How bravely thou becom'st thy bed! fresh lily,
And whiter than the sheets! That I might touch!
But kiss; one kiss!--Rubies unparagon'd,
How dearly they do't!--'Tis her breathing that
Perfumes the chamber thus."
The influence of this scene--interpreting as it does the overpowering
impression that emanates even from the material surroundings of
exquisite womanhood, the almost magical glamour of purity and
loveliness combined--may in all probability be traced in the rapture
expressed by Goethe's Faust when he and Mephistopheles enter
Gretchen's chamber. Iachimo is here the love-sick Faust and the malign
Mephistopheles in one. Remember Faust's outburst:
"Willkommen, süsser Dämmerschein,
Der Du dies Heiligthum durchwebst
Ergreif mein Herz, du süsse Liebespein,
Die Du vom Thau der Hoffnung schmachtend lebst!
Wie athmet hier Gefühl der Stille."
Despite the difference between the two situations, there can be no
doubt that the one has influenced the other.[1]
As though in ecstasy over this incomparable creation, Shakespeare once
more bursts forth into song. Once and again he pays her lyric homage;
here in Cloten's morning song, "Hark, hark, the lark at heaven's gate
sings," and afterwards in the dirge her brother's chant over what they
believe to be her dead body.
Shakespeare makes her lose her self-control for the first time when
Cloten ventures to speak disparagingly of her husband, calling him a
"base wretch," a beggar "foster'd with cold dishes, with scraps o' the
court," "a hilding for a livery," and so on. Then she bursts forth into
words of more than masculine violence, and almost as opprobrious as
Cloten's own (ii. 3):
"Profane fellow!
Wert thou the son of Jupiter, and no more
But what thou art besides, thou wert too base
To be his groom: thou wert dignified enough,
Even to the point of envy, if't were made
Comparative for your virtues, to be styl'd
The under-hangman of his kingdom, and hated
For being preferr'd so well."
It is in the same flush of anger that she speaks the words which first
sting Cloten to comic fury, and then inspire him with his hideous
design. Leonatus' meanest garment, she says, is "dearer in her respect"
than Cloten's whole person--an expression which rankles in the mind of
the noxious dullard, until at last it drives him out of his senses.
New charm and new nobility breathe around her in the scene in which
she receives the letter from her husband, designed to lure her to her
death. First all her enthusiasm, and then all her passion, blaze forth
and burn with the clearest flame. Hear this (iii. 2):
"_Pisanio_. Madam, here is a letter from my lord.
_Imogen_. Who? thy lord? that is my lord: Leonatus.
O learn'd indeed were that astronomer
That knew the stars as I his characters;
He'd lay the future open.--You good gods,
Let what is here contain'd relish of love,
Of my lord's health, of his content,--yet not,
That we two are asunder,--let that grieve him:
Some griefs are medicinable; that is one of them,
For it doth physic love:--of his content,
All but in that!--Good wax, thy leave.--Bless'd be
You bees, that make these locks of counsel!"
She reads that her lord appoints a meeting-place at Milford Haven,
little dreaming that she is summoned there only to be murdered:
"O for a horse with wings!--Hear'st thou, Pisanio?
He is at Milford Haven: read, and tell me
How far 'tis thither. If one of mean affairs
May plod it in a week, why may not I
Glide thither in a day?--Then, true Pisanio,
(Who long'st, like me, to see thy lord; who long'st,--
O let me 'bate!--but not like me;--yet long'st,--
But in a fainter kind:--O not like me,
For mine's beyond beyond) say, and speak thick,
(Love's counsellor should fill the bores of hearing,
To the smothering of the sense), how far it is
To this same blessed Milford: and, by the way,
Tell me how Wales was made so happy as
To inherit such a haven: but, first of all,
How we may steal from hence; and, for the gap
That we shall make in time, from our hencegoing
And our return, to excuse: but first, how get hence:
Why should excuse be born or e'er begot?
We'll talk of that hereafter.... Prithee, speak,
How many score of miles may we well ride
'Twixt hour and hour?
_Pis_. One score, 'twixt sun and sun,
Madam's, enough for you: [_Aside_] and too much too.
_Imo_. Why, one that rode to's execution, man,
Could never go so slow; I have heard of riding wagers,
Where horses have been nimbler than the sands
That run i' the clock's behalf. But this is foolery:
Go bid my woman feign a sickness."
These outbursts are beyond all praise; but quite on a level with them
stands her answer when Pisanio shows her Posthumus's letter to him,
denouncing her with the foulest epithets, and the whole extent of her
misfortune becomes clear to her. It is then she utters the words (iii.
4) which Sören Kierkegaard admired so deeply:
"False to his bed! what is it to be false?
To lie in watch there and to think on him?
To weep 'twixt clock and clock? if sleep charge nature
To break it with a fearful dream of him
And cry myself awake? that's false to's bed, is it?"
It is very characteristic that she never for a moment believes that
Posthumus can really think it possible she should have given herself to
another. She seeks another explanation for his inexplicable conduct:
"Some jay of Italy,
Whose mother was her painting, hath betray'd him."
This is scant comfort to her, however, and she implores Pisanio, who
would spare her, to strike, for life has now lost all value for her. As
she is baring her breast to the blow, she speaks these admirable words:
"Come, here's my heart:
Something's afore't:--soft, soft! we'll no defence;
Obedient as the scabbard.--What is here?
The scriptures of the loyal Leonatus,
All turn'd to heresy? Away, away,
Corrupters of my faith! you shall no more
Be stomachers to my heart."
With the same intentness, or rather with the same tenderness, has
Shakespeare, all through the play, imbued himself with her spirit,
never losing touch of her for a moment, but lovingly filling in trait
upon trait, until at last he represents her, half in jest, as the sun
of the play. The king says in the concluding scene:
"See,
Posthumus anchors upon Imogen;
And she, like harmless lightning, throws her eye
On him, her brothers, me, her master, hitting
Each object with a joy: the counterchange
Is severally in all."
Early in the play Imogen expressed the wish that she were a neatherd's
daughter, and Leonatus a shepherd's son. Later, when, clad in manly
attire, she chances upon the lonely forest cave in which her brothers
dwell, she feels completely at ease in their neighbourhood, and in the
primitive life for which she has always longed--as Shakespeare longs
for it now. The brothers are happy with her, and she with them. She
says (Act iii. sc. 6):
"Pardon me, gods!
I'd change my sex to be companions with them,
Since Leonatus's false."
And later (Act iv. sc. 2):
"These are kind creatures. Gods! what lies I have heard!
Our courtiers say all's savage but at court."
Belarius exclaims in the same spirit (Act iii. sc. 3):
"Oh, this life
Is nobler than attending for a check,
Richer than doing nothing for a bauble,
Prouder than rustling in unpaid for silk."
The princes, in whom the royal soldierly blood asserts itself in a
thirst for adventure, reply in a contrary strain:
"_Guiderius_. Haply this life is best
If quiet life be best; sweeter to you
That have a sharper known; well corresponding
With your stiff age; but unto us it is
A call of ignorance, travelling a-bed;
A prison for a debtor, that not dares
To stride a limit."
And his brother adds:
"What should we speak of
When we are as old as you? When we shall hear
The rain and wind beat dark December.
. . . . We have seen nothing;
We are beastly."
Shakespeare has diffused a marvellous poetry throughout this forest
idyl; a matchless freshness and primitive charm pervade the whole. In
this period of detestation for the abortions of culture, the poet has
beguiled himself by picturing a life far from all civilisation, an
innately noble youth in a natural state, and he depicts two young men
who have seen nothing of life and never looked upon the face of woman;
whose days have been passed in the pursuit of game, and who, like the
Homeric warriors, prepared and cooked with their own hands the spoil
procured by their bows and arrows. But their race shines through, and
they prove of better stock than we should have looked for in the sons
of the contemptible Cymbeline. Their instincts all tend towards the
noble and princely ideal.
In the Spanish drama, which twenty-five years later received such an
impetus under Calderon, it became a leading motive to portray young men
and women brought up in solitude without having seen a single being
of the other sex, and without knowledge of their rank and parentage.
Thus in Calderon's _Life is a Dream (La vida es sueño_) of 1635, we
are shown a king's son leading a solitary life in utter ignorance of
his royal descent. He is seized by a passionate love on his first
meeting with mankind kind, and is crudely violent in the face of any
opposition, but, like the princes in _Cymbeline_, the seeds of majesty
are lying dormant and the princely instincts spring readily into life.
In the play _En esta vida todo as verdad y todo es mentira_ of 1647,
a faithful servant carries off the emperor's son from the pursuit
of a tyrant, and seeks refuge in a mountain cave of Sicily. He also
takes charge of a base-born son of the tyrant, and the two lads are
brought up together. They see no one but their foster-father, are clad
in the skins of animals and live upon game and fruit. When the tyrant
appears to claim his child and slay the emperor's son, none can tell
him which is which, and neither threats nor entreaties can prevail upon
the servant to yield the secret. Here, as in _Life is a Dream_, the
first glimpse of a woman rouses instant love in both young men. In _A
Daughter of the Air_ (_La hija del ayre_) of 1664, Semiramis is brought
up by an old priest, as Miranda is by Prospero in _The Tempest_. Like
all these beings reared in solitude remote from the turmoil of life,
Semiramis nourishes an impatient longing to be out in the world. In the
two plays of 1672, _Eco y Narciso_ and _El monstruo de los jardines_,
Calderon employs a variation of the same idea. Narcissus in the one and
Achilles in the other are brought up in solitude in order that we may
see all the emotions aroused, especially those of love and jealousy, in
a being so primitive that it cannot even name its own sensations.
In this episode, and throughout this last period of his poetry,
Shakespeare entered a realm which the imagination of the Latin races
immediately seized upon and made their own. But in all their dramatic
poetry of this nature they never surpassed that of the English poet.
He refrained entirely from the erotic in this idyl, and instead of
the demands of a lover's passion, he portrayed unconscious brotherly
love offered to a sister disguised as a boy. Imogen and the two
strong-natured, high-minded youths dwell charmingly together, but
their companionship is destroyed in the bud when Imogen, after having
drunk the narcotic supplied by the physician to the queen instead of
poison, lies as one dead. A gently touching element is introduced into
this moving play when the two brothers bear her forth and sing over
her bier. We witness a burial without rites or ceremonies, requiems
or church formalities, an attempt being made to fill their place with
spontaneous natural symbols. A similar attempt was made by Goethe in
the double chorus sung over Mignon's body in _Wilhelm Meister_ (Book
VIII. chap. viii.). Imogen's head is laid towards the east, and the
brothers sing over her the beautiful duet which their father had taught
them at the burial of their mother. Its rhythm contains the germ of all
that later became Shelley's poetry.
The first verse runs:
"Fear no more the heat of sun,
Nor the furious winter's rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone and ta'en thy wages:
Golden lads and girls all must
As chimney-sweeper, come to dust."[2]
The concluding verses, in which the voices are heard first in solo and
then in duets, form a wonderful harmony of metric and poetic art.
This idyl, in which he found and expressed his reawakened love for
the heart of Nature, has been worked out by Shakespeare with especial
tenderness. He by no means intended to represent a flight from scorn of
mankind as a thing desirable in itself, but merely to depict solitude
as a refuge for the weary, and existence in the country as a happiness
for those who have done with life.
As a drama, _Cymbeline_ contains more of the nature of intrigue than
any earlier play. There is no little skill displayed in the way Pisanio
misleads Cloten by showing him Posthumus's letter, and where Imogen
takes the headless Cloten, attired in Posthumus's clothes, for her
murdered husband. The mythological dream vision seems to have been
interpolated for use at court festivities. The explanatory tablet
left by Jupiter, and the king's joyful outburst in the last scene,
"Am I a mother to the birth of three?" prove that even at his fullest
and ripest Shakespeare was never securely possessed of an unfailing
good taste, but such trifling errors of judgment are more than
counterbalanced by the overflowing richness of the fairylike poetry of
this drama
[1] Scarcely any poet has been more followed in modern times
than Shakespeare. We have already drawn attention to the by no means
accidental resemblances in Voltaire, Goethe, and Schiller, and we have
further instances. Schiller's _D. Jungfrau von Orleans_ is markedly
indebted to the first part of _Henry VI_. The scene between the maid
and the Duke of Burgundy (ii. 10) is fashioned after the corresponding
scene in Shakespeare (iii. 3), and that between the maid and her father
in Schiller (iv. II) answers to Shakespeare's (v. 4). The apothecary in
Oehlenschläger's _Aladdin_ is borrowed from the apothecary in _Romeo
and Juliet_. In Björnstjerne Björnson's _Maria Stuart_ (ii. 2) Ruthven
rises from a sick bed to totter into the conspirators with Knox, and
take the more eager share in the plot to murder Rizzio, as the sick
Ligarius makes his way to Brutus (_Julius Cæsar_, ii. I) to join the
conspiracy to murder Cæsar.
[2] It is somewhat remarkable that Guiderius and Arviragus
should know anything about chimney-sweepers.
XIX
_WINTER'S TALE--AN EPIC TURN--CHILDLIKE FORMS--THE PLAY AS A MUSICAL
STUDY--SHAKESPEARE'S ÆSTHETIC CONFESSION OF FAITH_
We are now about to see Shakespeare enthralled and reinspired by the
glamour of fairy tale and romance.
The _Winter s Tale_ was first printed in the Folio of 1623, but, as we
have already mentioned, an entry in Dr. Simon Forman's diary informs
us that he saw it played at the Globe Theatre on the 15th of May
1611. A notice in the official diary of Sir Henry Herbert, Master of
the Revels, goes to prove that at that date the play was quite new.
"For the king's players. An olde playe called Winter's Tale, formerly
allowed of by Sir George Bucke, and likewyse by mee on Mr. Hemmings his
word that nothing profane was added or reformed, though the allowed
book was missinge; and therefore I returned itt without fee this 19th
of August 1623." The Sir George Bucke mentioned here did not receive
his official appointment as censor until August 1610. Therefore it was
probably one of the first performances of the _Winters Tale_ at which
Forman was present in the spring of 1611.
We have already drawn attention to Ben Jonson's little fling at the
play in the introduction to his _Bartholomew's Fair_ in 1614.
The play was founded on a romance of Robert Greene's, published in 1588
under the title of "Pandosto, the Triumph of Time," and was re-named
half-a-century later "The Historie of Dorastus and Fawnia." So popular
was it, that it was printed again and again. We know of at least
seventeen editions, and in all likelihood there were more.
Shakespeare had adapted Lodge's _Rosalynde_ in his earlier pastoral
play, _As You Like It_, very soon after its publication in 1590. It is
significant that this other tale, with its peculiar blending of the
pathetic and idyllic, should only now, though it must have long been
familiar to him, strike him as suitable for dramatic treatment. Karl
Elze's theory that Shakespeare had adapted the story in some earlier
work, which Greene had in his mind when he wrote his famous and violent
accusation of plagiarism, cannot be considered as more than a random
conjecture. Greene's attack was sufficiently accounted for by that
remodelling and adaptation of older works which was practised by the
young poet from the very first, and it clearly aimed at _Henry VI_.
Shakespeare, who could not, of course, use Greene's title, called
his play _A Winters Tale_; a title which would convey an impression,
at that time, of a serious and touching or exciting story, and he
plainly strove for a dream-like and fantastic effect in his work.
Mamillius says, when he begins his little story (Act ii. sc. I), "A sad
tale's best for winter," and in three different places the romantic
impossibility of the plot is impressed upon the audience. In the
description of the discovery of Perdita we are warned that "this news,
which is called true, is so like an old tale, that the verity of it is
in strong suspicion" (Act v. sc. 2).
The geographical extravagances are those of the romance; it was
Greene who surrounded Bohemia with the sea and transferred the Oracle
of Delphi to the Island of Delphos. But Shakespeare contributed the
anachronisms; it was he who made the oracle exist contemporaneously
with Russia as an empire, who made Hermione a daughter of a Russian
Emperor and caused her statue to be executed by Giulio Romano.
The religion of the play is decidedly vague, the very characters
themselves seem to forget at times what they are, one moment figuring
as Christians, and the next worshipping Jupiter and Proserpina. In the
same play in which a pilgrimage is made to Delphi to obtain an oracle,
a shepherd lad says there is "but one puritan amongst them, and he
sings songs to hornpipes" (Act iv. sc. 2). All this is unintentional,
no doubt, but it greatly adds to the general fairy tale effect.
We do not know why Shakespeare transposed the localities. In Greene's
book the tragedy of the play occurs in Bohemia, and the idyllic part
in Sicily; in the drama the situations are reversed. It might be that
Bohemia seemed to him a more suitable country for the exposure of an
infant than the better known and more thickly populated island of the
Mediterranean.
All the main features of the play are drawn from Greene, first and
foremost the king's unreasonable jealousy because his wife, at his own
urgent request, invites Polixenes to prolong his stay and speaks to
him in friendly fashion. Among the grounds of jealousy enumerated by
Greene was the naïve and dramatically unsuitable one that Bellaria, in
her desire to please and obey her husband by showing every attention to
his guest, frequently entered his bed-chamber to ascertain if anything
was needed there.[1] Greene's queen really dies when she is cast off
by the king in his jealous madness, but this tragic episode, which
would have deprived him of his reconciliation scene, was not adopted
by Shakespeare. He did, however, include and amplify the death of
Mamillius, their little son, who pines away from sorrow for the king's
harsh treatment of his mother. Mamillius is one of the gems of the
play; a finer sketch of a gifted, large-hearted child could not be. We
can but feel that Shakespeare, in drawing this picture of the young boy
and his early death, must once again have had his own little son in his
mind, and that it was of him he was thinking when he makes Polixenes
say of his young prince (Act i. sc. 2):
"If at home, sir,
He's all my exercise, my mirth, my matter;
Now my sworn friend, and then mine enemy;
My parasite, my soldier, statesman, all:
He makes a July's day short as December;
And with his varying childness, cures in me
Thoughts that would thick my blood."
_Leontes_. So stands this squire
Offic'd with me."
The father's tone towards little Mamillius is at first a jesting one.
"Mamillius, art thou my boy?"
_Mamillius_. Ay, my good lord.
_Leontes_. Why, that's my bawcock. What, hast smutch'd
thy nose?
They say it is a copy out of mine."
Later, when jealousy grows upon him, he cries:
"Come, sir page,
Look on me with your welkin eye: sweet villain!
Most dear'st! my collop!--Can thy dam?--may'st be?"
The children of the French poets of the middle and end of that century
were never childlike. They would have made a little prince destined to
a sad and early death talk solemnly and maturely, like little Joas in
Racine's _Athelie_; but Shakespeare had no hesitation in letting his
princeling talk like a real child. He says to the lady-in-waiting who
offers to play with him:
"No, I'll none of you.
_lst Lady_. Why, my sweet lord?
_Mamillius_. You'll kiss me hard, and speak to me as if
I were a baby still."
He announces that he likes another lady better because her eyebrows are
black and fine; and he knows that eyebrows are most becoming when they
are shaped like a half-moon, and look as though drawn with a pen.
"_2nd Lady_. Who taught you this?
_Mamillius_. I learn'd it out of women's faces. Pray, now.
What colour are your eyebrows?
_lst Lady_. Blue, my lord.
_Mam_. Nay, that's a mock; I have seen a lady's nose
That has been blue, but not her eyebrows."
The tale he is about to tell is cut short by the entrance of the
furious king.
During the trial scene, which forms a parallel to that in _Henry
VIII_., tidings are brought of the prince's death (Act iii. sc. I):
"----whose honourable thoughts
(Thoughts too high for one so tender) cleft the heart
That could conceive a gross and foolish fire
Blemished his gracious dam."
In Greene's tale the death of the child causes that of his mother,
but in the play, where it follows immediately upon the king's defiant
rejection of the oracle, it effects a sudden revulsion of feeling in
him as a punishment direct from Heaven. Shakespeare allowed Hermione
to be merely reported dead because his mood at this time required that
the play should end happily. That Mamilius seems to pass entirely out
of every one's memory is only another proof of a fact we have already
touched upon, namely, Shakespeare's negligent style of work in these
last years of his working life. The poet, however, is careful to keep
Hermione well in mind; she is brought before us in the vision Antigonus
sees shortly before his death, and she is preserved during sixteen
years of solitude that she may be restored to us at the last. It is,
indeed, chiefly by her personality that the two markedly distinct parts
of this wasp-waisted play are held together.
Although, as in Pericles, there is more of an epic than a dramatic
character about the work, it possesses a certain unity of tone and
feeling. As a painting may contain two comparatively unconnected groups
which are yet united by a general harmony of line and colouring, so,
in this apparently disconnected plot, there is an all-pervading poetic
harmony which we may call the tone or spirit of the play. Shakespeare
was careful from the first that its melancholy should not grow to such
an incurable gloom as to prevent our enjoyment of the charming scenes
between Florizel and Perdita at the sheep-shearing festival, or the
thievish tricks of the rascal Autolycus. The poet sought to make each
chord of feeling struck during the play melt away in the gentle strain
of reconciliation at the close. If Hermione had returned to the king
at once, which would have been the most natural course of events, the
play would have ended with the third act. She therefore disappears,
finally returning to life and the embrace of the weeping Leontes in the
semblance of a statue.
Looked upon from a purely abstract point of view, as though it were a
musical composition, the play might be considered in the light of a
soul's history. Beginning with powerful emotions, suspense and dread;
with terrible mistakes entailing deserved and undeserved suffering,
it leads to a despair which in turn gradually yields to forgetfulness
and levity; but not lastingly. Once alone with its helpless grief and
hopeless repentance, the heart still finds in its innermost sanctuary
the memory which, death-doomed and petrified, has yet been faithfully
guarded and cherished unscathed until, ransomed by tears, it consents
to live once more. The play has its meaning and moral just as a
symphony may have, neither more nor less. It would be absurd to seek
for a psychological reason for Hermione's prolonged concealment. She
reappears at the end because her presence is required, as the final
chord is needed in music or the completing arabesque in a drawing.
Among Shakespeare's additions in the first part of the play we find
the characters of the noble and resolute Paulina and her weakly
good-natured husband. Paulina, who has been overlooked by both Mrs.
Jameson and Heine in their descriptions of Shakespeare's feminine
characters, is one of the most admirable and original figures he has
put upon the stage. She has more courage than ten men, and possesses
that natural eloquence and power of pathos which determined honesty and
sound common sense can bestow upon a woman. She would go through fire
and water for the queen whom she loves and trusts. She is untouched
by sentimentality; there is as little of the erotic as there is of
repugnance in her attitude towards her husband. Her treatment of the
king's jealous frenzy reminds us of Emilia in _Othello_, but the
resemblance ends there. In Paulina there is a vein of that rare metal
which we only find in excellent women of this not essentially feminine
type. We meet it again in the nineteenth century in the character
of Christiana Oehlenschläger as we see it in Hauch's beautiful
commemorative poem.
The rustic fête in the second part of the play, with the conversations
between Florizel and Perdita, is entirely Shakespeare's work; above all
is the diverting figure of Autolycus his own peculiar property.
In Greene's tale the king falls violently in love with his daughter
when she is restored to him a grown woman, and he kills himself in
despair when she is wedded to her lover. Shakespeare rejected this
stupid and ugly feature; his ending is all pure harmony.
Here, as in _Cymbeline_, we see the poet compelled by the nature of his
theme to dwell upon the disastrous effects of jealousy. This is the
third time he treats of such suspicions driving to madness. Othello was
the first great example, then Posthumus, and now Leontes.
The case of Leontes is so far unique that no one has suggested causes
of jealousy, nor slandered Hermione to him. His own coarse and foolish
imaginings alone are to blame. This variation of the vice was evidently
intended to darken the background against which womanly high-mindedness
and blamelessness were to shine forth.
Mrs. Jameson has charmingly said that Hermione combines such rare
virtues as "dignity without pride, love without passion, and
tenderness without weakness." As queen, wife, and mother, there is
a majestic lovableness about her, a grand and gracious simplicity,
a natural self-control, the proverb, "Still waters run deep," being
eminently applicable to her. Her gentle dignity contrasts well with
Paulina's enthusiastic intrepidity, and her noble reticence with
Paulina's free outspokenness. Her attitude and language during the
trial scene are superb, far outshining Queen Katherine's on a similar
occasion. Her nature, the ideal Englishwoman's nature, all meekness
and submissiveness, rises in dignified protest. She is brief in
her self-defence; life has no value for her since she has lost her
husband's love, since her little son has been removed from her as
though she were plague-stricken, and her new-born daughter "from her
breast, the innocent milk in its most innocent mouth, haled out to
murder." Her only desire is to vindicate her honour, yet the first
words of this cruelly accused and shamefully treated woman are full of
pity for the remorse which Leontes will some day suffer. Her language
is that of innocent fortitude. When about to be taken to prison she
says:
"There's some ill planet reigns:
I must be patient till the heavens look
With an aspect more favourable. Good my lords,
I am not prone to weeping, as our sex
Commonly are; the want of which vain dew
Perchance shall dry your pities: but I have
That honourable grief lodged here which burns
Worse than tears drown."
She bids her women not weep until she has deserved imprisonment; then
indeed their tears will have cause to flow.
In the second half of the _Winters Tale_ we are surrounded by a fresh
and charming country, and shown a picture of rustic happiness and
well-being. No one was less influenced by the sentimental vagaries
of the fantastic pastorals of the day than Shakespeare. He had drawn
in Corin and Phebe, in _As You Like It_, an extremely natural, and
therefore not particularly poetical, shepherd and shepherdess; and the
herdsmen in the _Winters Tale_ are no beautiful languishing souls. They
do not write sonnets and madrigals, but drink ale and eat pies and
dance. The hostess serves her guests with a face that is "o' fire with
labour and the thing she took to quench it." The clowns' heads are full
of the prices of wool; they have no thought for roses and nightingales,
and their simplicity is rather comical than touching. They are more
than overmatched by the light-fingered Autolycus, who educates them
by means of ballads, and eases them of their purses at the same time.
He is a Jack-of-all-trades, has travelled the country with a monkey,
been a process-server, bailiff, and servant to Prince Florizel; he
has gone about with a puppet-show playing the Prodigal Son; finally,
he marries a tinker's wife and settles down as a confirmed rogue. He
is the clown of the piece--roguish, genial, witty, and always master
of the situation. In spite of the fact that Shakespeare seized every
opportunity to flout the lower classes, that he always gave a satirical
and repellent picture of them as a mass, yet their natural wit,
good sense, and kind-heartedness are always portrayed in his clowns
with a sympathetic touch. Before his time, the buffoon was never an
inherent part of the play; he came on and danced his jig without any
connection with the plot, and was, in fact, merely intended to amuse
the uneducated portion of the audience and make them laugh. Shakespeare
was the first to incorporate him into the plot, and to endow him,
not merely with the jester's wit, but with the higher faculties and
feelings of the Fool in _Lear_, or the gay humour of the vagabond
pedlar, Autolycus.
The clown in the _Winter's Tale_ is the drollest and sharpest of
knaves, and is employed to unravel the knot in the story. He it is who
transports the old shepherd and his son from Bohemia to the court of
King Leontes in Sicily.
The ludicrous features of rustic society, however, are quite
overpowered by the kind-heartedness which stamps every word coming
from the lips of these worthy country folk, and prepares us for the
appearance of Perdita in their midst.
She has been adopted out of compassion, and, with her gold, proves a
source of prosperity to her adoptive parents. Thus she grows up without
feeling the pressure of poverty or servitude. She wins the prince's
heart by the beauty of her youth, and when we first see her she is
attired in all her splendour as queen of a rural festival. Modest and
charming as she is, she shows the courage of a true princess in face of
the difficulties and hardships she must encounter for the sake of her
love.
She is one of Shakespeare's cherished children, and he has endowed
her with his favourite trait--a distaste for anything artificial or
unnatural. Not even to improve the flowers in her garden will she
employ the art of special means of cultivation. She will not have the
rich blooms of "carnations and streaked gillyflowers" there; they do
not thrive and she will not plant them. When Polixenes asks why she
disdains them, she replies (Act iv. sc. 3):
"For I have heard it said
There is an art which in their piedness shares
With great creating nature."
To which Polixenes makes the profound response:
"Say there be;
Yet nature is made better by no mean,
But nature makes that mean: so over that art
Which you say adds to nature is an art
That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry
A gentler scion to the wildest stock,
And make conceive a bark of baser kind
By bud of nobler race; this is an art
Which does mend nature,--change it rather; but
The art itself is nature."
With great creating nature."
These are the most profound and subtle words that could well be spoken
on the subject of the relations between nature and culture; the
clearest repudiation of that gospel of naturalism against which the
figure of Caliban and the ridicule cast upon Gonzalo's Utopia in _The
Tempest_ are protests. Perdita herself is one of those chosen flowers
which are the product of that true culture which preserves and ennobles
nature.
They are also words of genuine wisdom on the relative positions of
nature and art. Shakespeare's art was that of nature itself, and in
this short speech we possess his æsthetic confession of faith.
His ideal was a poetry which strayed neither in matter nor manner from
what Hamlet calls "the modesty of nature." Although he did not wholly
succeed in escaping its infection, Shakespeare invariably pursued
the artificial taste of the times with gibes. From the days when he
made merry at the expense of Euphuisms in _Love's Labours Lost_ and
Falstaff, until now, when he puts such affectedly poetical language
in the mouths of his courtiers in the _Winter s Tale_, he has always
ridiculed it vigorously.
In the first scene of the play Camillo says in praise of Mamillius:
"They that went on crutches before he was born desire still their
life to see him a man.
Whereupon Archidamus sarcastically inquires:
"Would they else be content to die?"
and Camillo is forced to laughingly confess:
"Yes, if there were no other excuse why they should desire to live."
Still more absurd is the style in which the Third Gentleman describes,
in the last scene of the play, the meeting between the king and his
long-lost daughter and the aspect of the spectators. He says of Paulina:
She had one eye declined for the loss of her husband, another
elevated that the oracle was fulfilled.[2]
This comical diction reaches a climax in the following expressions:
"One of the prettiest touches of all, and that _which angled
for mine eyes, caught water though not the fish_, was when
at the relation of the queen's death, with the manner how
she came to't, bravely confessed and lamented by the king,
how attentiveness wounded his daughter; till, from one sign
of dolour to another, she did, with an 'Alas,' I would fain
say, _bleed tears_, for I am sure my heart wept blood. Who
was most marble there changed colour; some swooned, all
sorrowed: if all the world could have seen't _the woe had
been universal_."
That Shakespeare's æsthetic sense did not sanction such expressions as
these of the Third Gentleman scarcely needs stating. Perdita's language
is that of nature itself. So great is her dislike of artificiality,
that she will not even plant gardener's flowers in her garden, saying:
"No more than were I painted I would wish
This youth should say 'twere well, and only therefore
Desire to breed by me."
Nowhere is Shakespeare's knowledge of nature more charmingly displayed
than in her speeches. It is not only the poetic expression that is so
wonderful in Perdita's distribution of flowers; it is the intimacy
shown with their habits. She says (Act iv. sc. 3):
"Hot lavender, mints, savory, marjoram;
The marigold, that goes to bed wi' the sun
And with him rises weeping."
How well she knows that in England the daffodils bloom as early as
February and March, while the swallow does not come till April:
"----O Proserpina,
For the flowers now that, frighted, thou lett'st fall
From Dis's waggon! daffodils,
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty; violets dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes
Or Cytherea's breath; pale primroses,
That die unmarried, ere they can behold
Bright Phœbus in his strength--a malady
Most incident to maids; bold oxlips and
The crown imperial; lilies of all kinds,
The flower-de-luce being one! Oh, these I lack
To make you garlands of, and my sweet friend,
To strew him o'er and o'er!
_Florizel_. What, like a corse?
_Perdita_. No, like a bank for love to lie and play on:
Not like a corse; or if, not to be buried,
'But quick and in mine arms." ...
Florizel's answer describes her with a lover's eloquence:
"What you do
Still betters what is done. When you speak, sweet,
I'd have you do it ever: when you sing
I'd have you buy and sell so, so give alms,
Pray so, and, for the ordering your affairs,
To sing them too."...
Her charm is equalled by her pride and resolution. When the king
threatens to have her "beauty scratched with briars" if she dares
retain her hold upon his son, although she believes all is lost, she
says:
"I was not much afraid; for once or twice
I was about to speak and tell him plainly,
The self-same sun that shines upon his court
Hides not his visage from our cottage, but
Looks on alike." ...
The delineation of the love between Florizel and Perdita is marked by
certain features not to be found in Shakespeare's youthful works, but
which reappear with Ferdinand and Miranda in _The Tempest_. There is
a certain remoteness from the world about it, a tenderness for those
who are still yearning and hoping for happiness and a renunciation of
any expectation as far as himself is concerned. He stands outside and
beyond it all now. In the old days the poet stood on a level, as it
were, with the love he was portraying; now he looks upon it from above
with a fatherly eye.
As in _Cymbeline_, the court is here placed in contrast with idyllic
life, and shown as the abode of cruelty, stupidity, and vice. Even the
better of the two kings, Polixenes, is rough and harsh, and Leontes,
whom we are not to look upon as criminal, but only as misled by his
miserable suspicions, offers a true picture of the princely attitude
and princely behaviour of the time of the Renaissance, during the
sixteenth century in Italy and about a century later in England. It was
with good reason that Belarius said in _Cymbeline_ (Act iii. sc. 3):
"And we will fear no poison, which attends
In place of greater state."
We see that the thoughts of the king immediately turn to poison when
he believes that his wife has deceived him, and we also see that the
courtier in whom he confides has all the means ready to hand (Act i.
sc. 2):
"And thou ...
... might'st bespice a cup,
To give mine enemy a lasting wink;
Which draught to me were cordial.
_Camillo_. Sir, my lord,
I could do this, and that with no rash potion,
But with a lingering dram that should not work
Maliciously like poison."
When, to escape committing this crime, Camillo takes flight with
Polixenes, and the king has to be content with wreaking his vengeance
on the hapless Hermione and her infant, he returns again and again to
the thought of having them burned:
"Say that she were gone,
Given to the fire, a moiety of my rest
Might come to me again."'
Then the command with regard to the child:
"Hence with it, and, together with the dam,
Commit them to the fire!" (Act ii/sc. 3).'
Paulina shall share their fate for daring to oppose him:
"I'll ha' thee burnt!"
When she is gone, he repeats his order for the burning of the infant:
"Take it hence
And see it instantly consumed with fire....
... If thou refuse,
And wilt encounter with my wrath, say so;
The bastard brains with these my proper hands
Shall I dash out. Go, take it to the fire!"
We can see that Shakespeare had no intention of allowing the drama to
become mawkish by giving too free scope to the humours of a pastoral
play.
The resemblance between the sufferings of the infant Perdita, put
ashore on the coast of Bohemia during a tempest, and those of the
infant Marina, born during a storm at sea, is accentuated by lines
which markedly recall a well-known passage in _Pericles._ In the
_Winter's Tale_ we have (Act iii. sc. 3):
"Thou'rt like to have
A lullaby too rough: I never saw
The heavens so dim by day. A savage clamour!"[3]
The impression designedly produced upon the audience, that all this
is not serious earnest, enables Shakespeare to approach more nearly
to tragic dissonance than would otherwise be permissible in a work of
this kind. The atmosphere of fairy tale, so skilfully breathed here
and there throughout the play, carries with it a certain playfulness
of expression which gives a touch of raillery to incidents which would
otherwise be horrible. Playfulness it is, and we once more obtain a
glimpse of this quality which has so long deserted Shakespeare. It
would be difficult to find a more roguish bit of drollery than the old
shepherd's monologue on finding the child (Act iii. sc. 3):
"A pretty one; a very pretty one: sure, some 'scape: though
I am not bookish, yet I can read waiting-gentlewoman in the
'scape. This has been some stair-work, some trunk-work, some
behind-door-work: they were warmer that got this than the
poor thing is here."
The same tone is preserved in the young shepherd's account of how
he saw Antigonus torn to pieces by a bear. Impossible to feel
horror-stricken or solemn over this:
"And then for the land-service, to see how the bear tore out
his shoulder-bone; how he cried to me for help, and said his
name was Antigonus, a nobleman. But to make an end of the
ship, to see how the sea flap-dragoned it; but first how
the poor souls roared, and the sea mocked them; and how the
poor gentleman roared, and the bear mocked him, both roaring
louder than sea or weather."
It does not seem very likely that the unfortunate man's chief anxiety
while the bear was tearing him to pieces would be to inform the
shepherd of his name and rank. He forgot to add his age, although,
through a slip on Shakespeare's part, the old shepherd knows without
being told that Antigonus was aged.
Shakespeare did not concentrate his whole strength on this play either.
He took no great pains to reduce his scattered materials to order, and,
as if in defiance of those classically cultivated people who demanded
unity of time and place, he allowed sixteen years to elapse between
two acts, leaving us on the voyage between Sicily and Bohemia, between
reality and wonderland. In other words, he has freely improvised
on his instrument upon a given poetic theme; he has painted purely
decoratively, content with a general harmony of colour and unity of
tone, without giving much thought to any ultimate meaning.
[1] _The Historie of Dorastus and Fawnia_. Shakespeare's
Library. T. P. Collins. Vol. i. p. 7.
[2] Julius Lange positively asserts that these expressions are
not to be taken as an intentional jest on the part of Shakespeare, but
are to be regarded as part of his style ("said in sober earnest," to
quote his own words), and he makes them the pretext of an attack upon
the "then, as now, idolised Shakespeare--in whose works, after all, we
find more high-sounding and highly-coloured words than any meaning or
real understanding of life." (_Tilskueren_, 1895, p. 699.)
[3] In _Pericles_:
"For thou'rt the rudliest welcome to this world
That e'er was prince's child."
XX
_THE TEMPEST--WRITTEN FOR THE PRINCESS ELIZABETH'S WEDDING_
It is a different matter with that rich, fantastic wonder-poem, _The
Tempest_, on which Shakespeare concentrated for the last time all the
powers of his mind. Everything here is ordered and concise, and so
inspired with thought that we seem to be standing face to face with the
poet's idea. In spite of all its boldness of imagination, the dramatic
order and condensation are such that the whole complies with the
severest rules of Aristotle, the action of the entire play occupying in
reality only three hours.
Owing to a notice by the Master of the Revels concerning a performance
of the play at Whitehall in 1611, the date 1610-11 was long accepted
as the year of its production. This memorandum is, however, a forgery,
and the sole bit of reliable information we possess of _The Tempest_,
before its appearance in the Folio edition of 1613, is a notice in
Vertue's Manuscripts of a performance at court in February 1613, as one
of the festivities celebrating the Princess Elizabeth's wedding. We
can prove that this was its first performance and that it was written
expressly for the occasion.
The Princess Elizabeth had been educated at Combe Abbey, far from
the impure atmosphere of the court, under the care of Lord and Lady
Harrington, an honourable and right-minded couple. When returned to her
parents at the age of fifteen, she was distinguished by a charm and
dignity beyond her years, and soon became the special favourite of her
brother Henry, then seventeen years of age. Claimants for her hand were
not long in appearing. The Prince of Piedmont was among the first, but
the Pope would not consent to a marriage between a Catholic potentate
and a Protestant princess. The next wooer was no less a person than
Gustavus Adolphus, and his suit was rejected because James refused to
bestow his daughter upon the enemy of his friend and brother-in-law,
Christian IV. of Denmark. As early as December 1611 negotiations were
entered upon on behalf of Prince Frederick V., who had just succeeded
his father as Elector of the Palatinate. There was much to be said in
favour of an alliance with a son of the man who had stood at the head
of the Protestant League in Germany, and in May 1612 a preliminary
contract of betrothal was signed. In the August of the same year an
ambassador from the young Elector came to England. Meanwhile the
first suitor, strongly supported by the Queen's Catholic sympathies,
had reappeared. The King of Spain had also made some overtures, but
they had fallen through on account of their implying the conversion
of the Princess to the Catholic faith. It was the Elector Frederick,
therefore, who was finally victorious in the contest, and matters were
soon so far settled that he could set out on his journey to England. He
was very popular there by reason of his Protestantism, and he arrived
at Gravesend amid general rejoicing. He sailed up to Whitehall on the
22nd of October, and was enthusiastically greeted by the crowd. King
James received him warmly, and presented him with a ring worth eighteen
hundred pounds. He was ardently supported by the young Prince of Wales,
who announced his intention of following his sister on her wedding-tour
to Germany, where it was his secret purpose to look for a bride for
himself, regardless of political intrigue.
The Elector Palatine was a remarkably handsome and prepossessing young
man. Born on the 16th of August 1596, he was at this time just sixteen
years of age, and nothing in his conduct suggested the unmanly and
contemptible character he displayed eight years later, when he, as
King of Bohemia, lost the battle of Prague through a drunken revel.
The contemporary English accounts of him abound with his praise. He
made an excellent impression everywhere, and we read, of his dignified
and princely behaviour in a letter from John Chamberlain to Sir Dudley
Carleton, dated 22nd October 1612: "He hath a train of very sober and
well-fashioned gentlemen, his whole number is not above 170, servants
and all, being limited by the King not to exceed." The condition of the
exchequer would not permit of any unnecessary extravagance, and in less
than a month after the wedding the whole retinue appointed to attend on
the Prince during his stay in England was dismissed--a slight which the
young Princess took very much to heart.
The much beloved Prince Henry was far from well at the time of his
future brother-in-law's arrival in London. He had injured himself by
violent bodily exercise during the unusually hot summer, and had ruined
his digestion by eating great quantities of fruit. We now know that the
illness by which he was attacked was typhus fever, and it appears that
not many days after he was convalescent he incurred a severe relapse by
playing tennis in the cold open air with no more clothing on the upper
part of his body than a shirt.
High-minded, enlightened, and honourable as he was, Prince Henry was
the idol and hope of the English nation. Queen Anne had taken the
Prince, while he was yet a boy, to visit Raleigh at the Tower, soon
after the illustrious prisoner had been forced to abandon those hopes
of the Admiralship of the Danish fleet which he had based on the visit
of Christian the Fourth, to England. Prince Henry had been intimate
with Raleigh since 1610, and is reported to have said, "No man but
my father would have kept such a bird in a cage!" He had, with great
difficulty, obtained from the King a promise that Raleigh should be
released at Christmas 1612--a promise which was never kept.
On the morning of the 6th of November the Prince's condition was
declared hopeless. The Queen sent to the Tower for a bottle of
Raleigh's famous cordial, which she believed to have once saved her
own life, and in which Raleigh himself placed the greatest faith. He
despatched it with a message that it would save the Prince's life,
unless he were dying of poison. It only availed to ease his death
struggles, however, and, barely nineteen years of age, he died before
the day was out.
Never before in the history of England had such hopes been fixed and
such affection lavished on an heir-apparent, and we can realise how
great would be the grief of the entire nation for his loss. According
to the manner of the times, it was generally supposed that he had been
poisoned. John Chamberlain, writing to Sir Dudley Carleton, says that
grave doubts were entertained, but adds that no traces of poison were
found when the body was opened on the second day. The editor of these
letters however (author of the _Memoirs of Sophia Dorothea_), remarks:
"There is nothing conclusive in this; for, in the first place, there
were poisons which left no trace of their presence; and, in the next,
if the effects of poisoning had been visible, the physicians would have
been afraid to say so. More than one writer has ventured to assert that
the atrocious crime was perpetrated with the connivance of the king,
whose notorious jealousy of the popular young prince at this period,
and foolish fondness for his brother Charles, induced a wretch well
known to have been guilty of similar practices--the King's favourite,
Viscount Rochester--to cause the prince to be secretly put out of the
way. It was hoped by all who objected to the marriage of the Princess
to the German Elector that Prince Henry's death would stand in the
way of the wedding, for it could hardly be celebrated at a time of
such deep mourning. The Elector, however, had come over to England on
purpose to be married, and it was not possible to delay the ceremony
long. The final marriage contract was signed by the King on the 17th of
November, and the formal betrothal took place on the 27th of the same
month. The wedding was postponed, but only until February. Sir Thomas
Lake writes on the 6th of January that mourning is given up, and the
wedding festivities are arranged.
The bride of seventeen was solemnly united to the bridegroom of sixteen
to the general gratification of the court, on the 14th of February, in
the presence of many spectators. On the 18th of the same month John
Chamberlain writes to Mrs. Carleton: "The bridegroom and bride were
both in a suit of cloth of silver, richly embroidered with silver,
her train carried up by thirteen young ladies, or lord's daughters at
least, besides five or six more that could not come near it. These were
all in the same livery with the bride, though not so rich. The bride
was married in her hair, that hung down long, with an exceeding rich
coronet on her head, which the King valued at a million of crowns."
The bridegroom, with the King and Prince Charles, took part in a
tournament of the wedding, and earned great applause in the evening
by a display of his splendid horsemanship (_Court and Times of James
the First_). In Wilson's _Contemporary History_ (p. 64) we read of the
bride: "Her vestments were white, the emblem of Innocency, her hair
dishevel'd, hanging down her back at length, an ornament of Virginity;
a crown of pure gold upon her head, the cognizance of Majesty, being
all beset with precious gems, shining liking a constellation, her train
supported by twelve young ladies in white garments, so adorned with
jewels that her passage looked like a milky way."
Among the various plays chosen for performance at court during these
wedding festivities was _The Tempest_, and we shall see that it was
written expressly for the occasion.
It is hardly necessary to confute Hunter's theory, argued at great
length, that the play dates from 1596. One fact alone will sufficiently
prove its absurdity, namely, that use is made in the play of a passage
from Florio's translation of Montaigne, which was not published until
1603. Nor is there any foundation for Karl Elze's opinion (also
lengthily set forth) that _The Tempest_ was written by 1604. The
metre shows that it belongs to Shakespeare's latest period. It has a
proportion of 33 in the 100 of eleven-syllabled lines, whereas _Antony
and Cleopatra_, written long after 1604, has but 25, and _As You Like
It_, of the year 1600, only 12 in the 100.
We have another fragment of internal evidence against the play having
been written before 1610. In May 1609 Sir George Somer's fleet was
scattered by a storm in mid-ocean while on its way to Virginia. The
admiral's ship, driven out of its course, was blown by the gale unto
the Bermudas. After all hope had been abandoned, the vessel was saved
by being stranded between two rocks in just such a bay as that to
which Ariel guides the king's ship in _The Tempest_. A little book was
written on the subject of this shipwreck, and the adventures connected
with it, by Sylvester Jourdan, and was published in 1610 under the
title, "Discovery of the Bermudas, otherwise called, The Isle of
Devils." The storm and the peril of the admiral's ship are described;
the vessel had sprung a leak, and the sailors were falling asleep at
the pumps out of sheer exhaustion when she grounded. They found the
island (hitherto regarded as enchanted) uninhabited, the air mild, and
the soil remarkably fertile.
Shakespeare borrowed several details from this book, the name of
Bermoothes, mentioned by Ariel in the first act, for instance; and his
only reason for not following the narrative in detail was his desire to
lay the scene in an island of the Mediterranean.
The play, then, was written for the royal wedding in 1613. This date
was first surmised by Tieck, and later declared probable by Johan
Meissner, being finally confirmed by Richard Garnett in the _Universal
Review_ of 1889. The latter maintains and proves that _The Tempest_ was
written for a private audience on the occasion of a wedding; that the
nature of the audience and the identity of the wedding are determined
by unmistakable references to the personality of the bridegroom, to
the early death of Prince Henry, and to the qualities which King James
prided himself on possessing, and for which he loved to be praised.
Over and above all this, there is internal evidence for the year 1613,
and none for any other date.
The play is much shorter than the generality of Shakespeare's dramas,
there being only 2000 lines in _The Tempest_ against the average 3000.
It was not permitted to take up too much of the King's time nor of that
of his guests; moreover, the play had to be written and learned and
put on the stage all within the course of, at most, a few months. Thus
there was every inducement to make it short.
Not being written for performance in an ordinary theatre, it was
desirable to have as few changes of scene as possible, and in this
respect _The Tempest_ is unique among Shakespeare's plays. After the
opening scene on the deck of the ship, no change of scenery whatever
is necessary, although the action transpires on different parts of the
island. The occasion of the play made it equally desirable to avoid
change of costume, and of this there is actually none, except where
Prospero attires himself in ducal robes at the close of the play, and
even this he effects on the stage with the assistance of Ariel. We
have already referred to the compression of the play, which, instead
of extending, as is usual with Shakespeare, over a long period, or
even (as in _Pericles_ and _The Winter's Tale_) over a whole lifetime,
merely occupies three hours, not much longer than was required for the
performance of the play.
In spite of its brevity, two masques, of the kind generally represented
before royalty on such occasions, are introduced into the play.
The pantomime and ballet, with its transformations, are much more
elaborate than would have been necessary if the scene was only there
for its own sake. "Enter several strange Shapes, bringing in a banquet;
they dance about it with gentle actions of salutation; and inviting the
king, &c., to eat, they depart. Thunder and lightning. Enter Ariel,
like a harpy; claps his wings upon the table, and with a quaint device
the banquet vanishes." King James had, as we know, a fancy for all
manner of stage machinery, and Inigo Jones contrived quantities of it
for use at court festivities.
Still more suggestive is the great wedding masque, which, with its
mythological figures, Juno, Ceres, and Iris, occupies nearly the whole
of the fourth act. If it were not that _The Tempest_ was written for
a bridal performance, this masque would be condemned, so extraneous
is it to the plot, as a later interpolation, and as such, indeed,
it was considered by Karl Elze. Without it, however, the fourth act
dwindles to nothing, and the ballet is obviously required to give it
its proper length. Moreover, masque and play are inseparably connected
by the famous lines, "and like the baseless fabric of this vision,"
&c. It has been attributed, without sufficient reason, to Beaumont;
but even supposing him to have composed it, it must have been planned
by the author of the play and written to his order, and it affords
unmistakable proof that _The Tempest_ was composed as an occasional
play for the diversion of princes and courtiers. The audience must have
been in possession of circumstances justifying the introduction of the
masque, and those circumstances could not be anything but a wedding. We
may now assert with absolute certainty that _The Tempest_ was performed
on the occasion of the Princess Elizabeth's wedding. They would not
revive an old play, originally written for the stage, for such a
purpose, still less would they use one which had been composed for a
previous wedding. Shakespeare would never allow anything unsuitable to
be performed; moreover, at no former marriage would such a play have
been appropriate. The fact that it was one of the king's musicians who
composed the music for Ariel's songs, "Full fathom five" in the first
act, and "Where the bee sucks" in the last, renders it still more
probable that this of the court was its first performance. Everything
indicates a royal wedding.
We find many flattering allusions in this play to King James, who could
not possibly be neglected on such an occasion as that of his daughter's
bridal. When Prospero, explaining his position to his daughter (Act i.
sc. 2), tells how he was foremost among all the dukes for dignity and
knowledge of the liberal arts, his special study, and how, absorbed in
secret studies, he grew a stranger to his state, his speech conveys
that interpretation of James's position and character which he himself
favoured, and implies, at the same time, that the possession of these
qualities was the cause of his unpopularity. Possibly there was a
touch of well-concealed irony in all this. Garnett, indeed, finds an
intentional dramatic satire in the crustiness and self-sufficiency of
the character, proving that even the development of the highest human
qualities is attended by drawbacks. But this is carrying the parallel
between the characteristics of Prospero and James too far. Garnett can
truly say, however, that just such a prince as Prospero, wise, humane,
peace-loving, pursuing distant aims which none but he could realise
or fathom; independent of counsellors and more than a match for his
enemies in sagacity, holding himself in reserve until the decisive
moment and then taking effective action, a devoted student of every
lawful science but a sworn foe to the black art, did James imagine
himself to be, and as such did he love to be represented.
We have seen with what mingled feelings the King and court would
prepare for the Princess's wedding. The grief for Prince Henry's death
was still so fresh that all rejoicing must be overshadowed by it. A
noisy joyous play would have been out of place, while, upon the other
hand, it would not do to destroy all festive feeling by directly
recalling the loss the royal family and the nation had so lately
sustained. Shakespeare performed this difficult task with admirable
tact and good feeling. He alluded to the death of the Prince, but in
such a manner that grief was lost in joy. Until the last act of the
play the youthful Prince Ferdinand is believed by his father and the
courtiers to be dead, and frequent expression is given to their sorrow
over their supposed loss. The Prince is not the son of Prospero, but of
Alonso, and the sonless Duke finds a son in Ferdinand, as James found
one in the Elector Palatine.
The fact that these guarded allusions to Prince Henry's death are found
throughout the play prove that it must have been written after the 6th
of November, and, since it was evidently performed before the wedding,
which was celebrated on the 14th of February, we may see how little
time was needed by Shakespeare in which to produce a work actually
brimming over with genius, and how far he was from being enfeebled or
exhausted when, in this play, he bade farewell for ever to his art and
his position in London.
The entire drama is permeated by the atmosphere of that age of
discovery and struggling colonists. It has been admirably shown by
Watkins Lloyd that all the topics and problems it deals with correspond
to the colonisation of Virginia--the marvels brought to light by the
discovery of new countries and new races; by the wonderful falsehoods,
and still more wonderful truths, of travellers concerning natural
phenomena and the superstitions arising from them. Sea perils and
shipwreck, the power that lies in such calamities to provoke remorse
for crimes committed; the quarrels and mutinies of colonists, the
struggles of their leaders to preserve their authority; theories on the
civilisation and government of new countries, the reappearance of old
world vices on a new soil, the contrast between the reasoning powers of
man and those of the savage; and lastly, all the demands made upon the
activity, promptitude, and energy of the conquerors.
The date of the first Virginian settlement was May 1607, and it then
consisted of 107 colonists. The Virginia Company was not founded until
1609 and very little was known about it before 1610. Not before 1612
could they write home, "Our colony is now seven hundred strong." These
circumstances all seem to point to 1612-13 as the period during which
_The Tempest_ was produced.
XXI
_SOURCES OF THE TEMPEST_
We possess no knowledge of any one particular source from which _The
Tempest_ might have been drawn, but it seems probable that Shakespeare
constructed his drama upon some already existing foundation. A
childishly old-fashioned play by Jacob Ayrer, _Comedia von der schönen
Sidea_, seems to have been founded upon a variant of the story used by
Shakespeare.[1] Ayrer died in 1605, and his work, therefore, cannot
have owed anything to that of the great dramatist. The similarity
between the two plays is confined to the relations between Prospero
and Alonso, and Ferdinand and Miranda. In the German play we have
a banished sovereign, his daughter, and a captive prince, who is
compelled to atone for his audacity in making love to the daughter by
carrying and cutting firewood. He promises his beloved she shall be
queen, and attempting to draw his sword upon his father-in-law, is
rendered powerless by magic. There is no real resemblance between the
dramas. It is, of course, possible that Dowland, or some other English
actor, might have introduced the _Sidea_ from Germany, but Shakespeare
did not know German, and in any case the play was too poor a one to
interest him. Moreover, since we know that Ayrer did occasionally
copy English works, we may safely conclude that both dramatists were
indebted to some earlier English source. There is nothing specially
original about the above incidents. In Greene's _Friar Bacon_, four
men make fruitless efforts to draw swords held in their scabbards by
magic, and _The Tempest_ would naturally possess traits in common with
other plays representing sorcery upon the stage. In Marlowe's drama,
_Dr. Faustus_, for instance, the hero punishes his would-be murderers
by making them wallow in filth (_Faustus_, Act iv. sc. 2), just as
Prospero drives Caliban, Trinculo, and Stephano into the marsh and
leaves them there up to their chins in mire (_Tempest_, Act iv.).
It is a most arbitrary and unreasonable supposition of Meissner's that
Shakespeare borrowed his wedding masque from the one performed at
Prince Henry's christening, in which also Juno, Ceres, and Iris appear.
Shakespeare was never so lacking in inventive power that he needed to
unearth a description of an old play which had been acted before King
James at Stirling Castle some nineteen years previously. We know that
the masque itself was not yet in print.
It was an early and correct observation that various minor details of
_The Tempest_ were taken from different books of travel. Shakespeare
found the name of Setebos, and, possibly, the first idea of Caliban
himself, in an account of Magellan's voyage to the south pole in Eden's
_Historye of Travaile in East and West Indies_ (1577). From Raleigh's
_Discovery of the large, rich, and bewtiful Empire of Guiana_ (1596) he
took the fable of the men whose heads stood upon their breasts. Raleigh
writes that, though this may be an invention, he is inclined to believe
it true, because every child in the provinces of Arromai and Canuri
maintains that their mouths were in the middle of their breasts.[2]
(See Gonzalo's speech in _The Tempest_, Act iii. sc. 2.)
It was Hunter who first suggested that Shakespeare might have taken
some hints from Ariosto. It is possible that he had in mind some
stanzas from the 43rd canto of _Orlando Furioso_. The 15th and 14th
contain a faint foreshadowing, as it were, of Prospero and Miranda, and
the 187th stanza alludes to the power of witchcraft to raise storms
and calm seas again. The _Orlando_ had been translated into English by
Harrington, but, as we have already observed, Shakespeare was fully
qualified to read it in the original. Too much, however, has already
been made of these trivial, nay, utterly insignificant coincidences.[3]
It is far more remarkable that the famous and beautiful passage (Act
iv.) proclaiming the transitoriness of all earthly things--a passage
which seems to be a mournful epitome of the philosophy of Shakespeare's
last years of productiveness--may be an easy adaptation of an inferior
and quite unknown poet of his day. When the spirit play conjured up by
Prospero has vanished he says:
"These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air,
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep."
In Count Stirling's tragedy of _Darius_, published in London, 1604, the
following verses occur:
"Let Greatness of her glassy scepters vaunt,
Not scepters, no, but reeds, soon bruis'd, soon broken;
And let this worldly pomp our wits enchant,
All fades, and scarcely leaves behind a token.
Those golden palaces, those gorgeous halls,
With furniture superfluously fair,
Those stately courts, those sky-encount'ring walls,
Evanish all like vapours in the air."
History could scarcely afford a more striking proof that in art
the style is all, subject and meaning being of comparatively small
importance. Stirling's verses are by no means bad, nor even poor, and
their decidedly pleasing rhymes express, in very similar words, exactly
the same idea we find in Shakespeare's lines, and were, moreover, their
precursors. Nevertheless, both they and the name of their author would
be utterly forgotten long since if Shakespeare had not, by a marvellous
touch or two, transformed them into a few lines of blank verse which
will hold their own in the memory of man as long as the English
language lasts.
As Meissner[4] pointed out, Shakespeare was indebted to Frampton's
translation of Marco Polo (1579) for one or two suggestive hints. For
example, we read in Frampton of the desert of Lob in Asia: "You shall
heare in the ayre, the sound of _Tabers and other instruments_, to
putte the travellers in feare, and to make them lose their way, and to
depart their company and loose themselves: and by that meanes many doe
die, being deceived so, by evill spirits, that make these soundes, and
also doe call diverse of the travellers _by their names_." Compare this
with Caliban's words in _The Tempest_ (Act iii. sc. 2):
"The isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a _thousand twangling instruments_
Will hum about mine ears, and sometimes voices."
And Trinculo's subsequent jesting remark, which evidently refers to
the accompaniment of a clown's morris dance: "I would I could see this
_tabourer_; he lays it on." Compare also Alonso's lament (Act iii. sc.
3):
"Oh, it is monstrous, monstrous!
Methought the billows spoke and told me of it;
The winds did sing it to me, and the thunder,
That deep and dreadful organ-pipe, pronounced
_The name of Prospero_: it did bass my trespass."
Shakespeare may have found the first suggestions of Caliban and Ariel
in Greene's _Friar Bacon_. In the ninth scene of this play, two
necromancers, Bungay and Vandermast, dispute as to which possess the
greater power, the pyromantic (fire) spirits or the geomantic (earth)
spirits. The fire spirits, says Bungay, are mere transparent shadows
that float past us like heralds, while the spirits of earth are strong
enough to burst rocks asunder. Vandermast maintains that earth spirits
are dull, as befits their place of abode. They are coarse and earthly,
less intelligent than other spirits, and thus it is they are at the
service of jugglers, witches, and common sorcerers. But the fine
spirits are mighty and swift, their power is far-reaching.
A more direct suggestion of Ariel's charming ways was probably found
by Shakespeare at the close of the already mentioned _Faithful
Shepherdess_, written by his young friend Fletcher. In it the satyr
offers his services to the beautiful Corin in terms which recall
Ariel's speech to Prospero (Act i. sc. 2):
"All hail, great master! grave sir, hail! I come
To answer thy best pleasure; be't to fly,
To swim, to dive into the fire, to ride
On the curled clouds, to thy strong bidding task
Ariel and all his quality."
Fletcher's satyr makes the same offer:
"Tell me, sweetest,
What new service now is meetest
For a satyr? Shall I stray
In the middle air, and stay
The sailing rack, or nimbly take
Hold by the moon, and gently make
Suit to the pale queen of night
For a beam to give thee light?
Shall I dive into the sea,
And bring thee coral, making way
Through the rising waves that fall
In snowy fleeces?" &c.
But a much more striking example of Shakespeare's taste and talent for
adaptation is presented by Prospero's farewell speech to the elves (Act
v. sc. I), "Ye elves of hills, brooks," &c. Warburton was the first
to draw attention to the fact that this speech, in which Shakespeare
bids farewell to his art, and tells, through the medium of Prospero's
marvellous eloquence, of all that he has accomplished, was founded upon
the great incantation in Ovid's _Metamorphoses_ (vii. 197-219), where,
after the conquest of the golden fleece, Medea, at Jason's request,
invokes the spirits of night to obtain the prolongation of his old
father's life. A comparison of the text plainly proves Shakespeare's
indebtedness to Golding's translation of the Latin work:
"Ye Ayres and Windes: _ye Elites of Hillies, of Brooks, of Woods alone_,
_Of standing Lakes_, and of the Night approche ye everyone
_Through helpe of whom_ (the crooked bankes much wondring at the thing)
_I haue compelled streames to run cleane backward to their spring_.
By charmes I make the calme seas rough, and make the rough seas
playne,
_And cover all the Skie with clouds and chase them thence againe._
_By charmes I raise and lay the windes_ and burst the Viper's iaw,
_And from the bowels of the earth both stones and trees do draw._
_Whole woods and Forrests I remoouve: I make the Mountains shake_,
And euen the earth it selfe to grone and fearefully to quake.
_I call up dead men from their graues_, and thee, O lightsome Moone,
I darken oft, though beaten brass abate thy perill soone.
_Our Sorcerie dimmes the Morning faire, and darkes the Sun at Noone._
. . . . . . . . . .
Among the earth-bred brothers you a mortall warre did set
And brought asleepe the Dragon fell whose eyes were neuer shet."
The corresponding lines in _The Tempest_ run:
"_Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves_;
And ye that on the sands with printless foot
_Do chase the ebbing Neptune_, and do fly him
When he comes back; you . . .
. . . . . _by whose aid_--
Weak masters though ye be--_I have bedimm'd_
_The noontide sun, call'd forth the mutinous winds_,
And twixt the green sea and the azur'd vault
Set roaring war: to the dread-rattling thunder
Have I given fire, and rifted Jove's stout oak
With his own bolt: _the strong-bas'd promontory_
_Have I made shake;_ and by the spurs _pluck'd up_
_The pine and cedar: graves at my command_
_Have wak'd their sleepers, op'd and let 'em forth_
By my so potent art."
The words employed in addressing the elves are actually the same.
Medea's power to raise and calm the waves becomes the elfin chase of
and flight from the advancing and retreating billows. Both Medea and
Prospero proclaim their power to overcloud the sky and darken the sun,
to raise winds and shatter trees, tearing them up by the roots. They
can make the very mountains tremble, and can compel the grave to give
up its dead.
The names Prospero and Stephano may be found in Ben Jonson's _Every Man
in his Humour_ (1595). Prospero was also the name of a riding-master
well known in the London of Shakepeare's day.
Malone has suggested that the name "Caliban" was derived from
"cannibal." Although the creature displays no tendency towards
cannibalism, it is possible that Shakespeare had this term for a
man-eater in his mind when he invented the name; it is even probable,
seeing that the passage in Montaigne from which he drew Gonzalo's
Utopia is contained in a chapter headed "Les Cannibales." Furness, who
has inaugurated such an admirable edition of Shakespeare, considers
this surmise an improbable one. He and Th. Elze incline to the belief
that the name was derived from Calibia, a town in the neighbourhood of
Tunis, but the connection is scarcely more obvious. Shakespeare found
the name Ariel in Isaiah xxix. 1, the name of a city in which David
dwelt, and he doubtless appropriated it on account of its similarity in
sound to both English and Latin words for air.
We now seem to have exhausted all the available literary sources of
_The Tempest_, and we need only add that Dryden and Davenant, in their
abominable adaptation of the play (published in London 1670), made free
use of Calderon's already mentioned "En esta vida todo es vertad y todo
es mentira," and thus provided the Miranda, who has never seen a young
man, with a counterpart in Hippolyto, who has never seen the face of
woman.
[1] Jacob Ayrer: _Opera Theatricum_. Nurnburg, 1618. L. Tieck:
_Deutsches Theater_, i. p. 323. Albert Cohn: _Shakespeare in Germany_,
ii. pp. 1-75.
[2]
"Or that there were such men
Whose heads stood in their breasts? which now we find,
Each putter-out of five for one will bring us
Good warrant of."
[3] We read of the old man:
"Nella nostra cittade era un uom saggio
Di tutte l'arti oltre ogni creder dotto."
Of his arrangements for his daughter, due to the bad character of his
wife, we are told:
"Fuor del commercio popolo la invola,
Ed ove piu solingo il luogo vede,
Questo amplo e bel palagio e ricco tanto
Fece fare a demonj per incanto."
Of the storm, which, by the way, is not raised by the said old man, but
by hermit, we are merely told:
"E facea alcuno effetto soprumano
. . . . . . .
Fermare il vento ad un segno di croce
E far tranquillo il mar quando è più atroce."
[4] Johan Meissner: _Untersuchungen über Shakespeare's Sturm_.
XXII
_THE TEMPEST AS A PLAY--SHAKESPEARE AND PROSPERO--FAREWELL TO ART_
Although, taken from the point of view of a play, _The Tempest_ is
lacking in dramatic interest, the entire work is so marvellously rich
in poetry and so inspired by imagination, that it forms a whole little
world in itself, and holds the reader captive by that power which sheer
perfection possesses to enthrall.
If the ordinary being desires to obtain a salutary impression of his
own insignificance and an ennobling one of the sublimity of true
genius, he need only study this last of Shakespeare's masterpieces. In
the majority of cases the result will be prostrate admiration.
Shakespeare gave freer rein to his imagination in this play than he
had allowed himself since the days of the _Midsummer Nights Dream_ and
the _First Part of Henry IV_. He felt able, indeed compelled to do
this; and, in spite of the restraint imposed upon him by the occasion
for which it was written, he devoted his whole individuality to the
task with greater force than he had done for years. The play contains
far more of the nature of a confession than was usual at this period.
Never, with the exception of _Hamlet_ and _Timon_, had Shakespeare been
so personal.
It may be said that, in a manner, _The Tempest_ was a continuation
of his gloomy period; once again he treated of black ingratitude and
cunning and violence practised upon a good man.
Prospero, Duke of Milan, absorbed in scientific study, and finding
his real dukedom in his library, imprudently intrusted the direction
of his little state to his brother Antonio. The latter, betraying his
trust, won over to his side all the officers of state appointed by
Prospero, entered into an alliance with the Duke's enemy, Alonso, King
of Naples, and reduced the hitherto free state of Milan to a condition
of vassalage. Then, with the assistance of Alonso and his brother
Sebastian, Antonio attacked and dethroned Prospero. The Duke, with
his little three-year-old daughter, was carried out some leagues to
sea, placed in a rotten old hull, and abandoned. A Neapolitan noble,
Gonzalo, compassionately supplied them with provisions, clothes, and,
above all, the precious books upon which Prospero's supernatural
powers depended. The boat was driven ashore upon an island whose one
inhabitant, the aboriginal Caliban, was reduced to subjection by means
of the control exercised over the spirit world by the banished man.
Here, then, Prospero dwelt in peace and solitude, devoting himself
to the culture of his mind, the enjoyment of nature, and the careful
education of his daughter Miranda, who received such a training as
seldom falls to the lot of a princess.
Twelve years have passed, and Miranda is just fifteen when the play
begins. Prospero is aware that his star has reached its zenith and
that his old enemies are in his power. The King of Naples has married
his daughter, Claribel, to the King of Tunis, and the wedding has been
celebrated, oddly enough, at the home of the bridegroom; but then
it was probably the first time in history that a Christian King of
Naples had bestowed his daughter upon a Mohammedan. Alonso, with all
his train, including his brother and the usurper of Milan, is on his
homeward voyage when Prospero raises the storm which drives them on his
island. After being sufficiently bewildered and humiliated, they are
finally forgiven, and the King's son, purified by the trials through
which he has passed, is as Prospero has all along intended that he
should be, united to Miranda.
It was evidently Shakespeare's intention in _The Tempest_ to give
a picture of mankind as he now saw it, and we are shown something
quite new in him, a typical representation of the different phases of
humanity.
In Caliban we have the primitive man, the aboriginal, the animal which
has just evolved into the first rough stages of the human being. In
Prospero we are given the highest development of Nature, the man of the
future, the superhuman man of spirit.
We have seen that Shakespeare roughly planned such a character some
years back, in the faintly outlined sketch of Cerimon in _Pericles_
(_ante_ p. 591). Prospero is the fulfilment of the promise contained
in Cerimon's principal speech, a man, namely, who can compel to his
uses all the beneficent powers dwelling in metals, stones, and plants.
He is a creature of princely mould, who has subdued outward Nature, has
brought his own turbulent inner self under perfect control, and has
overpowered the bitterness caused by the wrongs he has suffered in the
harmony emanating from his own richly spiritual life.
Prospero, like all Shakespeare's heroes and heroines of this last
decade--Pericles, Imogen, and Hermione no less than Lear and
Timon--suffers grievous wrong. He is even more sinned against than
Timon, has suffered more and lost more through ingratitude. He has
not squandered his substance like the misanthrope, but, absorbed in
occupations of a higher nature, he has neglected his worldly interests
and fallen a victim to his own careless trustfulness.
The injustice offered to Imogen and Hermione was not so detestable
in its origin as that suffered by Prospero; the wrong done them
sprang from misguided love, and was therefore easier to condone. The
crime against the Duke was actuated by such low motives as envy and
covetousness.
Tried by suffering, Prospero proves its strengthening qualities. Far
from succumbing to the blow, it is not until it has fallen that he
displays his true, far-reaching, and terrible power, and becomes the
great irresistible magician which Shakespeare himself had so long been.
His power is not understood by his daughter, who is but a child, but
it is felt by his enemies. He plays with them as he pleases, compels
them to repent their past treatment of him, and then pardons them with
a calmness of superiority to which Timon could never have attained, but
which is far from being that all-obliterating tenderness with which
Imogen and Hermione forgive remorseful sinners.
There is less of charity towards the offenders in Prospero's absolution
than that element of contempt which has so long and so exclusively
filled Shakespeare's soul. His forgiveness, the oblivion of a scornful
indifference, is not so much that of the strong man who knows his power
to crush if need be, as that of the wisdom which is no longer affected
by outward circumstance.
Richard Garnett aptly observes, in his critical introduction to the
play in the "Irving Edition," that Prospero finds it easy to forgive
because, in his secret soul, he sets very little value on the dukedom
he has lost, and is, therefore, roused to very little indignation
by the treachery which deprived him of it. His daughter's happiness
is the sole thing which greatly interests him now, and he carries
his indifference to worldly matters so far that, without any outward
compulsion, he breaks his magic wand and casts his books into the
sea. Resuming his place among the ranks of ordinary men, he retains
nothing but his inalienable treasure of experience and reflection. I
quote the following passage from Garnett on account of its remarkable
correspondence with the general conception of Shakespeare's development
set forth in this book.
"That this Quixotic height of magnanimity should not surprise, that it
should seem quite in keeping with the character, proves how deeply this
character has been drawn from Shakepeare's own nature. Prospero is not
Shakespeare, but the play is in a certain measure autobiographical....
It shows us more than anything else what the discipline of life had
made of Shakespeare at fifty--a fruit too fully matured to be suffered
to hang much longer on the tree. Conscious superiority untinged by
arrogance, genial scorn for the mean and base, mercifulness into which
contempt entered very largely, serenity excluding passionate affection
while admitting tenderness, intellect overtopping morality but in no
way blighting or perverting it--such are the mental features of him in
whose development the man of the world kept pace with the poet, and who
now shone as the consummate perfection of both."
In other words, it is Shakespeare's own nature which overflows into
Prospero, and thus the magician represents not merely the noble-minded
great man, but the genius, imaginatively delineated, not, as in
_Hamlet_, psychologically analysed. Audibly and visibly does Prospero's
genius manifest itself, visible and audible also the inward and outward
opposition he combats.
The two figures in which this spiritual power and this resistance are
embodied are the most admirable productions of an artist's powers in
this or any other age. Ariel is a supernatural, Caliban a bestially
natural being, and both have been endowed with a human soul. They were
not seen, but created.
Prospero is the master-mind, the man of the future, as shown by his
control over the forces of Nature. He passes as a magician, and
Shakespeare found his prototype, as far as external accessories were
concerned, in a scholar of mark and man of high principles, Dr. Dee,
who died in 1607. This Dr. Dee believed himself possessed of powers to
conjure up spirits, good and bad, and on this account enjoyed a great
reputation in his day. A man owning but a small share of the scientific
knowledge of our times would inevitably have been regarded as a
powerful magician at that date. In the creation of Prospero, therefore,
Shakespeare unconsciously anticipated the results of time. He not
merely gave him a magic wand, but created a poetical embodiment of the
forces of Nature as his attendant spirit. In accordance with the method
described in the _Midsummer Night's Dream_ he gave life to Ariel:
"The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven:
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothings
A local habitation and a name.
Such tricks hath strong imagination,
That if it would but apprehend some joy,
It comprehends the bringer of that joy."
Ariel is just such a harbinger of joy; from the moment he appears
we are content and assured of pleasurable impressions. In the whole
record of poetry he is the one good spirit who arrests and affects us
as a living being. He is a non-christian angel, a sprite, an elf, the
messenger of Prospero's thought, the fulfiller of his will through the
elementary spirits subject to the great magician's power. He is the
emblem of Shakespeare's own genius, that "affable, familiar ghost" (as
Shakespeare expresses it in his 86th sonnet) which Chapman boasted of
possessing. His longing for freedom after prolonged servitude has a
peculiar and touching significance as a symbol of the yearning of the
poet's own genius for rest.
Ariel possesses that power of omnipresence and all those constantly
varying forms which are the special gift of imagination. He skims along
the foam, flies on the keen north wind, and burrows in the frozen
earth. Now he is a fire spirit spreading terror as he flashes in
cloven flame, encircling the mast and playing about the rigging of the
vessel, or as one great bolt hurls himself to strike with all the power
and speed of lightning. Now again, he is a mermaid, seen in fitful
glimpses, and chanting alluring songs. He sounds the magic music of the
air, he mimics the monotonous splashing of the waves, or barks like a
dog and crows like a cock. In every essence of his nature as well as
name he is a spirit of the air, a mirage, a hallucination of light and
sound. He is a bird, a harpy, and finds his way through the darkness of
night to fetch dew from the enchanted Bermudas. Faithful and zealous
servant of the good, he terrifies, bewilders, and befools the wicked.
He is compounded of charm and delicacy, and is as swift and bright as
lightning.
He was formerly in the service of the witch Sycorax, but, incurring
her displeasure, was imprisoned by her in the rift of a cloven pine.
There he was held in suffering many years, until delivered at last
by Prospero's supernatural powers. He serves the magician in return
for his release, but never ceases to long for his promised freedom.
Although a creature of the air, he is capable of compassion, and can
understand a sentiment of devotion which he does not actually feel.
His subject condition is painful to him, and he looks forward with joy
to the hour of liberty. Spirit of fire and air as he is, his essence
exhales itself in music and mischievous pranks.
Caliban, on the other hand, is of the earth earthy, a kind of
land-fish, a being formed of heavy and gross materials, who was raised
by Prospero from the condition of an animal to that of a human being,
without, however, being really civilised. Prospero made much of the
creature at first, caressed him and gave him to drink of water mixed
with the juice of berries; taught him the art of speech and how to
name the greater and the lesser light, and lodged him in his cell. But
from the moment Caliban's savage instinct prompted him to attempt the
violation of Miranda, Prospero treated him as a slave and made him
serve as such. Strangely enough, however, Shakespeare has made him
no prosaically raw being, untouched by the poetry of the enchanted
island. The vulgar new-comers, Trinculo and Stephano, speak in prose,
but Caliban's utterances are always rhythmic; indeed, many of the most
exquisitely melodious lines in the play fall from the lips of this poor
animal. They sound like an echo from the time he lived within the magic
circle and was the constant companion of Prospero and Miranda.
But since, from being their fellow, he has been degraded to their
slave, all gratitude for former benefits has disappeared from his mind;
and he now employs the language they have taught him in cursing the
master who has robbed him, the original inhabitant, of his birthright.
His is the hatred of the savage for his civilised conquerors.
We have seen that the abhorrence Shakespeare felt for the vices of the
court and fashionable life inclined him during these later years to
dream of some natural life far from all civilisation (_Cymbeline_).
But his instinct was too sure and his judgment too sound to allow of
his ever believing, with the Utopists of his day, that the natural
primitive state of man was one of innocence and nobility of soul in the
golden age of prehistoric times. Caliban is a protest against this very
theory, and Shakespeare distinctly ridicules all such fanaticism in the
lines copied from Montaigne, and placed in Gonzalo's mouth, concerning
the organisation of an ideal commonwealth; without commerce, law, or
letters, without riches or poverty, without corn, oil, or wine, and
without work of any kind, but a happy idleness for all.
Caliban represents the primitive, the prehistoric man; yet, such as he
is, a poetically inclined philosopher of our day has discovered in him
the features of the eternal plebeian. It is instructive to witness with
how few reservations Renan was enabled to modernise the type, and shown
how, tidied up and washed and interpreted as the dull fickle democracy,
Caliban was as capable as the old aristocratic-religious despotism of
sounding a conservative note, of protecting the arts and graciously
patronising the sciences, &c.
Shakespeare's Caliban was the offspring of Sycorax and begotten by the
Devil himself. With such a pedigree he could hardly be expected to rise
to any height of angelic goodness and purity. He is, in reality, more
of an elemental power than a human being; and therefore rouses neither
indignation nor contempt in the mind of the audience, but genuine
amusement. Invented, and drawn with masterly humour, he represents the
savage natives found by the English in America, upon whom they bestowed
the blessings of civilisation in the form of strong drink. There is
not only wit but profound significance in the scene (Act ii. sc. 2) in
which Caliban, who at first takes Trinculo and Stephano for two spirits
sent by Prospero to torment him, allows himself to be persuaded that
Trinculo is the Man in the Moon, shown to him by Miranda on beautiful
moonlight nights, and forthwith worships him as his god, because he
alone possesses the bottle with the heavenly liquor which has been put
to the creature's lips, and given him his first taste of the wonderful
intoxication produced by fire-water.
Midway between these symbols of the highest culture and of Nature in
its crudest form Shakespeare has placed a young girl, as noble in body
and soul as her father, and yet so purely and simply a child of Nature
that she unhesitatingly follows her instincts, including that of love.
She is the counterpart of the masculine ideal in Prospero, being all
that is admirable in woman; hence her name, Miranda. To preserve her
absolutely unspotted and fresh, Shakespeare has made her almost as
young as his Juliet; and to still further accentuate the impression of
maidenly immaculateness, she has grown up without seeing a single youth
of the other sex, a trait which was used and abused by the Spaniards
later in the same century. Hence the wondering admiration of the first
meeting between Ferdinand and Miranda:
"What! is't a spirit?
Lord, how it looks about! Believe me, sir,
It carries a brave form. But 'tis a spirit."
When her father denies this she says:
"I might call him
A thing divine, for nothing natural
I ever saw so noble."
And Ferdinand:
"My prime request,
Which I do last pronounce, is, O you wonder!
If you be maid or no?"
It is Prospero, whose greatness shows no less in his power over
human beings than over the forces of Nature, who has brought these
two together, and who, although assuming displeasure at their mutual
attraction, causes all which concerns them to follow the exact course
his will has marked out.
He sees into the soul of mankind with as sure an eye as Shakespeare
himself, and plays the part of Providence to his surroundings as
incontestably as did the poet to the beings of his own creation.
When Prospero shows the young people to his guests, they are playing
chess, and there would seem to be a touch of symbol in the fact that
they are playing, not only because they wish to do so, but because
they must. There is, moreover, something almost personal in the way
Prospero trains and admonishes the loving couple. Garnett is inclined
to infer from the repeated exhortations to Ferdinand to restrain the
impulse of his blood until the wedding-hour has struck, that the play
was acted some days before the royal wedding ceremony. But if these
warnings were intended for the Elector in his capacity of bridegroom,
they were a piece of tasteless impertinence. No, it is far more likely
that, as before suggested, they contain a melancholy confession, a
purely personal reminiscence. Shakespeare cannot be accused of any
excessive severity in such questions of morals. We saw in _Measure for
Measure_ that he considered the connection between the two lovers, for
which they are to be so severely punished, was to the full as good as
marriage, although entered upon without ceremonies. It was no mere
formalism which spoke here, but bitter experience. Now that he was
already, in thought, on his way back to Stratford, and was living in
anticipation of what awaited him there, Shakespeare was reminded of how
he and Anne Hathaway forestalled their ceremonial union, and he spoke
of the punishment following on such actions as a curse, which he knew:
"Barren hate,
Sour-eyed disdain and discord shall bestrew
The union of your bed with weeds so loathly
That you shall hate it both" (Act iv. sc. I).
As already observed, Shakespeare appropriated from some source or
another the incident of the youthful suitor being obliged to submit
to the trial of carrying and piling wood. It almost seems that his
motive in including such an incident was to show that it is man's great
and noble privilege to serve out of love. To Caliban all service is
slavery; throughout the whole play he roars for freedom, and never so
loudly as when he is drunk. For Ariel, too, all bondage, even that
of a higher being, is mere torment. Man alone finds pleasure in the
servitude of love. Thus Ferdinand bears uncomplainingly, and even
gladly, for Miranda's sake, the burden laid upon him (Act iii. sc. I):
"I am in my condition
A prince, Miranda, I do think, a king.
. . . . . . . .
The very instant that I saw you, did
My heart fly to your service; there resides
To make me slave to it."
She shares this feeling:
"I am your wife if you will marry me!
If not, I'll die your maid; to be your fellow
You may deny me; but I'll be your servant
Whether you will or no."
It is a feeling of the same nature which impels Prospero to return to
Milan to fulfil his duty towards the state whose government he has so
long neglected.
There are certain analogies between _The Tempest_ and the _Midsummer
Night's Dream_. In both we are shown a fantastic world in which
heavenly powers make sport of earthly fools. Caliban discovering a
god in the drunken Trinculo reminds us of Titania's amorous worship
of Bottom. Both are wedding-plays, and yet what a difference! _The
Midsummer Night's Dream_ was one of Shakespeare's earliest independent
poetical works, written at the age of twenty-six, and his first great
success. _The Tempest_ was written as a farewell to art and the
artist's life, just before the completion of his forty-ninth year, and
everything in the play bespeaks the touch of autumn.
The scenery is autumnal throughout, and the time is that of the autumn
equinox with its storms and shipwrecks. With noticeable care all the
plants named, even those occurring merely in similes, are such flowers
and fruit, &c., as appear in the fall of the year in a northern
landscape. The climate is harsh and northerly in spite of the southern
situation of the island and the southern names. Even the utterances of
the goddesses, the blessing of Ceres, for example, show that the season
is late September--thus answering to Shakespeare's time of life and
frame of mind.
No means of intensifying this impression are neglected. The utter
sadness of Prospero's famous words describing the trackless
disappearance of all earthly things harmonises with the time of year
and with his underlying thought--"We are such stuff as dreams are made
on:" a deep sleep, from which we awaken to life, and again, deep sleep
hereafter. What a personal note it is in the last scene of the play
where Prospero says:
"And thence retire me to my Milan, where
Every third thought shall be my grave."
How we feel that Stratford was the poet's Milan, just as Ariel's
longing for freedom was the yearning of the poet's genius for rest. He
has had enough of the burden of work, enough of the toilsome necromancy
of imagination, enough of art, enough of the life of the town. A
deep sense of the vanity of all things has laid its hold upon him,
he believes in no future and expects no results from the work of a
lifetime.
"Our revels now are ended. These our actors
. . . . . . . . . . were all spirits and
are melted into air, into thin air."
Like Prospero, he had sacrificed his position to his art, and, like
him, he had dwelt upon an enchanted island in the ocean of life. He had
been its lord and master, with dominion over spirits, with the spirit
of the air as his servant, and the spirit of the earth as his slave.
At his will graves had opened, and by his magic art the heroes of the
past had lived again. The words with which Prospero opens the fifth act
come, despite all gloomy thoughts of death and wearied hopes of rest,
straight from Shakespeare's own lips:
"Now does my project gather to a head;
My charms crack not; my spirits obey; and time
Goes upright with his carriage."
All will soon be accomplished and Ariel's hour of deliverance is nigh.
The parting of the master from his genius is not without a touch of
melancholy:
"My dainty Ariel! _I shall miss thee_,
But yet thou shalt have freedom."
Prospero has determined in his heart to renounce all his magical powers:
"To the elements
Be free, and fare thee well!"
He has taken leave of all his elves by name, and now utters words
whose personal application has never been approached by any character
hitherto set upon the stage by Shakespeare:
"But this rough service
I here abjure, and, when I have required
Some heavenly music, which even now I do,
. . . . . I'll break my staff,
Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,
And deeper than did ever plummet sound
I'll drown my book."
Solemn music is heard, and Shakespeare has bidden farewell to his art.
Collaboration in _Henry VIII_. and the production and staging of _The
Tempest_ were the last manifestations of his dramatic activity. In
all probability he only waited for the close of the court festivities
before carrying out his plan of leaving London and returning to
Stratford; and Ben Jonson's foolish thrust at _those who beget tales,
tempests, and such like drolleries_, would not find him in town. When
we drew attention to his efforts to increase his capital, and his
purchase of houses and land at Stratford, we showed that, even at that
early period, he hoped eventually to quit the metropolis, to give up
the theatre and literature and to spend the last years of his life in
the country. Even supposing him to have delayed his departure until
after the performance of _The Tempest_, an event which happened only
four months later would have supplied the final inducement to leave.
In the month of June 13 a fire broke out, as we know, at the Globe
Theatre during a performance of _Henry VIII._, and the whole building
was burned to the ground. Thus the scene of his activity for so many
long years disappeared, as it were, in smoke, leaving no trace behind.
He was probably part owner of the stage properties and costumes, which
were all consumed. In any case, the flames devoured all the manuscripts
of his plays then in the possession of the theatre, a priceless
treasure--for him surely a painful, and for us an irreparable, loss.
XXIII
_THE RIDE TO STRATFORD_
That must have been a momentous day in Shakespeare's life on which,
after giving up his house in London, he mounted his horse and rode back
to Stratford-on-Avon to take up his abode there for good.
He would recall that day in 1585 when, twenty-eight years younger,
with his life lying before him veiled in the mists of expectation and
uncertainty, he set out from Stratford to London to try his fortunes in
the great city. Then his heart beat high, and he must have felt towards
his horse much as the Dauphin did in _Henry V_. (Act iii. sc. 7) when
he said, "When I bestride him I soar, I am a hawk: he trots the air;
the earth sings when he touches it, the basest horn of his hoof is more
musical than the pipe of Hermes."
Life lay behind him now. His hopes had been fulfilled in many ways; he
was famous, he had raised himself a degree in the social scale, above
all he was rich, but for all that he was not happy.
The great town, in which he had spent the better part of a lifetime,
had not so succeeded in attaching him to it that he would feel any pain
in leaving it. There was neither man nor woman there so dear to him as
to make society preferable to solitude, and the crowded life of London
to the seclusion of the country and an existence passed in the midst of
family and Nature.
He had toiled enough, his working days were over, and now, at last, the
cloud should be lifted from his name which had so long been cast upon
it by his profession. It was nine years since he had actually appeared
upon the stage, since he had made over his parts to others, and now he
had ceased to take any pleasure in his pen. None of those were left
for whom he had cared to write plays and put them upon the stage; the
new generation and present frequenters of the theatre were strangers
to him. There was no one in London who would heed his leaving it, no
friends to induce him to stay, no farewell banquet to be given in his
honour.
He would remember his first arrival in London, and how, according to
the custom of all poor travellers, he sold his horse at Smithfield. He
could, if he wished, keep many horses now, but no power could renew the
joyous mood of twenty-one. Then the wind had played with the long curls
hanging below his hat, now he was elderly and bald.
The journey from London to Stratford took three days. He would, put up
at the inns at which he was accustomed to stay on his yearly journey to
and fro, and where he was always greeted as a welcome guest, and given
a bed with snow-white sheets, for which travellers on foot were charged
an extra penny, but which he, as rider, enjoyed gratis. The hostess at
Oxford, pretty Mistress Davenant, would give him a specially cordial
greeting. The two were old and good friends. Little William, born in
1606, and now seven years old, possessed a certain, perhaps accidental,
resemblance of feature to the guest.
As Shakespeare rode on, Stratford, so well known and yet, as settled
home, so new, would (as Hamlet says) rise "before his mind's eye." A
life of daily companionship with his wife was to begin afresh after a
break of twenty-eight years. She was now fifty-seven, and consequently
much older, in proportion, than her husband of forty-nine than when
they were lovers and newly married, the one under and the other
somewhat over twenty. There could be no intellectual bond between them
after so long a separation, and their married life was but an empty
form.
Of their two daughters, Susanna, the elder, was now thirty, and had
been married for six years to Dr. John Hall, a respected physician at
Stratford. Judith, the younger daughter, was twenty-eight and unmarried.
The Halls, with their little five-year-old daughter, lived in a
picturesque house in Old Stratford, at that time surrounded by woods.
Mrs. Shakespeare and Judith lived at New Place, and the spirit
prevailing in both establishments was not the spirit of Shakespeare.
Not only the town of Stratford, but his own home and family were
desperately pious and puritanical. That power which had been most
inimical to him in London, which had dishonoured his profession, and
with which he had been at war during all the years of his dramatic
activity; that very power against which he had striven, sometimes by
open attack, more often by cautious insinuation, had triumphed in his
native town behind his back and taken complete possession of his only
home.
The closing of the theatre, which did not occur in London until the
Puritans had completely gained the upper hand many years later, had
already been anticipated in Stratford. The performance of those plays
at which Shakespeare in his youth had made acquaintance with the men,
his future brother professionals, with whom he sought refuge in London,
was strictly forbidden. So long ago as 1602 the town council had
carried a resolution that no performance of play or interlude should
be permitted in the Guildhall, that long, low building with its eight
small-paned windows. It was the only place in Stratford suitable for
such a purpose, and was connected with many of Shakespeare's memories.
Directly above the long narrow hall, on the first floor, was the
school which he had attended daily as a child. Into the hall itself he
had awesomely penetrated the day the glories of a theatre were first
displayed before his childish eyes. And now eleven years had passed
since that wise Council had decreed that any alderman or citizen giving
his consent to the representation of plays in this building should be
fined ten shillings for every infringement of the prohibition. This not
proving a sufficient deterrent, the fine was raised in 1612 from ten
shillings to the extravagant sum of £10, equivalent to about £50 in our
day. Fifty pounds for allowing a play to be performed in the only hall
in the town suitable for the purpose! This was rank fanaticism!
Moreover, it was a fanaticism which had found its way into his own
home. That strong tendency to Puritanism which was so marked among
his descendants until the race died out, had already developed in his
family. His wife was extremely religious, as is often the case with
women whose youthful conduct has not been too circumspect. When she
captured her boy husband of eighteen, her blood was as warm as his, but
now she was vastly his superior in matters of religion. Neither could
he look for any real intellectual companionship from his daughters.
Susanna was pious, her husband still more so. Judith was as ignorant as
a child. Thus he must pay the penalty of his long absence from home and
his utter neglect of the education of his girls.
It was to no happy harmony of thought and feeling, therefore, that the
poet could look forward as he rode away from his dramatic fairyland
to the simplicities of domestic life. The only attractions existing
for him there were his position as a gentleman, the satisfaction of no
longer being obliged to act and write for money, and the pleasure of
living on and roaming about his own property. The very fact that he did
go back to Stratford with the little there was to attract him there
proves how slight a hold London had taken upon him, and with what a
feeling of loneliness, and (now that the bitterness was past) with what
indifference, he bade farewell to the metropolis, its inhabitants and
its pleasures.
It was the quietude of Stratford which attracted him, its leisure, the
emptiness of its dirty streets, its remoteness, from the busy world.
What he really longed for was Nature, the Nature with which he had
lived in such intimate companionship in his early youth, which he had
missed so terribly while writing _As You Like It_ and its fellow-plays,
and from which he had so long been separated.
Far more than human beings was it the gardens which he had bought and
planted there which drew him back to his native town--the gardens and
trees on which he looked from his windows at New Place.
XXIV
_STRATFORD-UPON-AVON_
He was home again. Home once more, where he knew every road and path,
every house and field, every tree and bush. The silence of the empty
streets struck him afresh as his footsteps echoed down them, and the
river Avon shone bright and still between the willows bending down to
the water's edge. He had shot many a deer in the neighbourhood of that
stream, and it was by its banks that Jaques, in _As You Like It_, had
sat as he watched the wounded stag that sighed as though its leathern
coat would burst, while the big round tears coursed down its innocent
nose. The fine arched bridge was erected in the time of Henry VIII.
by the same Sir Hugh Clopton who had built New Place, the house which
Shakespeare had bought, and been obliged to restore before his family
could live in it.
Close by the river stood the avenue leading to the beautiful Gothic
church of the Holy Trinity, with its slender spire and handsome
windows. Within were the graves and monuments of the neighbouring
gentry, and there, so much sooner than he could possibly have dreamed,
was Shakespeare himself to lie.
Passing through Church Street, he would come upon the Guild Chapel, a
fine square building, from whose tower rang the weekly bells calling
to Sunday-morning service. He remembered those bells from of old,
and now they would be constantly sounding in his ears, for New Place
lay just across the road. Soon they would be tolling his own funeral
knell. Directly adjoining the chapel stood the timbered building which
represented both Guildhall and school. Once it had seemed large and
spacious; how small and mean it looked now! It was more satisfactory
to glance on to the corner where his large garden and green lawns
stood, and his eye would rest affectionately upon the mulberry-tree
his own hands had planted. Ten steps from his door lay the tavern,
quaint and low, and how familiar! Not the first time would it be that
he had sat at that table, the largest, it was said, that had ever been
cut in England from a single piece of wood. He would at least find
something to drink there, and a game of draughts or dice. With a sigh
he realised that this tavern was likely to prove his chief refuge from
his loneliness.