whole course of the play, Shakspeare has abandoned himself
without constraint to that abundance of reflection and discourse
which is one of the characteristics of his genius. Nowhere is the
contrast more striking between the depth of the feelings which
the poet describes, and the form in which he expresses them.
Shakspeare excels in seeing our human feelings as they really
exist in nature, without premeditation, without any labor of man
upon himself, ingenuous and impetuous, mingled of good and evil,
of vulgar instincts and sublime inspirations, just as the human
soul is, in its primitive and spontaneous state. What can be more
truthful than the love of Romeo and Juliet, so young, so ardent,
so unreflecting, full at once of physical passion and of moral
tenderness, without restraint, and yet without coarseness,
because delicacy of heart ever combines with the transports of
the senses! There is nothing subtle or factitious in it, and
nothing cleverly arranged by the poet; it is neither the pure
love of piously exalted imaginations, nor the licentious love of
palled and perverted lives; it is love itself--love complete,
involuntary and sovereign, as it bursts forth in early youth, in
the heart of man, at once simple and diverse, as God made it.
{168}
"Romeo and Juliet" is truly the tragedy of love, as "Othello" is
that of jealousy, and "Macbeth" that of ambition. Each of the
great dramas of Shakspeare is dedicated to one of the great
feelings of humanity; and the feeling which pervades the drama
is, in very reality, that which occupies and possesses the human
soul when under its influence. Shakspeare omits, adds, and alters
nothing; he brings it on the stage simply and boldly, in its
energetic and complete truth.
Pass now from the substance to the form, and from the feeling
itself to the language in which it is clothed by the poet; and
observe the contrast! In proportion as the feeling is true and
profoundly known and understood, its expression is often
factitious, laden with developments and ornaments in which the
mind of the poet takes delight, but which do not flow naturally
from the lips of a dramatic personage. Of all Shakspeare's great
dramas, "Romeo and Juliet" is, perhaps, the one in which this
fault is most abundant. We might almost say that Shakspeare had
attempted to imitate that copiousness of words, and that verbose
facility which, in literature as well as life, generally
characterize the peoples of the South. He had certainly read, at
least in translation, some of the Italian poets; and the
innumerable subtleties interwoven, as it were, into the language
of all the personages in "Romeo and Juliet," and the introduction
of continual comparisons with the sun, the flowers, and the
stars, though often brilliant and graceful, are evidently an
imitation of the style of the sonnets, and a debt paid to local
coloring. It is, perhaps, because the Italian sonnets almost
always adopt a plaintive tone, that choice and exaggeration of
language are particularly perceptible in the complaints of the
two lovers.
{169}
The expression of their brief happiness is, especially in the
mouth of Juliet, of ravishing simplicity; and when they reach the
final term of their destiny, when the poet enters upon the last
scene of this mournful tragedy, he renounces all his attempts at
imitation, and all his wittily wise reflections. His characters,
who, says Johnson, "have a conceit left them in their misery,"
lose this peculiarity when misery has struck its heavy blows; the
imagination ceases to play; passion itself no longer appears,
unless united to solid, serious, and almost stern feelings; and
that mistress, who was so eager for the joys of love, Juliet,
when threatened in her conjugal fidelity, thinks of nothing but
the fulfillment of her duties, and how she may remain without
blemish the wife of her dear Romeo. What an admirable trait of
moral sense and good sense is this in a genius devoted to the
delineation of passion!
However, Shakspeare was mistaken when he thought that, by
prodigality of reflections, imagery, and words, he was imitating
Italy and her poets. At least he was not imitating the masters of
Italian poetry, his equals, and the only ones who deserved his
notice. Between them and him, the difference is immense and
singular. It is in comprehension of the natural feelings that
Shakspeare excels, and he depicts them with as much simplicity
and truth of substance as he clothes them with affectation and
sometimes whimsicality of language. It is, on the contrary, into
these feelings themselves that the great Italian poets of the
fourteenth century, and especially Petrarch, frequently introduce
as much refinement and subtlety as elevation and grace; they
alter and transform, according to their religious and moral
beliefs, or even to their literary tastes, those instincts and
passions of the human heart to which Shakspeare leaves their
native physiognomy and liberty.
{170}
What can be less similar than the love of Petrarch for Laura, and
that of Juliet for Romeo? In compensation, the expression, in
Petrarch, is almost always as natural as the feeling is refined;
and whereas Shakspeare presents perfectly simple and true
emotions beneath a strange and affected form, Petrarch lends to
mystical, or at least singular and very restrained emotions, all
the charm of a simple and pure form.
I will quote only one example of this difference between the two
poets, but it is a very striking example, for it is one in which
both have tried their powers upon the same position, the same
feeling, and almost the same image.
Laura is dead. Petrarch is desirous of depicting, on her entrance
upon the sleep of death, her whom he had painted so frequently,
and with such charming passion, in the brilliancy of life and
youth:
"Non come fiamma che per forza è spenta,
Ma che per sè medesraa si consume,
Se n'andò in pace l'animo contenta.
A guisa d'un soave e chiaro lume,
Cui nutrimento a poco a poco manca,
Tenendo al fin il suo usato costume;
Pallida no, ma più che neve bianca
Che senza vento in un bel colle fiocchi,
Parea posar come persona stanca.
Quasi un dolce dormir ne' suoi begli occhi,
Sendo lo sperto già de lei diviso,
Era quel che morir chiaman gli sciocchi,
Morte bella parea nel suo bel viso." [Footnote 21]
[Footnote 21: Petrarch, "Trionfo della Morte,"
cap. i., lines 160-172]
{171}
The following translation is from the pen of Captain Macgregor:
"Not as a flame which suddenly is spent,
But one that gently finds its natural close,
To heaven, in peace, her willing spirit rose;
As, nutriment denied, a lovely light,
By fine gradations failing, less, less bright,
E'en to the last gives forth a lambent glow:
Not pale, but fairer than the virgin snow,
Falling, when winds are laid, on earth's green breast,
She seem'd a saint from life's vain toils at rest.
As if a sweet sleep o'er those bright eyes came,
Her spirit mounted to the throne of grace!
If this we, in our folly, Death do name,
Then Death seem'd lovely on that lovely face." [Footnote 22]
[Footnote 22: Macgregor's "Odes of Petrarch," p. 220.]
Juliet also is dead. Romeo contemplates her as she lies in her
tomb, and he also expatiates upon her beauty:
* * * "O, my love! my wife!
Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath,
Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty;
Thou art not conquer'd; beauty's ensign yet
Is crimson in thy lips and on thy cheeks,
And death's pale flag is not advanced there."
I need not insist upon the comparison; who does not feel how much
more simple and beautiful the form of expression is in Petrarch?
It is the brilliant and flowing poetry of the South, beside the
strong, rough, and vigorous imagination of the North.
The love of Romeo for Rosaline is an invention of Luigi da Porto,
retained in the poem of Arthur Brooke. This invention imparts so
little interest to the first acts of the drama, that Shakspeare
probably adopted it merely with a view to giving greater effect
to that character of suddenness which distinguishes the passions
of a Southern clime. The part of Mercutio was suggested to him by
these lines of the English poem:
"A courtier that eche where was highly had in price,
For he was courteous of his speeche, and pleasant of devise.
Even as a lyon would emong the lambs be bolde,
Such was emong the bashful maydes Mercutio to beholde."
{172}
Such was, doubtless, the _bel air_ in Shakspeare's time, and
it is as the type of the amiable and amusing companion that he
has described Mercutio. However, though he was not bold enough to
attack, like Molière, the ridiculous absurdities of the court, he
very frequently makes it evident that its tone was a burden to
him; and the part of Mercutio seems to have been a great tax upon
his taste and uprightness of mind. Dryden relates as a tradition
of his time, that Shakspeare used to say, "that he was obliged to
kill Mercutio in the third act, lest he should have been killed
by him." Mercutio has, nevertheless, had many zealous partisans
in England; among others, Johnson, who, on this occasion, soundly
rates Dryden for his irreverent words regarding the witty
Mercutio, "some of whose sallies," he says, "are perhaps out of
the reach of Dryden." Shakspeare's aversion for the kind of wit
of which he has been so lavish in "Romeo and Juliet," is
sufficiently proved by Friar Laurence's injunction to Romeo when
he begins to explain his position in the sonnet style:
"Be plain, good son, and homely in thy drift;
Riddling confession finds but riddling shrift."
Friar Laurence is the wise man of the play, and his speeches are,
in general, as simple as it was allowable for those of a
philosopher to be in his time.
The part of Juliet's nurse also contains but few of these
subtleties, which Shakspeare seems to have reserved, in this
work, to persons of the higher classes, and sometimes to the
valets who ape their manners. The character of the nurse is
indicated in Arthur Brooke's poem; in which, however, it is far
from possessing the same homely truthfulness as in Shakspeare's
drama.
{173}
Wherever they are not disfigured by conceits, the lines in "Romeo
and Juliet" are perhaps the most graceful and brilliant that ever
flowed from Shakspeare's pen. They are, for the most part,
written in rhyme, another homage paid to Italian habits.
{174}
Hamlet.
(1596.)
"Hamlet" is not the finest of Shakspeare's dramas; "Macbeth,"
and, I think, "Othello" also, are, on the whole, superior to it:
but it perhaps contains the most remarkable examples of its
author's most sublime beauties, as well as of his most glaring
defects. Never has he unvailed with more originality, depth, and
dramatic effect the inmost state of a mighty soul; never, also,
has he yielded with greater unrestraint to the terrible or
burlesque fancies of his imagination, and to the abundant
intemperance that is characteristic of a mind which hastens to
diffuse its ideas without any selection, and which delights to
render them striking by a strong, ingenious, and unexpected
expression, without caring to give them a pure and natural form.
According to his custom, Shakspeare took no trouble in "Hamlet,"
either to invent or to arrange his subject. He took the facts as
he found them recorded in the fabulous stories of the ancient
history of Denmark, by Saxo Grammaticus, which wore transformed
into tragical histories by Belleforest, about the middle of the
sixteenth century, and were immediately translated and became
popular in England, not only among the reading public, but also
on the stage, for it appears certain that six or seven years
before Shakspeare, in 1589, an English poet named Thomas Kyd had
already written a tragedy on the subject of Hamlet.
{175}
This is the text of the historical romance out of which, as a
sculptor chisels a statue from a block of marble, Shakspeare
modeled his drama.
"Fengon, having secretly assembled certain men, and perceiving
himself strong enough to execute his enterprise, Horvendile, his
brother, being at a banquet with his friends, suddenly set upon
him, where he slew him as traitorously as cunningly he purged
himself of so detestable a murder to his subjects; for that
before he had any violent or bloody hands, or once committed
parricide upon his brother, he had incestuously abused his wife,
whose honor he ought to have sought and procured, as traitorously
he pursued and effected his destruction. * * *
"Boldened and encouraged by his impunity, Fengon ventured to
couple himself in marriage with her whom he used as his concubine
during good Horvendile's life, * * * and the unfortunate and
wicked woman, that had received the honor to be the wife of one
of the valiantest and wisest princes of the North, imbased
herself in such vile sort as to falsify her faith unto him, and,
which is worse, to marry him that had been the tyrannous murderer
of her lawful husband. * * *
"Geruth having so much forgotten herself, the prince Hamblet
perceiving himself to be in danger of his life, as being
abandoned of his own mother, to beguile the tyrant in his
subtleties, counterfeited the madman with such craft and subtle
practices that he made show as if he had utterly lost his wits;
and under that vail he covered his pretense, and defended his
life from the treasons and practices of the tyrant his uncle.
{176}
For every day being in the queen's palace (who as then was more
careful to please her whoremaster, than ready to revenge the
cruel death of her husband, or to restore her son to his
inheritance), he rent and tore his clothes, wallowing and lying
in the dirt and mire, running through the streets like a man
distraught, not speaking one word, but such as seemed to proceed
of madness and mere frenzy; all his actions and gestures being no
other than the right countenances of a man wholly deprived of all
reason and understanding, in such sort, that as then he seemed
fit for nothing but to make sport to the pages and ruffling
courtiers that attended in the court of his uncle and
father-in-law. But many times he did divers actions of great and
deep consideration, and often made such and so fit answers, that
a wise man would soon have judged from what spirit so fine an
invention might proceed. * * *
"Hamblet likewise had intelligence in what danger he was like to
fall, if by any means he seemed to obey, or once like the wanton
toys and vicious provocations of the gentlewoman sent to him by
his uncle; which much abashed the prince, as then wholly being in
affection to the lady; but by her he was likewise informed of the
treason, as being one that from her infancy loved and favored
him, and would have been exceeding sorrowful for his misfortune.
* * *
"Among the friends of Fengon, there was one that, above all the
rest, doubted of Hamblet's practices in counterfeiting the
madman. His device to entrap Hamblet in his subtleties was
thus--that King Fengon should make as though he were to go some
long voyage concerning affairs of great importance, and that in
the mean time Hamblet should be shut up alone in a chamber with
his mother, wherein some other should secretly be hidden behind
the hangings, there to stand and hear their speeches, and the
complots by them to be taken concerning the accomplishment of the
dissembling fool's pretense; * * * and withal offered himself to
be the man that should stand to hearken and bear witness of
Hamblet's speeches with his mother. This invention pleased the
king exceeding well. * * *
{177}
"Meantime, the counselor entered secretly into the queen's
chamber, and there hid himself behind the arras, not long before
the queen and Hamblet came thither, who, being crafty and
politic, as soon as he was within the chamber, doubting some
treason, used his ordinary manner of dissimulation, and began to
come like a cock, beating with his arms (in such manner as cocks
use to strike with their wings) upon the hangings of the chamber;
whereby, feeling something stirring under them, he cried, "A rat!
a rat!" and presently drawing his sword, thrust it into the
hangings, which done, he pulled the counselor, half dead, out by
the heels, and made an end of killing him. * * * By which means
having discovered the ambush, and given the inventor thereof his
just reward, he came again to his mother, who in the mean time
wept and tormented herself; and having once again searched every
corner of the chamber, perceiving himself to be alone with her,
he began in sober and discreet manner to speak unto her, saying,
"'What treason is this, most infamous woman of all that ever
prostrated themselves to the will of an abominable whoremonger,
who, under the vail of a dissembling creature, covereth the most
wicked and detestable crime that man could ever imagine or was
committed? Now may I be assured to trust you, that like a vile
wanton adulteress, altogether impudent and given over to her
pleasure, runs spreading forth her arms to embrace the traitorous
villainous tyrant that murdered my father, and most incestuously
receivest the villain into the lawful bed of your loyal spouse? *
* *
{178}
O, Queen Geruth! it is licentiousness only that has made you
deface out of your mind the memory of the valor and virtues of
the good king, your husband and my father. * * * Be not offended,
I pray you, madam, if, transported with dolor and grief, I speak
so boldly unto you, and that I respect you less than duty
requireth; for you, having forgotten me, and wholly rejected the
memory of the deceased king my father, must not be ashamed if I
also surpass the bounds and limits of due consideration. * * *'
"Although the Queen perceived herself nearly touched, and that
Hamblet moved her to the quick, where she felt herself
interested, nevertheless she forgot all disdain and wrath, which
thereby she might as then have had, hearing herself so sharply
chidden and reproved, to behold the gallant spirit of her son,
and to think what she might hope, and the easier expect of his so
great policy and wisdom. But on the one side, she durst not lift
up her eyes to behold him, remembering her offense, and on the
other side, she would gladly have embraced her son, in regard of
the wise admonitions by him given unto her, which as then
quenched the flames of unbridled desire that before had moved
her. * * *
"After this, Fengon came to the court again, and determined that
Hamblet should be sent into England. Now to bear him company were
assigned two of Fengon's faithful ministers, bearing letters
engraved in wood, that contained Hamblet's death, in such sort as
he had advertised the King of England. But the subtle Danish
prince, while his companions slept, having read the letters, and
known his uncle's great treason, with the wicked and villainous
minds of the two courtiers that led him to the slaughter erased
out the letters that concerned his death, and instead thereof
graved others, with commission to the King of England to hang his
two companions. * * *
{179}
"Hamblet, while his father lived, had been instructed in that
devilish art, whereby the wicked spirit abuseth mankind, and
advertiseth him of things past. It toucheth not the matter herein
to discover whether this prince, by reason of his over great
melancholy, had received those impressions, divining that which
never any but himself had before declared. * * *" [Footnote 23]
[Footnote 23: See "The Hystorie of Hamblet," in Payne
Collier's "Shakspeare's Library," vol, i. London, 1843.]
It was evidently Hamlet who, in this narrative, struck and
allured the imagination of Shakspeare. This young prince, mad
from calculation, and perhaps slightly mad by nature; cunning and
melancholy; burning to avenge the death of his father, and
skillful in defending his own life; adored by the young girl sent
to work his ruin; an object of dread, and yet of tenderness, to
his guilty mother; and, until the moment of throwing off the
mask, hidden and incomprehensible to both: this personage, full
of passion, danger, and mystery, well versed in the occult
sciences, and whom, perhaps, "by reason of his over great
melancholy, the wicked spirit enabled to divine that which never
any but himself had before declared;" what an admirable character
was this for Shakspeare, that curious and deep-searching observer
of the secret agitations of the human soul and destiny! Had he
done nothing more than depict, with the bold outline and
brilliant coloring of his pencil, this character and situation as
delineated in the chronicle, he would assuredly have produced a
masterpiece.
{180}
But Shakspeare did much more than this: under his treatment,
Hamlet's madness becomes something altogether different from the
obstinate premeditation or melancholy enthusiasm of a young
prince of the Middle Ages, placed in a dangerous position, and
engaged in a dark design; it is a grave moral condition, a great
malady of soul which, at certain epochs and in certain states of
society and of manners, diffuses itself among mankind, frequently
attacks the most highly gifted and the noblest of our species,
and afflicts them with a disturbance of mind which sometimes
borders very closely upon madness. The world is full of evil, and
of all kinds of evil. What sufferings, crimes, and fatal,
although innocent errors! What general and private iniquities,
both strikingly apparent and utterly unknown! What merits, either
stifled or neglected, become lost to the public, and a burden to
their possessors! What falsehood, and coldness, and levity, and
ingratitude, and forgetfulness, abound in the relations and
feelings of men! Life is so short, and yet so agitated--sometimes
so burdensome, and sometimes so empty! The future is so
obscure! so much darkness at the end of so many trials! In
reference to those who only see this phase of the world and of
human destiny, it is easy to understand why their mind becomes
disturbed, why their heart fails them, and why a misanthropic
melancholy becomes an habitual feeling which plunges them by
turns into irritation or doubt--into ironical contempt or utter
prostration.
This was assuredly not the disease of the times in which the
chronicle represents Hamlet to have lived, nor indeed of the age
in which Shakspeare himself flourished. The Middle Ages and the
sixteenth century were epochs too active and too rude to give
ready admittance to these bitter contemplations and unhealthy
developments of human sensibility.
{181}
They belong much rather to times of luxurious life, and of moral
excitement at once keen and leisurely, when souls are roused from
their repose, and deprived of every strong and obligatory
occupation. It is then that arise these meditative discontents,
these partial and irritated impressions, this entire
forgetfulness of all that is good, this passionate susceptibility
to all that is evil in the condition of man, and all this
pedantic wrath of man against the laws and order of the universe.
That painful uneasiness and profound disturbance which are
introduced into the soul by so gloomy and false an appreciation
of things in general, and of man himself--which he never met
with in his own time, or in those times with the history of which
he was acquainted--Shakspeare devined, and constructed from them
the figure and character of Hamlet. Read once again the four
great monologues in which the Prince of Denmark abandons himself
to the reflective expression of his inmost feelings; gather
together from the whole play the passages in which he casually
gives them utterance; seek out and sum up that which is manifest,
and that which is hidden in all that he thinks and says, and you
will every where recognize the presence of the moral malady which
I have just described. Therein truly resides, much more than in
his personal griefs and perils, the source of Hamlet's
melancholy; in this consists his fixed idea and his madness.
And with the admirable good sense of genius, in order to render
the exhibition of so sombre a disease not only endurable, but
attractive, Shakspeare has endowed the sufferer himself with the
gentlest and most alluring qualities. He has made Hamlet
handsome, popular, generous, affectionate, and even tender. He
was desirous that the instinctive character of his hero should in
some sort redeem human nature from the distrust and anathemas
with which it was laden by his philosophic melancholy.
{182}
But, at the same time, guided by that instinct of harmony which
never deserts the true poet, Shakspeare has diffused over the
whole drama the same gloomy color which opens the scene; the
spectre of the assassinated monarch gives its impress to the
movement of the drama from its very outset, and leads it onward
to its termination, and when that term arrives, death reigns once
more; all die, the innocent as well as the guilty, the young girl
as well as the prince, and she more mad than he is; all depart to
join the spectre who had left the tomb only that he might drag
them all with him on his return. The whole circumstance is as
mournful as Hamlet's thoughts. None are left upon the stage but
the Norwegian strangers, who then appear for the first time, and
who have previously taken no part in the action.