[The elegantly embellished volumes by Mrs. Jamieson, with
the above attractive title, present the prettiest code of
ladye-philosophy we have ever witnessed on paper. They aim
at illustrating the characters of Intellect, Passion, and
Imagination, the Affections, and what are purely Historical
Characters, in the females of Shakspeare's Plays. Such is the
design: of its beautiful execution we can give the reader but a
faint idea by extracting from Passion and Imagination, part of the
_Character of Juliet_:--]
It is not without emotion, that I attempt to touch on the character of
Juliet. Such beautiful things have already been said of her--only
to be exceeded in beauty by the subject that inspired them!--it
is impossible to say any thing better; but it is possible to say
something more. Such in fact is the simplicity, the truth, and the
loveliness of Juliet's character, that we are not at first aware
of its complexity, its depth, and its variety. There is in it an
intensity of passion, a singleness of purpose, an entireness, a
completeness of effect, which we feel as a whole; and to attempt to
analyze the impression thus conveyed at once to soul and sense, is
as if while hanging-over a half-blown rose, and revelling in its
intoxicating perfume, we should pull it asunder, leaflet by leaflet,
the better to display its bloom and fragrance. Yet how otherwise
should we disclose the wonders of its formation, or do justice to the
skill of the divine hand that hath thus fashioned it in its beauty?
All Shakspeare's women, being essentially women, either love, or
have loved, or are capable of loving; but Juliet is love itself. The
passion is her state of being, and out of it she has no existence.
It is the soul within her soul; the pulse within her heart; the
life-blood along her veins, "blending with every atom of her frame."
The love that is so chaste and dignified in Portia--so airy-delicate,
and fearless in Miranda--so sweetly confiding in Perdita--so playfully
fond in Rosalind--so constant in Imogem--so devoted in Desdemona--so
fervent in Helen--so tender in Viola,--is each and all of these in
Juliet. All these remind us of her; but she reminds us of nothing but
her own sweet self: or if she does, it is of the Grismunda, or the
Lisetta, or the Fiamminetta of Boccaccio, to whom she is allied, not
in the character or circumstances, but in the truly Italian spirit,
the glowing, national complexion of the portrait.[6]
[6] Lord Byron has remarked of the Italian women, (and he could
speak _avec connaissance de fait_,) that they are the only women
in the world capable of impressions at once very sudden and very
durable; which, he adds, is to be found in no other nation. Mr.
Moore observes afterwards, how completely an Italian woman, either
from nature or her social position, is led to invert the usual
course of frailty among ourselves, and weak in resisting the
first impulses of passion, to reserve the whole strength
her character for a display of constancy and devotedness
afterwards.--Both these traits of national character are
exemplified in Juliet.--_Moore's Life of Byron_, vol. ii p. 303,
338, 4to edit.
There was an Italian painter who said that the secret of all effect
in colour consisted in white upon black, and black upon white. How
perfectly did Shakspeare understand this secret of effect! and how
beautifully he has exemplified it in Juliet!
So shews a snowy dove trooping with crows,
As yonder lady o'er her follows shews!
Thus she and her lover are in contrast with all around them. They are
all love, surrounded with all hate; all harmony, surrounded with all
discord; all pure nature, in the midst of polished and artificial
life. Juliet, like Portia, is the foster-child of opulence and
splendour: she dwells in a fair city--she has been nurtured in a
palace--she clasps her robe with jewels--she braids her hair with
rainbow-tinted pearls; but in herself she has no more connexion with
the trappings around her, than the lovely exotic transplanted from
some Eden-like climate, has with the carved and gilded conservatory
which has reared and sheltered its luxuriant beauty.
But in this vivid impression of contrast, there is nothing abrupt or
harsh. A tissue of beautiful poetry weaves together the principal
figures and the subordinate personages. The consistent truth of the
costume, and the exquisite gradations of relief with which the most
opposite hues are approximated, blend all into harmony. Romeo and
Juliet are not poetical beings placed on a prosaic background; nor are
they, like Thekla and Max in the Wallenstein, two angels of light amid
the darkest and harshest, the most debased and revolting aspects of
humanity; but every circumstance, and every personage, and every shade
of character in each, tends to the developement of the sentiment which
is the subject of the drama. The poetry, too, the richest that can
possibly be conceived, is interfused through all the characters; the
splendid imagery lavished upon all with the careless prodigality of
genius, and all is lighted up into such a sunny brilliance of effect,
as though Shakspeare had really transported himself into Italy, and
had drunk to intoxication of her genial atmosphere. How truly it has
been said, that "although Romeo and Juliet are in love, they are not
love-sick!" What a false idea would any thing of the mere whining
amoroso, give us of Romeo, such as he is really in Shakspeare--the
noble, gallant, ardent, brave, and witty! And Juliet--with even less
truth could the phrase or idea apply to her! The picture in "Twelfth
Night" of the wan girl dying of love, "who pined in thought, and with
a green and yellow melancholy," would never surely occur to us, when
thinking on the enamoured and impassioned Juliet, in whose bosom love
keeps a fiery vigil, kindling tenderness into enthusiasm, enthusiasm
into passion, passion into heroism! No, the whole sentiment of the
play is of a far different cast. It is flushed with the genial spirit
of the south; it tastes of youth, and of the essence of youth; of
life, and of the very sap of life. We have indeed the struggle of love
against evil destinies and a thorny world; the pain, the grief,
the anguish, the terror, the despair:--the aching adieu; the pang
unutterable of parted affection; and rapture, truth, and tenderness
trampled into an early grave: but still an Elysian grace lingers round
the whole, and the blue sky of Italy bends over all!
Lord Byron's Haidée is a copy of Juliet in the Oriental costume, but
the development is epic, not dramatic.
I remember no dramatic character, conveying the same impression of
singleness of purpose, and devotion of heart and soul, except the
Thekla of Schiller's Wallenstein: she is the German Juliet; far
unequal, indeed, but conceived, nevertheless, in a kindred spirit. I
know not if critics have ever compared them, or whether Schiller is
supposed to have had the English, or rather the Italian, Juliet in his
fancy when he portrayed Thekla; but there are some striking points of
coincidence, while the national distinction in the character of the
passion leaves to Thekla a strong cast of originality.
With regard to the termination of the play, which has been a subject
of much critical argument, it is well-known that Shakspeare, following
the old English versions, has departed from the original story of Da
Porta;[7] and I am inclined to believe that Da Porta, in making Juliet
waken from her trance while Romeo yet lives, and in his terrible final
scene between the lovers, has departed from the old tradition, and as
a romance, has certainly improved it: but that which is effective in
a narrative is not always calculated for the drama; and I cannot but
agree with Schlegel, that Shakspeare has done well and wisely
in adhering to the old story.[8] Can we doubt for a moment that
Shakspeare, who has given us the catastrophe of Othello, and the
tempest scene in Lear, might also have adopted these additional
circumstances of horror in the fate of the lovers, and have so treated
them as to harrow up our very souls--had it been his object to do so?
But apparently it was _not_. The tale is one,
Such, as once heard, in gentle heart destroys
All pain but pity.
[7] The "Giulietta" of Luigi da Porta was written about 1520. In
a popular little book published in 1565, thirty years before
Shakspeare wrote his tragedy, the name of Juliet occurs as an
example of faithful love, and is thus explained by a note in the
margin. "Juliet, a noble maiden of the citie of Verona, which
loved Romeo, eldest son of the Lord Monteschi; and being privily
married together, he at last poisoned himself for love of her:
she, for sorrow of his death, slew herself with his dagger." This
note, which furnishes in brief, the whole argument of Shakspeare's
play, might possibly have made the first impression on his fancy.
[8] There is nothing so improbable in the story of Romeo and
Juliet as to make us doubt the tradition that it is a real fact.
"The Veronese," says Lord Byron, in one of his letters from
Verona, "are tenacious to a degree of the truth of Juliet's story,
insisting on the fact, giving the date 1303, and showing a tomb.
It is a plain, open, and partly decayed sarcophagus, with withered
leaves in it, in a wild and desolate conventual garden--once a
cemetery, now ruined, to the very graves! The situation struck me
as very appropriate to the legend, being blighted as their
love." He might have added, that when Verona itself, with its
amphitheatre and its Palladian structures, lies level with the
earth, the very spot on which it stood will still be consecrated
by the memory of Juliet. When in Italy, I met a gentleman, who
being then "_dans le genre romantique_," wore a fragment of
Juliet's tomb set in a ring.
It is in truth a tale of love and sorrow, not of anguish and terror.
We behold the catastrophe afar off with scarcely a wish to avert it.
Romeo and Juliet _must_ die: their destiny is fulfilled: they have
quaffed off the cup of life, with all its infinite of joys and
agonies, in one intoxicating draught. What have they to do more
upon this earth? Young, innocent, loving, and beloved, they descend
together into the tomb: but Shakspeare has made that tomb a shrine
of martyred and sainted affection consecrated for the worship of all
hearts,--not a dark charnel vault, haunted by spectres of pain, rage,
and desperation.
The poem, which opened with the enmity of the two families, closes
with their reconciliation over the breathless remains of their
children; and no violent, frightful, or discordant feeling, is
suffered to mingle with that soft impression of melancholy left within
the heart, and which Schlegel compares to one long, endless sigh.
"A youthful passion," says Goëthe, (alluding to one of his own early
attachments), "which is conceived and cherished without any certain
object, may be compared to a shell thrown from a mortar by night: it
rises calmly in a brilliant track, and seems to mix, and even to dwell
for a moment, with the stars of heaven; but at length it falls--it
bursts--consuming and destroying all around even as itself expires."
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