THE Shakesperean world is impressed, as a whole, with an unmistakable
joy in healthy living. This tells habitually as a pervading spirit, a
contagious temper, not as a creed put forward, or an example set up.
It is as clear in the presentment of Falstaff or Iago, as of Horatio
or Imogen. And nowhere is it clearer than in his handling of the
relations between men and women. For here Shakespeare’s preferences and
repugnances are unusually transparent; what pleased him in the ways of
lovers and wedded folks he drew again and again, and what repelled him
he rarely and only for special reasons drew at all. Criminal love, of
any kind, holds a quite subordinate place in his art; and, on the other
hand, if ideal figures are to be found there, it is among his devoted,
passionate, but arch and joyous women.
It is thus possible to lay down a Shakesperean _norm_ or ideal type
of love-relations. It is most distinct in the mature Comedies, where
he is shaping his image of life with serene freedom; but also in the
Tragedies, where a Portia or a Desdemona innocently perishes in the
web of death. Even in the Histories it occasionally asserts itself
(as in Richard II’s devoted queen, historically a mere child) against
the stress of recorded fact. In the earlier Comedies it is approached
through various stages of erratic or imperfect forms. And both in
Comedy and Tragedy he makes use, though not largely, of other than the
‘normal’ love for definitely comic or tragic ends.
The present study will follow the plan thus indicated. The first
section defines the ‘norm.’ The second describes the kinds of appeal
and effect, in Comedy and Tragedy, to which the drama of ‘normal’ love
lent itself. The third traces the gradual approach to the norm in the
early Comedies. The fourth and fifth sections, finally, discuss the
treatment, in Comedy and Tragedy, of Love-types other than the norm.
I
The Shakesperean norm of love,[1] thus understood, may be described
somewhat as follows. Love is a passion, kindling heart, brain,
and senses alike in natural and happy proportions; ardent but not
sensual, tender but not sentimental, pure but not ascetic, moral but
not puritanic, joyous but not frivolous, mirthful and witty but not
cynical. His lovers look forward to marriage as a matter of course, and
they neither anticipate its rights nor turn their affections elsewhere.
They commonly love at first sight and once for all. Love-relations
which do not contemplate marriage occur rarely and in subordination
to other dramatic purposes. Tragedy like that of Gretchen does not
attract him. Romeo’s amour with Rosalind is a mere foil to his greater
passion, Cassio’s with Bianca merely a mesh in the network of Iago’s
intrigue; Claudio’s with Juliet is the indispensable condition of the
plot. The course of love rarely runs smooth; but rival suitors proposed
by parents are quietly resisted or merrily abused, never, even by the
gentlest, accepted. Crude young girls like Hermia, delicate-minded
women like Desdemona and Imogen, the rapturous Juliet and the homely
Anne Page, the discreet Silvia and the naïve Miranda, are all at one
on this point. And they all carry the day. The dramatically powerful
situations which arise from forced marriage--as when Ford’s Penthea
(_The Broken Heart_) or Corneille’s Chimène (_Le Cid_) is torn by
the conflict between love and honour--lie, like this conflict in
general, outside Shakespeare’s chosen field. And with this security
of possession his loving women combine a capacity for mirth and jest
not usual in the dramatic representation of passion. Rosalind is more
intimately Shakesperean than Juliet.
Married life, as Shakespeare habitually represents it, is the
counterpart, _mutatis mutandis_, of his representation of unmarried
lovers. His husbands and wives have less of youthful abandon; they
rarely speak of love, and still more rarely with lyric ardour, or
coruscations of poetic wit. But they are no less true. The immense
field of dramatic motives based upon infringements of marriage, so
fertile in the hands of his successors, and in most other schools of
drama, did not attract Shakespeare, and he touched it only occasionally
and for particular purposes. Heroines like Fletcher’s Evadne (_A
Maid’s Tragedy_), who marries a nominal husband to screen her guilty
relations with the King, or Webster’s Vittoria Corombona (_The White
Devil_), who conspires with her lover to murder her husband, or
Chapman’s Tamyra (_Bussy d’Ambois_), whose husband kills her lover in
her chamber; even Heywood’s erring wife, whom her husband elects to
‘kill with kindness,’ are definitely un-Shakesperean.