl's ardour, and this not working to her satisfaction, she wrote
the following letter to her priestess, which was later produced at the
trial and made public by Fulk Greville:--
"Sweet Turner, as thou hast been hitherto, so art thou all my hopes
of good in this world. My Lord is lusty as ever he was, and hath
complained to my brother Howard, that hee hath not layne with mee, nor
used mee as his wife. This makes me mad, since of all men I loath him,
because he is the only obstacle and hindrance, that I shall never enjoy
him whom I love."
Upon the Earl's complaining a second time, the two applied to a
Dr. Forman, quack and reputed sorcerer, for some means of causing
an aversion (frigidity _quoad hanc_) in the Earl. The mountebank
obligingly performed all manner of hocus-pocus with wax dolls, &c., and
these in their turn failing, Lady Essex wrote to him:--
"Sweet Father, although I have found you ready at all
times to further mee, yet must I still crave your helpe;
wherefore I beseech you to remember that you keepe the
doores close, and that you still retaine the Lord with
mee and his affection towards mee. I have no cause but to
be confident in you, though the world be against mee; yet
heaven failes mee not; many are the troubles I sustaine, the
doggednesse of my Lord, the crossenesse of my enemies, and
the subversion of my fortunes, unlesse you by your wisdome
doe deliver mee out of the midst of this wildernesse, which
I entreat for God's sake. From Chartley.--Your affectionate
loving daughter, FRANCES ESSEX."
In the beginning of the year 1613, a woman named Mary Woods accused
Lady Essex of attempting to bribe her to poison the Earl. The
accusation came to nothing, however, and the Countess soon afterwards
tried a new tack. It was now three years since her husband's return
from abroad, and if she could succeed in convincing the Court that
the marriage had never been consummated there was some chance of its
being declared void. Having won her father and her utterly unscrupulous
uncle, the powerful Lord Northampton, to her side, she induced the
latter, who played Pandarus to this Cressida, to represent the
situation to the King. James, loving Rochester as much as ever, and
taking a pleasure in completing the happiness of those he loved, lent
a willing ear. Northampton and Suffolk both took the matter up warmly,
clearly seeing how advantageous an alliance with Carr, whom they had
hitherto regarded as an enemy, would be to their plans. A meeting
between the relatives of both parties was arranged. It consisted of
the Earls of Northampton and Suffolk on Lady Essex's side, and the
Earl of Southampton and Lord Knollys on her husband's. Essex, while
resolved not to make any declaration which might prove an obstacle to
his marrying again, fully conceded that he was not qualified to be
this particular lady's husband. A commission of clergy and lawyers was
therefore appointed to inquire into the matter.
A committee was nominated of six midwives and ten Godfearing matrons of
rank, who had all borne children, to ascertain if Lady Essex was, as
she asserted, a virgin. The lady's modesty insisted upon being closely
veiled during the examination, which naturally gave rise to a rumour
that another woman had been substituted.
The examination, which terminated in favour of the plaintiff, convinced
none but those who had undertaken it, and was the occasion of much
coarse-grained jesting.
With considerable impudence, Lady Essex maintained that her husband
had been deprived of his manhood by witchcraft; but she was careful
not to mention either Dr. Forman or herself as the instigators
of this sorcery. Several members of the commission were prepared
beforehand to declare the marriage void, it having been made worth
their while to fall in with the wishes of the King and his favourite.
Archbishop Abbot, however, an independent spirit, insisted from the
first that it was utterly improbable that witchcraft could produce
the assigned result, and urged that in accommodating the Countess
they were establishing a precedent of which any childless wife could
take advantage. The votes being equal, Abbot petitioned the King to
allow his withdrawal. James, however, appointed two new members,
both bishops, instead, and thus made the votes 7 to 5 in favour of
"nullity." Abbot, as the result of his protest, became for a while
the most popular man in England. Bishop Neile, who had always been
despised, sank still lower in the public esteem, and Bishop Bilson of
Winchester, of whom better things had been expected, was overwhelmed
with ridicule. His son, whom the King knighted in order to reward his
father, was acclaimed by general consent, Sir Nullity Bilson.
Throughout his whole career, and in his late relations with Lady Essex,
Rochester had been guided by an intimate and capable adviser, Sir
Thomas Overbury. He had assisted Rochester in the composition of his
love-letters to the Countess, and he knew a great deal too much about
the secret meetings, which he had himself arranged, between the lovers
at Paternoster Row, Hammersmith, &c. When he learned that Rochester
intended to supplement the connection by marriage, he strove by every
means in his power to prevent it. He had been accustomed to dictate to
his master in everything, but Rochester had now grown restive, and was
resolved, by fair means or foul, on freeing himself from this control.
To this end the King was given to understand that it was a common
jest that Rochester managed the King, but Overbury ruled Rochester.
In order to get rid of him in an honourable manner, he was appointed
to some official post abroad. Overbury, however, whose ambition bound
him to England, detected that this was but a mild form of banishment,
and strove to excuse himself, finally declining outright. This was
considered a breach of a subject's duty by James, and, upon the
advice of the favourite, Overbury was sent to the Tower. Rochester
now began to play a double game, and while assuring the prisoner that
he was doing his utmost to obtain his release, he was, in reality,
concentrating all his influence upon keeping him where he was. It was
necessary to befool Overbury into thinking he had reason to be grateful
to him, in case the prisoner should one day be released, and should
wish to reveal all that Rochester was most anxious to keep concealed.
It was commanded from the first that Overbury should have no contact
whatever with the outside world, an order which speaks for itself.
When, however, the Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir William Wood,
interpreted these directions so literally that he refused Rochester's
own messengers access, it became necessary to replace him by the more
amenable Sir Gervase Helwys.
Lady Essex, who was not the woman for half measures, preferred to make
certain of Overbury once for all, and was determined that he should
never leave the Tower alive. For this purpose she again applied to Mrs.
Turner, who was well supplied with means serviceable to the occasion.
The first thing necessary was to assure themselves of the man to whose
immediate care the prisoner was intrusted. Lady Essex applied to Sir
Thomas Monson, Master of the Tower Armoury, and through his influence
Helwys was induced to dismiss Overbury's attendant and supply his place
with Richard Weston, a former servant of Anne Turner.
This man was instructed by Mrs. Turner to meet Lady Essex at Whitehall,
and to receive from her a little phial whose contents were to be mixed
with the prisoner's food. Meeting Helwys on his way to Overbury's
cell, and supposing him to be initiated into the secret, Weston
consulted him as to the best way of administering the poison. Helwys,
horror-stricken, prevailed upon him to throw away the contents of
the phial. He was in too much awe of the Howard family to venture an
accusation, and Weston at his instigation told Lady Essex that the
poison had been duly administered, and that the prisoner's health was
failing in consequence. Overbury was, in truth, suffering greatly from
the frustration of his hopes of release, and he naïvely requested
Rochester to send him an emetic in order that the King, hearing of his
sickness, might be moved to compassion. It is not known what kind of
medicament Rochester sent, nor whether he was aware of Lady Essex's
attempt, but he seems to have played his own hand on this occasion.
On finding that Overbury, in spite of his steadily failing health,
still continued to live, Lady Frances renewed her activity. Rochester
was sending sweetmeats, jellies, and wines to the prisoner, and Lady
Essex mixed poison with all these condiments, quite unconscious of
the fact that Helwys, now upon the alert, took care that none of them
should reach the prisoner. Losing all patience, she looked round for
some more certain means than this poison, which worked with such
astonishing and irritating deliberation. Learning that the apothecary
Franklin was attending Overbury, she bribed his boy to give the sick
man a poisoned injection. This was done, and the prisoner died in the
Tower on the following day. Northampton immediately spread about a
report that Sir Thomas Overbury had by no means led such a secluded
life in the Tower as was generally supposed, but had by his dissolute
life there contracted a disease of which he died. The rumour was
generally believed, but that some suspicions were entertained can be
seen in the letters of the times. John Chamberlain, writing to Sir
Dudley Carleton on the 14th October 1613, speaks of Overbury's death as
being caused by this disease, "or something worse."
Thus the last obstacle was cleared from the path which led this
brilliant pair to the altar. Lady Frances was happy, and much farther
removed from any feeling of remorse than Lady Macbeth. The King was
full of affection for her, and, in order that she might not be wanting
her title of Countess, Rochester was made Earl of Somerset. The wedding
was celebrated with inordinate pomp on the 26th December 1613. The
bride had the assurance to appear with maidenly hair unbound upon her
shoulders. John Chamberlain, writing to Mrs. Alice Carleton, December
30th, says, "She was married in her hair, and led to the chapel by her
bridemen, a Duke of Saxony that is here, and the Earl of Northampton,
her great-uncle." The wedding was celebrated in the Chapel Royal, in
the same place and by the same bishop who had solemnised the previous
marriage. King, Queen, and Archbishop were all present, not to mention
those of the nobility who wished to stand well with the King and his
favourite, and rich gifts were brought by all. Gondomar, wishing to
show himself attentive to so highly favoured a pair, sent them some
magnificent jewels. The City of London, the Merchant Adventurers, the
East India Company, and the Customs sent each their present of precious
metals of great value. Gold, silver, and jewels were showered upon them
throughout the first half of January 1614. Bacon, though personally
no admirer of Somerset, naturally did not hold back. It is very
significantly remarked in a letter from John Chamberlain to Sir Dudley
Carleton, December 23, 1613, "Sir Francis Bacon prepares a masque to
honour the marriage, which will stand him in about £2000, and though
he have been offered some help by the House, and especially by Mr.
Solicitor, Sir Henry Yelverton, who would have sent him £500, yet he
would not accept it, but offers them the whole charge with the honour."
A few years later it is Bacon who conducts the poisoning case against
Rochester.
The day following the wedding the King sent a message to the Lord
Mayor, inviting him to arrange a fête for Lord and Lady Somerset. The
City vainly endeavoured to excuse itself on the ground of insufficient
space, but the King himself suggested a remedy, and it was arranged
that the guests should go in procession from Westminster to the City,
the gentlemen on horseback and the ladies in carriages. The bride was
pleased to consider her carriage suitable to the occasion, but not
being satisfied with her horses, she sent to borrow Lord Winwood's. He,
replying that it did not beseem so great a lady to borrow, gallantly
begged her acceptance of the horses as a gift.
Macaulay has likened this Court to that of Nero, and Swinburne has
added that these celebrations recall the bridals of Sporus and Locusta.
Chapman had already inscribed to Rochester two of the dedicatory
sonnets which accompanied the last books of his translation of the
Iliad, and filled them with absurdly exaggerated praise of the
Viscount's "heroic virtues." He now wrote his "Andromeda Liberata"
in glorification of the nuptials, and on his being attacked on that
score, he retorted with his exceedingly naïve "Defence of Perseus and
Andromeda."
Life with Lady Frances could have no beneficial effect upon Somerset's
character. Nothing was magnificent enough for him, and he was
constantly importing new fashions in order to please his master and his
wife. That ingenuously moralising historian, Arthur Wilson, complains
bitterly of his appearance, his curled and perfumed locks, smooth
shaven face and bare neck, and the golden embroideries lavished upon
his attire. His only occupation was to solicit estates and money of
the King. The subjects supplied him handsomely, for every petitioner
paid tribute to Somerset. How much he received in this manner is
uncertain, but he spent not less than £90,000 a year. It may be said
to his credit, that he never, as did the later favourites, sought to
tamper with the law, and he now and then displayed some generosity,
but it was the exactions of his Howard connections which ruined him.
The Council's most honourable members, amongst whom was Shakespeare's
patron, Pembroke, saw with indignation that he predisposed the King in
favour of their rivals.
His successor appeared in 1614. George Villiers, a young, handsome man
of lively disposition, was promoted step by step, yet not too hastily,
for fear of wounding Somerset's feelings. His presence at Court,
however, was exceedingly disagreeable to the latter, who treated his
rival with cold insolence, and seized every opportunity of humbling
him. Somerset's passionate temper and arrogant disposition soon
betrayed him into treating the King with similar superciliousness. He
was rebuked by James, and a temporary reconciliation was effected; but
how far Carr was from the enjoyment of a clear conscience is shown by
his soliciting a general pardon, such as Wolsey had received from Henry
VIII., from the King at this time, which was to include every possible
offence, not forgetting murder. This, he pointed out to James, was in
case his enemies should attempt to destroy him by false accusations
after the King's death. James was willing, but Lord Ellesmere refused
to apply the great seal to the document in question. The King's wrath
was great but unavailing. Ellesmere fell upon his knees, but refused to
affix the seal.
Soon after this Somerset experienced the need of this comprehensive
absolution which he had failed to secure. The apothecary's boy, who
had administered the injection to Overbury, fell dangerously ill
at Flushing, and, wishing to ease his burdened soul, confessed the
murder to Lord Winwood. Helwys was examined, Weston was examined, and
Lord and Lady Somerset were soon implicated in the case. As soon as
Somerset heard that he was accused, he quitted the King, with whom
he was staying at Royston, and started for London in order to clear
himself. The King, by this time, was profoundly weary of his old
favourite, and entirely taken up by his new. To give some idea of
James's dissimulation, we will quote Sir Anthony Weldon's account, as
an eye-witness, of the parting between the King and Somerset. "The
Earle when he kissed his hand, the King hung about his neck, slabbering
his cheeks, saying, 'For God's sake, when shall I see thee again? On my
soul, I shall neither eat nor sleep until you come again.' The Earle
told him, on Monday (this being on the Friday). 'For God's sake, let
me,' said the King. 'Shall I, shall I;' then lolled about his neck.
'Then, for God's sake, give thy lady this kiss for me.' In the same
manner at the stayres' head, at the middle of the stayres, and at the
stayres' foot. The Earl was not in his coach when the King used these
very words, 'I shall never see his face more.'"
Short work was made of the subordinate culprits. Mrs. Turner, Weston,
Helwys, and the apothecary Franklin, were all declared guilty and
hanged. The Countess bore testimony to her husband's innocence, and
he went to the Tower with the collar of the Garter and the George
about his neck. He threatened that if he were brought to trial he
would betray secrets which contained an accusation against the
King--contemporary letters show that this was understood to mean
that he would confess to having poisoned Prince Henry at the King's
instigation; but he abandoned this accusation later, and conducted
his defence with dignity, denying all complicity in the murder. The
Countess was less self-possessed. The judgment hall was filled with
spectators, and the Earl of Essex amongst them was seated exactly
opposite her. As the accusation was read, she trembled and turned pale,
and when Weston's name was reached, she covered her face with her fan.
When, according to custom, she was asked if she acknowledged herself
guilty, she could but answer, Yes. She was condemned to death, and to
the question whether she had anything further to add, replied that she
would say nothing to palliate her guilt, but prayed the King's mercy.
Somerset was also unanimously declared guilty.
The King pardoned them both. He could hardly send to the scaffold the
man who had so long been his most intimate friend, neither could he
well despatch thither the daughter of his Chancellor of the Exchequer.
But although Somerset steadily maintained his innocence, both he and
his wife were sent to the Tower.
In the letters written at the time of the trial, as much mention is
made of Sir George Villiers as of Somerset. The new favourite has been
ill for some time, "not without suspicion of smallpox, which if it had
fallen out _actum erat de amicitia_. But it proves otherwise, and we
say there is much casting about how to make him a great man, and that
he shall now be made of the Garter," &c.
He was soon made Cupbearer, Chamberlain, Master of the Horse, Marquis
of Buckingham, and Keeper of the Great Seal, and he retained his
pernicious influence well into the reign of Charles the First. It is
highly characteristic of James that he was now as anxious to procure
Villiers Raleigh's old estate, Sherborne, from the imprisoned Somerset
as he had been to wrest it from the imprisoned Raleigh for Somerset. He
must have regarded it as a lawful "morrowing gift," so inextricably had
it become associated with a rising favourite in his mind. Somerset was
given to understand that he would obtain a free pardon, together with
the restitution of the rest of his properties, if he would secure the
now all-powerful Villiers' protection by relinquishing Sherborne in his
favour. On his obstinately refusing, he and Lady Somerset were left to
languish for six long years in the Tower.[1]
[1] Arthur Wilson: "The History of Great Britain, being the
Life and Reign of James the First," 1653. Sir A. Weldon: "A Cat may
look upon a King," London, 1652. The author of "Memoirs of Sophia
Dorothea": "The Court and Times of James the First, illustrated by
Authentic Letters," 2 vols., London, 1848. Fulk Greville: "The Five
Years of King James." "Secret History of the Court of James the First,"
edited by Sir Walter Scott, 2 vols., Edinburgh, 1811. "An Inquiry into
the Literary and Political Character of James the First," by the author
of "Curiosities of Literature," London, 1816. Samuel R. Gardiner:
"History of England from the Accession of James I. to the Outbreak
of the Civil War," vol. ii., London, 1883. Edmond Gosse: "Raleigh,"
London, 1886. "The Court and Character of King James, Written and
taken by Sir A. W(eldon), being an Eye and Ear Witness," London, 1650.
Aulicus Coquinariæ: "A Vindication in Answer to a Pamphlet entitled
'The Court and Character of King James,'" London, 1650.
VII
_CONTEMPT OF WOMEN--TROILUS AND CRESSIDA_
In order to give a complete picture, it was necessary to trace events
down to the years in which external happenings ceased to work upon
Shakespeare's mind. He died in the same year that the Lady Arabella
perished in the Tower, and when the scandal of the Somerset trial was
beginning to fade from the public mind. It is obviously impossible
to point to any one cause which could have made an especially deep
impression on his inner life. All we can say with certainty is, that
the general atmosphere of the times, of the corrupt condition of morals
here described, could hardly fail to leave some mark on a disposition
which, just at this time, was susceptible and irritable to the highest
degree. If, as we maintain, there now ensued a period during which
his melancholy was prone to dwell upon the darkest side of life; if
he shows, in these years, a sickly tendency to imbibe poison from
everything; and if all his observation and experience seem to result in
a contempt of mankind, so did the general condition of society afford
ample nourishment for the mood of scorn for human nature.
In the merely external, Shakespeare's life cannot at this time have
undergone any great catastrophe. He was now (1607) forty-three
years of age. As soon as the play was over, between five and six
of an afternoon, he stepped into one of the Thames boats and was
set across the river to his house, where his books and work awaited
him. He studied much, making himself familiar with the works of his
contemporaries, plunging anew into Plutarch, reading Chaucer and Gower,
and pondering over More's _Utopia_. He worked as hard as ever. Neither
the rehearsal in the morning nor the play at mid-day had power to weary
him. He read through old dramatic manuscripts to see if new treatment
could revive them into use, and returned to long-laid-by manuscripts of
his own to work upon them afresh.
He attended to business at the same time, received the rents of his
houses at Stratford, collected his tithes from the same place, and
watched the lawsuits in which the purchase of these tithes had involved
him. He had obtained the object of his existence, so far as the
possession of property was concerned; but never had he been so downcast
and dispirited, never had he felt so keenly the emptiness of life.
So long as Shakespeare was young, the general condition of society and
the ways and worth of men had troubled him less. Then, except for the
feeling of belonging to a despised caste and the increasing spread of
Puritanism, he was at peace with his surroundings. Now he saw more
sharply the true outlines of his times and his world, and perceived
more clearly that eternal infirmity of human nature, which at all times
only waits for a propitious climate in order to develop itself.
The last work which had lain ready on his table was _Antony and
Cleopatra_. He had there, for the second time, given his impression of
the subversion of a world.
There was a pendant to this war of the East (which was in reality
waged for Cleopatra's sake), a war fought by all the countries of the
Mediterranean for the possession of a loose woman; the most famous of
all wars, the old Trojan war, set going by a "cuckold and carried on
for a whore," so it will shortly be described by a scandalous buffoon,
whom Shakespeare uses, so to speak, in his own name. Here was stuff for
a tragicomedy of right bitter sort.
From childhood he, and every one else, had been filled with the
fame and glory of this war. All its heroes were models of bravery,
magnanimity, wisdom, friendship, and fidelity, as if such things
existed! For the first time in his life he feels a desire to mock--to
shout "Bah!" straight out of his heart--to turn the wrong side out, the
true side.
Menelaus and Helen--what a ridiculous couple! The wretched head of
horned cattle moves heaven and earth, causes thousands of men to be
slain, and all that he may have his damaged beauty back again.[1]
Menelaus stood too low for his satire, however. Shakespeare himself
had never felt thus. Neither was it in his humour to portray a woman
who, like Helen, had openly left one man for another, a husband for
a lover--there was none of woman's special duplicity in that. The
transfer from one to another, which alone was of interest to him, in
her case was already past and gone. Helen's destiny is settled before
the drama begins. There is no play, no inner variety in her character,
no dramatic situation between her in Troy and Menelaus without.
But in the old legends of Troy which sagas and folk-tales had handed
down to him, he found, in miniature, the plot whereon the whole war
turned. Cressida, a rejuvenated Helen; Troilus, the simpleton who
loved her, and whom she betrayed; and round about them grouped all
those archetypes of subtlety, wisdom, and strength--that venerable old
twaddler Nestor, and that sly fox Ulysses, &c. Here was something
which urged him on to representation. Here was a plot which chimed in
with his mood.
Shakespeare had no interest in delineating that _bellâtre_, Prince
Paris; he had felt him as little as he had Menelaus. But he had many
a time felt as Troilus did--the honest soul, the honourable fool, who
was simple enough to believe in a woman's constancy. And he knew well,
too well, that Lady Cressida, with the alluring ways, the nimble wit,
the warm blood, speaking lawful passion with (to not too true an ear)
the lawful modesty of speech. She would rather be desired than confer,
would rather be loved than love, says "yes" with a "no" yet upon her
lips, and flames up at the least suspicion of her truth. Not that she
is false. Oh, no! why false? We believe in her as her lover believes in
her, and as she believes in herself--until she leaves him for the Greek
camp. Then she has scarcely turned her back upon him than she loses
her heart to the first she meets, and her constancy fails at the first
proof to which it is put.
All his life through these two forms had preoccupied his imagination.
In _Lucretia,_ he coupled Troilus with Hector among Trojan heroes. In
the fourth act of the _Merchant of Venice_, he made Lorenzo say:
"In such a night.
Troilus, methinks, mounted the Trojan walls,
And sighed his soul towards the Grecian tents
Where Cressid lay."
In _Henry V._, Pistol included Doll Tearsheet among "Cressid's kind,"
making Doll doubly ridiculous by classing her with the Trojan maid of
far-famed charm. In _Much Ado About Nothing_; (Act v.), Benedict called
Troilus "the first employer of Pandars." In _As You Like It_ (Act iv.),
Rosalind jested about him, and yet yielded him a certain recognition.
Protesting that no man ever yet died for love, she said, "Troilus had
his brains dashed out with a Grecian club, yet did what he could to die
before, _and he is one of the patterns of love_." In _Twelfth Night_
and in _All's Well' that Ends Well_, the Fool and Lafeu both jested
about Pandarus and his ill-famed zeal in bringing Troilus and Cressida
together.
Slowly, like the Hamlet tradition, this subject had been growing ripe
in Shakespeare's mind. It had hitherto lived in his imagination in
much the same form in which it had been handled by his compatriots. By
Chaucer, first and foremost, who in his _Troilus and Cressida_ (about
1360) had translated, elaborated, and enlarged Boccaccio's beautiful
poem, _Filostrato_. But neither Chaucer nor any other Englishman who
had translated or reproduced the subject (such as Lydgate, 1460,
who restored Guido delle Columne's _Historia Trojana,_ or Caxton,
who in 1471 published a translation of Raoul le Fevre's _Recueil
des Histoires de Troyes_) had found in it any material for satire.
Especially had none of its earlier elaborators found any fault with
the character of Cressida. Not the poets once. Chaucer founded his
heroine in all essentials upon Boccaccio's. He, who was the first to
gather the material into a poetic whole, had no intention of presenting
his heroine in an unfavourable light. He wished to give expression,
as he openly declares, to his own devotion to his lady-love in his
description of Troilus's passion for Cressida. The old Trouvere, Benoit
de St. Maure, and his _Histoire de la Guerre de Troie_ (about 1160),
was undoubtedly his model. It is from him he received the impression
that Griseida (into whom he transforms Benoit's Briseida) gradually
falls a victim to the seductions of Diomedes, in whose company she
leaves Troy, and little by little grows untrue to Troilus. He adds a
stanza to this effect, on the inconstancy of women.[2] It was not to
be expected that Boccaccio should kneel before women with the platonic
love and devout worship of Dante and Petrarch. Beatrice is a mystical,
Laura an earthly ideal. Griseida is a young lady from the Court of
Naples, such as it was then. A young, lovable, and frail woman of
flesh and blood. But only frail, never base, and very far from being a
coquette. Boccaccio never forgets that he has dedicated the poem to his
love and that she also left the place where they had dwelt together,
for one where he durst not follow her. He says clearly that in the
portrayal of Griseida's charms he has drawn a picture of his love, but
he refrains with consummate tact from driving the comparison further.
Chaucer, as little as Boccaccio, found anything in the relations of
the lovers to satirise. He intends, to the best of his abilities, to
prove their love as innocent and lawful as possible. He paints it with
a naïve and enraptured simplicity, which proves how far he is from
mockery.[3] He does not even rave over Cressida's faithlessness to
Troilus; she is excused, she trembles and hesitates before she falls.
Inconstancy is forced upon her by the overwhelming might of hard
circumstance.
There is nothing in these two poets that can compare with the
passionate heat and hatred, the boundless bitterness with which
Shakespeare delineates and pursues his Cressida. His mood is the more
remarkable that he in no wise paints her as unlovableor corrupt; she is
merely a shallow, frivolous, sensual, pleasure-loving coquette.
She does little, on the whole, to call for such severity of judgment.
She is a mere child and beginner in comparison with Cleopatra, for
instance, who, for all that, is not so unmercifully condemned. But
Shakespeare has aggravated and pointed every circumstance until
Cressida becomes odious, and rouses only aversion. The change from love
to treachery, from Troilus to Diomedes, is in no earlier poet effected
with such rapidity. Whenever Shakespeare expresses by the mouth of
one or another of his characters the estimate in which he intends his
audience to hold her, one is astounded by the bitterness of the hatred
he discloses. It is especially noticeable in the scene (Act iv.) in
which Cressida comes to the Greek camp and is greeted by the kings with
a kiss.
At this point Cressida has as yet offended in nothing. She has, out
of pure, vehement love for him, passed such a night with Troilus as
Juliet did with Romeo, persuaded to it by Pandarus, as Juliet was by
her nurse. Now she accepts and returns the kiss wherewith the Greek
chieftains bid her welcome. We may remark, in parenthesis, that at that
time there was no impropriety in such a greeting. In William Brenchley
Rye's "England as seen by Foreigners in the Days of Elizabeth and James
the First," are found, under the heading "England and Englishmen," the
following notes by Samuel Riechel, a merchant from Ulm:--"Item, when a
foreigner or an inhabitant goes to a citizen's house on business, or is
invited as a guest, and having entered therein, he is received by the
master of the house, the lady, or the daughter, and by them welcomed;
he has even the right to take them by the arm and kiss them, which
is the custom of the country; and if any one does not do so, it is
regarded and imputed as ignorance and ill-breeding on his part."
For all that, Ulysses, who sees through her at the first glance, breaks
out on occasion of this kiss which Cressida returns:
"Fie, fie upon her,
There's language in her eye, her cheek, her lips,
Nay, her foot speaks, her wanton spirit looks out
At every joint and motive of her body.
Oh, these encounterers, so glib of tongue,
That give occasion welcome ere it comes,
And wide unclasp the tables of their thoughts
To every ticklish reader! Set them down
For sluttish spoils of opportunity,
And daughters of the game."
So Shakespeare causes his heroine to be described, and doubtless
it is his own last word about her. Immediately before her he had
portrayed Cleopatra. When we remember the position occupied in his
drama by the Egyptian queen, whom he, for all that, has stamped as the
most dangerous of all dangerous coquettes, we can only marvel at the
distance his spiritual nature has traversed since then.
There was in Shakespeare's disposition, as we have already remarked, a
deep and extraordinary tendency to submissive admiration and worship.
Many of his flowing lyrics spring from this source. Recall his humility
of attitude before the objects of this admiration, before Henry V.,
for example, and his adoration for the friend in the Sonnets. We
still find this need of giving lyrical and ecstatic expression to his
hero-worship in _Antony and Cleopatra_. He by no means undertakes a
defence of the desolating temptress, but with what glamour he surrounds
her! What eulogies he lavishes upon her! She stands in an aureole of
the adulation of all the other characters in the drama. At the time
Shakespeare wrote this great tragedy, he had still so much of romantic
enthusiasm remaining to him that he found it natural to let her
live and die gloriously. Let be that she was a sorceress, still she
fascinates.
What a change! Shakespeare, who had hitherto worshipped women, has
become a misogamist. This mood, forgotten since his early youth, rises
up again in hundredfold strength, and his very soul overflows in scorn
for the sex.
What is the cause? Has anything befallen him--anything new? Upon what
and whom does he think? Does he speak out of new and recent experience,
or is it the old sorrow from the time of the Sonnets, of which he made
use in the construction of Cleopatra's character, and is this the same
grief which has taken new shape in his mind and is turning sour? is it
this which has grown increasingly bitter until it corrodes?
There are two types of artist soul. There is the one which needs
many varying experiences and constantly changing models, and which
instantly gives a poetic form to every fresh incident. There is the
other which requires amazingly few outside elements to fertilise it,
and for which a single life circumstance, inscribed with sufficient
force, can furnish a whole wealth of ever-changing thought and modes
of expression. Sören Kierkegaard among writers, and Max Klinger among
painters, are both great examples of the latter type.
To which did Shakespeare belong? His many-sidedness and fertility
is incontrovertible, and every particular points to the use of a
multiplicity of models. But for all that, his groups of feminine
characters can frequently be traced back to an original type, and
therefore, most likely, to a single model. When one momentous incident
of a poet's life is known, we are very apt to relate to it everything
in his works which could possibly have any connection with it. In this
manner the French literary and critical world most obstinately found
traces of Alfred de Musset's life with George Sand in every expression
of melancholy or complaint of desolation in his poems. In his biography
of his brother, however, Paul de Musset has revealed the fact that
the "December Night," which seems so obvious a supplement to the "May
Night" that turns upon George Sand, was really written in quite another
spirit, to a totally different woman. Also, the character delineated in
the "Letter to Lamartine," which was generally believed to be that of
the famous poetess, had in reality nothing whatever to do with her.
It is quite possible, therefore, that this last woman's character,
instead of being only a variant of the Cleopatra type, was a product
of a new, fiery, and scorching impression of feminine inconstancy and
worthlessness. We are too entirely ignorant of the circumstances of
the poet's life to venture any decided opinion, all we can say is,
that incidents and novel experiences are not absolutely necessary as
an explanation. There is a remote possibility that the first sketch of
the play was already written in 1603, in which case it would be more
than likely that the dark lady was once more his prototype. On the
other hand, it may be, as already suggested, that in a productive soul
one circumstance will take the place of many, and an experience which
at first seemed wholly tragic may, in the rapid inner development of
genius, come to wholly change its character. He has suffered under
it; it has sucked his heart's blood and left him a beaten man on his
path through life. He has sought to embody it in serious and worthy
forms, until suddenly it stands before him as a burlesque. His misery
no longer seems a cruel destiny, but a well-merited punishment for
immoderate stupidity, and this bitter mood has sought relief in such
scornful laughter as that whose discord strikes so harshly in _Troilus
and Cressida_.
We can imagine that Shakespeare began by worshipping his lady-love,
complaining of her coldness and hardness, celebrating her fingers in
song, cursing her faithlessness, and feeling himself driven nearly wild
with grief at the false position in which she had placed him; this
is the standpoint of the Sonnets. In the course of years the fever
had stormed itself out, but the memory of the enchantment was still
visibly fresh, and his mind pictured the loved one as a marvellous
phenomenon, half queen, half gipsy, alluring and repellant, true and
false, strong and weak, a siren and a mystery; this is the standpoint
of _Antony and Cleopatra_. Then, possibly, when life had sobered him
down, when he had cooled, as we all do cool in the hardening ice of
experience, he suddenly and sharply realised the insanity of an exotic
enthusiasm for so worthless an object. He looks upon this condition,
which invariably begins with self-deception and must of necessity end
in disillusionment, as a disgraceful and tremendous absurdity; and his
wrath over wasted feelings and wasted time and suffering, over the
degradation and humiliation of its self-deception, and ultimately the
treason itself, seeks final and supreme relief in the outburst, "What a
farce!" which is in itself the germ of _Troilus and Cressida_.
[1] Heine, some hundreds of years later, expresses the same
feeling in his
"O König Wiswamatra,
O welch ein Ochs bist du,
Dass du so viel kämpfest und brüssest
Und Alles für eine Kuh!"
[2]
Giovine donna è mobile, e vogliosa
E negli amanti molti, e sua bellezza
Estima più che allo specchio, e pomposa
Ha vanagloria di sua giovinezza;
La qual quanto piacevole e vezzosa
E più, cotanto più seco l'apprezza
Virtù non sente, nè conoscimento,
Volubil sempre come foglia al vento."
[3]
"Her armes smale, her streghte bak and softe,
Her sides long, fleshly, smothe, and white,
He gan to stroke; and good thrift bad ful oft.
Her snowish throte, her brestes round and lite:
Thus in this hevene he gan him to delite,
And then withal a thousand times her kiste
That what to dou for joie unnethe he wiste."
VIII
_TROILUS AND CRESSIDA--THE HISTORICAL MATERIAL_.
In the twenty-fourth book of the Iliad Homer makes his solitary mention
of Troilus as a son whom Priam had lost before the opening of the poem.
The old King says:
"O me, accursed man,
All my good sons are gone, my light the shades Cimmerian
Have swallowed from me. I have lost Mestor, surnamed the Fair,
Troilus, that ready knight at arms, that made his field repair
Ever so prompt and joyfully."
This is all the great old world poet says of the king's son, whose fame
in the Middle Ages outshone Hector's own. This brief mention of an
early death stirred the imagination and set fancy at work. The cyclic
poets expanded the hint and developed Troilus into a handsome youth who
fell by Achilles' lance. It had become the custom under Imperial Rome
to derive the empire from the Trojans, and the theory gave birth to
many fabrications, professing to emanate from eye-witnesses of the war.
Yet it was not before the time of Constantine the Great, that a
description was given which quite displaced Homer during the Middle
Ages. This was Dictys Cretensis' book, _De Bello Trojano,_ translated
from the original Greek into Latin. The translator, a certain Quintus
Septimius, informs us that Dictys was a brother in arms of Idomeneus,
and at his prince's suggestion wrote this book in Phœnician characters,
and afterwards caused it to be buried with him. An earthquake in the
time of Nero brought it to light. The translator is evidently simple
enough to believe in the truth of this account. A more daring forgery
was issued about 635, after the fall of the Western Empire of Rome.
The author is supposed to be a certain Dares Phrygius, who was one of
Hector's counsellors, and who wrote the Iliad before Homer. The title
of this book also is _De Bello Trojano_, and it professes to have been
translated into Latin by Cornelius Nepos, who is said to have found the
manuscript at Athens, "where, in his day, Homer was considered half
mad" because he had depicted gods and men as carrying on a war with one
another. Troilus is the most prominent hero of the book, which is a
wretched compilation of far-fetched reminiscences.
Dares, however, became the fountain-head for all mediæval
story-tellers, first and foremost among them being Benoit de St.
Maure, troubadour to Henry II. of England. Of his poem, containing
30,000 verses, only fragments have ever been printed. As a genuine
Trouvere of the early half of the twelfth century, he has adorned his
ancient material with sumptuous descriptions of towns, palaces, and
accoutrements. He enters, so far as he is able, into the spiritual life
of his hero, and supplies him with what, according to the notions of
his times, he could not possibly lack--a love motive. He represents
Briseis, Achilles' vaunted love, as the daughter of Kalchas, whom,
following the example of Dares, he makes a Trojan. Briseida, who is
beloved by Troilus, returns to Troy after her father goes over to the
Greeks. When Kalchas wishes to regain his daughter, she is exchanged,
as in Shakespeare's drama, for the prisoner Antenor. Diomedes is
sent by the Greeks to escort her, and Briseida falls a victim to his
seductive arts. Many of the incidents in Shakespeare's play are to be
found in Benoit--that Diomedes is experienced in women, for example;
that Briseis gives him a favour wherewith to adorn his lance; that
he dismounts Troilus and sends his horse to his lady-love, and that
Troilus inveighs against her broken faith, &c.
Now it can be traced how, in the further development of the theme, one
writer after another adds some feature which Shakespeare in his turn
still further elaborates. Guido de Colonna (or delle Columne), a judge
at Messina in 1287, retranslates Benoit de St. Maure into barbarous
Latin, making no acknowledgment of his source, and transforming
Achilles into a raw, bloodthirsty barbarian.
Boccaccio, who prefers significant names, and the title of whose poem,
_Filostrato_, signifies "one struck to earth by love," changes Briseida
into Cryseida (thus in old editions), in order that her name may mean
"the golden," and he it is who adds Pandarus, the "all-giver," who aids
Troilus in his love affairs. He is Cryseida's kinsman and is evidently
sympathetic all through.[1]
It is Chaucer who first submits the character of Pandarus to an
important change, and makes it the transition point of the Pandarus we
find in Shakespeare. In his poem Troilus's young friend has become the
elderly kinsman of Creseyde, and he brings the young pair together,
mostly out of looseness. It is he who persuades the young maiden and
leads her astray by means of lying impostures. It was not Chaucer's
intention, as it was Shakespeare's, to make the old fellow odious. His
_rôle_ is not carried out with the cynical and repulsive lowness of
Shakespeare's character. Chaucer endeavours to ward off any painful
impression by making the shameless old rascal the wit of his poem.
He did not achieve his object; his readers saw only the procurer in
Pandarus, whose name became thenceforward a by-word in the English
language, and it was as such that Shakespeare drew the character in
downright, unmistakable disgust.[2]
We have yet other sources, Latin, French, and English, for the
details of the drama. From Ovid's _Metamorphoses_, for example (which
Shakespeare must have known from childhood), he took the idea of
making Ajax almost an idiot in his conceited stupidity. It is in the
third book of the _Metamorphoses_ that Ulysses, fighting with Ajax for
Achilles' weapon, overwhelms his opponent with biting sarcasms.[3]
Shakespeare found the name of Thersites in the same book, with a word
concerning his _rôle_ as lampooner of princes.
We may doubt whether Shakespeare knew Lydgate's _Book of Troy_.
Most of his details with regard to the siege are taken from an old
writing translated from the French and published by Wynkyn de Worde
in 1503. Here, for example, is the parade of heroes, the talk of
King Neoptolemus being no son of Achilles, and the corrupted names
of the six gates of Troy--Dardane, Timbria, Helias, Chetas, Troyen,
and Antenorides. Here also he would find the name of Hectors horse,
Galathea, the archer who calls upon the Greeks, the bastard Margarelon,
Cassandra's warning to Hector, the glove Cressida gives away, and
Troilus's idea that a man is not called upon to be merciful in war, but
should take a victory as he may.[4]
We cannot tell if Shakespeare was further indebted to some old dramatic
writings, whereof only the names have survived to us. In 1515, a
"Komedy" called the _Story of Troylus and Pandor_ was played before
Henry VIII. On New Year's Day, 1572, a play about Ajax and Ulisses was
performed at Windsor Castle, and another in 1584 concerning Agamemnon
and Ulisses.[5] In Henslowe's Daybook for April and May 1599 we see
that the poets Dekker and Henry Chettle (Dickers and Harey Cheattel,
in his amusing orthography) wrote a piece, at his invitation, for the
Lord Admiral's troupe, _Troeyles and creasseday_. In May he lends
them a sum of money on it, changing its title to _A tragedy about
Agamemnon_. It is finally entered at the Stationers' Hall in February
1603 as a piece entitled _Troilus and Cresseda_, "as it was played by
the Lord Chamberlain's men"[6] (Shakespeare's company). The fact that
in Shakespeare's drama, as we have it, rhyme is introduced in various
parts of the dialogue, and several other details of versification,
seems to point to the possibility that the so-called piece was in
reality Shakespeare's first sketch of the play. It is one of Fleay's
tediously worked out theories that the drama was produced in three
different parts, with an interval of from twelve to thirteen years
between each. He is quite regardless of the fact that the parts are
absolutely inseparable, and is evidently entirely innocent of the
manner of growth of poems. He also totally ignores such important
evidence as that of the preface to the oldest edition, 1609, which
positively asserts that the piece has never hitherto been played. It
is, of course, possible that this edition, like most of its kind, was
unauthorised, but even then the writer of the preface would scarcely
lie about a fact which could be so easily verified, and which,
moreover, he was not in the least interested in falsifying.
[1] Troilus says to him:
"Non m'hai piccola cosa tu donata
Ne me a piccola cosa donato hai
La vita mia ti fia sempre obligata
In l'hai da morte in via suscitata."
[2] _Jahrbuch der Deutschen Shakespearegesellschaft_, iii,
252, and vi. 169. Francesco de Sanctis: _Historia della letterature
italiana_, i. 308.
[3]
"Huic modo ne prosit, quod, uti est, hebes esse, videtur.
Artis opus tantæ rudis et sine pectore miles
Indueret?
Ajacis stolidi Danais Sollertia prosit
Tu vires sine mente geris, mihi cura futuri
Tu pugnare potes, pugnandi tempora mecum
Eligit Atrides. In tantum corpore prodes."
Met. xiii. 135, 290, 327, 360.
[4] Halliwell-Phillips: _Memoranda on Troilus and Cressida._
1880. (Only twenty copies).
[5] "Ajax and Ulisses shoven on New Yeares day at nights by the
children of Wynsor. The history of Agamemnon and Ulisses presented and
enacted before her Majestie by the Earle of Oxenford his boyes on St.
John daie at night at Greenwiche. 1584.
[6] "Entered for his (Master Robertes') copie in full court
holden this day to print when he hath gotten sufficient aucthority
for yt the Booke of Troilus and Cressida, as it is acted by my Lord
Chamberlain's men."
IX
_SHAKESPEARE AND CHAPMAN--SHAKESPEARE AND HOMER_
We have now apparently exhausted the literary sources of this
mysterious and so little understood work. But we have not, for all
that, solved the fundamental question which has occupied so many brains
and pens. Was it Shakespeare's intention to ridicule Homer? Did he know
Homer?
To a Dane, _Troilus and Cressida_ recalls the mockery Holberg's
_Ulysses von Ithacia_ makes of the Homeric material, just as the
_Ulysses_ reminds us of Shakespeare's play. _Troilus and Cressida_
seems to have represented to the English poet much what Holberg's
play did to him, a satire, namely, on the absurdities the Gothic
and Anglo-Saxon understanding (_i.e._ narrow-mindedness) found in
Homer. It is sufficiently remarkable that Shakespeare should have
written a travesty which could, in spite of many reservations, be
classed with _Ulysses von Ithacia_. As far as Holberg is concerned,
the explanation is simple enough. His is the taste of the enlightened
age, and the ancient civilisation's noble naïveté viewed in the light
of dry rationalism, filled him with amazement and laughter. But what
has Shakespeare to do with rationalism? His was the very time of
the renaissance of that old world civilisation, the moment of its
resurrection. How came he to scorn it?
The general working of the public mind towards the ancient Greeks had
prompted Elizabeth to write a commentary on Plato and to translate
the Dialogues of Socrates; but Shakespeare's knowledge of Greek was
defective, and thus it was that he, as playwright, represented the
popular trend, in contradistinction to the numerous other poets, who,
like Ben Jonson, prided themselves on their erudition.
Moreover, like the Romans, and subsequently the Italians and French,
the Englishmen of his day believed themselves to be descended from
those ancient Trojans, whom Virgil, as true Roman, had glorified at
the expense of the Greeks. The England of Shakespeare's time took a
pride in her Trojan forefathers, and we find evidence in other of his
works that he, as English patriot, sided with the Trojans in the old
battles of Ilion, and was, consequently, prejudiced against the Greek
heroes. In my opinion, however, all this has little to do with the
point at issue. We have already found it probable that Chapman was the
poet whose intimacy with Pembroke roused Shakespeare's jealousy, making
him feel slighted and neglected, and causing him so much melancholy
suffering. I am not ignorant of the arguments which have been brought
forward in support of the theory that the rival poet was not Chapman
but Daniel, nor of what Miss Charlotte Stopes and G. A. Leigh have to
say on the subject of Minto and Tyler.[1]. I do not, however, consider
that they have been able to refute the strong evidence in favour of its
being no other than Chapman who was the poet of Shakespeare's Sonnets
78-86.
In the year 1598 Chapman had just published the first seven books of
his _Iliad_, namely, the first, second, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth,
and eleventh of Homer. The remaining books, followed by a complete
_Odyssey_, were not published until 1611, two years after the first
appearance of _Troilus and Cressida_. To render the comparatively
unknown Homer into good English verse was an achievement worthy of the
acknowledgments Chapman received. His translation is to this day, in
spite of its faults, the best that England possesses. Keats himself has
written a sonnet in praise of it.
How great a reputation Chapman enjoyed as a dramatist may be seen in
the dedication of John Webster's tragedy _The White Divel_ (1612),
at the close of which he says: "Detraction is the sworn friend to
ignorance. For mine owne part, I have ever truly cherisht my good
opinion of other men's worthy labours, especially of that full and
haightened stile of Maister Chapman. The labour'd and understanding
workes of Maister Johnson: The no less worthy composures of the both
worthy and excellent Maister Beamont and Maister Fletcher: and lastly
(without wrong last to be named), the right happy and copious industry
of Mr. Shakespeare, Mr. Decker and Mr. Heywood." As will have been
noticed, Chapman's name heads the list, while Shakespeare's comes at
the bottom in conjunction with such insignificant men as Decker and
Heywood!
Nevertheless (or possibly on that account) there is little doubt that
Shakespeare found Chapman personally antipathetic. His style was
unequalled for arrogance and pedantry; he was insufferably vain of his
learning, and not a whit less conceited of the divine inspiration he,
as poet, must necessarily possess. Even the most ardent of his modern
admirers admits that his own poems are both grotesque and wearisome,
and Shakespeare must certainly have suffered under the miserable
conclusion Chapman added to Marlowe's beautiful _Hero and Leander_,
a poem that Shakespeare himself so greatly admired. Take only the
fragment of introductory prose which prefaces his translation of Homer,
and try to wade through it. Short as it is, it is impossible. Read but
the confused garrulity and impossible imagery of the dedication in
1598, and could a more shocking collection of mediæval philology be
found outside the two pages he writes about Homer?
Swinburne, who loves him, says of his style: "Demosthenes, according
to report, taught himself to speak with pebbles in his mouth; but it
is presumable that he also learnt to dispense with their aid before he
stood up against Eschines or Hyperides on any great occasion of public
oratory. Our philosophic poet, on the other hand, before addressing
such audience as he may find, is careful always to fill his mouth
till the jaws are stretched well-nigh to bursting with the largest,
roughest, and most angular of polygonal flintstones that can be hewn or
dug out of the mine of language; and as fast as one voluminous sentence
or unwieldy paragraph has emptied his mouth of the first batch of
barbarisms, he is no less careful to refill it before proceeding to a
fresh delivery."[2] The comparison is strikingly exact.
It is this incomprehensible style which made Chapman's readers so few
in number, and caused his frequent complaints of being slighted and
neglected. As Swinburne jestingly says of him:
"We understand a fury in his words,
But not his words."
Even in his fine translation of Homer, he is unable to forego his
tendency to obscurity, and constrained and inflated expression. It is
universally admitted that even a translation must take some colouring
from its translator, and no man in England was less Hellenic than
Chapman. Swinburne has rightly observed that his temperament was more
Icelandic than Greek, that he handled the sacred vessels of Greek
art with the substantial grasp of the barbarian, and when he would
reproduce Homer he gave rather the stride of a giant than the step of a
god.
In all probability it was the grief Shakespeare felt at seeing Chapman
selected by Pembroke, added to the ill-humour caused by the elder
poet's arrogance and clumsy pedantry, which goaded him into wanton
opposition to the inevitable enthusiasm for the Homeric world and its
heroes.
And so he gave his bitter mood full play.
He touches upon the _Iliad's_ most beautiful and most powerful
elements, Achilles' wrath, the friendship between Achilles and
Patroclus, the question of Helen being delivered to the Greeks, the
attempt to goad Achilles into renewing the conflict, Hector and
Andromache's farewell, and Hector's death, but only to profane and
ridicule all.
It was a curious coincidence that Shakespeare should lay hands on
this material just at the most despondent period of his life; for
nowhere could we well receive a deeper impression of modern crudeness
and decadence, and never could we meet with a fuller expression of
German-Gothic innate barbarism in relation to Hellenism than when we
see this great poet of the Northern Renaissance make free with the
poetry of the old world.
Let us recall, for instance, the friendship, the brotherhood, existing
between Achilles and Patroclus as it is drawn by Homer, and then see
what an abomination Shakespeare, under the influence of his own times,
makes of it.[3] He causes Thersites to spit upon the connection, and by
not allowing any one to protest, so full of loathing for humanity has
he become, leaves us to suppose his version to be correct.
How refined and Greek is Homer's treatment of Helen's position. There
is no hint there of the modern ridicule of Menelaus; he is equally
worthy, equally "beloved by the gods," and still the same mighty hero,
if his wife has been abducted. Nor is there any scorn for Helen, only
worship for her marvellous beauty, which even the old men upon the
walls turn their heads to watch, only compassion for her fate and
sympathy with her sufferings. And now, here, this eternal mockery of
Menelaus as a deserted husband, these endless good and bad jests on his
lot, this barbaric laughter over Helen as unchaste!
Thersites is made the mouthpiece of most of it. Shakespeare found his
name in Ovid, and a description of his person in Homer, in one of the
books first translated by Chapman:--
"----All sate, and audience gave,
Thersites only would speak all. A most disordered store
Of words he foolishly poured out, of which his mind held more
Than it could manage; anything with which he could procure
Laughter, he never could contain. He should have yet been sure
To touch no kings; t' oppose their states becomes not jesters' parts,
But he the filthiest fellow was of all that had deserts
In Troy's brave siege. He was squint-eyed, and lame of either foot;
So crook-backed that he had no breast; sharp-headed where did shoot
(Here and there spersed) thin mossy hair. He most of all envied
Ulysses and Æacides, whom yet his spleen would chide."
The argument which has been brought forward to prove that Shakespeare
could not have known this description creating the character of
Thersites is worthless. It has been considered impossible that he,
who knew so well how to turn all material to account, should not
have profited, in that case, by the famous scene where Odysseus
beats Thersites. As a matter of fact, Shakespeare did so, and with
much humour, only it is Ajax who is the chastiser, while Thersites
exclaims (Act ii. sc. 3): "He beats me, and I rail at him. O worthy
satisfaction! would it were otherwise; that I could beat him, while he
railed at me."
Clearly enough, the character of the witty, malicious lampooner made an
impression upon Shakespeare, and he, probably following the example of
earlier plays, transformed him into a clown, and made him act as chorus
accompanying the action of the play. Such, obviously, was the Fool in
_Lear_; but how different is the melancholy, emotional satire to which
King Lear's faithful companion in distress gives vent from the flaying,
scorching scorn, the stream of fierce invective wherewith Thersites
overwhelms every one and everything.
One cannot but see that these lampoons of Menelaus and Helen represent
Shakespeare's own feeling, partly because Thersites is undoubtedly used
as a kind of Satyr-chorus, and partly because the dispassionate and
unprejudiced characters of the drama express themselves in harmony with
him.
Notice, for instance, this reply of Thersites (Act ii. sc. 3):
"After this, the vengeance upon the whole camp! or, rather,
the bone-ache! for that, methinks, is the curse upon those
that war for a placket"
"Here is such patchery, such juggling, and such knavery! all
the argument is a cuckold and a whore; a good quarrel to
draw emulous factions and bleed to death upon. Now the dry
serpigo on the subject! and war and lechery confound all!"
Or read this description of Menelaus (Act v. sc. I):
"And the goodly transformation of Jupiter there, his brother
the bull, the primitive statue and oblique memorial of
cuckolds; a thrifty shoeing-horn in a chain, hanging at
his brother's leg--to what form but that he is, should wit
larded with malice, and malice forced with wit, turn him to?
To an ass, were nothing; he is both ass and ox; to an ox,
were nothing; he is both ox and ass. To be a dog, a mule, a
cat, a fitchew, a toad, a lizard, an owl, a puttock, or a
herring without a roe, I would not care; but to be Menelaus!
I would conspire against destiny. Ask me not what I would be
if I were not Thersites; for I care not to be the louse of a
lazar, so I were not Menelaus."
One can by no means accept this as merely the outburst of a brawling
slave's hatred of his superiors, for the entirely unprejudiced Diomedes
expresses himself in the same spirit to Paris (Act iv. sc. I):
"_Paris_. And tell me, noble Diomede, faith, tell me true,
Even in the soul of sound good fellowship,
Who, in your thoughts, merits fair Helen best,
Myself or Menelaus.
_Diomedes_. Both alike:
He merits well to have her that doth seek her,
Not making any scruple of her soilure,
With such a hell of pain and world of charge;
And you as well to keep her, that defend her,
Not palating her dishonour,
With such a costly load of wealth and friends:
He, like a puling cuckold, would drink up
The lees and dregs of a flat tamed piece;
You, like a lecher, out of whorish loins
Are pleased to breed out your inheritors:
Both merits poised, each weighs nor less nor more;
But he as he, the heavier for a whore.
_Paris_. You are too bitter to your countrywoman.
_Diomedes_. She's bitter to her country: hear me, Paris:
For every false drop in her bawdy veins
A Grecian's life hath sunk; for every scruple
Of her contaminated carrion weight
A Trojan hath been slain: since she could speak
She hath not given so many good words breath
As for her Greeks and Trojans have suffered death."
In the _Iliad_ these forms represent the outcome of the imagination of
the noblest people of the Mediterranean shores, unaffected by religious
terrors and alcohol; they are bright, glad, reverential fantasies, born
in a warm sun under a deep blue sky. From Shakespeare they step forth
travestied by the gloom and bitterness of a great poet of a Northern
race, of a stock civilised by Christianity, not by culture; a stock
which, despite all the efforts of the Renaissance to give new birth
to heathendom, has become, once for all, disciplined and habituated
to look upon the senses as tempters which lead down into the mire; to
which the pleasurable is the forbidden and sexual attraction a disgrace.
How significant it is that Shakespeare only sees Greek love as
scourged by the lash of venereal diseases. Throughout the entire
play a pestilential breath of innuendo is blown with outbursts of
cursing, all centering on a contagion which first showed itself some
thousand years after the Homeric times. As Homeric friendships are
bestialised, so is Greek love profaned to suit modern circumstances.
To Thersites, the Greek princes are, every one of them, scandalous
rakes. "Here's Agamemnon, an honest fellow enough, and one that loves
quails, but he has not as much brain as earwax" (Act v. sc. I). "That
same Diomed's a false-hearted rogue, a most unjust knave.... They say
he keeps a Trojan drab and uses the traitor Calchas' tent.--Nothing
but lechery; all incontinent varlets" (Act v. sc. I). Achilles, that
"idol of idiot worshippers," that "full dish of fool," has Queen
Hecuba's daughter as a concubine, and has treacherously promised her
to leave his fellow-countrymen in the lurch. "Patroclus will give me
anything for the intelligence of this whore: the parrot will not do
more for an almond than he for a commodious drab. Lechery, lechery
still, nothing else holds fashion." Of Menelaus and Paris, "cuckold and
cuckold-maker," enough has already been said. Helen has been sternly
condemned, and of Cressida with her two adorers, Troilus and Diomedes,
"How the devil luxury, with his fat rump and potato-fingers, tickles
these two together! Fry lechery, fry" (Act v. sc. 2).
It is clear that the Christian conception of faithlessness in love
has displaced the old Hellenic innocence and naïveté. How fervent is
Achilles' love for Briseis in Homer; how honest, warm, and indignant
he is when he asks Agamemnon's messengers if among the children of
men only the Atrides love their wives, and he himself answers that
every man who is brave and of good understanding loves and shelters
his wife, as he of his inmost heart loved and would shelter Briseis,
prisoner of war though she was. None the less does Homer tell us how
immediately after Achilles has ended his speech and dismissed his
guests, he stretches himself upon his couch, "in the inner room of
his tent, richly wrought, and that fair lady by his side that he from
Lesbos brought, bright Diomeda." It never occurs to the Greek poet that
this implies any faithlessness to the absent Briseis, but Shakespeare's
standard is thoroughly and mediævally rigorous.
On two points the comparison between Homer and Shakespeare is
inevitable. The first is the farewell between Hector and Andromache.
There is nothing finer in Greek poetry (which is to say, any poetry)
than this tragic idyl, so profoundly human and movingly beautiful as
it is. The pure womanliness which out of deep grief and pain utters
a complaint without weakness, and expresses without sentimentality a
boundless love poured out upon this one object: "Thy life makes still
my father be, my mother, brother, and besides thou art my husband too.
Most loved, most worthy."
In contrast to this womanliness stands the man's strength, untouched by
harshness, stirred by the deepest tenderness, but fixed in immovable
determination. The picture of the child, too, frightened by the nodding
plumes upon his father's helm, until Hector sets the casque upon the
ground and kisses the tears from the eyes of his boy. The scene takes
place in the sixth book of the _Iliad;_ and could not have been known
to Shakespeare, inasmuch much as it was as yet untranslated by Chapman.
See what he sets in its place:
"_Andromache_. Unarm, unarm, and do not fight to-day.
_Hector_. You train me to offend you: get you in: By all the
everlasting gods I'll go!
_Andromache_. My dreams will, sure, prove ominous to the day.
_Hector_. No more, I say."
This is the harshness of a mediæval duke; the golden dust is brushed
from the wings of the Greek Psychè. If Harald Hardrada, as chieftain of
the Varangians, ever gave a thought to the spirit of Greek art, as he
passed with his troops through the streets of Constantinople, he must
have looked upon it thus, despising the ancient Hellenes because he
found the modern cowardly and effeminate.
Shakespeare had no particular place and no particular people in his
mind when he wrote this play; he simply robbed the finest scenes of
their beauty, because his mind, at that time, had elected to dwell upon
the lowest and basest side of human nature.
The second point is the mission to Achilles, told in the ninth book
of the _Iliad_. It was translated and published by Chapman in 1598,
and must certainly have been known to Shakespeare.[4] This book is
one of the few finished works of art which have been produced upon
this earth. The Greek Epos itself contains nothing more consummate
than its delineation of character, the contrast between the arrogant
and the intellectual, the polished and the humorous, the interplay of
personality from the highest pathos to the reiterated twaddle of the
old man. Achilles' wrath, Nestor's experience, Odysseus' subtle tact,
Phœnix's good-natured rambling, the wounded pride of the Hellenic
emissaries, are all gathered together in the endeavour to induce
Achilles to quit his tent.
Contrast this with the burlesque attempt to provoke that cowardly snob
and raw dunce, of an Achilles out of his exclusiveness, by passing
him by without returning his greeting or seeming conscious of his
existence; this same Achilles, who falls upon Hector with his myrmidons
and scoundrelly murders him, just as the hero, wearied by battle,
has taken off his helmet and laid aside his sword. It reads like the
invention of a mediæval barbarian. But Shakespeare is neither mediæval
nor a barbarian. No, he has written it down out of a bitterness so deep
that he has felt hero-worship, like love, to be an illusion of the
senses. As the phantasy of first love is absurd, and Troilus's loyalty
towards its object ridiculous, so is the honour of our forefathers and
of war in general a delusion. Shakespeare now suspects the most assured
reputations; he believes that if Achilles really lived at all, he was
most probably a stupid and vainglorious boaster, just as Helen must
have been a hussy by no means worthy of the turmoil which was made
about her.
As he distorted Achilles into an absurdity, so he wrenched all other
personalities into caricatures. Gervinus has justly remarked that
Shakespeare here acts very much as his Patroclus does when he mimics
Agamemnon's loftiness and Nestor's weakness, for Achilles' delectation
(Act i. sc. 3). We feel in the delineation of Nestor that Anglo-Saxon
master-hand which seizes upon the unsightly details which the Greek
ignores:
"He coughs and spits,
And with a palsy fumbling on his gorget,
Shakes in and out the rivet."
And we recognise in the allusion to the mimicry of Agamemnon that cheap
estimate of an actor's profession, which, with a contempt for the whole
guild of poets, is discernible throughout Shakespeare's works, in spite
of his efforts to raise both callings in the eyes of the public.[5]
Nestor is overwhelmed with ridicule, and is made to declare, at
the close of the first act, that he will hide his silver beard in
a golden beaver, and will maintain in duel with Hector that his
own long-dead wife was as great a beauty and as chaste a wife as
Hector's--grandmother.
Ulysses, who is intended to represent the wise man of the play, is as
trivial of mind as the rest. There was a certain amount of grandeur in
the way Iago handled Othello, Rodrigo, and Cassio, as though they were
mere puppets in his hands; but there is none in the sport Ulysses makes
of those swaggering numskulls, Achilles and Ajax. The bitterness which
breathes out of all that Shakespeare writes at this period has found
gratification in making Ulysses not one whit more sublime than the
fools with whom he plays.
Amongst German critics, Gervinus has characterised _Troilus and
Cressida_ as a good-naturedly humorous play. No description could
be more unlikely. Seldom has a poet been less good-natured than
Shakespeare here. No less impossible is the theory (also nourished
in Gervinus' imagination) that the poet of the English Renaissance
was offended by the loose ethics of Homeric poetry. Shakespeare most
certainly was never so moral as this moralising German critic (and
what German critic is not moralising) would have him to be. It is
not a sense of the ethics of Homer, but a feeling for his poetry
that is lacking. In Shakespeare's time men took too much pleasure in
classical culture to appreciate the antique naïveté. It was not until
the beginning of the nineteenth century, when popular poetry once more
began to be universally honoured, that Homer displaced Virgil in the
popular estimation. Even Goethe preferred Virgil to Homer. Gervinus
is equally wide of the mark when, in his anxiety to prove _Troilus
and Cressida_ a purely literary satire, he hazards the assertion that
Shakespeare never intended here to "hold up a mirror to his times;"[6]
for it is precisely his own times, and no other, that were in his mind
when he wrote this play.
[1] _Jahrbuch der Deutschen Shakespearegesellschaft_, xxv. p.
196; _Westminster Review_, Feb. 1897.
[2] A. C. Swinburne: _Essay on Chapman_.
[3]
"_Patroclus_. No more words, Thersites; peace!
"_Thersites_. I will hold my peace when Achilles' brach bids
me, shall I?" (Act ii. sc. i.)
"_Thersites_. Prithee, be silent, boy; I profit not by thy
talk: thou art thought to be Achilles' male varlet.
"_Patroclus_. Male varlet, you rogue! What's that?
"_Thersites_. Why, his masculine whore. Now the rotten
diseases of the South, the guts-griping, ruptures, catarrhs,
loads o' gravel i' the back, lethargies, cold palsies, raw
eyes, dirt rotten livers, wheezing lungs, bladders full of
impostume, sciaticas, lime-kilns i' the palm, incurable
bone-ache, and the rivalled fee-simple of the tetter, take
and take again all such preposterous discoveries." (Act v.
sc. 2.)
[4] The expression "by Jove multi potent," Act iv., sc. 5, is
taken from Chapman. This is the only time it is used by Shakespeare.
[5]
And, like a strutting player, whose conceit
Lies in his hamstring, and doth think it rich
To hear the wooden dialogue and sound
Twixt his stretched footing and the scaffoldage,
Such to be pitied and o'er-wrested seeming
He acts thy greatness in."
And the passage previously quoted from Macbeth:
"Life's but . . . . . a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more."
Also the 110th Sonnet.
[6] "Sein gutmüthiges humoristisches Spiel."--"So kann allerdings
aus der ganzen Darstellung die naheliegende Wahrzeit gezogen werden:
dass die erhabenste Dichtung ohne streng sittlichen Grundlagen nicht
das sei, wozu sie befähigt und berufen ist."--"Gewiss würde er dies
Stück nicht unter die rechnen wollen, die der Zeit einen Spiegel
vorhalten."--Gervinus: _Shakespeare_, iv. 22, 31, 32.
X
_SCORN OF WOMAN'S GUILE AND PUBLIC STUPIDITY_
Troilus and Cressida first appeared in 1609 in two editions, one of
which is introduced by a remarkable and diverting preface, entitled "A
never writer to an ever reader, News." It says:--
"Eternall reader, you have heere a new play, never stal'd
with the stage, never clapper-clawd with the palmes of
the Vulgar, and yet passing full of the palme comicall;
for it is a birth of your brain, that never undertooke
anything comicall, vainely: And were but the vaine names
of commedies changde for the titles of Commodities, or of
Playes for Pleas; you should see all those grand censors,
that now stile them such vanities, flocke to them for the
maine grace of their gravities: especially this author's
Commedies, that are so framed to the life, that they serve
for the most common Commentaries, of all the actions of
our lives, shewing such a dexteritie, and power of witte,
that the most displeased with playes are pleased with his
comedies. And all such dull and heavy-witted worldlings, as
were never capable of the witte of a commedie, coming by
report of them to his representations, have found that witte
there, that they never found in themselves, and have parted
better witted than they came: feeling an edge of witte set
upon them, more than ever they dreamed they had brain to
grind it on. So much and such sauvred salt of witte is in
his Commedies, that they seem (for their height of pleasure)
to be borne in that sea that brought forth Venus. Amongst
all there is none more witty than this. And had I time I
would comment upon it, though I know it needs it not (for so
much as will make you think your testerne well bestowed),
but for so much worth, as ever poore I know to be stuft in
it. It deserves such a labour, as well as the best Commedy
in Terence or Plautus. And believe this, that when he is
gone, and his Commedies out of sale, you will scramble for
them and set up a new English inquisition. Take this for a
warning, and at the perrill of your pleasures losse, and
judgements, refuse not nor like this the less for not being
sullied with the smoaky breath of the multitude; but thanke
fortune for the scape it hath made amongst you. Since by the
grand possessors wills I believe you should have prayed for
them rather than been prayed. And so I leave all such to be
prayed for (for the state of their witte's health) that will
not praise it. VALE."
How remarkable a comprehension of Shakespeare's work this old-time
preface shows, how clear-sighted an enthusiasm, and how just a
perception of his position in the future.
The play was again published in 1623 in folio, and under conditions
which betray the publisher's perplexity as to its classification. It is
altogether missing from the list of contents, in which the plays are
arranged under three headings, comedies, histories, and tragedies. It
is thrust, unpaged, into the middle of the book, between the histories
and the tragedies, between _Henry VIII._ and _Coriolanus_, probably
because the editor mistakenly deemed it to contain more of history and
of tragedy than of comedy. Of all Shakespeare's works, it is _Troilus
and Cressida_ which most nearly approaches the _Don Quixote_ of
Cervantes.
It is a proof of the stultifying effect of the too close attention
of philological critics to metrical peculiarities (peculiarities
which a poet can always accommodate as he thinks proper) upon the
finer psychological sense, that either the whole or a greater part of
_Troilus and Cressida_ has been taken for the work of Shakespeare's
youth, and has been attributed to the _Romeo and Juliet_ period. This
view has been taken by L. Moland and C. d'Hericault in their _Nouvelles
Françaises du 14me Siècle_, and not a few undiscerning
biographers of Shakespeare.
The contrast between the two plays is remarkable and instructive.
_Romeo and Juliet_ is a genuine work of youth, a product of truth and
faith. _Troilus and Cressida_ is the outcome of the disillusionment,
suspicion, and bitterness of ripe manhood. The critics have been
deceived by the apparently astonishing youthfulness of parts of
_Troilus and Cressida_, some upon the ground of its occasional
euphuisms and bombast (evidently satirical), others by the enthusiasm
of youth and absorption in love which some of Troilus's replies
express; for instance:
"I tell thee I am mad
In Cressid's love: thou answer'st 'She is fair,'
Pour'st in the open ulcer of my heart
Her eyes, her hair, her cheek, her gait, her voice," &c.
In his most ardent raptures there sounds a note of ridicule.[1].
All this is a complete inversion of _Romeo and Juliet_. His youthful
tragedy portrayed a woman so staunchly true in love that she is driven
thereby to a bitter death. _Troilus and Cressida_ deals with a woman
whose constancy fails at the first proof. There is no abyss between the
soul and the senses in _Romeo and Juliet_; the two melt into one in
fullest harmony. But it is the lower side of love's ideal nature which
is parodied in _Troilus and Cressida,_ and causes it to resemble the
flippant accompaniment to the serenade in Mozart's _Don Juan_, which
caricatures the sentimentality of the text.
It is true that there is a chivalrous fine feeling and sensual
tenderness in Troilus's love, which seems to foreshadow, as it were,
that which some centuries later found such full expression in Keats.
But the melancholy of Shakespeare's matured perception sets its iron
tooth in everything at this period of his life, and he looks upon
absorption in love as senseless and laughable. He shows us how blindly
Troilus runs into the snare, giddy with happiness and uplifted to the
heavens, and how the next moment he awakes from his intoxication,
betrayed; but he shows it without sympathy, coldly. Therefore, the play
never once arouses any true emotion, since Troilus himself never really
interests. The piece blazes out, but imparts no warmth. Shakespeare
wrote it thus, and therefore, while _Troilus and Cressida_ will find
many readers who will admire it, few will love it.
Shakespeare deliberately made Cressida sensually attractive, but
spiritually repulsive and unclean. She has desire for Troilus, but no
love. She is among those who are born experienced; she knows how to
inflame, win, and keep men enchained, but the honourable love of a man
is useless to her. At the same time she is one of those who easily
find their master. Any man who is not imposed upon by her airs, who
sees through her mock-prudish rebuffs, subdues her without difficulty.
All her sagacity amounted to, after all, was that Troilus would
continue ardent so long as she said "No;" that men, in short, value
the unattainable and what is won with difficulty,--the wisdom of any
commonplace coquette. Never has Shakespeare represented coquetry as so
void of charming qualities.
Cressida is never modest even when she is most prudish; she understands
a jest, even bold and libertine ones, and she will bandy them with
enjoyment. With all her kittenish charm she is uninteresting, and, in
spite of her hot blood, she betrays the coldest selfishness. She is
neither ridiculous nor unlovely, but as little is she beautiful; in no
other of Shakespeare's characters is the sensual attraction exercised
by a woman so completely shorn of its poetry.
Her uncle Pandarus is as experienced as she is in the art of exciting
by alternately thrusting forward and holding back. He has been named a
demoralised Polonius, and the epithet is good. He is an old voluptuary,
who finds his amusement in playing the spy and go-between, now that
more active pleasures are denied to him. The cynical enjoyment with
which Shakespeare (in spite of his contempt for him) has drawn him is
very characteristic of this period of his life. Pandarus is clever
enough, and often witty, but there is no enjoyment of his wit; he is
as comical, base, and shameless as Falstaff himself, but he never
calls forth the abstract sympathy we feel for the latter. Nothing
makes amends for his vileness, nor for that of Thersites, nor for that
of any other character in the whole play. Here, as in other plays,
_Timon of Athens_ in particular, is shown that deep-seated Anglo-Saxon
vein which, according to the popular estimate, Shakespeare entirely
lacked,--that vein in which flows the life-blood of Swift's, Hogarth's,
and even some of Byron's principal works, and it shows how, after all,
there was some sympathy between the Merrie England of those days and
the later Land of Spleen.
We have noticed the harsh strength of Ulysses' judgment of Cressida,
and in the decisive scene, in which Troilus is the unseen witness of
Cressida's perfidy, are written words so weighty and so full of emotion
that we feel Shakespeare's very soul speaks in them.
Diomedes begs Cressida for the scarf which Troilus has given her.
"_Diomedes_. I had your heart before, this follows it.
_Troilus (aside)_. I did swear patience.
_Cressida_. You shall not have it, Diomed, faith you shall
not: I'll give you something else.
_Diomedes_. I will have this: whose was it?
_Cressida_. It is no matter.
_Diomedes_. _Come, tell me whose it was?_
_Cressida_. _'Twas one that loved me better than you will'_
_But, now you have it, take it._"
And the bit of feminine psychology which Shakespeare has given in
Cressida's farewell to Diomedes:
"Good-night: I prithee, come.
Troilus, farewell! one eye yet looks on thee,
_But with my heart the other eye doth see_.
Ah, poor our sex! This fault in us I find,
The error of our eye directs our mind."
And the terrible words Shakespeare puts into Troilus's mouth when
he tries so desperately to shake off the impression, and deny the
possibility of what he has seen:
"_Ulysses_. Why stay we, then?'
_Troilus_. To make a recordation to my soul
Of every syllable that here was spoken.
But if I tell how these two did co-act,
Shall I not lie in publishing this truth?
Sith yet there is a credence in my heart
An esperance so obstinately strong,
That doth invert the attest of eyes and ears,
As if those organs had deceptious functions
Created only to calumniate.
Was Cressid here?
_Ulysses_. I cannot conjure, Trojan.
_Troilus_. She was not, sure.
_Ulysses_. Most sure she was.
_Troilus_. Why, my negation hath no taste of madness.
_Ulysses_. Nor mine, my lord. Cressid was here but now.
_Troilus_. Let it not be believed for womanhood!
_Think, we had mothers_: do not give advantage
To stubborn critics, apt, without a theme,
For depravation, to square this general sex
By Cressid's rule; rather think this not Cressid.
_Ulysses_. What hath she done, prince, that can soil our
mothers?
_Troilus_. Nothing at all, unless that that were she."
Not only Troilus, but the whole play has here become permeated by
Ulysses' conception of Cressida, and in this despairing outburst,
"Think, we had mothers," is the pith of the piece uttered forth with
terrible clearness.
Yet Troilus and Cressida by no means represent the whole of the play.
In order to counterbalance the slightness of the action, the bombastic
speech, the railing abuse, and the heavy bitter Juvenal-like satire of
his drama, Shakespeare has interpolated some serious and thoughtful
utterances in which some of the fruits of his abundant experience are
expressed in weighty and concise form.
Achilles, and more especially Ulysses, give vent to profound political
and psychological reflections, entirely regardless of the fact that
the one is a thoughtless blockhead, and the other is a crafty and
unsympathetic nature, the mere negative pole of Troilus, cold as he
is warm, cunning as he is naïve. These remarkable and thoughtful
utterances, not in the least in harmony with their characters, stand in
direct contradiction to the whole play and its farcical treatment, but
they are none the less notable for that. This singular inconsistency is
one of the many in which this incongruous play is so rich, and it is
these very contradictions which make it attractive, insomuch as they
reveal the conflicting moods from which it sprang. They arrest the
attention like the irregular features of a face whose expression varies
between irony, satire, melancholy, and profundity.
Ulysses, who is represented as the sole statesman among the Greeks,
degrades himself by low flattery of the idiotic Ajax, servilely
referring to him as "this thrice worthy and right valiant lord,"
who should not soil the victory he has won by going as messenger to
Achilles' tent, and he persuades the princes to pass Achilles by
without greeting him. On this occasion Achilles, who is otherwise but
a braggart, dolt, coward, and scoundrel, surprises us by a succession
of outbursts, in each of which he gives voice to as deep and bitter
knowledge of human nature as does Timon of Athens himself.
"What, am I poor of late?
'Tis certain greatness once fall'n out with Fortune
Must fall out with men too: what the declined is
He shall as soon read in the eyes of others,
As feel in his own fall.
. . . . . . .
And not a man, for being simply man,
Hath any honour, but honour for those honours
That are without him, as place, riches, favour,
Prizes of accident as oft as merit:
Which when they fall, as being slippery standers,
The love that leaned on them is slippery too,
Do one pluck down another, and together
Die in the fall."
Ulysses now enters upon a thoughtful conversation with Achilles,
calling his attention to the fact that no man, however highly advanced
he may be, has any real knowledge of his worth until he has received
the judgment of others and observed their attitude towards him.
Achilles answers him a happy and pertinent analogy on principles of
pure philosophical reasonings, and Ulysses continues:
"That no man is the lord of anything
Till he communicate his parts to others;
Nor doth he of himself know them for aught
Till he behold them formed in the applause
Where they're extended: who like an arch reverberates
The voice again, or, like a gate of steel
Fronting the sun, receives and renders back
His figure and his heart."
Achilles interrupts a long discourse, ending with a thrust at Ajax,
with the question "What, are my deeds forgot?" and the remarkable
answer he receives reveals, to an observant reader, one of the sources
of the bitterness and pessimism of the play. It can scarcely be doubted
that Shakespeare at this time felt himself ousted from the popular
favour by younger and less worthy men: we know that immediately after
his death he was eclipsed by Fletcher. He is absorbed by a feeling of
the ingratitude of man and the injustice of what is called the way of
the world. We found the first traces of this feeling in the words of
Bertram's dead father, quoted by the King in _All's Well that Ends
Well_, and here it breaks out in full force in a reply whose very weak
pretext is that of showing Achilles how ill advised he is to rest upon
his laurels:
"Time hath, my lord, a wallet on his back,
Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,
A great-sized monster of ingratitudes:
Those scraps are good deeds past, which are devoured
As fast as they are made, forgot as soon
As done: perseverance dear, my lord,
Keeps honour bright: to have done is to hang
Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail
In monumental mockery. Take the instant way;
For honour travels in a strait so narrow,
Where but one goes abreast: keep then the path;
For emulation hath a thousand sons
That one by one pursue: if you give way,
Or hedge aside from the direct forthright,
Like to an entered tide, they all rush by
And leave you hindmost;
Or like a gallant horse fall'n in first rank,
Lie there for pavement to the abject rear,
O'errun and trampled on: then what they do in present,
Though less than yours in past, must o'ertop yours;
For time is like a fashionable host,
That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand,
And with his arms outstretched, as he would fly,
Grasps in the comer; welcome ever smiles,
And farewell goes out sighing. Oh, let not virtue seek
Remuneration for the thing it was;
For beauty, wit,
High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service,
Love, friendship, charity are subjects all
To envious and calumniating time.
One touch of nature makes the whole world kin,
That all with one consent praise new-born gauds,
Though they are made and moulded of things past;
And give to dust that is a little gilt
More land than gilt o'erdusted."
How plainly is one of the sources betrayed here of the black waters
of bitterness which bubble up in _Troilus and Cressida_, a bitterness
which spares neither man nor woman, war nor love, hero nor lover, and
which springs in part from woman's guile, in part from the undoubted
stupidity of the English public. In the latter part of the conversation
between Ulysses and Achilles the former has some renowned words on
the direction of the state--its ideal government, that is to say. The
incongruity between the circumstance of utterance and the utterance
itself is nowhere more striking in this play than here. Ulysses tells
Achilles that they all know why he refuses to take part in the battle;
every one is well aware that he is in love with Priam's daughter; and
when Achilles exclaims in amazement at finding the secrets of his
private life disclosed, Ulysses, with a solemnity inconsistent with the
triviality of the subject and the grim ways of espionage, gives the
almost mystical and too profound answer:
"Is that a wonder?
The providence that's in a watchful state
Knows almost every grain of Pluto's gold,
Finds bottom in the uncomprehensive deeps,
Keeps place with thought, and almost, like the gods,
Does thoughts unveil in their dumb cradles.
There is a mystery--with whom relation
Durst never meddle--in the soul of state;
Which hath an operation more divine
Than breath or pen can give expression to."
He then turns abruptly to the subject of Achilles's amours with
Polyxena being common talk, and seeks to provoke the lover into
joining the combat by telling him that it has become a common jest
that Achilles has conquered Hector's sister, but that Ajax has subdued
Hector himself, and then ends his speech with the following obscure
allusion to the relation between Achilles and Ajax:--
"Farewell, my lord. I as your lover speak:
The fool slides o'er the ice that you should break."[2]
In spite of the strange inconsistency of all these political allusions,
they are of the greatest interest to us, inasmuch as they so clearly
indicate Shakespeare's next great work, the Roman tragedy of
_Coriolanus_ (1608).
Ulysses makes steady protest against the vulgar error that it is the
gross work, and not the guiding spirit, which is decisive in war and
politics. He complains of the abuse Achilles and Thersites heap upon
the leaders of the campaign (Act i. sc. 3):
"They tax our policy and call it cowardice,
Count wisdom as no member of the war,
Forestall prescience, and esteem no act
But that of hand: the still and mental parts
That do contrive how many hands shall strike
When fitness calls them on, and know by measure
Of their observant toil the enemies' weight--
Why, 'this hath not a finger's dignity," &c.
It is, of course, Thersites who has taken the lead; the light wit and
deep humour of the earlier clowns is displaced in him by the frantic
outbursts of a contemptible scamp. Throughout, Thersites is intended as
a caricature of the envious and worthless (if sharpsighted) plebeian,
of whose wit Shakespeare has need for the complete scourging of an
arrogant and corrupt aristocracy, but whose politics are the subject
of his utter disgust and scorn. As the haughty intelligence of Ulysses
seems to foreshadow Prospero, but without his bright supernatural
clearness, so does Thersites seem to be a preliminary sketch for
Caliban, barring his heavy, earthy, grotesque clumsiness. The character
more immediately allied to that of Thersites, however, is not Caliban,
but that grim cynic Apemantus in _Timon of Athens_.
Still more significant than the previously quoted lines is the speech
in which Ulysses (Act i. sc. 3) develops a political view which was
obviously Shakespeare's own, and which is soon to be proclaimed in
_Coriolanus_. Its point of view proceeds from the conviction, expressed
in our day by Nietzsche, that the distance between man and man must on
no account be bridged over, and is introduced by a half-astronomical,
half-astrological explanation of the Ptolemaic system:
"The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre
Observe degree, priority, and place,
Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,
Office and custom, in all line of order;
And therefore is the glorious planet Sol
In noble eminence enthroned and sphered
Amidst the others; whose med'cinable eye
Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil,
And posts, like the commandment of a king,
Sans check to good and bad: but when the planets
In evil mixture to disorder wander,
What plagues and what portents! what mutiny!
What raging of the sea! frights, changes, horrors,
Divert and crack, rend and deracinate
The unity and married calm of states
Quite from their fixture."
The remainder of the passage has become a fixed ingredient of English
Shakespearian anthologies, and carries us on directly into _Coriolanus_:
"Oh, when degree is shaked,
Which is the ladder to all high designs,
Then enterprise is sick....
Take but degree away, untune that string,
And hark, what discord follows! each thing meets
In mere oppugnancy: the bounded waters
Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores,
And make a sop of all this solid globe:
Strength should be lord of imbecility,
And the rude son should strike the father dead.
Force should be right; or rather right and wrong,
Between whose endless jar justice resides,
Should lose their names, and so should justice too.
. . . . . . . .
This chaos, when degree is suffocate,
Follows the choking.
And this neglection of degree it is
That by a pace goes backward, with a purpose
It hath to climb. The general's disdained
By him one step below, he by the next,
That next by him beneath...
... It grows to an envious fever
Of pale and bloodless emulation."
Shakespeare has so often emphasised the superiority of real merit to
outside show, that he needs no vindication from a charge of worship of
mere rank and station. What he here expresses is merely that inherently
aristocratic point of view which we recognized in his early works, and
which has intensified with increasing years. It was from the first
founded upon a conviction that only among an hereditary aristocracy,
under a well-established monarchy, was any patronage of his art and
profession possible, and the opinion, steadily nourished by the enmity
of the middle classes, will soon be expressed with extraordinary
vehemence in _Coriolanus_.
_Troilus and Cressida_, then, which seems at first sight to be
a romantic play founded on an old world subject, is in reality,
despite its embellishments, a satire on the ancient material, and a
parody of romanticism itself. It cannot therefore be classed with
the attempts made by other great poets to resuscitate the old Greek
personalities. Racine's _Iphigenia in Aulis_ and Goethe's _Iphigenia
in Tauris_, were written in serious earnestness, although neither of
them approximated closely to the old world of tradition. Racine's
Greeks are courtly Frenchmen from the salons, and Goethe's are German
princes and princesses, of humane and classic culture, who attitudinise
like the figures in a painting by Raphael Mengs. It may be said that
Shakespeare's Hector, who quotes Aristotle, and his Lord Achilles,
with his spurs and long sword, are as much noblemen of the Renaissance
as Racine's Seigneur Achilles is a courtier in periwig and red-heeled
shoes. But Racine meant no satire, while Shakespeare most deliberately
caricatured. All turns to discord under his touch; love is betrayed,
heroes are murdered, constancy ridiculed, levity and coarseness
triumph, and no gleam of better things shines out at the end. The play
closes with an indecent jest of the loathsome Pandar's.
[1] Troilus's euphuisms:--
"I was about to tell thee: when my heart
As wedged with a sigh, would rive in twain,
Lest Hector or my father should perceive me,
I have, as when the sun doth light a storm,
Buried this sigh in wrinkle of a smile" (Act i. sc. I).
"----O gentle Pandarus,
From Cupid's shoulder pluck his painted wings,
And fly with me to Cressid" (Act iii. sc. 2).
[2] F. Halliwell-Phillips has published, concerning these last
two lines, a miniature book, _The Fool and the Ice_, London, 1883. He
explains that a whole little history lies behind this curious simile.
When Lord Chandos's Company played at Evesham, near Stratford (before
1600), a country fool there, Jack Miller by name, became so infatuated
with their clown that he wanted to run away with them, and had,
consequently, to be locked up. He saw from the window, however, that
the company was preparing to depart, and springing out, sped, in spite
of the danger, over forty yards of ice so thin that it would not bear a
piece of brick which was laid upon it. (First told in a little book by
the player Robert Arnim, afterwards one of Shakespeare's colleagues. It
was published in 1603 under the title "Foole upon Foole, or Sixe Sortes
of Sottes, by Colonnico del Mondo Snuffe," clown at the Globe Theatre.)
XI
_DEATH OF SHAKESPEARE'S MOTHER--CORIOLANUS--HATRED OF THE MASSES_
Shakespeare's mother was buried on the 9th of September 1608. He had
travelled about the country of late, playing with his company, from the
middle of May until far into the autumn, during which period court and
aristocracy were absent from the capital. It is not certain whether
he had returned to London at this time or not, but he hastened to
Stratford on hearing of his mother's death, and must have stayed some
time on his property, "New Place," after attending her funeral; for
we find him still at Stratford on the 16th of October. On that day he
stands godfather to the son of a friend of his youth, Henry Walker, an
alderman of the borough, who is mentioned in Shakespeare's will.
The death of a mother is always a mournfully irreparable loss, often
the saddest a man can sustain. We can realise how deeply it would go
to Shakespeare's heart when we remember the capacity for profound
and passionate feeling with which nature had blessed and cursed him.
We know little of his mother; but judging from that affinity which
generally exists between famous sons and their mothers, we may suppose
that she was no ordinary woman. Mary Arden, who belonged to an old and
honourable family, which traced its descent (perhaps justly) back to
the days of Edward the Confessor, represented the haughty patrician
element of the Shakespeare family. Her ancestors had borne their coat
of arms for centuries, and the son would be proud of his mother for
this among other reasons, just as the mother would be proud of her son.
In the midst of the prevailing gloom and bitterness of his spirit,
this fresh blow fell upon him, and, out of his weariness of life as
his surroundings and experiences showed it to him, recalled this one
mainstay to him--his mother. He remembered all she had been to him for
forty-four years, and the thoughts of the man and the dreams of the
poet were thus led to dwell upon the significance in a man's life of
this unique form, comparable to no other--his mother.
Thus it was that, although his genius must follow the path it had
entered upon and pursue it to the end, we find, in the midst of all
that was low and base in his next work, this one sublime mother-form,
the proudest and most highly-wrought that he has drawn, Volumnia.
The _Tragedy of Coriolanus_ was first published in 1623, in folio
edition, but 1608 is the generally accepted date of its production,
partly because a speech in Ben Jonson's _The Silent Woman_ (1609)
seems to indicate a reminiscence of _Coriolanus_, and partly because
many different critics concur in the opinion that its style and
versification point to that year.
How came this work to emerge from the depths of all the discontent,
despondency, hatred of life, and contempt for humanity which went at
this time to make up Shakespeare's soul? He was angry and soured, and
the sources of his embittered feelings are embodied in his plays,
seeking outlet, now under one, now under another form. In _Troilus
and Cressida_ it was the relation of the sexes; here it is social
conditions and politics.
His point of view is as personal as it well could be. Shakespeare's
aversion to the mob was based upon his contempt for their
discrimination, but it had its deepest roots in the purely physical
repugnance of his artist nerves to their plebeian atmosphere. It was
obvious in _Troilus and Cressida_ that the irritation with public
stupidity was at its height. He now, for the third time, finds in his
Plutarch a subject which not only responds to the mood of the moment,
but also gives him an opportunity for portraying a notable mother; and
he is irresistibly drawn to give his material dramatic style.
It is the old traditional story of Coriolanus, great man and great
general, who, in the remote days of Roman antiquity, became involved in
such hopeless conflict with the populace of his native city, and was
so roughly dealt with by them in return, that he was driven, in his
bitterness, to reckless deeds.
Plutarch, however, was by no means prejudiced against the people, and
the subject had to be entirely re-fashioned by Shakespeare before it
would harmonise with his mood. The historian may be guilty of serious
contradictions in matters of detail, but he endeavours, to the best
of his ability, to enter into the circumstances of times which were
of hoary antiquity, even to him. The main drift of his narrative is
to the effect that Coriolanus had already attained to great authority
and influence in the city, when the Senate, which represented the
wealth of the community, came into collision with the masses. The
people were overridden by usurers, the law was terribly severe upon
debtors, and the poor were subjected to incessant distraint; their few
possessions were sold, and men who had fought bravely for their country
and were covered with honourable scars were frequently imprisoned.
In the recent war with the Sabines the patricians had been forced to
promise the people better treatment in the future, but the moment the
war was over they broke their word, and distraint and imprisonment
went on as before. After this the plebeians refused to come forward at
the conscription, and the patricians, in spite of the opposition of
Coriolanus, were compelled to yield.
Shakespeare was evidently incapable of forming any idea of the free
citizenship of olden days, still less of that period of ferment during
which the Roman people united to form a vigorous political party, a
civic and military power combined, which proved the nucleus round which
the great Roman Empire eventually shaped itself--a power of which J. L.
Heiberg's words on thought might have been predicted: "It will conquer
the world, nothing less."
Much the same thing was occurring in Shakespeare's own time, and, under
his very eyes, as it were, the English people were initiating their
struggle for self-government. But they who constituted the Opposition
were antagonistic to him and his art, and he looked without sympathy
upon their conflict. Thus it was that those proud and self-reliant
plebeians, who exiled themselves to Mons Sacer sooner than submit
to the yoke of the patricians, represented no more to him than did
that London mob which was daily before his eyes. To him the Tribunes
of the People were but political agitators of the lowest type, mere
personifications of the envy of the masses, and representatives of
their stupidity and their brute force of numbers. Ignoring every
incident which shed a favourable light upon the plebeians, he seized
upon every instance of popular folly which could be found in Plutarch's
account of a later revolt, in order to incorporate it in his scornful
delineation. Again and again he insists, by means of his hero's
passionate invective, on the cowardice of the people, and that in the
face of Plutarch's explicit testimony to their bravery. His detestation
of the mass thrived upon this reiterated accentuation of the wretched
pusillanimity of the plebeians, which went hand-in-hand with a
rebellious hatred for their benefactors.
Was it Shakespeare's intention to allude to the strained relations
existing between James and his Parliament? Does Coriolanus represent
an aristocratically-minded poet's side-glance at the political
situation in England? I fancy it does. Heaven knows there was little
resemblance between the amazingly craven and vacillating James and
the haughty, resolute hero of Roman tradition, who fought a whole
garrison single-handed. Nor was it personal resemblance which suggested
the comparison, but a general conception of the situation as between
a beneficent power on the one hand and the people on the other. He
regarded the latter wholly as mob, and looked upon their struggle for
freedom as mutiny, pure and simple.
It is hard to have to say it, but the more one studies Shakespeare
with reference to contemporary history, the more is one struck by the
evident necessity he felt, in spite of the undoubted disgust with
which King and Court inspired him, for seeking the support of the
kingly power against his adversaries. Many are the unmistakable, though
discreet and delicate, compliments he addresses to the monarch.