----"Fear and niceness,
The handmaids of all women, or more truly,
Woman its pretty self, into a waggish courage,
Ready in gibes, quick-answer'd, saucy, and
As quarrellous as the weazel"----
she interrupts him hastily:--
"Nay, be brief;
I see into thy end, and am almost
A man already."
In her journey thus disguised to Milford-Haven, she loses her guide and
her way; and unbosoming her complaints, says beautifully--
----"My dear lord,
Thou art one of the false ones; now I think on thee,
My hunger's gone; but even before, I was
At point to sink for food."
She afterwards finds, as she thinks, the dead body of Posthumus, and
engages herself as a foot-boy to serve a Roman officer, when she has done
all due obsequies to him whom she calls her former master--
----"And when
With wild wood-leaves and weeds I ha' strew'd his grave,
And on it said a century of pray'rs,
Such as I can, twice o'er, I'll weep and sigh,
And leaving so his service, follow you,
So please you entertain me."
Now this is the very religion of love. She all along relies on her
personal charms, which she fears may have been eclipsed by some painted
Jay of Italy; she relies on her merit, and her merit is in the depth of
her love, her truth and constancy. Our admiration of her beauty is excited
with as little consciousness as possible on her part. There are two
delicious descriptions given of her, one when she is asleep, and one when
she is supposed dead. Arviragus thus addresses her--
----"With fairest flowers,
While summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele,
I'll sweeten thy sad grave; thou shalt not lack
The flow'r that's like thy face, pale primrose, nor
The azur'd hare-bell, like thy veins, no, nor
The leaf of eglantine, which not to slander,
Out-sweeten'd not thy breath."
The yellow Iachimo gives another thus, when he steals into her
bedchamber:--
----"Cytherea,
How bravely thou becom'st thy bed! Fresh lily,
And whiter than the sheets! That I might touch--
But kiss, one kiss--'Tis her breathing that
Perfumes the chamber thus: the flame o' th' taper
Bows toward her, and would under-peep her lids
To see th' enclosed lights now canopied
Under the windows, white and azure, laced
With blue of Heav'ns own tinct--on her left breast
A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops
I' th' bottom of a cowslip."
There is a moral sense in the proud beauty of this last image, a rich
surfeit of the fancy,--as that well-known passage beginning, "Me of my
lawful pleasure she restrained, and prayed me oft forbearance," sets a
keener edge upon it by the inimitable picture of modesty and self-denial.
The character of Cloten, the conceited, booby lord, and rejected lover of
Imogen, though not very agreeable in itself, and at present obsolete, is
drawn with much humour and quaint extravagance. The description which
Imogen gives of his unwelcome addresses to her--"Whose love-suit hath been
to me as fearful as a siege"--is enough to cure the most ridiculous lover
of his folly. It is remarkable that though Cloten makes so poor a figure
in love, he is described as assuming an air of consequence as the Queen's
son in a council of state, and with all the absurdity of his person and
manners, is not without shrewdness in his observations. So true is it that
folly is as often owing to a want of proper sentiments as to a want of
understanding! The exclamation of the ancient critic--Oh Menander and
Nature, which of you copied from the other! would not be misapplied to
Shakspeare.
The other characters in this play are represented with great truth and
accuracy, and as it happens in most of the author's works, there is not
only the utmost keeping in each separate character; but in the casting of
the different parts, and their relation to one another, there is an
affinity and harmony, like what we may observe in the gradations of colour
in a picture. The striking and powerful contrasts in which Shakspeare
abounds could not escape observation; but the use he makes of the
principle of analogy to reconcile the greatest diversities of character
and to maintain a continuity of feeling throughout, has not been
sufficiently attended to. In CYMBELINE, for instance, the principal
interest arises out of the unalterable fidelity of Imogen to her husband
under the most trying circumstances. Now the other parts of the picture
are filled up with subordinate examples of the same feeling, variously
modified by different situations, and applied to the purposes of virtue or
vice. The plot is aided by the amorous importunities of Cloten, by the
persevering determination of Iachimo to conceal the defeat of his project
by a daring imposture; the faithful attachment of Pisanio to his mistress
is an affecting accompaniment to the whole; the obstinate adherence to his
purpose in Bellarius, who keeps the fate of the young princes so long a
secret in resentment for the ungrateful return to his former services, the
incorrigible wickedness of the Queen, and even the blind uxorious
confidence of Cymbeline, are all so many lines of the same story, tending
to the same point. The effect of this coincidence is rather felt than
observed; and as the impression exists unconsciously in the mind of the
reader, so it probably arose in the same manner in the mind of the author,
not from design, but from the force of natural association, a particular
train of thought suggesting different inflections of the same predominant
feeling, melting into, and strengthening one another, like chords in
music.
The characters of Bellarius, Guiderius, and Arviragus, and the romantic
scenes in which they appear, are a fine relief to the intrigues and
artificial refinements of the court from which they are banished. Nothing
can surpass the wildness and simplicity of the descriptions of the
mountain life they lead. They follow the business of huntsmen, not of
shepherds; and this is in keeping with the spirit of adventure and
uncertainty in the rest of the story, and with the scenes in which they
are afterwards called on to act. How admirably the youthful fire and
impatience to emerge from their obscurity in the young princes is opposed
to the cooler calculations and prudent resignation of their more
experienced counsellor! How well the disadvantages of knowledge and of
ignorance, of solitude and society, are placed against each other!
"_Guiderius._ Out of your proof you speak: we poor unfledg'd
Have never wing'd from view o' th' nest; nor know not
What air's from home. Haply this life is best,
If quiet life is best; sweeter to you
That have a sharper known; well corresponding
With your stiff age: but unto us it is
A cell of ignorance; travelling a-bed,
A prison for a debtor, that not dares
To stride a limit.
_Arviragus._ What should we speak of
When we are old as you? When we shall hear
The rain and wind beat dark December! How,
In this our pinching cave, shall we discourse
The freezing hours away? We have seen nothing.
We are beastly; subtle as the fox for prey,
Like warlike as the wolf for what we eat;
Our valour is to chase what flies; our cage
We make a quire, as doth the prison'd bird,
And sing our bondage freely."
The answer of Bellarius to this expostulation is hardly satisfactory; for
nothing can be an answer to hope, or the passion of the mind for unknown
good, but experience.--The forest of Arden in _As you like it_ can alone
compare with the mountain scenes in CYMBELINE: yet how different the
contemplative quiet of the one from the enterprising boldness and
precarious mode of subsistence in the other! Shakspeare not only lets us
into the minds of his characters, but gives a tone and colour to the
scenes he describes from the feelings of their supposed inhabitants. He at
the same time preserves the utmost propriety of action and passion, and
gives all their local accompaniments. If he was equal to the greatest
things, he was not above an attention to the smallest. Thus the gallant
sportsmen in CYMBELINE have to encounter the abrupt declivities of hill
and valley: Touchstone and Audrey jog along a level path. The deer in
CYMBELINE are only regarded as objects of prey, "The game's a-foot,"
etc.--with Jaques they are fine subjects to moralise upon at leisure,
"under the shade of melancholy boughs."
We cannot take leave of this play, which is a favourite with us, without
noticing some occasional touches of natural piety and morality. We may
allude here to the opening of the scene in which Bellarius instructs the
young princes to pay their orisons to heaven:
----"See, boys! this gate
Instructs you how t' adore the Heav'ns; and bows you
To morning's holy office.
_Guiderius._ Hail, Heav'n!
_Arviragus._ Hail, Heav'n!
_Bellarius._ Now for our mountain-sport, up to yon hill."
What a grace and unaffected spirit of piety breathes in this passage! In
like manner, one of the brothers says to the other, when about to perform
the funeral rites to Fidele,
"Nay, Cadwall, we must lay his head to the east;
My Father hath a reason for't"--
--as if some allusion to the doctrines of the Christian faith had been
casually dropped in conversation by the old man, and had been no farther
inquired into.
Shakspeare's morality is introduced in the same simple, unobtrusive
manner. Imogen will not let her companions stay away from the chase to
attend her when sick, and gives her reason for it--
"Stick to your journal course; _the breach of custom
Is breach of all!_"
When the Queen attempts to disguise her motives for procuring the poison
from Cornelius, by saying she means to try its effects on "creatures not
worth the hanging," his answer conveys at once a tacit reproof of her
hypocrisy, and a useful lesson of humanity--
----"Your Highness
Shall from this practice but make hard your heart."