Criticisms on Shakspeare's Tragedies.
_Romeo and Juliet_, and _Othello_, differ from most of the pieces which we
have hitherto examined, neither in the ingredients of the composition, nor
in the manner of treating them: it is merely the direction of the whole
that gives them the stamp of Tragedy. _Romeo and Juliet_ is a picture of
love and its pitiable fate, in a world whose atmosphere is too sharp for
this the tenderest blossom of human life. Two beings created for each
other feel mutual love at the first glance; every consideration disappears
before the irresistible impulse to live in one another; under
circumstances hostile in the highest degree to their union, they unite
themselves by a secret marriage, relying simply on the protection of an
invisible power. Untoward incidents following in rapid succession, their
heroic constancy is within a few days put to the proof, till, forcibly
separated from each other, by a voluntary death they are united in the
grave to meet again in another world. All this is to be found in the
beautiful story which Shakspeare has not invented, and which, however
simply told, will always excite a tender sympathy: but it was reserved for
Shakspeare to join in one ideal picture purity of heart with warmth of
imagination; sweetness and dignity of manners with passionate intensity of
feeling. Under his handling, it has become a glorious song of praise on
that inexpressible feeling which ennobles the soul and gives to it
its highest sublimity, and which elevates even the senses into soul,
while at the same time it is a melancholy elegy on its inherent and
imparted frailty; it is at once the apotheosis and the obsequies of love.
It appears here a heavenly spark, that, as it descends to the earth, is
converted into the lightning flash, which almost in the same moment sets
on fire and consumes the mortal being on whom it lights. All that is most
intoxicating in the odour of a southern spring,--all that is languishing
in the song of the nightingale, or voluptuous in the first opening of the
rose, all alike breathe forth from this poem. But even more rapidly than
the earliest blossoms of youth and beauty decay, does it from the first
timidly-bold declaration and modest return of love hurry on to the most
unlimited passion, to an irrevocable union; and then hastens, amidst
alternating storms of rapture and despair, to the fate of the two lovers,
who yet appear enviable in their hard lot, for their love survives them,
and by their death they have obtained an endless triumph over every
separating power. The sweetest and the bitterest love and hatred, festive
rejoicings and dark forebodings, tender embraces and sepulchral horrors,
the fulness of life and self-annihilation, are here all brought close to
each other; and yet these contrasts are so blended into a unity of
impression, that the echo which the whole leaves behind in the mind
resembles a single but endless sigh.
The excellent dramatic arrangement, the significance of every character in
its place, the judicious selection of all the circumstances, even the most
minute, have already been dwelt upon in detail. I shall only request
attention to a trait which may serve for an example of the distance to
which Shakspeare goes back to lay the preparatory foundation. The most
striking and perhaps incredible circumstance in the whole story is the
liquor given by the Monk to Julia, by which she for a number of hours not
merely sleeps, but fully resembles a corpse, without however receiving the
least injury. How does the poet dispose us to believe that Father Lorenzo
possesses such a secret?--At his first appearance he exhibits him in a
garden, where he is collecting herbs and descanting on their wonderful
virtues. The discourse of the pious old man is full of deep meaning: he
sees everywhere in nature emblems of the moral world; the same wisdom with
which he looks through her has also made him master of the human heart. In
this manner a circumstance of an ungrateful appearance, has become the
source of a great beauty.
If _Romeo and Juliet_ shines with the colours of the dawn of morning,
but a dawn whose purple clouds already announce the thunder of a sultry
day, _Othello_ is, on the other hand, a strongly shaded picture: we
might call it a tragical Rembrandt. What a fortunate mistake that the Moor
(under which name in the original novel, a baptized Saracen of the
Northern coast of Africa was unquestionably meant), has been made by
Shakspeare in every respect a negro! We recognize in Othello the wild
nature of that glowing zone which generates the most ravenous beasts of
prey and the most deadly poisons, tamed only in appearance by the desire
of fame, by foreign laws of honour, and by nobler and milder manners. His
jealousy is not the jealousy of the heart, which is compatible with the
tenderest feeling and adoration of the beloved object; it is of that
sensual kind which, in burning climes, has given birth to the disgraceful
confinement of women and many other unnatural usages. A drop of this
poison flows in his veins, and sets his whole blood in the wildest
ferment. The Moor _seems_ noble, frank, confiding, grateful for the
love shown him; and he is all this, and, moreover, a hero who spurns at
danger, a worthy leader of an army, a faithful servant of the state; but
the mere physical force of passion puts to flight in one moment all his
acquired and mere habitual virtues, and gives the upper hand to the savage
over the moral man. This tyranny of the blood over the will betrays itself
even in the expression of his desire of revenge upon Cassio. In his
repentance, a genuine tenderness for his murdered wife, and in the
presence of the damning evidence of his deed, the painful feeling of
annihilated honour at last bursts forth; and in the midst of these painful
emotions he assails himself with the rage wherewith a despot punishes a
runaway slave. He suffers as a double man; at once in the higher and the
lower sphere into which his being was divided.--While the Moor bears the
nightly colour of suspicion and deceit only on his visage, Iago is black
within. He haunts Othello like his evil genius, and with his light (and
therefore the more dangerous,) insinuations, he leaves him no rest; it is
as if by means of an unfortunate affinity, founded however in nature, this
influence was by necessity more powerful over him than the voice of his
good angel Desdemona. A more artful villain than this Iago was never
portrayed; he spreads his nets with a skill which nothing can escape. The
repugnance inspired by his aims becomes tolerable from the attention of
the spectators being directed to his means: these furnish endless
employment to the understanding. Cool, discontented, and morose, arrogant
where he dare be so, but humble and insinuating when it suits his
purposes, he is a complete master in the art of dissimulation; accessible
only to selfish emotions, he is thoroughly skilled in rousing the passions
of others, and of availing himself of every opening which they give him:
he is as excellent an observer of men as any one can be who is
unacquainted with higher motives of action from his own experience; there
is always some truth in his malicious observations on them. He does not
merely pretend an obdurate incredulity as to the virtue of women, he
actually entertains it; and this, too, falls in with his whole way of
thinking, and makes him the more fit for the execution of his purpose. As
in every thing he sees merely the hateful side, he dissolves in the rudest
manner the charm which the imagination casts over the relation between the
two sexes: he does so for the purpose of revolting Othello's senses, whose
heart otherwise might easily have convinced him of Desdemona's innocence.
This must serve as an excuse for the numerous expressions in the speeches
of Iago from which modesty shrinks. If Shakespeare had written in our days
he would not perhaps have dared to hazard them; and yet this must
certainly have greatly injured the truth of his picture. Desdemona is a
sacrifice without blemish. She is not, it is true, a high ideal
representation of sweetness and enthusiastic passion like Juliet; full of
simplicity, softness, and humility, and so innocent, that she can hardly
form to herself an idea of the possibility of infidelity, she seems
calculated to make the most yielding and tenderest of wives. The female
propensity wholly to resign itself to a foreign destiny has led her into
the only fault of her life, that of marrying without her father's consent.
Her choice seems wrong; and yet she has been gained over to Othello by
that which induces the female to honour in man her protector and guide,--
admiration of his determined heroism, and compassion for the sufferings
which he had undergone. With great art it is so contrived, that from the
very circumstance that the possibility of a suspicion of her own purity of
motive never once enters her mind, she is the less reserved in her
solicitations for Cassio, and thereby does but heighten more and more the
jealousy of Othello. To throw out still more clearly the angelic purity of
Desdemona, Shakspeare has in Emilia associated with her a companion of
doubtful virtue. From the sinful levity of this woman it is also
conceivable that she should not confess the abstraction of the
handkerchief when Othello violently demands it back: this would otherwise
be the circumstance in the whole piece the most difficult to justify.
Cassio is portrayed exactly as he ought to be to excite suspicion without
actual guilt,--amiable and nobly disposed, but easily seduced. The public
events of the first two acts show us Othello in his most glorious aspect,
as the support of Venice and the terror of the Turks: they serve to
withdraw the story from the mere domestic circle, just as this is done in
_Romeo and Juliet_ by the dissensions between the houses of Montague
and Capulet. No eloquence is capable of painting the overwhelming force of
the catastrophe in _Othello_,--the pressure of feelings which measure
out in a moment the abysses of eternity.
_Hamlet_ is singular in its kind: a tragedy of thought inspired by
continual and never-satisfied meditation on human destiny and the dark
perplexity of the events of this world, and calculated to call forth the
very same meditation in the minds of the spectators. This enigmatical work
resembles those irrational equations in which a fraction of unknown
magnitude always remains, that will in no way admit of solution. Much has
been said, much written, on this piece, and yet no thinking head who anew
expresses himself on it, will (in his view of the connexion and the
signification of all the parts) entirely coincide with his predecessors.
What naturally most astonishes us, is the fact that with such hidden
purposes, with a foundation laid in such unfathomable depth, the whole
should, at a first view, exhibit an extremely popular appearance. The
dread appearance of the Ghost takes possession of the mind and the
imagination almost at the very commencement; then the play within the
play, in which, as in a glass, we see reflected the crime, whose
fruitlessly attempted punishment constitutes the subject-matter of the
piece; the alarm with which it fills the King; Hamlet's pretended and
Ophelia's real madness; her death and burial; the meeting of Hamlet and
Laertes at her grave; their combat, and the grand determination; lastly,
the appearance of the young hero Fortinbras, who, with warlike pomp, pays
the last honours to an extinct family of kings; the interspersion of comic
characteristic scenes with Polonius, the courtiers, and the grave-diggers,
which have all of them their signification,--all this fills the stage with
an animated and varied movement. The only circumstance from which this
piece might be judged to be less theatrical than other tragedies of
Shakspeare is, that in the last scenes the main action either stands still
or appears to retrograde. This, however, was inevitable, and lay in the
nature of the subject. The whole is intended to show that a calculating
consideration, which exhausts all the relations and possible consequences
of a deed, must cripple the power of acting; as Hamlet himself expresses
it:--
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought;
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
With respect to Hamlet's character: I cannot, as I understand the poet's
views, pronounce altogether so favourable a sentence upon it as Goethe
does. He is, it is true, of a highly cultivated mind, a prince of royal
manners, endowed with the finest sense of propriety, susceptible of noble
ambition, and open in the highest degree to an enthusiastic admiration of
that excellence in others of which he himself is deficient. He acts the
part of madness with unrivalled power, convincing the persons who are sent
to examine into his supposed loss of reason, merely by telling them
unwelcome truths, and rallying them with the most caustic wit. But in the
resolutions which he so often embraces and always leaves unexecuted, his
weakness is too apparent: he does himself only justice when he implies
that there is no greater dissimilarity than between himself and Hercules.
He is not solely impelled by necessity to artifice and dissimulation, he
has a natural inclination for crooked ways; he is a hypocrite towards
himself; his far-fetched scruples are often mere pretexts to cover his
want of determination: thoughts, as he says on a different occasion, which
have
----but one part wisdom
And ever three parts coward.-----
He has been chiefly condemned both for his harshness in repulsing the love
of Ophelia, which he himself had cherished, and for his insensibility at
her death. But he is too much overwhelmed with his own sorrow to have any
compassion to spare for others; besides his outward indifference gives us
by no means the measure of his internal perturbation. On the other hand,
we evidently perceive in him a malicious joy, when he has succeeded in
getting rid of his enemies, more through necessity and accident, which
alone are able to impel him to quick and decisive measures, than by the
merit of his own courage, as he himself confesses after the murder of
Polonius, and with respect to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Hamlet has no
firm belief either in himself or in anything else: from expressions of
religious confidence he passes over to sceptical doubts; he believes in
the Ghost of his father as long as he sees it, but as soon as it has
disappeared, it appears to him almost in the light of a deception.
[Footnote: It has been censured as a contradiction, that Hamlet in the
soliloquy on self-murder should say,
The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns-----
For was not the Ghost a returned traveller? Shakspeare, however, purposely
wished to show, that Hamlet could not fix himself in any conviction of any
kind whatever.] He has even gone so far as to say, "there is nothing
either good or bad, but thinking makes it so;" with him the poet loses
himself here in labyrinths of thought, in which neither end nor beginning
is discoverable. The stars themselves, from the course of events, afford
no answer to the question so urgently proposed to them. A voice from
another world, commissioned it would appear, by heaven, demands vengeance
for a monstrous enormity, and the demand remains without effect; the
criminals are at last punished, but, as it were, by an accidental blow,
and not in the solemn way requisite to convey to the world a warning
example of justice; irresolute foresight, cunning treachery, and impetuous
rage, hurry on to a common destruction; the less guilty and the innocent
are equally involved in the general ruin. The destiny of humanity is there
exhibited as a gigantic Sphinx, which threatens to precipitate into the
abyss of scepticism all who are unable to solve her dreadful enigmas.
As one example of the many niceties of Shakspeare which have never been
understood, I may allude to the style in which the player's speech about
Hecuba is conceived. It has been the subject of much controversy among the
commentators, whether this was borrowed by Shakspeare from himself or from
another, and whether, in the praise of the piece of which it is supposed
to be a part, he was speaking seriously, or merely meant to ridicule the
tragical bombast of his contemporaries. It seems never to have occurred to
them that this speech must not be judged of by itself, but in connexion
with the place where it is introduced. To distinguish it in the play
itself as dramatic poetry, it was necessary that it should rise above the
dignified poetry of the former in the same proportion that generally
theatrical elevation soars above simple nature. Hence Shakspeare has
composed the play in Hamlet altogether in sententious rhymes full of
antitheses. But this solemn and measured tone did not suit a speech in
which violent emotion ought to prevail, and the poet had no other
expedient than the one of which he made choice: overcharging the pathos.
The language of the speech in question is certainly falsely emphatical;
but yet this fault is so mixed up with true grandeur, that a player
practised in artificially calling forth in himself the emotion he is
imitating, may certainly be carried away by it. Besides, it will hardly be
believed that Shakspeare knew so little of his art, as not to be aware
that a tragedy in which Aeneas had to make a lengthy epic relation of a
transaction that happened so long before as the destruction of Troy, could
neither be dramatical nor theatrical.
Of _Macbeth_ I have already spoken once in passing, and who could exhaust
the praises of this sublime work? Since _The Eumenides_ of Aeschylus,
nothing so grand and terrible has ever been written. The witches are not,
it is true, divine Eumenides, and are not intended to be: they are ignoble
and vulgar instruments of hell. A German poet, therefore, very ill
understood their meaning, when he transformed them into mongrel beings, a
mixture of fates, furies, and enchantresses, and clothed them with tragic
dignity. Let no man venture to lay hand on Shakspeare's works thinking to
improve anything essential: he will be sure to punish himself. The bad is
radically odious, and to endeavour in any manner to ennoble it, is to
violate the laws of propriety. Hence, in my opinion, Dante, and even
Tasso, have been much more successful in their portraiture of daemons than
Milton. Whether the age of Shakspeare still believed in ghosts and
witches, is a matter of perfect indifference for the justification of the
use which in _Hamlet_ and _Macbeth_ he has made of pre-existing
traditions.
No superstition can be widely diffused without having a foundation in
human nature: on this the poet builds; he calls up from their hidden
abysses that dread of the unknown, that presage of a dark side of nature,
and a world of spirits, which philosophy now imagines it has altogether
exploded. In this manner he is in some degree both the portrayer and the
philosopher of superstition; that is, not the philosopher who denies and
turns it into ridicule, but, what is still more difficult, who distinctly
exhibits its origin in apparently irrational and yet natural opinions. But
when he ventures to make arbitrary changes in these popular traditions, he
altogether forfeits his right to them, and merely holds up his own idle
fancies to our ridicule. Shakspeare's picture of the witches is truly
magical: in the short scenes where they enter, he has created for them a
peculiar language, which, although composed of the usual elements, still
seems to be a collection of formulae of incantation. The sound of the
words, the accumulation of rhymes, and the rhythmus of the verse, form, as
it were, the hollow music of a dreary witch-dance. He has been abused for
using the names of disgusting objects; but he who fancies the kettle of
the witches can be made effective with agreeable aromatics, is as wise as
those who desire that hell should sincerely and honestly give good advice.
These repulsive things, from which the imagination shrinks, are here
emblems of the hostile powers which operate in nature; and the repugnance
of our senses is outweighed by the mental horror. With one another the
witches discourse like women of the very lowest class; for this was the
class to which witches were ordinarily supposed to belong: when, however,
they address Macbeth they assume a loftier tone: their predictions, which
they either themselves pronounce, or allow their apparitions to deliver,
have all the obscure brevity, the majestic solemnity of oracles.
We here see that the witches are merely instruments; they are governed by
an invisible spirit, or the operation of such great and dreadful events
would be above their sphere. With what intent did Shakspeare assign the
same place to them in his play, which they occupy in the history of
Macbeth as related in the old chronicles? A monstrous crime is committed:
Duncan, a venerable old man, and the best of kings, is, in defenceless
sleep, under the hospitable roof, murdered by his subject, whom he has
loaded with honours and rewards. Natural motives alone seem inadequate, or
the perpetrator must have been portrayed as a hardened villain. Shakspeare
wished to exhibit a more sublime picture: an ambitious but noble hero,
yielding to a deep-laid hellish temptation; and in whom all the crimes to
which, in order to secure the fruits of his first crime, he is impelled by
necessity, cannot altogether eradicate the stamp of native heroism. He
has, therefore, given a threefold division to the guilt of that crime. The
first idea comes from that being whose whole activity is guided by a lust
of wickedness. The weird sisters surprise Macbeth in the moment of
intoxication of victory, when his love of glory has been gratified; they
cheat his eyes by exhibiting to him as the work of fate what in reality
can only be accomplished by his own deed, and gain credence for all their
words by the immediate fulfilment of the first prediction. The opportunity
of murdering the King immediately offers; the wife of Macbeth conjures him
not to let it slip; she urges him on with a fiery eloquence, which has at
command all those sophisms that serve to throw a false splendour over
crime. Little more than the mere execution falls to the share of Macbeth;
he is driven into it, as it were, in a tumult of fascination. Repentance
immediately follows, nay, even precedes the deed, and the stings of
conscience leave him rest neither night nor day. But he is now fairly
entangled in the snares of hell; truly frightful is it to behold that same
Macbeth, who once as a warrior could spurn at death, now that he dreads
the prospect of the life to come [Footnote: We'd jump the life to come.],
clinging with growing anxiety to his earthly existence the more miserable
it becomes, and pitilessly removing out of the way whatever to his dark
and suspicious mind seems to threaten danger. However much we may abhor
his actions, we cannot altogether refuse to compassionate the state of his
mind; we lament the ruin of so many noble qualities, and even in his last
defence we are compelled to admire the struggle of a brave will with a
cowardly conscience. We might believe that we witness in this tragedy the
over-ruling destiny of the ancients represented in perfect accordance with
their ideas: the whole originates in a supernatural influence, to which
the subsequent events seem inevitably linked. Moreover, we even find here
the same ambiguous oracles which, by their literal fulfilment, deceive
those who confide in them. Yet it may be easily shown that the poet has,
in his work, displayed more enlightened views. He wishes to show that the
conflict of good and evil in this world can only take place by the
permission of Providence, which converts the curse that individual mortals
draw down on their heads into a blessing to others. An accurate scale is
followed in the retaliation. Lady Macbeth, who of all the human
participators in the king's murder is the most guilty, is thrown by the
terrors of her conscience into a state of incurable bodily and mental
disease; she dies, unlamented by her husband, with all the symptoms of
reprobation. Macbeth is still found worthy to die the death of a hero on
the field of battle. The noble Macduff is allowed the satisfaction of
saving his country by punishing with his own hand the tyrant who had
murdered his wife and children. Banquo, by an early death, atones for the
ambitious curiosity which prompted the wish to know his glorious
descendants, as he thereby has roused Macbeth's jealousy; but he preserved
his mind pure from the evil suggestions of the witches: his name is
blessed in his race, destined to enjoy for a long succession of ages that
royal dignity which Macbeth could only hold for his own life. In the
progress of the action, this piece is altogether the reverse of
_Hamlet_: it strides forward with amazing rapidity, from the first
catastrophe (for Duncan's murder may be called a catastrophe) to the last.
"Thought, and done!" is the general motto; for as Macbeth says,
The flighty purpose never is o'ertook,
Unless the deed go with it.
In every feature we see an energetic heroic age, in the hardy North which
steels every nerve. The precise duration of the action cannot be
ascertained,--years perhaps, according to the story; but we know that to
the imagination the most crowded time appears always the shortest. Here we
can hardly conceive how so very much could ever have been compressed into
so narrow a space; not merely external events,--the very inmost recesses
in the minds of the dramatic personages are laid open to us. It is as if
the drags were taken from the wheels of time, and they rolled along
without interruption in their descent. Nothing can equal this picture in
its power to excite terror. We need only allude to the circumstances
attending the murder of Duncan, the dagger that hovers before the eyes of
Macbeth, the vision of Banquo at the feast, the madness of Lady Macbeth;
what can possibly be said on the subject that will not rather weaken the
impression they naturally leave? Such scenes stand alone, and are to be
found only in this poet; otherwise the tragic muse might exchange her mask
for the _head of Medusa_.
I wish merely to point out as a secondary circumstance the prudent
dexterity of Shakspeare, who could still contrive to flatter a king by a
work in every part of whose plan nevertheless the poetical views are
evident. James the First drew his lineage from Banquo; he was the first
who united the threefold sceptre of England, Scotland, and Ireland: this
is foreshown in the magical vision, when a long series of glorious
successors is promised to Banquo. Even the gift of the English kings to
heal certain maladies by the touch, which James pretended to have
inherited from Edward [Footnote: The naming of Edward the Confessor gives
us at the same time the epoch in which these historically accredited
transactions are made to take place. The ruins of Macbeth's palace are yet
standing at Inverness; the present Earls of Fife are the descendants of
the valiant Macduff, and down to the union of Scotland with England they
were in the enjoyment of peculiar privileges for their services to the
crown.] the Confessor, and on which he set a great value, is brought in
very naturally.--With such occasional matters we may well allow ourselves
to be pleased without fearing from them any danger to poetry: by similar
allusions Aeschylus endeavoured to recommend the Areopagus to his fellow-
citizens, and Sophocles to celebrate the glory of Athens.
As in _Macbeth_ terror reaches its utmost height, in _King Lear_
the science of compassion is exhausted. The principal characters here are
not those who act, but those who suffer. We have not in this, as in most
tragedies, the picture of a calamity in which the sudden blows of fate
seem still to honour the head which they strike, and where the loss is
always accompanied by some flattering consolation in the memory of the
former possession; but a fall from the highest elevation into the deepest
abyss of misery, where humanity is stripped of all external and internal
advantages, and given up a prey to naked helplessness. The threefold
dignity of a king, an old man, and a father, is dishonoured by the cruel
ingratitude of his unnatural daughters; the old Lear, who out of a foolish
tenderness has given away every thing, is driven out to the world a
wandering beggar; the childish imbecility to which he was fast advancing
changes into the wildest insanity, and when he is rescued from the
disgraceful destitution to which he was abandoned, it is too late: the
kind consolations of filial care and attention and of true friendship are
now lost on him; his bodily and mental powers are destroyed beyond all
hope of recovery, and all that now remains to him of life is the
capability of loving and suffering beyond measure. What a picture we have
in the meeting of Lear and Edgar in a tempestuous night and in a wretched
hovel! The youthful Edgar has, by the wicked arts of his brother, and
through his father's blindness, fallen, as the old Lear, from the rank to
which his birth entitled him; and, as the only means of escaping further
persecution, is reduced to assume the disguise of a beggar tormented by
evil spirits. The King's fool, notwithstanding the voluntary degradation
which is implied in his situation, is, after Kent, Lear's most faithful
associate, his wisest counsellor. This good-hearted fool clothes reason
with the livery of his motley garb; the high-born beggar acts the part of
insanity; and both, were they even in reality what they seem, would still
be enviable in comparison with the King, who feels that the violence of
his grief threatens to overpower his reason. The meeting of Edgar with the
blinded Gloster is equally heart-rending; nothing can be more affecting
than to see the ejected son become the father's guide, and the good angel,
who under the disguise of insanity, saves him by an ingenious and pious
fraud from the horror and despair of self-murder. But who can possibly
enumerate all the different combinations and situations by which our minds
are here as it were stormed by the poet? Respecting the structure of the
whole I will only make one observation. The story of Lear and his
daughters was left by Shakspeare exactly as he found it in a fabulous
tradition, with all the features characteristical of the simplicity of old
times. But in that tradition there is not the slightest trace of the story
of Gloster and his sons, which was derived by Shakspeare from another
source. The incorporation of the two stories has been censured as
destructive of the unity of action. But whatever contributes to the
intrigue or the _dénouement_ must always possess unity. And with what
ingenuity and skill are the two main parts of the composition dovetailed
into one another! The pity felt by Gloster for the fate of Lear becomes
the means which enables his son Edmund to effect his complete destruction,
and affords the outcast Edgar an opportunity of being the saviour of his
father. On the other hand, Edmund is active in the cause of Regan and
Gonerill, and the criminal passion which they both entertain for him
induces them to execute justice on each other and on themselves. The laws
of the drama have therefore been sufficiently complied with; but that is
the least: it is the very combination which constitutes the sublime beauty
of the work. The two cases resembles each other in the main: an infatuated
father is blind towards his well-disposed child, and the unnatural
children, whom he prefers, requite him by the ruin of all his happiness.
But all the circumstances are so different, that these stories, while they
each make a correspondent impression on the heart, form a complete
contrast for the imagination. Were Lear alone to suffer from his
daughters, the impression would be limited to the powerful compassion felt
by us for his private misfortune. But two such unheard-of examples taking
place at the same time have the appearance of a great commotion in the
moral world: the picture becomes gigantic, and fills us with such alarm as
we should entertain at the idea that the heavenly bodies might one day
fall from their appointed orbits. To save in some degree the honour of
human nature, Shakspeare never wishes his spectators to forget that the
story takes place in a dreary and barbarous age: he lays particular stress
on the circumstance that the Britons of that day were still heathens,
although he has not made all the remaining circumstances to coincide
learnedly with the time which he has chosen. From this point of view we
must judge of many coarsenesses in expression and manners; for instance,
the immodest manner in which Gloster acknowledges his bastard, Kent's
quarrel with the Steward, and more especially the cruelty personally
inflicted on Gloster by the Duke of Cornwall. Even the virtue of the
honest Kent bears the stamp of an iron age, in which the good and the bad
display the same uncontrollable energy. Great qualities have not been
superfluously assigned to the King; the poet could command our sympathy
for his situation, without concealing what he had done to bring himself
into it. Lear is choleric, overbearing, and almost childish from age, when
he drives out his youngest daughter because she will not join in the
hypocritical exaggerations of her sisters. But he has a warm and
affectionate heart, which is susceptible of the most fervent gratitude;
and even rays of a high and kingly disposition burst forth from the
eclipse of his understanding. Of Cordelia's heavenly beauty of soul,
painted in so few words, I will not venture to speak; she can only be
named in the same breath with Antigone. Her death has been thought too
cruel; and in England the piece is in acting so far altered that she
remains victorious and happy. I must own, I cannot conceive what ideas of
art and dramatic connexion those persons have who suppose that we can at
pleasure tack a double conclusion to a tragedy; a melancholy one for hard-
hearted spectators, and a happy one for souls of a softer mould. After
surviving so many sufferings, Lear can only die; and what more truly
tragic end for him than to die from grief for the death of Cordelia? and
if he is also to be saved and to pass the remainder of his days in
happiness, the whole loses its signification. According to Shakspeare's
plan the guilty, it is true, are all punished, for wickedness destroys
itself; but the virtues that would bring help and succour are everywhere
too late, or overmatched by the cunning activity of malice. The persons of
this drama have only such a faint belief in Providence as heathens may be
supposed to have; and the poet here wishes to show us that this belief
requires a wider range than the dark pilgrimage on earth to be established
in full extent.