In Shakespeare's time there lived in London one Simon Forman, M.D., to
whom we are indebted for our earliest notice of THE WINTER'S TALE. He
was rather an odd genius, I should think; being an adept in occult
science and the arts of magic, and at the same time an ardent lover
of the stage; thus symbolizing at once with the most conservative and
the most radical tendencies of the age: for, strange as it may seem,
the Drama then led the van of progress; Shakespeare being even a more
audacious innovator in poetry and art than Bacon was in philosophy. Be
this as it may, Forman evidently took great delight in the theatre,
and he kept a diary of what he witnessed there. Not many years ago,
the manuscript of this diary was discovered by Mr. Collier in the
Ashmolean Museum, and a portion of its contents published. Forman was
at the Globe theatre on Wednesday, the 15th of May, 1611, and under
that date he records "how Leontes the King of Sicilia was overcome
with jealousy of his wife with the King of Bohemia, his friend that
came to see him, and how he contrived his death, and would have had
his cup-bearer poison him, who gave the King warning thereof, and fled
with him to Bohemia. Also, how he sent to the oracle of Apollo, and
the answer of Apollo was that she was guiltless; and except the child
was found again that was lost, the King should die without issue: for
the child was carried into Bohemia, and there laid in a forest, and
brought up by a shepherd; and the King of Bohemia's son married that
wench, and they fled into Sicilia, and by the jewels found about her
she was known to be Leontes' daughter, and was then sixteen years
old."
This clearly identifies the performance seen by Forman as _The
Winter's Tale_ of Shakespeare. It is altogether probable that the play
was then new, and was in its first course of exhibition. For Sir
George Buck became Master of the Revels in October, 1610, and was
succeeded in that office by Sir Henry Herbert in 1623, who passed _The
Winter's Tale_ without examination, on the ground of its being an "old
play formerly allowed by Sir George Buck." As the play had to be
licensed before it could be performed, this ascertains its first
performance to have been after October, 1610. So that _The Winter's
Tale_ was most likely presented for official sanction some time
between that date and the 15th of May following, when Forman saw it
at the Globe. To all this must be added the internal characteristics
of the play itself, which is in the Poet's ripest and most idiomatic
style of art. It is not often that the date of his workmanship can be
so closely remarked. _The Winter's Tale_ was never printed, so far as
we know, till it appeared in the folio of 1623.
* * * * *
In the plot and incidents of this play, Shakespeare followed very
closely the _Pandosto_, or, as it was sometimes called, the _Dorastus
and Fawnia_, of Robert Greene. This novel appears to have been one of
the most popular books of the time; there being no less than fourteen
old editions of it known, the first of which was in 1588. Greene was a
scholar, a man of some genius, Master of Arts in both the
Universities, and had indeed much more of learning than of judgment in
the use and application of it. For it seems as if he could not write
at all without overloading his pages with classical allusion, nor hit
upon any thought so trite and commonplace, but that he must run it
through a series of aphoristic sentences twisted out of Greek and
Roman lore. In this respect, he is apt to remind one of his
fellow-dramatist, Thomas Lodge, whose _Rosalynd_ contributed so much
to the Poet's _As You Like It_: for it was then much the fashion for
authors to prank up their matter with superfluous erudition. Like all
the surviving works of Greene, _Pandosto_ is greatly charged with
learned impertinence, and in the annoyance thence resulting one is apt
to overlook the real merit of the performance. It is better than
Lodge's _Rosalynd_ for this reason, if for no other, that it is
shorter. I must condense so much of the tale as may suffice to
indicate the nature and extent of the Poet's obligations.
Pandosto, King of Bohemia, and Egistus, King of Sicilia, had passed
their boyhood together, and grown into a mutual friendship which kept
its hold on them long after coming to their crowns. Pandosto had for
his wife a very wise and beautiful lady named Bellaria, who had made
him the father of a prince called Garinter in whom both himself and
his people greatly delighted. After many years of separation, Egistus
"sailed into Bohemia to visit his old friend," who, hearing of his
arrival, went with a great train of lords and ladies to meet him,
received him very lovingly, and wished his wife to welcome him. No
pains were spared to honour the royal visitor and make him feel at
home. Bellaria, "to show how much she liked him whom her husband
loved," treated Egistus with great confidence, often going herself to
his chamber to see that nothing should be amiss. This honest
familiarity increased from day to day, insomuch that when Pandosto was
busy with State affairs they would walk into the garden and pass their
time in pleasant devices. After a while, Pandosto began to have
doubtful thoughts, considering the beauty of his wife, and the
comeliness and bravery of his friend. This humour growing upon him, he
went to watching them, and fishing for proofs to confirm his
suspicions. At length his mind got so charged with jealousy that he
felt quite certain of the thing he feared, and studied for nothing so
much as revenge. He resolved to work by poison, and called upon his
cup-bearer, Franion, to execute the scheme, and pressed him to it with
the alternative of preferment or death. The minister, after trying his
best to dissuade the King, at last gave his consent, in order to gain
time, then went to Egistus, and told him the secret, and fled with him
to Sicilia. Full of rage at being thus baffled, Pandosto then let
loose his fury against the Queen, ordering her forthwith into close
prison. He then had his suspicion proclaimed as a certain truth; and
though her character went far to discredit the charge, yet the sudden
flight of Egistus caused it to be believed. And he would fain have
made war on Egistus, but that the latter not only was of great
strength and prowess, but had many kings in his alliance, his wife
being daughter to the Emperor of Russia.
Meanwhile the Queen in prison gave birth to a daughter, which put the
King in a greater rage than ever, insomuch that he ordered both the
mother and the babe to be burnt alive. Against this cruel sentence his
nobles stoutly remonstrated; but the most they could gain was, that he
should spare the child's life; his next device being to put her in a
boat and leave her to the mercy of the winds and waves. At the hearing
of this hard doom, the Queen fell down in a trance, so that all
thought her dead; and on coming to herself she at last gave up the
babe, saying, "Let me kiss thy lips, sweet infant, and wet thy tender
cheeks with my tears, and put this chain about thy little neck, that
if fortune save thee, it may help to succour thee."
When the day of trial came, the Queen, standing as a prisoner at the
bar, and seeing that nothing but her death would satisfy the King,
"waxed bold, and desired that she might have law and justice," and
that her accusers might be brought before her face. The King replied
that their word was enough, the flight of Egistus confirming what they
had said; and that it was her part "to be impudent in forswearing the
fact, since she had passed all shame in committing the fault." At the
same time he threatened her with a cruel death; which she met by
telling him that her life had ever been such as no spot of suspicion
could stain, and that, if she had borne a friendly countenance towards
Egistus, it was only as he was her husband's friend: "therefore, if
she were condemned without further proof, it was rigour, and not law."
The judges said she spoke reason, and begged that her accusers might
be openly examined and sworn; whereupon the King went to browbeating
them, the very demon of tyranny having got possession of him. The
Queen then told him that, if his fury might stand for law, it was of
no use for the jury to give their verdict; and therefore she begged
him to send six of his noblemen to "the Isle of Delphos," to inquire
of Apollo whether she were guilty or not. This request he could not
refuse. The messengers using all haste soon came back with the sealed
answer of Apollo. The court being now assembled again, the scroll was
opened and read in their presence, its contents being much the same as
in the play. As soon as Apollo's verdict was known, the people raised
a great shout, rejoicing and clapping their hands, that the Queen was
clear. The repentant King then besought his nobles to intercede with
the Queen in his behalf, at the same time confessing how he had tried
to compass the death of Egistus; and while he was doing this word came
that the young Prince was suddenly dead; at the hearing of which the
Queen fell down, and could never be revived: the King also sank down
senseless, and lay in that state three days; and there was nothing but
mourning in Bohemia. Upon reviving, the King was so frenzied with
grief and remorse that he would have killed himself, but that his
peers being present stayed his hand, entreating him to spare his life
for the people's sake. He had the Queen and Prince very richly and
piously entombed; and from that time repaired daily to the tomb to
bewail his loss.
Up to this point, the play, so far as the mere incidents are
concerned, is little else than a dramatized version of the tale:
henceforth the former diverges more widely from the latter, though
many of the incidents are still the same in both.
The boat with its innocent freight was carried by wind and tide to the
coast of Sicilia, where it stuck in the sand. A poor shepherd, missing
one of his sheep, wandered to the seaside in search of it. As he was
about to return he heard a cry, and, there being no house near, he
thought it might be the bleating of his sheep; and going to look more
narrowly he spied a little boat from which the cry seemed to come.
Wondering what it might be, he waded to the boat, and found the babe
lying there ready to die of cold and hunger, wrapped in an embroidered
mantle, and having a chain about the neck. Touched with pity he took
the infant in his arms, and as he was fixing the mantle there fell at
his feet a very fair rich purse containing a great sum of gold. To
secure the benefit of this wealth, he carried the babe home as
secretly as he could, and gave her in charge to his wife, telling her
the process of the discovery. The shepherd's name was Porrus, his
wife's Mopsa; the precious foundling they named Fawnia. Being
themselves childless, they brought her up tenderly as their own
daughter. With the gold Porrus bought a farm and a flock of sheep,
which Fawnia at the age of ten was set to watch; and, as she was
likely to be his only heir, many rich farmers' sons came to his house
as wooers; for she was of singular beauty and excellent wit, and at
sixteen grew to such perfection of mind and person that her praises
were spoken at the Sicilian Court. Nevertheless she still went forth
every day with the sheep, veiling her face from the Sun with a garland
of flowers; which attire became her so well, that she seemed the
goddess Flora herself for beauty.
King Egistus had an only son, named Dorastus, a Prince so adorned with
gifts and virtues, that both King and people had great joy of him. He
being now of ripe age, his father sought to match him with some
princess; but the youth was little minded to wed, as he had more
pleasure in the exercises of the field and the chase. One day, as he
was pursuing this sport, he chanced to fall in with the lovely
shepherdess, and while he was rapt in wonder at the vision one of his
pages told him she was Fawnia, whose beauty was so much talked of at
the Court.
The story then goes on to relate the matter of their courtship; how
the Prince resolved to forsake his home and inheritance, and become a
shepherd, for her sake, as she could not think of matching with one
above her degree; how, forecasting the opposition and dreading the
anger of his father, he planned for escaping into Italy, in which
enterprise he was assisted by an old servant of his named Capnio, who
managed the affair so shrewdly, that the Prince made good his escape,
taking the old shepherd along with him; how, after they got to sea,
the ship was seized by a tempest and carried away to Bohemia; and how
at length the several parties met together at the Court of Pandosto,
which drew on a disclosure of the facts, and a happy marriage of the
fugitive lovers.
I must add one more item from the novel, as it aptly shows what
advantage is sometimes to be gained by tracing the Poet in his
reading. In the play, the Shepherd on finding the babe is made to
exclaim, "What have we here? Mercy on 's, a bairn; a very pretty
bairn! a boy, or a child, I wonder?" For some hundred years, editorial
ingenuity has been strained to the utmost to explain why _child_
should be thus used in opposition to _boy_; and nothing would do but
to surmise an obsolete custom of speech which made _child_ signify
_girl_. The simple explanation is, that _boy_ is a misprint for _god_.
For this felicitous restoration we are indebted to Mr. R.G. White, of
New York, who was guided to it by the corresponding passage of the
novel: "The shepherd, who before had never seen so fair a babe nor so
rich jewels, thought assuredly that it was _some little god_, and
began with great devotion to knock on his breast. The babe, who
writhed with the head to seek for the pap, began again to cry, whereby
the poor man knew _it was a child_." That we are not gods, is indeed
evident enough when we cry. Of course the man's devotion turned all to
pity as soon as he caught that little but most unequivocal note of
humanity.
* * * * *
From the foregoing sketch, it would seem that the Poet must have
written with the novel before him, and not merely from general
recollection. Here, again, as in case of _As You Like It_, to
appreciate his judgment and taste, one needs to compare his
workmanship in detail with the original, and to note what he left
unused. The free sailing between Sicily and Bohemia he retained,
inverting, however, the local order of the persons and incidents, so
that Polixenes and Florizel are Bohemian Princes, whereas their
prototypes, Egistus and his son, are Sicilians. The reason of this
inversion does not appear. Of course, the Poet could not have done it
with any view to disguise his obligations; as his purpose evidently
was, to make the popular interest of the tale tributary to his own
success and profit. The most original of men, he was also the most
free from pride and conceit of originality. In this instance, too, as
in others, the instinctive rectitude of his genius is manifest in
that, the subject once chosen, and the work begun, he thenceforth lost
himself in the inspiration of his theme; all thoughts of popularity
and pay being swallowed up in the supreme regards of Nature and Truth.
For so, in his case, however prudence might dictate the plan, poetry
was sure to have command of the execution. If he was but human in
electing what to do, he became divine as soon as he went to doing it.
And it is further considerable that, with all his borrowings in this
play, the Poet nowhere drew more richly or more directly from his own
spring. The whole life of the work is in what he gave, not in what he
took; the mechanism of the story being used but as a skeleton to
underpin and support the eloquent contexture of life and beauty. In
the novel, Paulina and the Clown are wanting altogether; while Capnio
yields but a slight hint, if indeed it be so much, towards the part of
Antolycus. And, besides the great addition of life and matter in these
persons, the play has several other judicious departures from the
novel.
In Leontes all the revolting features of Pandosto, save his jealousy,
and the headstrong insolence and tyranny thence proceeding, are purged
away; so that while the latter has neither intellect nor generosity to
redeem his character, jealousy being the least of his faults, the
other has a liberal stock of both. And in Bellaria the Poet had little
more than a bare framework of incident wherein to set the noble, lofty
womanhood of Hermione,--a conception far, far above the reach of such
a mind as Greene's. In the matter of the painted statue, Shakespeare,
so far as is known, was altogether without a model, as he is without
an imitator; the boldness of the plan being indeed such as nothing but
entire success could justify, and wherein it is hardly possible to
conceive of anybody but Shakespeare's having succeeded. And yet here
it is that we are to look for the idea and formal cause of Hermione's
character, while her character, again, is the shaping and informing
power of the whole drama. For this idea is really the living centre
and organic law in and around which all the parts of the work are
vitally knit together. But, indeed, the Poet's own most original and
inimitable mode of conceiving and working out character is everywhere
dominant.
* * * * *
So much has been said about the anachronisms of this play, that it
seems needful to add a word concerning them. We have already seen that
the making of seaports and landing of ships in Bohemia were taken from
Greene. Mr. Verplanck conjectures that by Bohemia Shakespeare meant
simply the land of the Boii, an ancient people several tribes of whom
settled in the maritime parts of France: but I hardly think he would
have used the name with so much license at a time when the boundaries
of that country were so well fixed and so widely known. For the events
of the Reformation had made Bohemia an object of special interest to
the people of England, and there was much intercourse between the
English and Bohemian Courts. I have no notion indeed that this breach
of geography was a blunder: it was meant, no doubt, for the
convenience of thought; and such is its effect, until one goes to
viewing the parts of the work with reference to ends not contemplated
in the use here made of them. And the same is to be said touching
several points of chronological confusion; such as the making Whitsun
pastorals, Christian burial, Julio Romano, the Emperor of Russia, and
Puritans singing psalms to hornpipes, all contemporary with the Oracle
of Delphi; wherein actual things are but marshalled into an ideal
order, so as to render Memory subservient to Imagination. In these and
such points, it is enough that the materials be apt to combine among
themselves, and that they agree in working out the issue proposed, the
end thus regulating the use of the means. For a work of art, as such,
should be itself an object for the mind to rest upon, not a directory
to guide it to something else. So that here we may justly say "the
mind is its own place"; and, provided the work be true to this
intellectual whereabout, breaches of geography and history are of
little consequence. And Shakespeare knew full well, that in poetical
workmanship Memory stands absolved from the laws of time, and that the
living order of art has a perfect right to overrule and supersede the
chronological order of facts. In a word, history and chronology have
no rights which a poet, as such, is bound to respect. In his sphere,
things draw together and unite in virtue of other affinities than
those of succession and coexistence. A work of art must indeed aim to
be understood and felt; and so far as historical order is necessary to
this, so far it may justly claim a prerogative voice. But still such a
work must address itself to the mind and heart of man as man, and not
to particular men as scholars or critics. That Shakespeare did this
better than anybody else is the main secret of his supremacy. And it
implies a knowledge far deeper than books could give,--the knowledge
of a mind so intuitive of Nature, and so at home with her, as not to
need the food of learning, because it fed directly on that which is
the original food of learning itself.
Hence the conviction which I suppose all true Shakespearians to have,
that no amount of scholastic advantages and acquirements could really
do any thing towards explaining the mystery of his works. To do what
he did at all, he must have had a native genius so strong and clear
and penetrative, as to become more than learned without the aid of
learning. What could the hydrants of knowledge do for a mind which
thus dwelt at its fountain? Or why should he need to converse with
Wisdom's messengers, whose home was in the very court and pavilion of
Wisdom herself? Shakespeare is always weakest when a fit of learning
takes him. But then he is stronger without learning than any one else
is with it, and, perhaps, than he would have been with it himself; as
the crutches that help the lame are but an incumbrance to the whole.
Perhaps I ought to add, touching the forecited anachronisms, that the
Poet's sense of them may be fairly regarded as apparent in the naming
of the piece. He seems to have judged that, in a dramatic _tale_
intended for the delight of the fireside during a long, quiet Winter's
evening, such things would not be out of place, and would rather help
than mar the entertainment and life of the performance. Thus much
indeed is plainly hinted more than once in the course of the play; as
in Act v. scene 2, where, one of the Gentlemen being asked, "What
became of Antigonus, that carried hence the child?" he replies, "Like
an _old tale_ still, which will have matter to rehearse, though credit
be asleep, and not an ear open."
Much the same is to be said touching the remarkable freedom which the
Poet here takes with the conditions of time; there being an interval
of sixteen years between the third and fourth Acts, which is with
rather un-Shakespearian awkwardness bridged over by the Chorus
introducing Act iv. This freedom, however, was inseparable from the
governing idea of the piece, nor can it be faulted but upon such
grounds as would exclude all dramatized fiction from the stage. It is
to be noted also that while the play thus divides itself into two
parts, these are skilfully woven together by a happy stroke of art.
The last scene of the third Act not only finishes the action of the
first three, but by an apt and unforced transition begins that of the
other two; the two parts of the drama being smoothly drawn into the
unity of a continuous whole by the introduction of the old Shepherd
and his son at the close of the one and the opening of the other. This
natural arrangement saves the imagination from being disturbed by any
yawning or obtrusive gap of time, notwithstanding the lapse of so many
years in the interval. On this point, Gervinus remarks that, "while
Shakespeare has in other dramas permitted a twofold action united by a
common idea, he could not in this instance have entirely concentrated
the two fictions; he could but unite them indistinctly by a leading
idea in both; though the manner in which he has outwardly united them
is a delicate and spirited piece of art."
* * * * *
In the delineation of Leontes there is an abruptness of change which
strikes us, at first view, as not a little a-clash with nature: we
cannot well see how one state of mind grows out of another: his
jealousy shoots in comet-like, as something unprovided for in the
general ordering of his character. Which causes this feature to appear
as if it were suggested rather by the exigencies of the stage than by
the natural workings of human passion. And herein the Poet seems at
variance with himself; his usual method being to unfold a passion in
its rise and progress, so that we go along with it freely from its
origin to its consummation. And, certainly, there is no accounting for
Leontes' conduct, but by supposing a predisposition to jealousy in
him, which, however, has been hitherto kept latent by his wife's
clear, firm, serene discreetness, but which breaks out into sudden and
frightful activity as soon as she, under a special pressure of
motives, slightly overacts the confidence of friendship. There needed
but a spark of occasion to set this secret magazine of passion all
a-blaze.
The Pandosto of the novel has, properly speaking, no character at all:
he is but a human figure going through a set of motions; that is, the
person and the action are put together arbitrarily, and not under any
law of vital correspondence. Almost any other figure would fit the
motions just as well. It is true, Shakespeare had a course of action
marked out for him in the tale. But then he was bound by his own
principles of art to make the character such as would rationally
support the action, and cohere with it. For such is the necessary law
of moral development and transpiration. Nor is it by any means safe to
affirm that, he has not done this. For it is to be noted that
Polixenes has made a pretty long visit, having passed, it seems, no
less than nine changes of the Moon at the home of his royal friend.
And he might well have found it not always easy to avoid preferring
the Queen's society to the King's; for she is a most irresistible
creature, and her calm, ingenuous modesty, itself the most dignified
of all womanly graces, is what, more than any thing else, makes her
so. What secret thoughts may have been gathering to a head in the mind
of Leontes during that period, is left for us to divine from the
after-results. And I believe there is a jealousy of friendship, as
well as of love. Accordingly, though Leontes invokes the Queen's
influence to induce a lengthening of the visit, yet he seems a little
disturbed on seeing that her influence has proved stronger than his
own.
"_Leon_. Is he won yet?
_Herm_. He'll stay, my lord.
_Leon_. At my request he would not.
Hermione, my dear'st, thou never spok'st
To better purpose.
_Herm_. Never?
_Leon_. Never, but once.
_Herm_. What! have I twice said well? when was't before?
I pr'ythee tell me.
_Leon_. Why, that was when
Three crabbed months had sour'd themselves to death,
Ere I could make thee open thy white hand,
And clap thyself my love: then didst thou utter,
_I'm yours forever_."
There is, I think, a relish of suppressed bitterness in this last
speech, as if her long reluctance had planted in him a germ of doubt
whether, after all, her heart was really in her words of consent. For
the Queen is a much deeper character than her husband. It is true,
these notices, and various others, drop along so quiet and
unpronounced, as hardly to arrest the reader's attention. Shakespeare,
above all other men, delights in just such subtile insinuations of
purpose; they belong indeed to his usual method of preparing for a
given issue, yet doing it so slyly as not to preclude surprise when
the issue comes.
So that in his seeming abruptness Leontes, after all, does but
exemplify the strange transformations which sometimes occur in men
upon sudden and unforeseen emergencies. And it is observable that the
very slightness of the Queen's indiscretion, the fact that she goes
but a little, a very little too far, only works against her, causing
the King to suspect her of great effort and care to avoid suspicion.
And on the same principle, because he has never suspected her before,
therefore he suspects her all the more vehemently now: that his
confidence has hitherto stood unshaken, he attributes to extreme
artfulness on her part; for even so, to an ill-disposed mind perfect
innocence is apt to give an impression of consummate art. A passion
thus groundless and self-generated might well be full-grown as soon as
born. The more greedy and craving, too, that it has nothing real to
eat; it therefore proceeds at once to "make the meat it feeds on,"
causing him to magnify whatever he sees, and to imagine many things
that are not. That jealousy, however, is not the habit of his mind,
appears in that it finds him unprepared, and takes him by surprise;
insomuch that he forthwith loses all self-control, and runs right
athwart the rules of common decency and decorum, so that he becomes an
object at once of pity, of hatred, and scorn.
I think the Poet hardly anywhere shows a keener and juster insight of
nature than in the behaviour of this man while the distemper is upon
him. He is utterly reason-proof, and indeed acts as one literally
insane. For the poison infects not only his manners, but his very
modes of thought: in fact, all his rational and imaginative forces,
even his speech and language, seem to have caught the disease. And all
the loathsome filth which had settled to the bottom of his nature is
now shaken up to the surface, so that there appears to be nothing but
meanness and malignity and essential coarseness in him. Meanwhile an
instinctive shame of his passion and a dread of vulgar ridicule put
him upon talking in dark riddles and enigmas: hence the confused,
broken, and disjointed style, an odd jumble of dialogue and soliloquy,
in which he tries to jerk out his thoughts, as if he would have them
known, and yet not have them known. I believe men generally credit
themselves with peculiar penetration when they are in the act of being
deluded, whether by themselves or by others. Hence, again, the strange
and even ludicrous conceit in which Leontes wraps himself. "Not noted,
is 't," says he, referring to the Queen's imaginary crime,--
"not noted, is 't,
But of the finer natures? by some severals
Of head-piece extraordinary? lower messes,
Perchance, are to this business purblind."
Thus he mistakes his madness for a higher wisdom, and clothes his
delusion with the spirit of revelation; so that Camillo rightly
says,--
"You may as well
Forbid the sea for to obey the Moon
As or by oath remove or counsel shake
The fabric of his folly, whose foundation
Is pil'd upon his faith."
I must note one more point of the delineation. When Leontes sends his
messengers to Delphos, he avows this as his reason for doing so:
"Though I am satisfied, and need no more
Than what I know, yet shall the Oracle
Give rest to th' minds of others."
Which means simply that he is not going to let the truth of the charge
stand in issue, and that he holds the Divine authority to be a capital
thing, provided he may use it, and need not obey it; that is, if he
finds the god agreeing with him in opinion, then the god's judgment is
infallible; if not, then, in plain terms, he is no god. And they who
have closely observed the workings of jealousy, know right well that
in all this Shakespeare does not one whit "overstep the modesty of
Nature."
The Poet manages with great art to bring Leontes off from the
disgraces of his passion, and repeal him home to our sympathies, which
had been freely drawn to him at first by his generosity of friendship.
To this end, jealousy is represented as his only fault, and this as a
sudden freak, which passes on directly into a frenzy, and whips him
quite out of himself, temporarily overriding his characteristic
qualities, but not combining with them; the more violent for being
unwonted, and the shorter-lived for being violent. In his firm,
compact energy of thought and speech, after his passion has cleared
itself, and in his perennial flow of repentance after his bereavement,
are displayed the real tone and texture of his character. We feel
that, if his sin has been great, his suffering is also great, and that
if he were a greater sinner, his suffering would be less. Quick,
impulsive, headstrong, he admits no bounds to anger or to penitence;
condemns himself as vehemently as he does others; and will spend his
life in atoning for a wrong he has done in a moment of passion: so
that we are the more willing to forgive him, inasmuch as he never
forgives himself.
* * * * *
The old poets seem to have contemplated a much wider range of female
excellence than it has since grown customary to allow; taking for
granted that whatsoever we feel to be most divine in man might be
equally so in woman; and so pouring into their conceptions of
womanhood a certain _manliness_ of soul, wherein we recognize an union
of what is lovely with what is honourable,--such a combination as
would naturally inspire any right-minded man at the same time with
tenderness and with awe. Their ideas of delicacy did not preclude
strength: in the female character they were rather pleased than
otherwise to have the sweetness of the violet blended with the
grandeur of the oak; probably because they saw and felt that woman
might be big-hearted and brave-minded, and yet be none the less
womanly; and that love might build all the higher and firmer for
having its foundations laid deep in respect. This largeness of heart
and liberality of thought often comes out in their writings, and that
too whether in dealing with ideal or with actual women; which suggests
that in what they chose to create they were a good deal influenced by
what they were accustomed to see. For in a thing that works so much
from the sympathies, it could hardly be but that they reflected the
mind and spirit of their age. Of this the aptest illustration that my
reading has lighted upon is in Ben Jonson's lines on the Countess of
Bedford, describing "what kind of creature I could most desire to
honour, serve, and love":
"I meant to make her fair, and free, and wise,
Of greatest blood, and yet more good than great;
I meant the day-star should not brighter rise,
Nor lend like influence from his lucent seat:
I meant she should be courteous, facile, sweet,
Hating that solemn vice of greatness, pride;
I meant each softest virtue there should meet,
Fit in that softer bosom to reside:
Only a learned and a manly soul
I purpos'd her; that should with even powers
The rock, the spindle, and the shears control
Of Destiny, and spin her own free hours."
That Shakespeare fully shared in this magnanimous bravery of
sentiment, we need no further proof than is furnished in the heroine
of this play. We can scarce call Hermione sweet or gentle, though she
is both; she is a _noble_ woman,--one whom, even in her greatest
anguish, we hardly _dare_ to pity. The whole figure is replete with
classic grace, is shaped and finished in the highest style of classic
art. As she acts the part of a statue in the play, so she has a
statue-like calmness and firmness of soul. A certain austere sweetness
pervades her whole demeanour, and seems, as it were, the essential
form of her life. It is as if some masterpiece of ancient sculpture
had warmed and quickened into life from its fulness of beauty and
expression.
Appearing at first as the cheerful hostess of her husband's friend,
and stooping from her queenly elevation to the most winning
affabilities, her behaviour rises in dignity as her sorrow deepens.
With an equal sense of what is due to the King as her husband, and to
herself as a woman, a wife, and a mother, she knows how to reconcile
all these demands; she therefore resists without violence, and submits
without weakness. And what her wise spirit sees to be fit and
becoming, that she always has strength and steadiness of character to
do: hence, notwithstanding the insults and hardships wantonly put upon
her, she still preserves the smoothnesses of peace; is never betrayed
into the least sign of anger or impatience or resentment, but
maintains, throughout, perfect order and fitness and proportion in act
and speech: the charge, so dreadful in itself, and so cruel in its
circumstances, neither rouses her passions, as it would Paulina's, nor
stuns her sensibilities, as in the case of Desdemona; but, like the
sinking of lead in the ocean's bosom, it goes to the depths without
ruffling the surface of her soul. Her situation is indeed full of
pathos,--a pathos the more deeply-moving to others, that it stirs no
tumults in her; for her nature is manifestly fitted up and furnished
with all tender and gentle and womanly feelings; only she has the
force of mind to control them, and keep them all in the right place
and degree. "They are the patient sorrows that touch nearest." And so,
under the worst that can befall, she remains within the region of
herself, calm and serenely beautiful, stands firm, yet full of grace,
in the austere strengths of reason and conscious rectitude. And when,
at her terrible wrongs and sufferings, all hearts are shaken, all eyes
wet, but her own, the impression made by her stout-hearted fortitude
is of one whose pure, tranquil, deep-working breast is the home of
sorrows too big for any eye-messengers to report:
"Calm pleasures there abide, majestic pains."
The delineation keeps the same tone and texture through all its parts,
but the sense of it is specially concentrated in what she says when
the King winds up his transport of insane fury by ordering her off to
prison:
"Good my lords,
I am not prone to weeping, as our sex
Commonly are; the want of which vain dew
Perchance shall dry your pities; but I have
That honourable grief lodg'd here which burns
Worse than tears drown. 'Beseech you all, my lords,
With thoughts so qualified as your charities
Shall best instruct you, measure me;--and so,
The King's will be perform'd!--'Beseech your Highness,
My women may be with me; for, you see,
My plight requires it.--Do not weep, good fools;
There is no cause: when you shall know your mistress
Has deserv'd prison, then abound in tears,
As I come out.--.... Adieu, my lord:
I never wish'd to see you sorry; now
I trust, I shall."
And her character is answerably reflected in the minds of the King's
chief counsellors, whose very swords seem stirring with life in the
scabbards, and yearning to leap forth and vindicate the honour of
their glorious Queen, but that awe of the crown restrains them.
Her last speech at the trial is, I am apt to think, the solidest piece
of eloquence in the language. It is like a piece of the finest
statuary marble, chiselled into perfect form; so compact of grain,
that you cannot crush it into smaller space; while its effect is as
wholesome and bracing as the atmosphere of an iced mountain when
tempered by the Summer sun. The King threatens her with death, and she
replies,--
"Sir, spare your threats:
The bug which you would fright me with I seek.
To me can life be no commodity:
The crown and comfort of my life, your favour,
I do give lost; for I do feel it gone,
But know not how it went: my second joy,
And first-fruits of my body, from his presence
I'm barr'd, like one infectious: my third comfort,
Starr'd most unluckily, is from my breast,
The innocent milk in its most innocent mouth,
Hal'd out to murder: myself on every post
Proclaim'd a strumpet; with immodest hatred,
The child-bed privilege denied, which 'longs
To women of all fashion: lastly, hurried
Here to this place, i' the open air, before
I have got strength of limit. Now, my liege,
Tell me what blessings I have here alive,
That I should fear to die. Therefore, proceed.
But yet hear this; mistake me not: My life,
I prize it not a straw; but for mine honour,
Which I would free, if I shall be condemn'd
Upon surmises, all proofs sleeping else
But what your jealousies awake, I tell you
'Tis rigour, and not law."
Noble simplicity of the olden time, when the best and purest of women,
with the bravest men in presence, thought no shame to hear themselves
speaking such plain honest words as these!
The Queen's long concealing of herself has been censured by some as
repugnant to nature. Possibly they may think it somewhat strained and
theatrical, but it is not so: the woman is but true to herself, in
this matter, and to the solid and self-poised repose in which her
being dwells. So that the thing does not seem repugnant to nature as
individualized by her reason and will; nor is her character herein
more above or out of nature than the proper ideal of art abundantly
warrants. For to her keen sensibility of honour the King's treatment
is literally an _infinite_ wrong; nor does its cruelty more wound her
affection, than its meanness alienates her respect; and one so strong
to bear injury might well be equally strong to remember it.
Therewithal she knows full well that, in so delicate an instrument as
married life, if one string be out of tune the whole is ajar, and will
yield no music: for her, therefore, all things must be right, else
none are so. And she is both too clear of mind and too upright of
heart to put herself where she cannot be precisely what the laws of
propriety and decorum require her to seem. Accordingly, when she does
forgive, the forgiveness is simply _perfect_; the breach that has
been so long a-healing is at length _completely_ healed; for to be
whole and entire in whatever she does, is both an impulse of nature
and a law of conscience with her. When the King was wooing her, she
held him off three months, which he thought unreasonably long; but the
reason why she did so is rightly explained when, for his inexpressible
sin against her, she has locked herself from his sight sixteen years,
leaving him to mourn and repent. Moreover, with her severe chastity of
principle, the reconciliation to her husband must begin there where
the separation grew. Thus it was for Perdita to restore the parental
unity which her being represents, but of which she had occasioned the
breaking.
Such is Hermione, in her "proud submission," her "dignified
obedience," with her Roman firmness and integrity of soul, heroic in
strength, heroic in gentleness, the queenliest of women, the
womanliest of queens. She is perhaps the Poet's best illustration of
the great principle, which I fear is not so commonly felt as it should
be, that the highest beauty always has an element or shade of the
terrible in it, so that it awes you while it attracts.
"If I prove honey-mouth'd, let my tongue blister,
And never to my red-look'd anger be
The trumpet any more."
"Good Queen, my lord, good Queen; I say, good Queen,
And would by combat make her good, so were I
A man, the worst about you."
"For ever
Unvenerable be thy hands, if thou
Tak'st up the Princess by that forcèd baseness
Which he has put upon 't."
Such are some of the words that boil over from the stout heart of
Paulina,--the noblest and most amiable termagant we shall anywhere
find,--when, with the new-born babe in charge, she confronts the
furious King. He threatens to have her burnt, and she replies
instantly,--
"I care not:
It is an heretic that makes the fire,
Not she which burns in 't."
If her faults were a thousand times greater than they are, I could
pardon them all for this one little speech; which proves that
Shakespeare was, I will not say a Protestant, but a true Christian,
intellectually at least, and far deeper in the spirit of his religion
than a large majority of the Church's official organs were in his day,
or, let me add, have been any day since. And this was written, be it
observed, at a time when the embers of the old ecclesiastical fires
were not yet wholly extinct, and when many a priestly bigot was
deploring the lay ascendency which kept them from being rekindled.
Paulina makes a superb counterpart to Hermione, heightening the effect
of her character by the most emphatic contrast, and at the same time
reflecting it by her intense and outspoken sympathy. Without any of
the Queen's dignified calmness and reserve, she is alive to all her
inward beauty and greatness: with a head to understand and a heart to
reverence such a woman, she unites a temper to fight, a generosity to
die for her. But no language but her own can fitly measure the ardour
with which she loves and admires and even adores her "dearest,
sweetest mistress," whose power has indeed gone all through her, so
that every part of her nature cannot choose but speak it, when the
occasion kindles her. Loud, voluble, violent, and viraginous, with a
tongue sharper than a sword, and an eloquence that fairly blisters
where it hits, she has, therewithal, too much honour and magnanimity
and kind feeling either to use them without good cause, or to forbear
using them at all hazards when she has such cause. Mrs. Jameson
classes her, and justly, no doubt, among those women--and she assures
us there are many such--who seem regardless of the feelings of those
for whom they would sacrifice their life.
"I thought she had some great matter there in hand; for she hath
privately, twice or thrice a day, ever since the death of Hermione,
visited that removed house." Such is the speech of one gentleman to
another, as the royal party and all the Court are going to Paulina's
house to see the mysterious workmanship of Julio Romano. Nothing could
better suggest the history of that quiet, placid intercourse, with its
long record of patient, self-rewarding service; a fellowship in which
little needed to be said, for each knew what was in the other's mind
by a better language than words. It is such an idea of friendship as
it does the heart good to rest upon. Just think of those two great
manly souls, enshrined in womanly tenderness, thus communing together
in secret for sixteen long years! And what a powerful charm of love
and loyalty must have been cast upon Paulina's impulsive tongue, that
she should keep so reticent of her dear cause through all that time!
To play the woman after that fashion would not hurt any of us.
* * * * *
During the first three Acts the interest of this play is mainly
tragic; the scene is densely crowded with incidents; the action
hurried, abrupt, almost spasmodic; the style quick and sharp, flashing
off point after point in brief, sinewy strokes; and all is rapidity
and despatch: what with the insane fury of the King, the noble agony
of the Queen, the enthusiasm of the Court in her behalf, and the
King's violence towards both them and her, the mind is kept on the
jump: all which, if continued to the end, would generate rather a
tumult and hubbub in the thoughts, than that inward music which the
title of the play promises; not to say, that such a prolonged hurry of
movement would at length become monotonous and wearisome. Far
otherwise the latter half of the play. Here the anticipations proper
to a long, leisurely winter evening are fully met; the general effect
is soothing and composing; the tones, dipped in sweetness, fall gently
on the ear, disposing the mind to be still and listen and contemplate;
thus making the play, as Coleridge describes it, "exquisitely
respondent to the title." It would seem, indeed, that in these scenes
the Poet had specially endeavoured how much of silent effect he could
produce, without diverging from the dramatic form. To this end, he
provides resting-places for thought; suspending or retarding the
action by musical pauses and periods of lyrical movement, and
breathing in the mellowest strains of poetical harmony, till the eye
is "made quiet by the power of beauty," and all tumult of mind is
hushed in the very intensity of feeling.
In the last two Acts we have a most artful interchange and blending of
romantic beauty and comic drollery. The lost Princess and the
heir-apparent of Bohemia, two of the noblest and loveliest beings that
ever fancy conceived, occupy the centre of the picture, while around
them are clustered rustic shepherds and shepherdesses amid their
pastimes and pursuits, the whole being enlivened by the tricks and
humours of a merry pedler and pickpocket. For simple purity and
sweetness, the scene which unfolds the loves and characters of the
Prince and Princess is not surpassed by any thing in Shakespeare.
Whatsoever is enchanting in romance, lovely in innocence, elevated in
feeling, and sacred in faith, is here concentrated; forming, all
together, one of those things which we always welcome as we do the
return of Spring, and over which our feelings may renew their youth
for ever. So long as flowers bloom and hearts love, they will do it in
the spirit of this scene.
It is a pastoral frolic, where free thoughts and guileless hearts rule
the hour, all as true and as pure as the tints and fragrances with
which field and forest and garden have beautified the occasion. The
neighbouring swains and lasses have gathered in, to share and enhance
the sport. The old Shepherd is present, but only as a looker-on,
having for the nonce resigned the command to his reputed daughter.
Under their mutual inspiration, the Prince and Princess are each in
the finest rapture of fancy, while the surrounding influences of the
rustic festival are just enough to enfranchise their inward music into
modest and delicate utterance. He has tastefully decked her person
with flowers, till no traces of the shepherdess can be seen, and she
seems herself a multitudinous flower; having also attired himself
"with a swain's wearing," so that the prince is equally obscured.
"These your unusual weeds to each part of you
Do give a life: no shepherdess; but Flora,
Peering in April's front. This your sheep-shearing
Is as a meeting of the petty gods,
And you the queen on't."
Thus he opens the play. And when she repeats her fears of the event:
"Thou dearest Perdita,
With these forc'd thoughts, I pr'ythee, darken not
The mirth o' the feast: or I'll be thine, my fair,
Or not my father's; for I cannot be
Mine own, nor any thing to any, if
I be not thine: to this I am most constant,
Though destiny say no."
The King and Camilla steal upon them in disguise, and while they are
present we have this:
"_Perdita_. Come, take your flowers:
Methinks I play as I have seen them do
In Whitsun pastorals: sure, this robe of mine
Does change my disposition.
_Florizel_. What you do
Still betters what is done. When you speak, sweet,
I'd have you do it ever: when you sing,
I'd have you buy and sell so; so give alms;
Pray so; and, for the ordering your affairs,
To sing them too: when you do dance I wish you
A wave o' the sea, that you might ever do
Nothing but that; move still, still so, and own
No other function. Each your doing is
So singular in each particular,
Crowning what you have done i' the present deed,
That all your acts are queens.
_Perdita_. O Doricles!
Your praises are too large: but that your youth,
And the true blood that peeps so fairly through 't,
Do plainly give you out an unstain'd shepherd,
With wisdom I might fear, my Doricles,
You woo'd me the false way.
_Florizel_. I think you have
As little skill to fear as I have purpose
To put you to 't. But come; our dance, I pray.
_Polix_. This is the prettiest low-born lass that ever
Ran on the green-sward: nothing she does or seems
But smacks of something greater than herself,--
Too noble for this place.
_Camil_. He tells her something
That makes her blood look out: Good sooth, she is
The queen of curds and cream.
_Polix_. 'Pray you, good shepherd, what fair swain is this
Which dances with your daughter?
_Shep_. They call him Doricles; and boasts himself
To have a worthy feeding: I but have it
Upon his own report, and I believe it;
He looks like sooth. He says he loves my daughter:
I think so too; for never gaz'd the Moon
Upon the water, as he'll stand, and read,
As 't were, my daughter's eyes: and, to be plain,
I think there is not half a kiss to choose
Who loves another best.
_Polix_. She dances featly.
_Shep_. So she does any thing, though I report it,
That should be silent."
Perdita, notwithstanding she occupies so little room in the play,
fills a large space in the reader's thoughts, almost disputing
precedence with the Queen. And her mother's best native qualities
reappear in her, sweetly modified by pastoral associations; her nature
being really much the same, only it has been developed and seasoned in
a different atmosphere; a nature too strong indeed to be displaced by
any power of circumstances or supervenings of art, but at the same
time too delicate and susceptive not to take a lively and lasting
impress of them. So that, while she has thoroughly assimilated, she
nevertheless clearly indicates, the food of place and climate,
insomuch that the dignities of the princely and the simplicities of
the pastoral character seem striving which shall express her
goodliest. We can hardly call her a poetical being; she is rather
poetry itself, and every thing lends and borrows beauty at her touch.
A playmate of the flowers, when we see her with them, we are at a loss
whether they take more inspiration from her or she from them; and
while she is the sweetest of poets in making nosegays, the nosegays
become in her hands the richest of crowns. If, as Schlegel somewhere
remarks, the Poet is "particularly fond of showing the superiority of
the innate over the acquired," he has surely nowhere done it with
finer effect than in this unfledged angel.
There is much to suggest a comparison of Perdita and Miranda; yet how
shall I compare them? Perfectly distinct indeed as individuals, still
their characters are strikingly similar; only Perdita has perhaps a
sweeter gracefulness, the freedom, simplicity, and playfulness of
nature being in her case less checked by external restraints; while
Miranda carries more of a magical and mysterious charm woven into her
character from the supernatural influences of her whereabout. So like,
yet so different, it is hard saying which is the better of the two, or
rather one can hardly help liking her best with whom he last
conversed. It is an interesting fact also, for such it seems to be,
that these two glorious delineations were produced very near together,
perhaps both the same year; and this too when Shakespeare was in his
highest maturity of poetry and wisdom; from which it has been not
unjustly argued that his experience both in social and domestic life
must have been favourable to exalted conceptions of womanhood. The
Poet, though in no sort a bigot, was evidently full of loyal and
patriotic sentiment; and I have sometimes thought that the government
of Elizabeth, with the grand national enthusiasm which clustered round
her throne and person, may have had a good deal to do in shaping and
inspiring this part of his workmanship. Be that as it may, with but
one great exception, I think the world now finds its best ideas of
moral beauty in Shakespeare's women.
* * * * *
Florizel's character is in exquisite harmony with that of the
Princess. To be sure, it may be said that if he is worthy of her, it
is mainly her influence that makes him so. But then it is to be
observed, on the other hand, that as in such cases men find only what
they bring the faculties for finding, so the meeting with her would
not have elicited such music from him, had not his nature been
originally responsive to hers. For he is manifestly drawn and held to
her by a powerful instinct of congeniality. And none but a living
abstract and sum-total of all that is manly could have so felt the
perfections of such a woman. The difference between them is, that she
was herself before she saw him, and would have been the same without
him; whereas he was not and could not be himself, as we see him, till
he caught inspiration from her; so that he is but right in saying,--
"I bless the time
When my good falcon made her flight across
Thy father's ground."
Nevertheless it is a clear instance of the pre-established harmony of
souls: but that his spirit were akin to hers, he could not have
recognized his peer through such a disguise of circumstances. For any
one to be untouched and unsweetened by the heavenly purity of their
courtship, were indeed a sin almost too great to be forgiven.
Shakespeare knew,--none better,--that in order to be a lover in any
right sense of the term, one must first be a man. He therefore does
not leave the Prince without an opportunity to show that he is such.
And it is not till after the King has revealed himself, and blown up
the mirth of the feast by his explosion of wrath, that the Prince
displays his proper character in this respect. I need not stay to
remark how well the Poet orders the action for that purpose; suffice
it to say that the Prince then fully makes good his previous
declaration:
"Were I crown'd the most imperial monarch,
Thereof most worthy; were I the fairest youth
That ever made eye swerve; had force and knowledge
More than was ever man's; I would not prize them,
Without her love; for her employ them all;
Commend them or condemn them to her service,
Or to their own perdition."
The minor characters of this play are both well conceived and
skilfully disposed, the one giving them a fair personal, the other a
fair dramatic interest. The old Shepherd and his clown of a son are
near, if not in, the Poet's happiest comic vein. Autolycus, the
"snapper-up of unconsidered trifles," is the most amiable and
ingenious rogue we should desire to see; who cheats almost as divinely
as those about him love, and whose thieving tricks the very gods seem
to crown with thrift in reward of his wit. His self-raillery and droll
soliloquizing give us the feeling that his sins are committed not so
much for lucre as for fun.--The Poet was perhaps a little too fond of
placing his characters in situations where they have to be false in
order to be the truer; which no doubt sometimes happens; yet, surely,
in so delicate a point of morality, some care is needful, lest the
exceptions become too much for the rule. And something too much of
this there may be in the honest, upright, yet deceiving old lord,
Camillo. I speak this under correction; for I know it is not safe to
fault Shakespeare's morals; and that they who affect a better morality
than his are very apt to turn out either hypocrites or moral coxcombs.
As for the rest, this Camillo, though little more than a staff in the
drama, is nevertheless a pillar of State; his integrity and wisdom
making him a light to the counsels and a guide to the footsteps of the
greatest around him. Fit to be the stay of princes, he is one of those
venerable relics of the past which show us how beautiful age can be,
and which, linking together different generations, format once the
salt of society and the strength of government.
I have never seen this play on the stage; but I can well understand
how the scene with the painted statue, if fairly delivered, might be
surpassingly effective. The illusion is all on the understandings of
the spectators; and they seem to feel the _power_ without the _fact_
of animation, or to have a _sense_ of mobility in a _vision_
of fixedness. And such is the magic of the scene, that we almost fancy
them turning into marble, as they fancy the marble turning into flesh.