Shakespeare's _Humour_ is so large and so operative an element of his
genius, that a general review of his works would be very incomplete
without some special consideration of it. And perhaps, except his
marvellous duality of mind, there is nothing in his poetry of which it
is more difficult to give a satisfactory account. For humour is nowise
a distinct or separable thing with him, but a perfusive and permeating
ingredient of his make-up: it acts as a sort of common solvent, in
which different and even opposite lines of thought, states of mind,
and forms of life are melted into happy reconcilement and
co-operation. Through this, as a kind of pervading and essential sap,
is carried on a free intercourse and circulation between the moral and
intellectual parts of his being; and hence, perhaps, in part, the
wonderful catholicity of mind which generally marks his
representations.
It follows naturally from this that the Poet's humour is widely
diversified in its exhibitions. There is indeed no part of him that
acts with greater versatility. It imparts a certain wholesome
earnestness to his most sportive moods, making them like the honest
and whole-hearted play of childhood, than which human life has nothing
that proceeds more in earnest. For who has not found it a property of
childhood to be serious in its fun, innocent in its mischief, and
ingenuous in its guile? Moreover it is easy to remark that, in
Shakespeare's greatest dunces and simpletons and potentates of
nonsense, there is something that prevents contempt. A fellow-feeling
springs up between us and them; it is through our sympathetic, not our
selfish emotions, that they interest us: we are far more inclined to
laugh with them than at them; and even when we laugh at them we love
them the more for that which is laughable in them. So that our
intercourse with them proceeds under the great law of kindness and
charity. Try this with any of the Poet's illustrious groups of comic
personages, and it will be found, I apprehend, thoroughly true. What
distinguishes us from them, or sets us above them in our own esteem,
is never appealed to as a source or element of delectation. And so the
pleasure we have of them is altogether social in its nature, and
humanizing in its effect, ever knitting more widely the bands of
sympathy.
Here we have what may be called a foreground of comedy, but the Poet's
humour keeps up a living circulation between this and the serious
elements of our being that stand behind it. It is true, we are not
always, nor perhaps often, conscious of any stirring in these latter:
what is laughable occupies the surface, and therefore is all that we
directly see. But still there are deep undercurrents of earnest
sentiment moving not the less really that their movement is noiseless.
In the disguise of sport and mirth, there is a secret discipline of
humanity going on; and the effect is all the better that it steals
into us unseen and unsuspected: we know that we laugh, but we do
something better than laughing without knowing it, and so are made
the better by our laughter; for in that which betters us without our
knowledge we are doubly benefited.
Not indeed but that Shakespeare has characters, as, for example, the
Steward in _King Lear_, which are thoroughly contemptible, and which
we follow with contempt. But it is to be observed that there is
nothing laughable in Oswald; nothing that we can either laugh with or
laugh at: he is a sort of human reptile, such as life sometimes
produces, whom we regard with moral loathing and disgust, but in whose
company neither mirth nor pity can find any foothold. On the other
hand, the feelings moved by a Bottom, a Dogberry, an Aguecheek, or a
Slender, are indeed very different from those which wait upon a
Cordelia, an Ophelia, or an Imogen, but there is no essential
oppugnance between them: in both cases the heart moves by the laws of
sympathy; which is exactly reversed in the case of such an object as
Oswald: the former all touch us through what we have in common with
them; the latter touches us only through our antipathies. There is,
therefore, nothing either of comic or of tragic in the part of Oswald
viewed by itself: on the contrary, it runs in entire oppugnance to the
proper currents of them both.
Much of what I have said touching Shakespeare's comic scenes holds
true, conversely, of his tragic scenes. For it is a great mistake to
suppose that his humour has its sole exercise in comic representations.
It carries the power of tears as well as of smiles: in his deepest
strains of tragedy there is often a subtile infusion of it, and this
too in such a way as to heighten the tragic effect; we may feel it
playing delicately beneath his most pathetic scenes, and deepening
their pathos. For in his hands tragedy and comedy are not made up of
different elements, but of the same elements standing in different
places and relations: what is background in the one becomes foreground
in the other; what is an undercurrent in the one becomes an uppercurrent
in the other; the effect of the whole depending almost, perhaps altogether,
as much on what is not directly seen as on what is. So that with him the
pitiful and the ludicrous, the sublime and the droll, are like the
greatness and littleness of human life: for these qualities not only
coexist in our being, but, which is more, they coexist under a mysterious
law of interdependence and reciprocity; insomuch that our life may in some
sense be said to be great because little, and little because great.
And as Shakespeare's transports of humour draw down more or less into
the depths of serious thought, and make our laughter the more
refreshing and exhilarating because of what is moving silently
beneath; so his tragic ecstasies take a richness of colour and flavour
from the humour held in secret reserve, and forced up to the surface
now and then by the super incumbent weight of tragic matter. This it
is, in part, that truly makes them "awful mirth." For who does not
know that the most winning smiles are those which play round a
moistening eye, and tell of serious thoughts beneath; and that the
saddest face is that which wears in its expression an air of
remembered joy, and speaks darkly of sunshine in the inner courts of
the soul? For we are so made, that no one part of our being moves to
perfection unless all the other parts move with it: when we are at
work, whatever there is of the playful within us ought to play; when
we are at play, our working mind ought to be actively present in the
exercise. It is this harmonious moving together of all the parts of
our being that makes the true music of life. And to minister in
restoring this "concord of a well-tuned mind," which has been broken
by "discords most unjust," is the right office of Culture, and the
right scope of Art as the highest organ of Culture. And in reference
to this harmonious interplay of all the human faculties and
sensibilities, I may not unfitly apply to Shakespeare's workmanship
these choice lines from Wordsworth:
"Brisk Youth appeared, the Morn of youth,
With freaks of graceful folly,--
Life's temperate Noon, her sober Eve,
Her Night not melancholy;
Past, present, future, all appeared,
In harmony united,
Like guests that meet, and some from far,
By cordial love invited."
I cannot, nor need I, stay to illustrate the point in hand, at any
length, by detailed reference to the Poet's dramas. This belongs to
the office of particular criticism, and therefore would be something
out of keeping here. The Fool's part in _King Lear_ will readily occur
to any one familiar with that tragedy. And perhaps there is no one
part of _Hamlet_ that does more to heighten the tragic effect than the
droll scene of the Gravediggers. But, besides this, there is a vein of
humour running through the part of Hamlet himself, underlying his
darkest moods, and giving depth and mellowness to his strains of
impassioned thought. And every reflecting reader must have observed
how much is added to the impression of terror in the trial-scene of
_The Merchant of Venice_, by the fierce jets of mirth with which
Gratiano assails old Shylock; and also how, at the close of the scene,
our very joy at Antonio's deliverance quickens and deepens our pity
for the broken-hearted Jew who lately stood before us dressed in such
fulness of terror. But indeed the Poet's skill at heightening any
feeling by awakening its opposite; how he manages to give strength to
our most earnest sentiments by touching some spring of playfulness;
and to further our liveliest moods by springing upon us some delicate
surprises of seriousness;--all this is matter of common observation.
But the Poet's humour has yet other ways of manifesting itself. And
among these not the least remarkable is the subtile and delicate irony
which often pervades his scenes, and sometimes gives character to
whole plays, as in the case of _Troilus and Cressida_, and _Antony and
Cleopatra_. By methods that can hardly be described, he contrives to
establish a sort of secret understanding with the reader, so as to
arrest the impression just as it is on the point of becoming tragic.
While dealing most seriously with his characters, he uses a certain
guile: through them we catch, as it were, a roguish twinkle of his
eye, which makes us aware that his mind is secretly sporting itself
with their earnestness; so that we have a double sympathy,--a sympathy
with their passion and with his play. Thus his humour often acts in
such a way as to possess us with mixed emotions: the persons, while
moving us with their thoughts, at the same time start us upon other
thoughts which have no place in them; and we share in all that they
feel, but still are withheld from committing ourselves to them, or so
taking part with them as to foreclose a due regard to other claims.