All's Well that End's Well was first published in the folio of 1623,
and is among the worst-printed plays in that volume. In many places
the text, as there given, is in a most unsatisfactory state; and in
not a few I fear it must be pronounced incurably at fault. A vast deal
of study and labour has been spent in trying to rectify the numerous
errors; nearly all the editors and commentators, from Rowe downwards,
have strained their faculties upon the work: many instances of
corruption have indeed yielded to critical ingenuity and perseverance,
and it is to be hoped that still others may; but yet there are several
passages which give little hope of success, and seem indeed too hard
for any efforts of corrective sagacity and skill. This is not the
place for citing examples of textual difficulty: so I must be content
with referring to Dyce's elaborate annotation on the play.
Why the original printing of this play should thus have been
exceptionally bad, is a matter about which we can only speculate; and
as in such cases speculation can hardly lead to any firm result,
probably our best way is to note the textual corruption as a fact, and
there let it rest. Still it may be worth the while to observe on this
head, that in respect of plot and action the piece is of a somewhat
forbidding, not to say repulsive nature; and though it abounds in
wisdom, and is not wanting in poetry, and has withal much choice
delineation of character, and contains scenes which stream down with
the Poet's raciest English, yet it is not among the plays which
readers are often drawn to by mere recollections of delight: one does
not take to it heartily, and can hardly admire it without something of
effort: even when it wins our approval, it seems to do so rather
through our sense of right than through our sense of pleasure: in
short, I have to confess that the perusal is more apt to inspire an
apologetic than an enthusiastic tone of mind. It may be a mere fancy
of mine; but I have often thought that the extreme badness of the
printing may have been partly owing to this cause; that the Poet may
have left the manuscript in a more unfinished and illegible state,
from a sense of something ungenial and unattractive in the
subject-matter and action of the play.
* * * * *
No direct and certain contemporary notice of _All's Well that Ends
Well_ has come down to us. But the often-quoted list of Shakespeare's
plays set forth by Francis Meres in his _Palladis Tamia_, 1598,
includes a play called _Love's Labour's Won_,--a title nowhere else
given to any of the Poet's pieces. Dr. Farmer, in his _Essay on the
Learning of Shakespeare_, 1767, first gave out the conjecture, that
the two titles belonged to one and the same play; and this opinion has
since been concurred or acquiesced in by so many competent critics,
that it might well be allowed to pass without further argument. There
is no other of the Poet's dramas to which that title applies so well,
while, on the other hand, it certainly fits this play quite as well as
the one it now bears. The whole play is emphatically _love's labour_:
its main interest throughout turns on the unwearied and
finally-successful struggles of affection against the most stubborn
and disheartening obstacles. It may indeed be urged that the play
entitled _Love's Labour's Won_ has been lost; but this, considering
what esteem the Poet's works were held in, both in his time and ever
since, is so very improbable as to be hardly worth dwelling upon.
There was far more likelihood that other men's dross would be fathered
upon him than that any of his gold would be lost. And, in fact,
contemporary publishers were so eager to make profit of his
reputation, that they forged his name to various plays which most
certainly had no touch of his hand.
The Rev. Joseph Hunter has spent a deal of learning and ingenuity in
trying to make out that the play referred to by Meres as _Lovers
Labour's Won_ was _The Tempest_. Among Shakespeare's dramas he could
hardly have pitched upon a more unfit subject for such a title. There
is no _love's labour_ in _The Tempest_. For, though a lover does
indeed there labour awhile in piling logs, this is nowise from love,
but simply because he cannot help himself. Nor does he thereby _win_
the lady, for she was won before,--"at the first sight they have
chang'd eyes";--and the labour was imposed for the testing of his
love, not for the gaining of its object; and was all the while
refreshed with the "sweet thoughts" that in heart she was already his;
while in truth the father was overjoyed at the "fair encounter of two
most rare affections," and was quite as intent on the match as the
lovers were themselves. In short, there is no external evidence
whatever in favour of Mr. Hunter's notion, while the internal evidence
makes utterly against it.
There is, then, no reasonable doubt that _All's Well that Ends Well_
was originally written before 1598. For myself, I have no doubt that
the first writing was several years before that date; as early at
least as 1592 or 1593. Coleridge, in his _Literary Remains_, holds the
play to have been "originally intended as the counterpart of _Love's
Labour's Lost_"; and a comparison of the two naturally leads to that
conclusion without any help from the title. This inward relation of
the plays strongly infers them both to have been written about the
same time, or in pretty near succession. Now _Love's Labour's Lost_
was published in 1598, and in the title-page is said to have been
"newly corrected and augmented," which fairly supposes the first
writing of that play also to have been several years before, since
some considerable time would naturally pass before the Poet saw cause
for revising his workmanship. And the diversities of style in that
play fully concur herewith in arguing a considerable interval between
the original writing and the revisal.
It is abundantly certain, from internal evidence, that the play now in
hand also underwent revisal, and this too after a much longer interval
than in the case of _Love's Labour's Lost_. Here the diversities of
style are much more strongly marked than in that play. Accordingly it
was Coleridge's decided opinion, first given out in his lectures in
1813, and again in 1818, though not found in his _Literary Remains_,
that "_All's Well that Ends Well_ was written at two different and
rather distant periods of the Poet's life." This we learn from Mr.
Collier, who heard those lectures, and who adds that Coleridge
"pointed out very clearly two distinct styles, not only of thought,
but of expression." The same judgment has since been enforced by Tieck
and other able critics; and the grounds of it are so manifest in the
play itself, that no observant reader will be apt to question it.
Verplanck tells us he had formed the same opinion before he learned
through Mr. Collier what Coleridge thought on the subject; and his
judgment of the matter is given with characteristic felicity as follows:
"The contrast of two different modes of thought and manners of
expression, here mixed in the same piece, must be evident to all who
have made the shades and gradations of Shakespeare's varying and
progressive taste and mind at all a subject of study."[19]
[19] The point is further amplified and illustrated by the same
critic in a passage equally happy, as follows: "Much of the
graver dialogue, especially in the first two Acts, reminds the
reader, in taste of composition, in rhythm, and in a certain
quaintness of expression, of _The Two Gentlemen of Verona_. The
comic part is spirited and laugh-provoking, yet it consists
wholly in the exposure of a braggart coxcomb,--one of the most
familiar comic personages of the stage, and quite within the
scope of a boyish artist's knowledge of life and power of
satirical delineation. On the other hand, there breaks forth
everywhere, and in many scenes entirely predominates, a grave
moral thoughtfulness, expressed in a solemn, reflective, and
sometimes in a sententious brevity of phrase and harshness of
rhythm, which seem to me to stamp many passages as belonging to
the epoch of _Measure for Measure_, or of _King Lear_. We miss,
too, the gay and fanciful imagery which shows itself
continually, alike amidst the passion and the moralizing of the
previous comedies."
I have elsewhere observed at some length[20] on the Poet's diversities
of style, marking them off into three periods, severally distinguished
as earlier, middle, and later styles. Outside of the play itself, we
have in this case no help towards determining at what time the revisal
was made, or how long a period intervened between this and the
original writing. To my taste, the better parts of the workmanship
relish strongly of the Poet's later style,--perhaps I should say quite
as strongly as the poorer parts do of his earlier. This would bring
the revisal down to as late a time as 1603 or 1604: which date
accords, not only with my own sense of the matter, but with the much
better judgment of the critics I have quoted. I place the finished
_Hamlet_ at or near the close of the Poet's middle period; and I am
tolerably clear that in this play he discovers a mind somewhat more
advanced in concentrated fulness, and a hand somewhat more practised
in sinewy sternness, than in the finished _Hamlet_. I will quote two
passages by way of illustrating the Poet's different styles as seen in
this play. The first is from the dialogue of Helena and the King, in
Act ii., scene 1, where she persuades him to make trial of her remedy:
[20] Page 190 of this volume.
"The great'st Grace lending grace,
Ere twice the horses of the Sun shall bring
Their fiery torcher his diurnal ring;
Ere twice in murk and occidental damp
Moist Hesperus hath quench'd his sleepy lamp;
Or four-and-twenty times the pilot's glass
Hath told the thievish minutes how they pass;
What is infirm from your sound parts shall fly,
Health shall live free, and sickness freely die."
Here we have the special traits of Shakespeare's youthful style,--an
air of artifice and studied finery, a certain self-conscious
elaborateness and imitative rivalry,--which totally disappear in, for
instance, the blessing the Countess gives her son as he is leaving for
the Court:
"Be thou blest, Bertram! and succeed thy father
In manners, as in shape! thy blood and virtue
Contend for empire in thee, and thy goodness
Share with thy birthright! Love all, trust a few,
Do wrong to none; be able for thine enemy
Rather in power than use, and keep thy friend
Under thy own life's key; be check'd for silence,
But never tax'd for speech. What Heaven more will,
That thee may furnish, and my prayers pluck down,
Fall on thy head!"
I the rather quote this latter, because of its marked resemblance to
the advice Polonius gives his son in _Hamlet_. Mr. White justly
observes that "either the latter is an expansion of the former, or the
former a reminiscence of the latter"; and I fully concur with him that
the second part of the alternative is the more probable. It is hardly
needful to add that the passage here quoted breathes a higher and
purer moral tone than the resembling one in _Hamlet_; but this I take
to be merely because the venerable Countess is a higher and purer
source than the old politician. For a broader and bulkier illustration
of the point in hand, the student probably cannot do better than by
comparing in full the dialogue from which the first of the forecited
passages is taken with the whole of the second scene in Act i. These
seem to me at least as apt and telling examples as any, of the Poet's
rawest and ripest styles so strangely mixed in this play; and the
difference is here so clearly pronounced, that one must be dull indeed
not to perceive it.
As regards the notion of Mr. Hunter before referred to, it is indeed
true, as he argues, that the play twice bespeaks its present title;
but both instances occur in just those parts which relish most of the
Poet's later style. And the line in the epilogue,--"_All is well
ended_, if this suit _be won_,"--may be fairly understood as
intimating some connection between the two titles which the play is
supposed to have borne.
* * * * *
The only known source from which the Poet could have borrowed any part
of this play is a story in Boccaccio, entitled _Giletta di Nerbona_.
In 1566 William Paynter published an English version of this tale in
his _Palace of Pleasure_. Here it was, no doubt, that Shakespeare got
his borrowed matter; and the following outline will show the nature
and extent of his obligations.
Isnardo, Count of Rousillon, being sickly, kept in his house a
physician named Gerardo of Nerbona. The Count had a son named
Beltramo, and the physician a daughter named Giletta, who were brought
up together. The Count dying, his son was left in the care of the King
and sent to Paris. The physician also dying some while after, his
daughter, who had loved the young Count so long that she knew not when
her love began, sought occasion of going to Paris, that she might see
him; but, being diligently looked to by her kinsfolk, because she was
rich and had many suitors, she could not see her way clear. Now the
King had a swelling on his breast, which through ill treatment was
grown to a fistula; and, having tried all the best physicians and
being only rendered worse by their efforts, he resolved to take no
further counsel or help. Giletta, hearing of this, was very glad, as
it suggested an apt reason for visiting Paris, and offered a chance of
compassing her secret and cherished wish. Arming herself with such
knowledge in the healing art as she had gathered from her father, she
rode to Paris and repaired to the King, praying him to show her his
disease. He consenting, as soon as she saw it she told him that, if he
pleased, she would within eight days make him whole. He asked how it
was possible for her, being a young woman, to do that which the best
physicians in the world could not; and, thanking her for her
good-will, said he was resolved to try no more remedies. She begged
him not to despise her knowledge because she was a young woman,
assuring him that she ministered physic by the help of God, and with
the cunning of Master Gerardo of Nerbona, who was her father. The
King, hearing this, and thinking that peradventure she was sent of
God, asked what might follow, if she caused him to break his
resolution, and did not heal him. She said, "Let me be kept in what
guard you list, and if I do not heal you let me be burnt; but, if I
do, what recompense shall I have?" He answered that, since she was a
maiden, he would bestow her in marriage upon a gentleman of right good
worship and estimation. To this she agreed, on condition that she
might have such a husband as herself should ask, without presumption
to any member of his family; which he readily granted. This done, she
set about her task, and before the eight days were passed he was
entirely well; whereupon he told her she deserved such a husband as
herself should choose, and she declared her choice of Beltramo, saying
she had loved him from her childhood. The King was very loth to grant
him to her; but, because he would not break his promise, he had him
called forth, and told him what had been done. The Count, thinking her
stock unsuitable to his nobility, disdainfully said, "Will you, then,
sir, give me a physician to wife?" The King pressing him to comply, he
answered, "Sire, you may take from me all that I have, and give my
person to whom you please, because I am your subject; but I assure
you I shall never be contented with that marriage." To which he
replied, "Well, you shall have her, for the maiden is fair and wise,
and loveth you entirely; and verily you shall lead a more joyful life
with her than with a lady of a greater House"; whereupon the Count
held his peace. The marriage over, the Count asked leave to go home,
having settled beforehand what he would do. Knowing that the
Florentines and the Senois were at war, he was no sooner on horseback
than he stole off to Tuscany, meaning to side with the Florentines; by
whom being honorably received and made a captain, he continued a long
time in their service.
His wife, hoping by her well-doing to win his heart, returned home,
where, finding all things spoiled and disordered by reason of his
absence, she like a sage lady carefully put them in order, making all
his people very glad of her presence and loving to her person. Having
done this, she sent word thereof to the Count by two knights, adding
that, if she were the cause of his forsaking home, he had but to let
her know it, and she, to do him pleasure, would depart thence. Now he
had a ring which he greatly loved, and kept very carefully, and never
took off his finger, for a certain virtue which he knew it had. When
the knights came, he said to them churlishly, "Let her do what she
list; for I purpose to dwell with her when she shall have this ring on
her finger, and a son of mine in her arms." The knights, after trying
in vain to change his purpose, returned to the lady, and told his
answer; at which she was very sorrowful, and bethought herself a good
while how she might accomplish those two things. She then called
together the noblest of the country, and told them what she had done
to win her husband's love; that she was loth he should dwell in
perpetual exile on her account; and therefore would spend the rest of
her life in pilgrimages and devotion; praying them to let him know she
had left, with a purpose never to return. Then, taking with her a maid
and one of her kinsmen, she set out in the habit of a pilgrim, well
furnished with silver and jewels, told no one whither she was going,
and rested not till she came to Florence. She put up at the house of a
poor widow; and the next day, seeing her husband pass by on horseback,
she asked who he was. The widow told her this, and also that he was
marvellously in love with a neighbour of hers, a gentlewoman who was
poor, but of right honest life and report, and dwelt with her mother,
a wise and honest lady. After hearing this, she was not long in
deciding what to do. Going secretly to the house, and getting a
private interview with the mother, she told her whole story, and how
she hoped to thrive in her undertaking, if the mother and daughter
would lend their aid. In recompense she proposed to give the daughter
a handsome marriage portion; and the mother replied, "Madam, tell me
wherein I may do you service; if it be honest, I will gladly perform
it; and, that being done, do as it shall please you." So an
arrangement was made, that the daughter should encourage the Count,
and signify her readiness to grant his wish, provided he would first
send her the ring he prized so highly, as a token of his love.
Proceeding with great subtlety as she was instructed, the daughter
soon got the ring; and at the time fixed for the meeting the Countess
supplied her place; the result of which was, that she became the
mother of two fine boys, and so was prepared to claim her dues as a
wife upon the seemingly-impossible terms which the Count himself had
proposed.
Meanwhile her husband, hearing of her departure, had returned to his
country. In due time the Countess also took her journey homeward, and
arrived at Montpellier, where, hearing that the Count was about to
have a great party at his house, she determined to go thither in her
pilgrim's weeds. Just as they were on the point of sitting down to the
table, she came to the place where her husband was, and fell at his
feet weeping, and said, "My lord, I am thy poor unfortunate wife, who,
that thou mightest return and dwell in thy house, have been a great
while begging about the world. Therefore I now beseech thee to
observe the conditions which the two knights that I sent to thee did
command me to do; for behold, here in my arms, not only one son of
thine, but twain, and likewise the ring: it is now time, if thou keep
promise, that I should be received as thy wife." The Count knew the
ring, and the children also, they were so like him, and desired her to
rehearse in order how all these things came about. When she had told
her story, he knew it to be true; and, perceiving her constant mind
and good wit, and the two fair young boys, to keep his promise, and to
please his people, and the ladies that made suit to him, he caused her
to rise up, and embraced and kissed her, and from that day forth loved
and honoured her as his wife.
* * * * *
From this sketch it will be seen that the Poet anglicized Beltramo
into Bertram, changed Giletta to Helena, and closely followed
Boccaccio in the main features of the plot so far as regards these
persons and the widow and her daughter. Beyond this, the novel yields
no hints towards the play, while the latter has several judicious
departures from the matter of the former. Giletta is rich, and has a
fine establishment of her own; which so far reduces the social
inequality between her and the Count: Helena is poor and dependent, so
that she has nothing to stand upon but her nobility of nature and
merit. Beltramo, again, has no thought of going to Florence till after
his compelled marriage; so that his going to the war is not from any
free stirring of virtue in him, but purely to escape the presence of a
wife that has been forced upon him. With Bertram, the unwelcome
marriage comes in only as an additional spur to the execution of a
purpose already formed. Before Helena makes her appearance at the
Court, his spirit is in revolt against the command which would make him
"stay here the forehorse to a smock,
Creaking his shoes on the plain masonry,
Till honour is bought up, and no sword worn
But one to dance with."
He therefore resolves to "steal away" to the war along with other
brave and enterprising spirits; and we have some lords of the Court
ministering fuel to this noble fire burning within him. These
stirrings of native gallantry, this brave thirst of honourable
distinction, go far to redeem him from the rank dishonours of his
conduct, as showing that he is not without some strong and noble
elements of manhood. Here we have indeed no little just ground of
respect; and that his purpose is but quickened into act by the thought
of finding a refuge in such manly work from the thraldom of a hated
marriage, operates as further argument in the same behalf. And this
purpose, springing as it does from the free promptings of his nature,
has the further merit, that it involves a deliberate braving of the
King's anger; thus showing that he will even peril his head rather
than leave what is best in him to "fust unused." All which plainly
infers that he has at least the right virtues of a soldier. And the
promise thus held out from the start is made good in the
after-performance. He proves a gallant, a capable, a successful
warrior, and returns with well-won laurels. In all these points, the
play is a manifest improvement on the tale. And I suspect the Poet
took care to endow his hero with this streak of nobility, because he
felt that there was some danger lest Helena's pursuit of Bertram
should rather have the effect of lowering her than of elevating him in
our thoughts.
But the crowning innovation upon the matter of the tale lies in the
characters of Lafeu, the Countess, the Clown, and Parolles, and in the
comic proceedings; all which, so far as is known, are entirely of the
Poet's invention. And it is quite remarkable what an original cast is
given to his development of the borrowed characters by the presence of
these; and how in the light of their mutual interaction the conduct of
all becomes, not indeed right or just, but consistent and clear.
Helena's native force and rectitude of mind are approved from the
first in her just appreciation of Parolles; and her nobility of soul
and beauty of character are reflected all along in the honest
sagacity of Lafeu and the wise motherly affection of the Countess, who
never see or think of her but to turn her advocates and wax eloquent
in her behalf. The thoughtful and benevolent King also, on becoming
acquainted with her, is even more taken with her moral and
intellectual beauty than with her service in restoring him to health.
The Countess regards her as "a maid too virtuous for the contempt of
empire"; and, on bearing Bertram's "dreadful sentence" against her,
she is prompt to declare, "He was my son, but I do wash his name out
of my blood, and thou art all my child"; and it is her very heart that
speaks,--
"What angel shall
Bless this unworthy husband? he cannot thrive,
Unless her prayers, which Heaven delights to hear,
And loves to grant, reprieve him from the wrath
Of greatest justice."
To the King she is "all that is virtuous"; "young, wise, fair";
"virtue and she is her own dower." Lafeu remembers her at the close as
"a sweet creature," and as one
"Whose beauty did astonish the survey
Of richest eyes; whose words all ears took captive;
Whose dear perfection hearts that scorn'd to serve
Humbly call'd mistress."
Thus she walks right into all hearts that have any doors for the
entrance of virtue and loveliness. And her modest, self-sacrificing
worth is brought home to our feelings by the impression she makes on
the good; while in turn our sense of their goodness is proportionably
heightened by their noble sensibility to hers.
Parolles, again, is puffed up into a more consequential whiffet than
ever, by being taken into the confidence of a haughty young nobleman;
while, on the other side, the stultifying effects of Bertram's pride
are seen in that it renders him the easy dupe of a most base and
bungling counterfeit of manhood. It was natural and right, that such
a shallow, paltry word-gun should ply him with impudent flatteries,
and thereby gain an ascendency over him, and finally draw him into the
crimes and the shames that were to whip down his pride; and it was
equally natural that his scorn of Helena should begin to relax, when
he was brought to see what a pitiful rascal, by playing upon that
pride, had been making a fool of him. He must first be mortified,
before he can be purified. The springs of moral health within him have
been overspread by a foul disease; and the proper medicine is such an
exposure of the latter as shall cause him to feel that he is himself a
most fit object of the scorn which he has been so forward to bestow.
Accordingly the embossing and untrussing of his favourite is the
starting of his amendment: he begins to distrust the counsels of his
cherished passion, when he can no longer hide from himself into what a
vile misplacing of trust they have betrayed him. Herein, also, we have
a full justification, both moral and dramatic, of the game so
mercilessly practised on Parolles: it is avowedly undertaken with a
view to rescue Bertram, whose friends know full well that nothing can
be done for his good, till the fascination of that crawling reptile is
broken.
Finally, Helena's just discernment of character, as shown in the case
of Parolles, pleads an arrest of judgment in behalf of Bertram. And
the fact that with all her love for him she is not blind to his
faults, is a sort of pledge that she sees through them into a worth
which they hide from others. For, indeed, she has known him in his
childhood, before his heart got pride-bound with conceit of rank and
titles; and therefore may well have a reasonable faith, that beneath
the follies and vices which have overcrusted his character, there is
still an undercurrent of sense and virtue, a wisdom of nature, not
dead but asleep, whereby he may yet be recovered. So that, in effect,
we are not unwilling to see him through her eyes, and, in the strength
of her well-approved wisdom, to take it upon trust that he has good
qualities which we are unable of ourselves to discover.
Thus the several parts are drawn into each other, and thereby made to
evolve a manifold rich significance; insomuch that the characters of
Helena and Bertram, as Shakespeare conceived them, cannot be rightly
understood apart from the others with which they are dramatically
associated.
It is indeed curious to observe how much care the Poet takes that his
heroine may come safe and sweet through the perils of her course. For
instance, at the very outset, when she first learns of the King's
disease, in the dialogue about her father, the Countess says in her
hearing, "Would, for the King's sake, he were living! I think it would
be the death of the King's disease"; and Lafeu replies, "The King very
lately spoke of him admiringly and mourningly." This serves as a
pregnant hint to her for what she afterwards undertakes. She now
remembers the special instructions of her father touching that
disease; and the hint combining with her treasured science, her
loyalty, and affection, works her into the strong confidence of being
able to help the King. Thus the main point of her action is put into
her mind incidentally by the speech of others. And she goes to Paris,
with the full approval and blessing of her foster-mother, _mainly_
with the view of securing to one whom she highly reveres the benefit
of her father's skill. It is true, a still deeper and dearer hope
underlies and supports her action; which hope however springs and
grows, not because she foresees at all how things are to turn, but
merely from a pious trust, which is in her case both natural and just,
that her father's "good receipt" will somehow, "for her legacy, be
sanctified by the luckiest stars in heaven."
The same delicate care for her honour, as if this were indeed sacred
and precious in the Poet's regard, is shown at various other points.
It is very note-worthy how, all along, she shapes her action from step
to step, not by any long-headed planning, but merely as events suggest
and invite her onward. Helena is indeed brave, wise, prudent,
sagacious, quick and clear of perception, swift and steadfast in
resolution, prompt, patient, and persevering in action; but there is
nothing of a crafty or designing mind in what she does. She displays
no special forecast, no subtle or far-sighted scheming; though quick
and apt at seizing and using opportunities, she does not make or even
seek them. So it is in the strange proceedings at Florence, whereby
she manages to fulfil the hard conditions imposed by her husband.
Here, as elsewhere, she has her fine penetrative faculties all
wide-awake, but there is no contriving or forcing of occasions: when
she sees a way open before her, she strikes into it promptly, and
pursues it with quiet yet energetic constancy; and whatever apt
occasions emerge to her view, she throws herself into them at once,
and, with a sort of divine tact, turns them to the best possible
account in furtherance of her cherished hope. In this way the Poet
manages to bring her character off clean and fragrant in our thoughts,
by making us feel that in whatever blame might else attach to her
acts, the circumstances only are responsible, while to her belongs the
credit of using those circumstances purely, wisely, and well.
It is further observable, and a very material point too, that Helena
seems to think the better of Bertram for his behaviour towards her:
she takes it as evidence at least of honesty in him, and of a certain
downrightness of character, that shrinks from a life of appearances,
and knows not how to affect what he does not feel. So far from blaming
his indifference, she rather blames herself as having brought him into
a false position. She loves him simply because she cannot help it; she
wants him to love her for the same reason; and the point she aims at
is so to act and be and appear, that he cannot help loving her. She
knows right well that the choice must be mutual, else marriage is
rather a sacrilege than a sacrament; and the great question is, how
she may win him to reciprocate her choice: nothing less than this will
suffice her; and she justly takes it as her part to _inspire_ him with
the feeling, understanding perfectly that neither talk nor force can
be of any use to that end. Even a love that springs from a sense of
duty is not what she wants: her own love did not spring from that
source. So she "would not have him till she does deserve him," yet
knows not how that desert should ever be: still she cannot put off the
faith that love will sooner or later triumph, if worthily shown by
deeds. He is much noted as a fine instance of manly beauty: all are
taken with his handsome person. It is not, probably ought not to be,
in womanhood, to be proof against such attractions. In the sweetness
of their youthful intercourse, this has silently got the mastery of
her thoughts, and penetrated her being through and through:
"Twas pretty, though a plague,
To see him every hour; to sit and draw
His arched brows, his hawking eye, his curls,
In our heart's table."
And now she must needs strive with all her might, by loving ways, by
kind acts, by self-sacrificing works, to catch his heart, as he has
caught hers. Then too a holy instinct of womanhood teaches her that a
man must be hard indeed, to resist the wedded mother of his children,
and most of all, to keep his heart untouched by the power of a wife
when burdened with a mother's precious wealth. Therewithal she rightly
apprehends the danger Bertram is in from the wordy, cozening squirt,
the bedizened, scoundrelly dandiprat, who has so beguiled his youth
and ignorance. She must bless and sweeten him out of that contagion
into the religion of home; and she feels that nothing but an
honourable love of herself can save him. This she aims at, and finally
accomplishes.
Coleridge incidentally speaks of Helena as "Shakespeare's loveliest
character." And Mrs. Jameson, from whose judgment I shall take no
appeal, sets her down as exemplifying that union of strength and
tenderness which Foster, in one of his _Essays_, describes as being
"the utmost and rarest endowment of humanity";--a character, she
adds, "almost as hard to delineate in fiction as to find in real
life." Without either questioning or subscribing these statements, I
have to confess that, for depth, sweetness, energy, and solidity of
character, all drawn into one, Helena is not surpassed by more than
two or three of Shakespeare's heroines. Her great strength of mind is
well shown in that, absorbed as she is in the passion that shapes her
life, hardly any of the Poet's characters, after Hamlet, deals more in
propositions of general truth, as distinguished from the utterances of
individual sentiment and emotion. We should suppose that all her
thoughts, being struck out in such a glowing heat, would so cleave to
the circumstances as to have little force apart from them; yet much
that she says holds as good in a general application as in her own
particular. Which rightly infers that she sees things in their
principles; that is, her thoughts touch the pith of whatever matter
she takes in hand; while at the same time broad axiomatic notes of
discourse drop from her with an ease which shows that her mind is
thoroughly at home in them. For this cause, her feelings, strong as
they are, never so get the upper hand as to beguile her into any
self-delusion; as appears in the unbosoming of herself to the
Countess, where we have the greatest reluctance of modesty yielding to
a holy regard for truth. It is there manifest that she has taken a
full and just measure of her situation: she frankly avows the
conviction that she "loves in vain," and that she "strives against
hope"; that she "lends and gives where she is sure to lose";
nevertheless she resolves to "venture the well-lost life of hers on
his Grace's cure," and leave the result in other hands.
In her condition, both there and afterwards, there is much indeed to
move our pity; yet her behaviour and the grounds of it are such that
she never suffers any loss of our respect; one reason of which is,
because we see that her sound faculties and fine feelings are keenly
alive to the nature of what she undertakes. Thus she passes unharmed
through the most terrible outward dishonours, firmly relying on her
rectitude of purpose; and we dare not think any thing to her hurt,
because she looks her danger square in the face, and nobly feels
secure in that apparelling of strength. Here, truly, we have something
very like the sublimity of moral courage. And this precious, peerless
jewel in a setting of the most tender, delicate, sensitive womanhood!
It is a clear triumph of the inward and essential over the outward and
accidental; her character being radiant of a moral and spiritual grace
which the lowest and ugliest situation cannot obscure.
There certainly needs no scruple that the delineation is one of
extraordinary power: perhaps, indeed, it may stand as Shakespeare's
masterpiece in the conquest of inherent difficulties. And it is
observable that here, for once, he does not carry his point without
evident tokens of exertion. He does not outwrestle the resistance of
the matter without letting us see that he is wrestling. Of course the
hardness of the task was to represent the heroine as doing what were
scarce pardonable in another; yet as acting on such grounds, from such
motives, and to such issues, that the undertaking not only is, but is
felt to be, commendable in her. Lamb puts it just right: "With such
exquisite address is the dangerous subject handled, that Helena's
forwardness loses her no honour: delicacy dispenses with its laws in
her favour; and nature, in her single case, seems content to suffer a
sweet violation." And the Poet seems to have felt that something like
a mysterious, supernatural impulse, together with all the reverence
and authority of the old Countess, and also the concurring voice of
all the wise and good about her in hearty approval of her course and
eloquent admiration of her virtue,--that all these were needful to
bring her through with dignity and honour. Nor, perhaps, after all,
could any thing but success fully vindicate her undertaking; for such
a thing, to be proper, must be practicable: and who could so enter
into her mind as to see its practicability till it is done? At the
last we accept it as a sort of inspiration,--authenticated to us as
such in the result,--when she frames her intent in the meditation,--
"Impossible be strange attempts to those
That weigh their pains in sense, and do suppose
What hath not been can't be."
Before leaving the subject, I am moved to add that, though Helena is
herself all dignity and delicacy, some of her talk with Monsieur Words
the puppy in the first scene is neither delicate nor dignified: it is
simply a foul blot, and I can but regret the Poet did not throw it out
in the revisal; sure I am that he did not retain it to please himself.
* * * * *
Almost everybody falls in love with the Countess. And, truly, one so
meek and sweet and venerable, who can help loving her? or who, if he
can resist her, will dare to own it? I can almost find it in my heart
to adore the beauty of youth; yet this blessed old creature is enough
to persuade me that age may be more beautiful still. Her generous
sensibility to native worth amply atones for her son's mean pride of
birth: all her honours of rank and place she would gladly resign, to
have been the mother of the poor orphan left in her charge. Feeling as
she does the riches of that orphan's soul,--a feeling that bespeaks
like riches in herself,--all the factitious distinctions of life sink
to nothing in her regard; and the only distinction worth having is
that which grows by building honour out of one's own virtue, and not
by inheriting it from the virtue of others. So, in her breast,
"adoption strives with nature"; and, weighing the adopted and the
native together in her motherly judgment, she finds "there's nothing
here too good for him but only she"; and "which of them both is
dearest to her, she has no skill in sense to make distinction." Withal
she is a charming instance of youth carried on into age; so that
Helena justly recognizes her as one "whose aged honour cites a
virtuous youth." Thus her Winter inherits a soft warm robe of precious
memories woven out of her Spring: when she first learns of the
heroine's state of mind, the picture of her own May revives to her
eye, the treasure of her maiden years blooms afresh; she remembers
that "this thorn doth to our rose of youth rightly belong"; and has
more than ever a mother's heart towards the silent sufferer, because
she holds fast her old faith that
"It is the show and seal of nature's truth,
Where love's strong passion is impress'd in youth."
Well might Campbell say of her, that "she redeems nobility by
reverting to nature."
* * * * *
Johnson delivers his mind touching the young Count as follows: "I
cannot reconcile my heart to Bertram;--a man noble without generosity,
and young without truth; who marries Helena as a coward, and leaves
her as a profligate: when she is dead by his unkindness, sneaks home
to a second marriage; is accused by a woman he has wronged, defends
himself by falsehood, and is dismissed to happiness." A terrible
sentence indeed! and its vigour, if not its justice, is attested by
the frequency with which it has been quoted.
Now, in the first place, the Poet did not mean we should reconcile our
hearts to Bertram, but that he should not unreconcile them to Helena;
nay, that her love should appear the nobler for the unworthiness of
its object. Then, he does not marry her as a coward, but merely
because he has no choice; nor does he yield till he has shown all the
courage that were compatible with discretion. She is forced upon him
by a stretch of prerogative which seems strange indeed to us, but
which in feudal times was generally held to be just and right, so that
resistance to it was flat rebellion. And, as before observed,
Bertram's purpose of stealing away to the war was bravely formed
without any reference to Helena, and from a manly impulse or ambition
to be doing something that might show him not unworthy of his House
and his social inheritance. The King presses him with the hard
alternative of taking Helena as his wife,
"Or I will throw thee from my care for ever
Into the staggers and the cureless lapse
Of youth and ignorance; both my revenge and hate
Loosing upon thee, in the name of justice,
Without all terms of pity."
Nor, when thus driven to make a show of mastering his aversion, is
there any thing mean or cringing in the way he does it: his language
is not only reluctant and reserved, but is even made severe with a
dash of irony:
"When I consider
What great creation and what dole of honour
Flies where you bid it, I find that she, which late
Was in my nobler thoughts most base, is now
_The praisèd of the King_."
Marriage, in truth, is a thing that he has not begun to think of; the
passion that rightly leads to it is yet dormant in him; to the proper
charms of woman he is insensible, his heart being all set on other
things. Then, again, he does not leave Helena as a profligate, but
rather to escape from what is to him an unholy match, as being on his
side without love; and his profligacy is not so much the cause as the
consequence of his flight and exile. In the midst of his manlier work,
he is surprised into a passion unfelt by him before; and the tie which
has been strained upon him, and which his heart still disowns, is
partly to blame for the profligate intrigue into which he plunges,
because it shuts off the conditions of an honourable love.--Finally,
he is not dismissed to happiness, but rather left where he cannot be
happy, unless he shall have dismissed his faults. And, surely, he may
have some allowance, because of the tyranny laid upon him,--this too
in a sentiment where nature pleads loudest for freedom, and which, if
free, yields the strongest motives to virtue; if not, to vice.
As for his falsehood, or rather string of falsehoods, this is indeed
a pretty dark passage. The guilty passion with which he is caught
betrays him into a course of action still more guilty: he is
entangled, almost before he knows it, in a net of vile intrigue, from
which there is no escape but by lying his way out; and the more he
struggles to get free the more he gets engaged. It seems an earnest of
"the staggers and the cureless lapse of youth" with which the King has
threatened him. But he pays a round penalty in the shame that so
quickly overtakes him; which shows how careful the Poet was to make
due provision for his amendment. His original fault, as already noted,
was an overweening pride of birth: yet in due time he unfolds in
himself better titles to honour than ancestry can bestow; and, this
done, he naturally grows more willing to recognize similar titles in
another. It is to be noted further, that Bertram is all along a man of
few words; which may be one reason why Parolles, who is all words, as
his name imports, _burrs_ upon him and works his infection into him
with such signal success. His habitual reticence springs mainly from
real, inward strength of nature; but partly also from that same
unsocial pride which lays him so broadly open to the arts of
sycophancy, and thus draws him, as if spellbound, under the tainted
breath of that strange compound of braggart, liar, and fop.
Thus Shakespeare purposely represents Bertram as a very mixed
character, in whom the evil gains for some time a most unhopeful
mastery; and he takes care to provide, withal, the canon whereby he
would have him judged: "The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good
and ill together: our virtues would be proud, if our faults whipp'd
them not; and our crimes would despair, if they were not cherished by
our virtues." A pregnant and subtile reflection indeed, which may
sound strange to many; but the truth and wisdom of it are well
approved by the grave and saintly Hooker, who was "not afraid to
affirm it boldly," that proud men sometimes "receive a benefit at the
hands of God, and are assisted with His grace, when with His grace
they are not assisted, but permitted, and that grievously, to
transgress; whereby, as they were in overgreat liking of themselves
supplanted, so the dislike of that which did supplant them may
establish them afterwards the surer."
* * * * *
Captain Parolles is verily Shakespeare's most illustrious _pronoun_ of
a man. Several critics have somehow found it in their hearts to speak
of him and Falstaff together. A foul sin against Sir John! who,
whatever else he may deserve, certainly does not deserve that.
Schlegel, however, justly remarks that the scenes where our captain
figures contain matter enough for an excellent comedy. It is indeed a
marvel that one so inexpressibly mean, and withal so fully aware of
his meanness, should not cut his own acquaintance. But the greatest
wonder about him is, how the Poet could so run his own intellectuality
into such a windbag, without marring his windbag perfection. The
character of Parolles is interpreted with unusual fulness in the
piercing comments of the other persons. He seems indeed to have been
specially "created for men to breathe themselves upon." Thus one
describes him as "a most notable coward, an infinite and endless liar,
an hourly promise-breaker, the owner of no one good quality"; and
again, as having "outvillained villainy so far, that the rarity
redeems him." And he is at last felt to be worth feeding and keeping
alive for the simple reason of his being such a miracle of bespangled,
voluble, impudent good-for-nothingness, that contempt and laughter
cannot afford to let him die. But the roundest and happiest delivery
of him comes from the somewhat waggish but high-spirited and
sharpsighted Lord Lafeu, who finds him "my good window of lattice,"
and one whose "soul is in his clothes"; and who says to him, "I did
think thee, for two ordinaries, to be a pretty wise fellow; thou didst
make tolerable vent of thy travel; it might pass: yet the scarfs and
the bannerets about thee did manifoldly dissuade me from believing
thee a vessel of too great a burden." The play is choicely seasoned
throughout with the good-humoured old statesman's spicery; and our
captain is the theme that draws most of it out.
That the goddess whom Bertram worships does not whisper in his ear the
unfathomable baseness of this "lump of counterfeit ore," is a piece of
dramatic retribution at once natural and just. Far as the joke is
pushed upon Parolles, we never feel like crying out, _Hold, enough_!
for, "that he should know what he is, and be that he is," seems an
offence for which infinite shames were hardly a sufficient
indemnification. And we know right well that such a hollow, flaunting,
strutting roll of effrontery and poltroonery cannot possibly have soul
enough to be inwardly hurt by the utmost pressure of disgrace and
scorn. And yet, strange as it may seem, Parolles represents a class of
actual men; how truly, is well shown in that the delineation, in its
main features, but especially as of "one that lies three thirds, and
uses a known truth to pass a thousand nothings with," might almost be
mistaken for a portrait of a very noted character of our time,--a man
too--which is strangest of all--whose success with the voters has even
beaten that of his dramatic prototype with Bertram.
* * * * *
Verplanck thinks, as he well may, that the Poet's special purpose in
this play was to set forth the precedence of innate over
circumstantial distinctions. Gervinus also takes the same view: "The
idea that merit goes before rank is the soul of this piece and of the
relation between Bertram and Helena." And this high moral centre is
not only pronounced strongly in verbal discourse, but, which is still
better, is silently placed in the characters themselves and in the
facts of the play. Yet observe with what a catholic spirit the Poet
teaches this great lesson; frankly recognizing the noble man in the
nobleman, and telling us, in effect, that none know so well how to
prize the nobilities of nature as those who, like the King and the
Countess of this play, have experienced the nothingness of all other
claims. To be sure, their generous superiority to adventitious
distinctions is partly because of a certain regenerative efficacy
flowing from the heroine: pride of birth is sweetly rebuked in her
presence; a subtile inspiration from her seems to steal away whatever
prejudice of rank they may have, and to cheat them into full sympathy
with truth and virtue; and, with the exception of Bertram and the
bescarfed coxcomb that spaniels him, all from the King downwards are
won to the free worship of untitled merit directly they begin to
converse with this meek and modest incarnation of Nature's eloquence.