Criticisms on Shakspeare's Comedies.
The best and easiest mode of reviewing Shakspeare's dramas will be to
arrange them in classes. This, it must be owned, is merely a makeshift:
several critics have declared that all Shakspeare's pieces substantially
belong to the same species, although sometimes one ingredient, sometimes
another, the musical or the characteristical, the invention of the
wonderful or the imitation of the real, the pathetic or the comic,
seriousness or irony, may preponderate in the mixture. Shakspeare himself,
it would appear, did but laugh at the petty endeavours of critics to find
out divisions and subdivisions of species, and to hedge in what had been
so separated with the most anxious care; thus the pedantic Polonius in
_Hamlet_ commends the players, for their knowledge of "tragedy, comedy,
history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-
historical, tragical-comical, historical-pastoral, scene-undividable, or
poem unlimited." On another occasion he ridicules the limitation of
Tragedy to an unfortunate catastrophe:
"And tragical, my noble lord, it is;
For Pyramus therein doth kill himself."
However the division into Comedies, Tragedies, and Historical Dramas,
according to the usual practice, may in some measure be adopted, if we do
not lose sight of the transitions and affinities. The subjects of the
comedies are generally taken from novels: they are romantic love tales;
none are altogether confined to the sphere of common or domestic
relations: all of them possess poetical ornament, some of them run into
the wonderful or the pathetic. With these two of his most famous tragedies
are connected by an immediate link, _Romeo and Juliet_ and _Othello_; both
true novels, and composed on the same principles. In many of the
historical plays a considerable space is occupied by the comic characters
and scenes; others are serious throughout, and leave behind a tragical
impression. The essential circumstance by which they are distinguished is,
that the plot bears reference to a poetical and national interest. This is
not equally the case in _Hamlet_, _Lear_, and _Macbeth_; and therefore it
is that we do not include these tragedies among the historical pieces,
though the first is founded on an old northern, the second on a national
tradition; and the third comes even within the era of Scottish history,
after it ceased to be fabulous.
Among the comedies, _The Two Gentlemen of Verona_, _The Taming of the
Shrew_, and _The Comedy of Errors_, bear many traces of an early origin.
_The Two Gentlemen of Verona_ paints the irresolution of love, and its
infidelity to friendship, pleasantly enough, but in some degree
superficially, we might almost say with the levity of mind which a passion
suddenly entertained, and as suddenly given up, presupposes. The faithless
lover is at last, on account of a very ambiguous repentance, forgiven
without much difficulty by his first mistress; for the more serious part,
the premeditated flight of the daughter of a Prince, the capture of her
father along with herself by a band of robbers, of which one of the Two
Gentlemen, the betrayed and banished friend, has been against his will
elected captain: for all this a peaceful solution is soon found. It is as
if the course of the world was obliged to accommodate itself to a
transient youthful caprice, called love. Julia, who accompanies her
faithless lover in the disguise of a page, is, as it were, a light sketch
of the tender female figures of a Viola and an Imogen, who, in the latter
pieces of Shakspeare, leave their home in similar disguises on love
adventures, and to whom a peculiar charm is communicated by the display of
the most virginly modesty in their hazardous and problematical situation.
_The Comedy of Errors_ is the subject of the _Menaechmi_ of Plautus,
entirely recast and enriched with new developments: of all the works of
Shakspeare this is the only example of imitation of, or borrowing
from, the ancients. To the two twin brothers of the same name are added
two slaves, also twins, impossible to be distinguished from each other,
and of the same name. The improbability becomes by this means doubled: but
when once we have lent ourselves to the first, which certainly borders on
the incredible, we shall not perhaps be disposed to cavil at the second;
and if the spectator is to be entertained by mere perplexities they cannot
be too much varied. In such pieces we must, to give to the senses at least
an appearance of truth, always pre-suppose that the parts by which the
misunderstandings are occasioned are played with masks, and this the poet
no doubt observed. I cannot acquiesce in the censure that the discovery is
too long deferred: so long as novelty and interest are possessed by the
perplexing incidents, there is no need to be in dread of wearisomeness.
And this is really the case here: matters are carried so far that one of
the two brothers is first arrested for debt, then confined as a lunatic,
and the other is forced to take refuge in a sanctuary to save his life. In
a subject of this description it is impossible to steer clear of all sorts
of low circumstances, abusive language, and blows; Shakspeare has however
endeavoured to ennoble it in every possible way. A couple of scenes,
dedicated to jealousy and love, interrupt the course of perplexities which
are solely occasioned by the illusion of the external senses. A greater
solemnity is given to the discovery, from the Prince presiding, and from
the re-union of the long separated parents of the twins who are still
alive. The exposition, by which the spectators are previously instructed
while the characters themselves are still involved in ignorance, and which
Plautus artlessly conveys in a prologue, is here masterly introduced in an
affecting narrative by the father. In short, this is perhaps the best of
all written or possible Menaechmi; and if the piece be inferior in worth
to other pieces of Shakspeare, it is merely because nothing more could be
made of the materials.
_The Taming of the Shrew_ has the air of an Italian comedy; and indeed the
love intrigue, which constitutes the main part of it, is derived mediately
or immediately from a piece of Ariosto. The characters and passions are
lightly sketched; the intrigue is introduced without much preparation, and
in its rapid progress impeded by no sort of difficulties; while, in the
manner in which Petruchio, though previously cautioned as to Katherine,
still encounters the risks in marrying her, and contrives to tame her--in
all this the character and peculiar humour of the English are distinctly
visible. The colours are laid on somewhat coarsely, but the ground is
good. That the obstinacy of a young and untamed girl, possessed of none of
the attractions of her sex, and neither supported by bodily nor mental
strength, must soon yield to the still rougher and more capricious but
assumed self-will of a man: such a lesson can only be taught on the
stage with all the perspicuity of a proverb.
The prelude is still more remarkable than the play itself: a drunken
tinker, removed in his sleep to a palace, where he is deceived into the
belief of being a nobleman. The invention, however, is not Shakspeare's.
Holberg has handled the same subject in a masterly manner, and with
inimitable truth; but he has spun it out to five acts, for which such
material is hardly sufficient. He probably did not borrow from the English
dramatist, but like him took the hint from a popular story. There are
several comic motives of this description, which go back to a very remote
age, without ever becoming antiquated. Here, as well as everywhere else,
Shakspeare has proved himself a great poet: the whole is merely a slight
sketch, but in elegance and delicate propriety it will hardly ever be
excelled. Neither has he overlooked the irony which the subject naturally
suggested: the great lord, who is driven by idleness and ennui to deceive
a poor drunkard, can make no better use of his situation than the latter,
who every moment relapses into his vulgar habits. The last half of this
prelude, that in which the tinker, in his new state, again drinks himself
out of his senses, and is transformed in his sleep into his former
condition, is from some accident or other, lost. It ought to have followed
at the end of the larger piece. The occasional remarks of the tinker,
during the course of the representation of the comedy, might have been
improvisatory, but it is hardly credible that Shakspeare should have
trusted to the momentary suggestions of the players, whom he did not hold
in high estimation, the conclusion, however short, of a work which he had
so carefully commenced. Moreover, the only circumstance which connects the
play with the prelude, is, that it belongs to the new life of the supposed
nobleman to have plays acted in his castle by strolling actors. This
invention of introducing spectators on the stage, who contribute to the
entertainment, has been very wittily used by later English poets.
_Love's Labour Lost_ is also numbered among the pieces of his youth.
It is a humorsome display of frolic; a whole cornucopia of the most
vivacious jokes is emptied into it. Youth is certainly perceivable in the
lavish superfluity of labour in the execution: the unbroken succession of
plays on words, and sallies of every description, hardly leave the
spectator time to breathe; the sparkles of wit fly about in such
profusion, that they resemble a blaze of fireworks; while the dialogue,
for the most part, is in the same hurried style in which the passing masks
at a carnival attempt to banter each other. The young king of Navarre,
with three of his courtiers, has made a vow to pass three years in rigid
retirement, and devote them to the study of wisdom; for that purpose he
has banished all female society from his court, and imposed a penalty on
the intercourse with women. But scarcely has he, in a pompous harangue,
worthy of the most heroic achievements, announced this determination, when
the daughter of the king of France appears at his court, in the name of
her old and bed-ridden father, to demand the restitution of a province
which he held in pledge. Compelled to give her audience, he falls
immediately in love with her. Matters fare no better with his companions,
who on their parts renew an old acquaintance with the princess's
attendants. Each, in heart, is already false to his vow, without knowing
that the wish is shared by his associates; they overhear one another, as
they in turn confide their sorrows in a love-ditty to the solitary forest:
every one jeers and confounds the one who follows him. Biron, who from the
beginning was the most satirical among them, at last steps forth, and
rallies the king and the two others, till the discovery of a love-letter
forces him also to hang down his head. He extricates himself and his
companions from their dilemma by ridiculing the folly of the broken vow,
and, after a noble eulogy on women, invites them to swear new allegiance
to the colours of love. This scene is inimitable, and the crowning beauty
of the whole. The manner in which they afterwards prosecute their love-
suits in masks and disguise, and in which they are tricked and laughed at
by the ladies, who are also masked and disguised, is, perhaps, spun out
too long. It may be thought, too, that the poet, when he suddenly
announces the death of the king of France, and makes the princess postpone
her answer to the young prince's serious advances till the expiration of
the period of her mourning, and impose, besides, a heavy penance on him
for his levity, drops the proper comic tone. But the tone of raillery,
which prevails throughout the piece, made it hardly possible to bring
about a more satisfactory conclusion: after such extravagance, the
characters could not return to sobriety, except under the presence of some
foreign influence. The grotesque figures of Don Armado, a pompous
fantastic Spaniard, a couple of pedants, and a clown, who between whiles
contribute to the entertainment, are the creation of a whimsical
imagination, and well adapted as foils for the wit of so vivacious a
society.
_All's Well that Ends Well_, _Much Ado about Nothing_, _Measure for
Measure_, and _The Merchant of Venice_, bear, in so far, a resemblance to
each other, that, along with the main plot, which turns on important
relations decisive of nothing less than the happiness or misery of life,
and therefore is calculated to make a powerful impression on the moral
feeling, the poet, with the skill of a practised artist, has contrived to
combine a number of cheerful accompaniments. Not, however, that the poet
seems both to allow full scope to the serious impressions: he merely adds
a due counterpoise to them in the entertainment which he supplies for the
imagination and the understanding. He has furnished the story with all the
separate features which are necessary to give to it the appearance of a
real, though extraordinary, event. But he never falls into the lachrymose
tone of the sentimental drama, nor into the bitterness of those dramas
which have a moral direction, and which are really nothing but moral
invectives dramatized. Compassion, anxiety, and dissatisfaction become too
oppressive when they are too long dwelt on, and when the whole of a work
is given up to them exclusively. Shakspeare always finds means to
transport us from the confinement of social institutions or pretensions,
where men do but shut out the light and air from each other, into the open
space, even before we ourselves are conscious of our want.
_All's Well that Ends Well_ is the old story of a young maiden whose
love looked much higher than her station. She obtains her lover in
marriage from the hand of the King as a reward for curing him of a
hopeless and lingering disease, by means of a hereditary arcanum of her
father, who had been in his lifetime a celebrated physician. The young man
despises her virtue and beauty; concludes the marriage only in appearance,
and seeks in the dangers of war, deliverance from a domestic happiness
which wounds his pride. By faithful endurance and an innocent fraud, she
fulfils the apparently impossible conditions on which the Count had
promised to acknowledge her as his wife. Love appears here in humble
guise: the wooing is on the woman's side; it is striving, unaided by a
reciprocal inclination, to overcome the prejudices of birth. But as soon
as Helena is united to the Count by a sacred bond, though by him
considered an oppressive chain, her error becomes her virtue.--She affects
us by her patient suffering: the moment in which she appears to most
advantage is when she accuses herself as the persecutor of her inflexible
husband, and, under the pretext of a pilgrimage to atone for her error,
privately leaves the house of her mother-in-law. Johnson expresses a
cordial aversion for Count Bertram, and regrets that he should be allowed
to come off at last with no other punishment than a temporary shame, nay,
even be rewarded with the unmerited possession of a virtuous wife. But has
Shakspeare ever attempted to soften the impression made by his unfeeling
pride and light-hearted perversity? He has but given him the good
qualities of a soldier. And does not the poet paint the true way of the
world, which never makes much of man's injustice to woman, if so-called
family honour is preserved? Bertram's sole justification is, that by the
exercise of arbitrary power, the King thought proper to constrain him, in
a matter of such delicacy and private right as the choice of a wife.
Besides, this story, as well as that of Grissel and many similar ones, is
intended to prove that woman's truth and patience will at last triumph
over man's abuse of his superior power, while other novels and
_fabliaux_ are, on the other hand, true satires on woman's inconsistency
and cunning. In this piece old age is painted with rare favour: the plain
honesty of the King, the good-natured impetuosity of old Lafeu, the
maternal indulgence of the Countess to Helena's passion for her son, seem
all as it were to vie with each other in endeavours to overcome the
arrogance of the young Count. The style of the whole is more sententious
than imaginative: the glowing colours of fancy could not with propriety
have been employed on such a subject. In the passages where the
humiliating rejection of the poor Helena is most painfully affecting, the
cowardly Parolles steps in to the relief of the spectator. The
mystification by which his pretended valour and his shameless slanders are
unmasked must be ranked among the most comic scenes that ever were
invented: they contain matter enough for an excellent comedy, if
Shakspeare were not always rich even to profusion. Falstaff has thrown
Parolles into the shade, otherwise among the poet's comic characters he
would have been still more famous.
The main plot in _Much Ado about Nothing_ is the same with the story
of _Ariodante and Ginevra_ in Ariosto; the secondary circumstances
and development are no doubt very different. The mode in which the
innocent Hero before the altar at the moment of the wedding, and in the
presence of her family and many witnesses, is put to shame by a most
degrading charge, false indeed, yet clothed with every appearance of
truth, is a grand piece of theatrical effect in the true and justifiable
sense. The impression would have been too tragical had not Shakspeare
carefully softened it in order to prepare for a fortunate catastrophe. The
discovery of the plot against Hero has been already partly made, though
not by the persons interested; and the poet has contrived, by means of the
blundering simplicity of a couple of constables and watchmen, to convert
the arrest and the examination of the guilty individuals into scenes full
of the most delightful amusement. There is also a second piece of
theatrical effect not inferior to the first, where Claudio, now convinced
of his error, and in obedience to the penance laid on his fault, thinking
to give his hand to a relation of his injured bride, whom he supposes
dead, discovers on her unmasking, Hero herself. The extraordinary success
of this play in Shakspeare's own day, and even since in England, is,
however, to be ascribed more particularly to the parts of Benedict and
Beatrice, two humoursome beings, who incessantly attack each other with
all the resources of raillery. Avowed rebels to love, they are both
entangled in its net by a merry plot of their friends to make them believe
that each is the object of the secret passion of the other. Some one or
other, not over-stocked with penetration has objected to the same artifice
being twice used in entrapping them; the drollery, however, lies in the
very symmetry of the deception. Their friends attribute the whole effect
to their own device; but the exclusive direction of their raillery against
each other is in itself a proof of a growing inclination. Their witty
vivacity does not even abandon them in the avowal of love; and their
behaviour only assumes a serious appearance for the purpose of defending
the slandered Hero. This is exceedingly well imagined; the lovers of
jesting must fix a point beyond which they are not to indulge in their
humour, if they would not be mistaken for buffoons by trade.
In _Measure for Measure_ Shakspeare was compelled, by the nature of
the subject, to make his poetry more familiar with criminal justice than
is usual with him. All kinds of proceedings connected with the subject,
all sorts of active or passive persons, pass in review before us: the
hypocritical Lord Deputy, the compassionate Provost, and the hard-hearted
Hangman; a young man of quality who is to suffer for the seduction of his
mistress before marriage, loose wretches brought in by the police, nay,
even a hardened criminal, whom even the preparations for his execution
cannot awaken out of his callousness. But yet, notwithstanding this
agitating truthfulness, how tender and mild is the pervading tone of the
picture! The piece takes improperly its name from punishment; the true
significance of the whole is the triumph of mercy over strict justice; no
man being himself so free from errors as to be entitled to deal it out to
his equals. The most beautiful embellishment of the composition is the
character of Isabella, who, on the point of taking the veil, is yet
prevailed upon by sisterly affection to tread again the perplexing ways of
the world, while, amid the general corruption, the heavenly purity of her
mind is not even stained with one unholy thought: in the humble robes of
the novice she is a very angel of light. When the cold and stern Angelo,
heretofore of unblemished reputation, whom the Duke has commissioned,
during his pretended absence, to restrain, by a rigid administration of
the laws, the excesses of dissolute immorality, is even himself tempted by
the virgin charms of Isabella, supplicating for the pardon of her brother
Claudio, condemned to death for a youthful indiscretion; when at first, in
timid and obscure language, he insinuates, but at last impudently avouches
his readiness to grant Claudio's life to the sacrifice of her honour; when
Isabella repulses his offer with a noble scorn; in her account of the
interview to her brother, when the latter at first applauds her conduct,
but at length, overcome by the fear of death, strives to persuade her to
consent to dishonour;--in these masterly scenes, Shakspeare has sounded
the depths of the human heart. The interest here reposes altogether on the
represented action; curiosity contributes nothing to our delight, for the
Duke, in the disguise of a Monk, is always present to watch over his
dangerous representative, and to avert every evil which could possibly be
apprehended; we look to him with confidence for a happy result. The Duke
acts the part of the Monk naturally, even to deception; he unites in his
person the wisdom of the priest and the prince. Only in his wisdom he is
too fond of round-about ways; his vanity is flattered with acting
invisibly like an earthly providence; he takes more pleasure in
overhearing his subjects than governing them in the customary way of
princes. As he ultimately extends a free pardon to all the guilty, we do
not see how his original purpose, in committing the execution of the laws
to other hands, of restoring their strictness, has in any wise been
accomplished. The poet might have had this irony in view, that of the
numberless slanders of the Duke, told him by the petulant Lucio, in
ignorance of the person whom he is addressing, that at least which
regarded his singularities and whims was not wholly without foundation. It
is deserving of remark, that Shakspeare, amidst the rancour of religious
parties, takes a delight in painting the condition of a monk, and always
represents his influence as beneficial. We find in him none of the black
and knavish monks, which an enthusiasm for Protestantism, rather than
poetical inspiration, has suggested to some of our modern poets.
Shakspeare merely gives his monks an inclination to busy themselves in the
affairs of others, after renouncing the world for themselves; with
respect, however, to pious frauds, he does not represent them as very
conscientious. Such are the parts acted by the monk in _Romeo and Juliet_,
and another in _Much Ado about Nothing_, and even by the Duke, whom,
contrary to the well-known proverb, the cowl seems really to make a monk.
The _Merchant of Venice_ is one of Shakspeare's most perfect works:
popular to an extraordinary degree, and calculated to produce the most
powerful effect on the stage, and at the same time a wonder of ingenuity
and art for the reflecting critic. Shylock, the Jew, is one of the
inimitable masterpieces of characterization which are to be found only in
Shakspeare. It is easy for both poet and player to exhibit a caricature of
national sentiments, modes of speaking, and gestures. Shylock, however, is
everything but a common Jew: he possesses a strongly-marked and original
individuality, and yet we perceive a light touch of Judaism in everything
he says or does. We almost fancy we can hear a light whisper of the Jewish
accent even in the written words, such as we sometimes still find in the
higher classes, notwithstanding their social refinement. In tranquil
moments, all that is foreign to the European blood and Christian
sentiments is less perceptible, but in passion the national stamp comes
out more strongly marked. All these inimitable niceties the finished art
of a great actor can alone properly express. Shylock is a man of
information, in his own way, even a thinker, only he has not discovered
the region where human feelings dwell; his morality is founded on the
disbelief in goodness and magnanimity. The desire to avenge the wrongs and
indignities heaped upon his nation is, after avarice, his strongest spring
of action. His hate is naturally directed chiefly against those Christians
who are actuated by truly Christian sentiments: a disinterested love of
our neighbour seems to him the most unrelenting persecution of the Jews.
The letter of the law is his idol; he refuses to lend an ear to the voice
of mercy, which, from the mouth of Portia, speaks to him with heavenly
eloquence: he insists on rigid and inflexible justice, and at last it
recoils on his own head. Thus he becomes a symbol of the general history
of his unfortunate nation. The melancholy and self-sacrificing magnanimity
of Antonio is affectingly sublime. Like a princely merchant, he is
surrounded with a whole train of noble friends. The contrast which this
forms to the selfish cruelty of the usurer Shylock was necessary to redeem
the honour of human nature. The danger which almost to the close of the
fourth act, hangs over Antonio, and which the imagination is almost afraid
to approach, would fill the mind with too painful anxiety, if the poet did
not also provide for its recreation and diversion. This is effected in an
especial manner by the scenes at Portia's country-seat, which transport
the spectator into quite another world. And yet they are closely connected
with the main business by the chain of cause and effect: Bassanio's
preparations for his courtship are the cause of Antonio's subscribing the
dangerous bond; and Portia again, by the counsel and advice of her uncle,
a famous lawyer, effects the safety of her lover's friend. But the
relations of the dramatic composition are the while admirably observed in
yet another respect. The trial between Shylock and Antonio is indeed
recorded as being a real event, still, for all that, it must ever remain
an unheard-of and singular case. Shakspeare has therefore associated it
with a love intrigue not less extraordinary: the one consequently is
rendered natural and probable by means of the other. A rich, beautiful and
clever heiress, who can only be won by the solving the riddle--the locked
caskets--the foreign princes, who come to try the venture--all this
powerfully excites the imagination with the splendour of an olden tale of
marvels. The two scenes in which, first the Prince of Morocco, in the
language of Eastern hyperbole, and then the self-conceited Prince of
Arragon, make their choice among the caskets, serve merely to raise our
curiosity, and give employment to our wits; but on the third, where the
two lovers stand trembling before the inevitable choice, which in one
moment must unite or separate them for ever, Shakspeare has lavished all
the charms of feeling--all the magic of poesy. We share in the rapture of
Portia and Bassanio at the fortunate choice: we easily conceive why they
are so fond of each other, for they are both most deserving of love. The
judgment scene, with which the fourth act is occupied, is in itself a
perfect drama, concentrating in itself the interest of the whole. The knot
is now untied, and according to the common ideas of theatrical
satisfaction, the curtain ought to drop. But the poet was unwilling to
dismiss his audience with the gloomy impressions which Antonio's
acquittal, effected with so much difficulty, and contrary to all
expectation, and the condemnation of Shylock, were calculated to leave
behind them; he has therefore added the fifth act by way of a musical
afterlude in the piece itself. The episode of Jessica, the fugitive
daughter of the Jew, in whom Shakspeare has contrived to throw a veil of
sweetness over the national features, and the artifice by which Portia and
her companion are enabled to rally their newly-married husbands, supply
him with the necessary materials. The scene opens with the playful
prattling of two lovers in a summer evening; it is followed by soft music,
and a rapturous eulogy on this powerful disposer of the human mind and the
world; the principal characters then make their appearance, and after a
simulated quarrel, which is gracefully maintained, the whole end with the
most exhilarating mirth.
_As You Like It_ is a piece of an entirely different description. It
would be difficult to bring the contents within the compass of an ordinary
narrative; nothing takes place, or rather what is done is not so essential
as what is said; even what may be called the _dénouement_ is brought
about pretty arbitrarily. Whoever can perceive nothing but what can as it
were be counted on the fingers, will hardly be disposed to allow that it
has any plan at all. Banishment and flight have assembled together, in the
forest of Arden, a strange band: a Duke dethroned by his brother, who,
with the faithful companions of his misfortune, lives in the wilds on the
produce of the chase; two disguised Princesses, who love each other with a
sisterly affection; a witty court fool; lastly, the native inhabitants of
the forest, ideal and natural shepherds and shepherdesses. These lightly-
sketched figures form a motley and diversified train; we see always the
shady dark-green landscape in the background, and breathe in imagination
the fresh air of the forest. The hours are here measured by no clocks, no
regulated recurrence of duty or of toil: they flow on unnumbered by
voluntary occupation or fanciful idleness, to which, according to his
humour or disposition, every one yields himself, and this unrestrained
freedom compensates them all for the lost conveniences of life. One throws
himself down in solitary meditation under a tree, and indulges in
melancholy reflections on the changes of fortune, the falsehood of the
world, and the self-inflicted torments of social life; others make the
woods resound with social and festive songs, to the accompaniment of their
hunting-horns. Selfishness, envy, and ambition, have been left behind in
the city; of all the human passions, love alone has found an entrance into
this wilderness, where it dictates the same language alike to the simple
shepherd and the chivalrous youth, who hangs his love-ditty to a tree. A
prudish shepherdess falls at first sight in love with Rosalind, disguised
in men's apparel; the latter sharply reproaches her with her severity to
her poor lover, and the pain of refusal, which she feels from experience
in her own case, disposes her at length to compassion and requital. The
fool carries his philosophical contempt of external show, and his raillery
of the illusion of love so far, that he purposely seeks out the ugliest
and simplest country wench for a mistress. Throughout the whole picture,
it seems to be the poet's design to show that to call forth the poetry
which has its indwelling in nature and the human mind, nothing is wanted
but to throw off all artificial constraint, and restore both to mind and
nature their original liberty. In the very progress of the piece, the
dreamy carelessness of such an existence is sensibly expressed: it is even
alluded to by Shakspeare in the title. Whoever affects to be displeased,
if in this romantic forest the ceremonial of dramatic art is not duly
observed, ought in justice to be delivered over to the wise fool, to be
led gently out of it to some prosaical region.
_The Twelfth Night, or What you Will_, unites the entertainment of an
intrigue, contrived with great ingenuity, to a rich fund of comic
characters and situations, and the beauteous colours of an ethereal
poetry. In most of his plays, Shakspeare treats love more as an affair of
the imagination than the heart; but here he has taken particular care to
remind us that, in his language, the same word, _fancy_, signified
both fancy and love. The love of the music-enraptured Duke for Olivia is
not merely a fancy, but an imagination; Viola appears at first to fall
arbitrarily in love with the Duke, whom she serves as a page, although she
afterwards touches the tenderest strings of feeling; the proud Olivia is
captivated by the modest and insinuating messenger of the Duke, in whom
she is far from suspecting a disguised rival, and at last, by a second
deception, takes the brother for the sister. To these, which I might call
ideal follies, a contrast is formed by the naked absurdities to which the
entertaining tricks of the ludicrous persons of the piece give rise, under
the pretext also of love: the silly and profligate Knight's awkward
courtship of Olivia, and her declaration of love to Viola; the imagination
of the pedantic steward Malvolio, that his mistress is secretly in love
with him, which carries him so far that he is at last shut up as a
lunatic, and visited by the clown in the dress of a priest. These scenes
are admirably conceived, and as significant as they are laughable. If this
were really, as is asserted, Shakspeare's latest work, he must have
enjoyed to the last the same youthful elasticity of mind, and have carried
with him to the grave the undiminished fulness of his talents.
_The Merry Wives of Windsor_, though properly a comedy in the usual
acceptation of the word, we shall pass over at present, till we come to
speak of _Henry the Fourth_, that we may give our opinion of the character
of Falstaff in connexion.
_The Midsummer Night's Dream_ and _The Tempest_, may be in so far compared
together that in both the influence of a wonderful world of spirits is
interwoven with the turmoil of human passions and with the farcical
adventures of folly. _The Midsummer Night's Dream_ is certainly an earlier
production; but _The Tempest_, according to all appearance, was written in
Shakspeare's later days: hence most critics, on the supposition that the
poet must have continued to improve with increasing maturity of mind, have
honoured the last piece with a marked preference. I cannot, however,
altogether concur with them: the internal merit of these two works are, in
my opinion, pretty nearly balanced, and a predilection for the one or the
other can only be governed by personal taste. In profound and original
characterization the superiority of _The Tempest_ is obvious: as a whole
we must always admire the masterly skill which he has here displayed in
the economy of his means, and the dexterity with which he has disguised
his preparations,--the scaffoldings for the wonderful aërial structure. In
_The Midsummer Night's Dream_, on the other hand, there flows a luxuriant
vein of the boldest and most fantastical invention; the most extraordinary
combination of the most dissimilar ingredients seems to have been brought
about without effort by some ingenious and lucky accident, and the colours
are of such clear transparency that we think the whole of the variegated
fabric may be blown away with a breath. The fairy world here described
resembles those elegant pieces of arabesque, where little genii with
butterfly wings rise, half embodied, above the flower-cups. Twilight,
moonshine, dew, and spring perfumes, are the element of these tender
spirits; they assist nature in embroidering her carpet with green leaves,
many-coloured flowers, and glittering insects; in the human world they do
but make sport childishly and waywardly with their beneficent or noxious
influences. Their most violent rage dissolves in good-natured raillery;
their passions, stripped of all earthly matter, are merely an ideal dream.
To correspond with this, the loves of mortals are painted as a poetical
enchantment, which, by a contrary enchantment, may be immediately
suspended, and then renewed again. The different parts of the plot; the
wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta, Oberon and Titania's quarrel, the flight
of the two pair of lovers, and the theatrical manoeuvres of the mechanics,
are so lightly and happily interwoven that they seem necessary to each
other for the formation, of a whole. Oberon is desirous of relieving the
lovers from their perplexities, but greatly adds to them through the
mistakes of his minister, till he at last comes really to the aid of their
fruitless amorous pain, their inconstancy and jealousy, and restores
fidelity to its old rights. The extremes of fanciful and vulgar are united
when the enchanted Titania awakes and falls in love with a coarse mechanic
with an ass's head, who represents, or rather disfigures, the part of a
tragical lover. The droll wonder of Bottom's transformation is merely the
translation of a metaphor in its literal sense; but in his behaviour
during the tender homage of the Fairy Queen we have an amusing proof how
much the consciousness of such a head-dress heightens the effect of his
usual folly. Theseus and Hippolyta are, as it were, a splendid frame for
the picture; they take no part in the action, but surround it with a
stately pomp. The discourse of the hero and his Amazon, as they course
through the forest with their noisy hunting-train, works upon the
imagination like the fresh breath of morning, before which the shapes of
night disappear. Pyramus and Thisbe is not unmeaningly chosen as the
grotesque play within the play; it is exactly like the pathetic part of
the piece, a secret meeting of two lovers in the forest, and their
separation by an unfortunate accident, and closes the whole with the most
amusing parody.
_The Tempest_ has little action or progressive movement; the union of
Ferdinand and Miranda is settled at their first interview, and Prospero
merely throws apparent obstacles in their way; the shipwrecked band go
leisurely about the island; the attempts of Sebastian and Antonio on the
life of the King of Naples, and the plot of Caliban and the drunken
sailors against Prospero, are nothing but a feint, for we foresee that
they will be completely frustrated by the magical skill of the latter;
nothing remains therefore but the punishment of the guilty by dreadful
sights which harrow up their consciences, and then the discovery and final
reconciliation. Yet this want of movement is so admirably concealed by the
most varied display of the fascinations of poetry, and the exhilaration of
mirth, the details of the execution are so very attractive, that it
requires no small degree of attention to perceive that the
_dénouement_ is, in some degree, anticipated in the exposition. The
history of the loves of Ferdinand and Miranda, developed in a few short
scenes, is enchantingly beautiful: an affecting union of chivalrous
magnanimity on the one part, and on the other of the virgin openness of a
heart which, brought up far from the world on an uninhabited island, has
never learned to disguise its innocent movements. The wisdom of the
princely hermit Prospero has a magical and mysterious air; the
disagreeable impression left by the black falsehood of the two usurpers is
softened by the honest gossipping of the old and faithful Gonzalo;
Trinculo and Stephano, two good-for-nothing drunkards, find a worthy
associate in Caliban; and Ariel hovers sweetly over the whole as the
personified genius of the wonderful fable.
Caliban has become a by-word as the strange creation of a poetical
imagination. A mixture of gnome and savage, half daemon, half brute, in
his behaviour we perceive at once the traces of his native disposition,
and the influence of Prospero's education. The latter could only unfold
his understanding, without, in the slightest degree, taming his rooted
malignity: it is as if the use of reason and human speech were
communicated to an awkward ape. In inclination Caliban is maliciously
cowardly, false, and base; and yet he is essentially different from the
vulgar knaves of a civilized world, as portrayed occasionally by
Shakspeare. He is rude, but not vulgar; he never falls into the prosaic
and low familiarity of his drunken associates, for he is, in his way, a
poetical being; he always speaks in verse. He has picked up every thing
dissonant and thorny in language to compose out of it a vocabulary of his
own; and of the whole variety of nature, the hateful, repulsive, and
pettily deformed, have alone been impressed on his imagination. The
magical world of spirits, which the staff of Prospero has assembled on the
island, casts merely a faint reflection into his mind, as a ray of light
which falls into a dark cave, incapable of communicating to it either heat
or illumination, serves merely to set in motion the poisonous vapours. The
delineation of this monster is throughout inconceivably consistent and
profound, and, notwithstanding its hatefulness, by no means hurtful to our
feelings, as the honour of human nature is left untouched.
In the zephyr-like Ariel the image of air is not to be mistaken, his name
even bears an allusion to it; as, on the other hand Caliban signifies the
heavy element of earth. Yet they are neither of them simple, allegorical
personifications but beings individually determined. In general we find in
_The Midsummer Night's Dream_, in _The Tempest_, in the magical part of
_Macbeth_, and wherever Shakspeare avails himself of the popular belief in
the invisible presence of spirits, and the possibility of coming in
contact with them, a profound view of the inward life of nature and her
mysterious springs, which, it is true, can never be altogether unknown to
the genuine poet, as poetry is altogether incompatible with mechanical
physics, but which few have possessed in an equal degree with Dante and
himself.
_The Winter's Tale_ is as appropriately named as _The Midsummer Night's
Dream_. It is one of those tales which are peculiarly calculated to
beguile the dreary leisure of a long winter evening, and are even
attractive and intelligible to childhood, while animated by fervent
truth in the delineation of character and passion, and invested with the
embellishments of poetry lowering itself, as it were, to the simplicity of
the subject, they transport even manhood back to the golden age of
imagination. The calculation of probabilities has nothing to do with such
wonderful and fleeting adventures, when all end at last in universal joy;
and, accordingly, Shakspeare has here taken the greatest license of
anachronisms and geographical errors; not to mention other incongruities,
he opens a free navigation between Sicily and Bohemia, makes Giulio Romano
the contemporary of the Delphic oracle. The piece divides itself in some
degree into two plays. Leontes becomes suddenly jealous of his royal
bosom-friend Polyxenes, who is on a visit to his court; makes an attempt
on his life, from which Polyxenes only saves himself by a clandestine
flight;--Hermione, suspected of infidelity, is thrown into prison, and the
daughter which she there brings into the world is exposed on a remote
coast;--the accused Queen, declared innocent by the oracle, on learning
that her infant son has pined to death on her account, falls down in a
swoon, and is mourned as dead by her husband, who becomes sensible, when
too late, of his error: all this makes up the three first acts. The last
two are separated from these by a chasm of sixteen years; but the
foregoing tragical catastrophe was only apparent, and this serves to
connect the two parts. The Princess, who has been exposed on the coast of
Polyxenes's kingdom, grows up among low shepherds; but her tender beauty,
her noble manners, and elevation of sentiment, bespeak her descent; the
Crown Prince Florizel, in the course of his hawking, falls in with her,
becomes enamoured, and courts her in the disguise of a shepherd; at a
rural entertainment Polyxenes discovers their attachment, and breaks out
into a violent rage; the two lovers seek refuge from his persecutions at
the court of Leontes in Sicily, where the discovery and general
reconciliation take place. Lastly, when Leontes beholds, as he imagines,
the statue of his lost wife, it descends from the niche: it is she
herself, the still living Hermione, who has kept herself so long
concealed; and the piece ends with universal rejoicing. The jealousy of
Leontes is not, like that of Othello, developed through all its causes,
symptoms and variations; it is brought forward at once full grown and
mature, and is portrayed as a distempered frenzy. It is a passion whose
effects the spectator is more concerned with than with its origin, and
which does not produce the catastrophe, but merely ties the knot of the
piece. In fact, the poet might perhaps have wished slightly to indicate
that Hermione, though virtuous, was too warm in her efforts to please
Polyxenes; and it appears as if this germ of inclination first attained
its proper maturity in their children. Nothing can be more fresh and
youthful, nothing at once so ideally pastoral and princely as the love of
Florizel and Perdita; of the prince, whom love converts into a voluntary
shepherd; and the princess, who betrays her exalted origin without knowing
it, and in whose hands nosegays become crowns. Shakspeare has never
hesitated to place ideal poetry side by side of the most vulgar prose: and
in the world of reality also this is generally the case. Perdita's foster-
father and his son are both made simple boors, that we may the more
distinctly see how all that ennobles her belongs only to herself.
Autolycus, the merry pedlar and pickpocket, so inimitably portrayed, is
necessary to complete the rustic feast, which Perdita on her part seems to
render meet for an assemblage of gods in disguise.
_Cymbeline_ is also one of Shakspeare's most wonderful compositions.
He has here combined a novel of Boccacio's with traditionary tales of the
ancient Britons reaching back to the times of the first Roman Emperors,
and he has contrived, by the most gentle transitions, to blend together
into one harmonious whole the social manners of the newest times with
olden heroic deeds, and even with appearances of the gods.
In the character of Imogen no one feature of female excellence is omitted:
her chaste tenderness, her softness, and her virgin pride, her boundless
resignation, and her magnanimity towards her mistaken husband, by whom she
is unjustly persecuted, her adventures in disguise, her apparent death,
and her recovery, form altogether a picture equally tender and affecting.
The two Princes, Guiderius and Arviragus, both educated in the wilds, form
a noble contrast to Miranda and Perdita. Shakspeare is fond of showing the
superiority of the natural over the artificial. Over the art which
enriches nature, he somewhere says, there is a higher art created by
nature herself. [Footnote: The passage in Shakspeare here quoted, taken
with the context, will not bear the construction of the author. The whole
runs thus:--
Yet nature is made better by no mean,
But nature makes that mean: so, o'er 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.
_Winter's Tale_, Act iv. sc. 3.
Shakspeare does not here mean to institute a comparison between the
relative excellency of that which is innate and that which we owe to
instruction; but merely says, that the instruction or art is itself a part
of nature. The speech is addressed by Polyxenes to Perdita, to persuade
her that the changes effected in the appearance of flowers by the art of
the gardener are not to be accounted unnatural; and the expression of
_making conceive a bark of baser kind by bud of nobler race_ (i.e.,
engrafting), would rather lead to the inference, that the mind derived its
chief value from the influence of culture.--TRANS.] As Miranda's
unconscious and unstudied sweetness is more pleasing than those charms
which endeavour to captivate us by the brilliant embellishments of a
refined cultivation, so in these two youths, to whom the chase has given
vigour and hardihood, but who are ignorant of their high destination, and
have been brought up apart from human society, we are equally enchanted by
a _naïve_ heroism which leads them to anticipate and to dream of
deeds of valour, till an occasion is offered which they are irresistibly
compelled to embrace. When Imogen comes in disguise to their cave; when,
with all the innocence of childhood, Guiderius and Arviragus form an
impassioned friendship for the tender boy, in whom they neither suspect a
female nor their own sister; when, on their return from the chase, they
find her dead, then "sing her to the ground," and cover the grave with
flowers:--these scenes might give to the most deadened imagination a new
life for poetry. If a tragical event is only apparent, in such case,
whether the spectators are already aware of it or ought merely to suspect
it, Shakspeare always knows how to mitigate the impression without
weakening it: he makes the mourning musical, that it may gain in solemnity
what it loses in seriousness. With respect to the other parts, the wise
and vigorous Belarius, who after long living as a hermit again becomes a
hero, is a venerable figure; the Italian Iachimo's ready dissimulation and
quick presence of mind is quite suitable to the bold treachery which he
plays; Cymbeline, the father of Imogen, and even her husband Posthumus,
during the first half of the piece, are somewhat sacrificed, but this
could not be otherwise; the false and wicked Queen is merely an instrument
of the plot; she and her stupid son Cloton (the only comic part in the
piece) whose rude arrogance is portrayed with much humour, are, before the
conclusion, got rid of by merited punishment. As for the heroical part of
the fable, the war between the Romans and Britons, which brings on the
dénouement, the poet in the extent of his plan had so little room to
spare, that he merely endeavours to represent it as a mute procession. But
to the last scene, where all the numerous threads of the knot are untied,
he has again given its full development, that he might collect together
into one focus the scattered impressions of the whole. This example and
many others are a sufficient refutation of Johnson's assertion, that
Shakspeare usually hurries over the conclusion of his pieces. Rather does
he, from a desire to satisfy the feelings, introduce a great deal which,
so far as the understanding of the _dénouement_ requires, might in a
strict sense be justly spared: our modern spectators are much more
impatient to see the curtain drop, when there is nothing more to be
determined, than those of his day could have been.