text
stringlengths 0
89.3k
|
|---|
32. )So this friend of all the world may be accused of inhumanity andmisrule. The charge is plausible. Shakespeare could not here forgetthat at the proscription, Lepidus is represented as acquiescing in thedeath of his own brother-in-law to secure the death of Antony’s nephew. Still his alleged cruelty may only have been a specious pretext onOctavius’ part to screen his own designs, and even to transfer his ownoffences to another man’s shoulders. Pompey says, in estimating thechances of his venture, Caesar gets money where He loses hearts. (II. i. 13. )Appian refers to these exactions, but in Plutarch there is as yet nomention of Octavius making himself unpopular by exorbitant imposts,and only at a later time is he said to have done so in preparing forhis war with Antony. The subsequent passage, which Shakespeare doesnot use, or hardly uses, in its proper place, may have suggested thepresent statement: The great and grievous exactions of money did sorely oppresse the people. . . . Hereuppon there arose a wonderfull exclamation and great uprore all Italy over: so that among the greatest faults that ever Antonius committed. , they blamed him most for that he delayed to give Caesar battell. . . . When such a great summe of money was demaunded of them, they grudged at it, and grewe to mutinie upon it. Does Shakespeare, by antedating Caesar’s oppressive measures, mean toinsinuate his own gloss on the charge of cruelty against Lepidus thathe found in Plutarch? At any rate in that case Octavius would be merelyfollowing the course that Antony had already laid down: Though we lay these honours on this man, To ease ourselves of divers slanderous loads, He shall but bear them as the ass bears gold, To groan and sweat under the business, Either led or driven, as we point the way: And having brought our treasure where we will, Then take we down his load, and turn him off, Like to the empty ass, to shake his ears, And graze in commons. (_J. C. _ IV. i. 19. )Octavius certainly carries out Antony’s programme in the result, andit would add to the irony of the situation if he had also done so inthe process, and, while exploiting Lepidus’ resources, had incidentallyeased himself of a slanderous load. No wonder that Antony is annoyed. But if he frets at his colleague’s undoing, we may be sure that apartfrom personal chagrin, it is only because Octavius’ influence has beenincreased and his own share of the spoils withheld. Of personal regretthere is nothing in his reported reception of the news. Lepidus theman, Antony dismisses with an angry gesture and exclamation: he spurns The rush that lies before him; cries, “Fool, Lepidus! ” (III. v. 17. )Sextus Pompeius who at one time had a fair chance of entering into aposition equal or superior to that of Lepidus, comes higher in thescale than he. He has a certain feeling for righteousness: If the great gods be just, they shall assist The deeds of justest men. (II. i. 1. )He has a certain nobility of sentiment that enables him to rise to theoccasion. When to his surprise he learns that he will have to reckonwith the one man he dreads, he cries: But let us rear The higher our opinion, that our stirring Can from the lap of Egypt’s widow pluck The ne’er-lust-wearied Antony. (II. i. 35. )So, when told that he looks older, his reply is magnanimous: Well, I know not What counts harsh Fortune casts upon my face; But in my bosom shall she never come, To make my heart her vassal. (II. vi. 55. )Antony confesses that he owes him thanks for generous treatment: He hath laid strange courtesies and great Of late upon me. (II. ii. 157. )We presently get to hear what these were, and must admit that he actedlike a gentleman: Though I lose The praise of it by telling, you must know, When Caesar and your brother were at blows, Your mother came to Sicily, and did find Her welcome friendly. (II. vi. 43. )He has moreover a certain filial piety for the memory of his father,and a certain afterglow of free republican sentiment: What was’t That moved pale Cassius to conspire; and what Made the all-honour’d, honest Roman, Brutus, With the arm’d rest, courtiers of beauteous freedom, To drench the Capitol: but that they would Have one man but one man? And that is it Hath made me rig my navy: at whose burthen The anger’d ocean foams; with which I meant To scourge the ingratitude that despiteful Rome Cast on my noble father. (II. vi. 14. )But even if all this were quite genuine, it would not suffice to forma really distinguished character. In the first place Sextus neverpenetrates to the core of things but lingers over the shows. Thus hehas no grip of his present strength or of the insignificance to whichhe relegates himself by his composition. For Shakespeare differs fromPlutarch, and follows Appian, in making his rising a very seriousmatter. [206] It is this that in the play, and in complete contradictionof the _Life_, is the chief motive for Antony’s return to Italy: andhe gives his reasons. He says that Pompey “commands the empire of thesea” (I. ii. 191),—a great exaggeration of Plutarch’s statement thathe “so scoored[207] all the sea thereabouts (_i. e. _, near Sicily) thatnone durst peepe out with a sayle. ” He continues, that “the slipperypeople” begin to throw all the dignities of Pompey the Great upon hisson (I. ii. 193), though there is no hint of this popular support inthe history. And he concludes that Pompey’s . . . quality, going on, The sides o’ the world may danger. (I. ii. 198. )[206] See Appendix D. [207] Scoured. In Plutarch it is not prudence but courtesy that moves the Triumvirsto negociate with him. His hospitality to Antony’s mother is expresslymentioned as the cause of their leniency; “_therefore_ they thoughtgood to make peace with him. ” Similarly Shakespeare may have warrantfrom Appian, but he certainly has not warrant from Plutarch, torepresent Octavius as listening in dismay to reports of malcontents“that only have fear’d Caesar” (I. iv. 38) crowding to Pompey’s bannersfrom love of him; or as harassed by Antony’s absence, when thisoccasion “drums him from his sport” (I. iv. 29); or as driven by fearof Pompey to “cement their divisions and bind up the petty difference”(II. i. 48). In all these ways Shakespeare treats the triflingdisturbance of Plutarch’s account as a civil war waged by not unequalforces. And even after the tension has been somewhat relieved byAntony’s arrival, Octavius bears witness in regard to Pompey’s strengthby land that it is Great and increasing: but by sea He is an absolute master. (II. ii. 165. )Obviously then Shakespeare conceives Pompey as having much to hopefor, and much to lose. But Pompey does not realise his own power. By the treaty he throws away his advantages. In the division of theworld he only gets Sicily and Sardinia, which were his already; and inreturn he must rid all the sea of pirates, and send wheat to Rome. By the first provision he deprives himself of recruits like Menas andMenecrates; by the second, he caters for his scarce atoned enemies. Surely there is justification for Menas’ aside: “Thy father, Pompey,would ne’er have made this treaty” (II. vi. 84), and his like remark toEnobarbus: “Pompey doth this day laugh away his fortune” (II. vi. 109). He practically gives over the contest which he has a fair prospect ofwinning, and allows himself to be cajoled of the means by which hemight at least gain security and power. But the most that he obtains isa paper guarantee for a fraction of the spoils; though he ought to haveknown that such guarantees are rotten bands with rivals like Octavius,who will only wait the opportunity, that must now inevitably come, toset them aside. But besides, this magnanimity, which he is so fond of parading, is notonly insufficient, even were it quite sterling coin; in his case itrings counterfeit. We cannot forget that his noble sentiments aboutjustice are uttered to Menas and Menecrates, “great thieves by sea. ” IsPompeius Magnus to be avenged, is freedom to be restored by the helpof buccaneers who find it expedient to “deny” what they have done bywater? Surely all this is not very dexterous make-believe, intendedto impose on others or himself. Even his rejection of Menas’ schemefor doing away with the Triumvirs, though it shows his regard forappearances, does not imply any honourable feeling of the highest kind. For listen to his words: Ah, this thou should’st have done, And not have spoke on’t! In me, ’tis villany; In thee ’t had been good service. Thou must know, ’Tis not my profit that does lead mine honour; Mine honour, it. Repent that e’er thy tongue Hath so betray’d thine act: being done unknown, I should have found it afterwards well done; But must condemn it now. (II. vii. 79. )Here he shows no moral scruple, but only anxiety about his reputation. He would have no objection to reap the reward of crime, and wouldeven after a decorous interval approve it; but he will not commit orauthorise it, because he wishes to pose in his own eyes and the eyesof others as the man of justice, principle and chivalry. He is one ofthe people who “would not play false and yet would wrongly win,” andwho often excite more contempt than the resolute malefactor. And thereason is that their abstention from guilt arises not from tendernessof conscience but from perplexity of intellect. They confound shadowand substance; for by as much as genuine virtue is superior to materialsuccess, by so much is material success superior to the illusion ofvirtue. In the case of Pompey, the treachery of Octavius is almostexcused by the ostentation, obtuseness, and half-heartedness of thevictim. It is fitting that after being despoiled of Italy he shouldowe his death to a mistake. This at least is the story, not found inPlutarch, which Shakespeare in all probability adopts at the suggestionof Appian. It is not given as certain even by Appian, who leaves itopen to question whether he was killed by Antony’s command or not. But perhaps Shakespeare considers that his futile career should endfutilely through the overzeal of an agent who misunderstands hismaster’s wishes; so he makes Eros tell how Antony Threats the throat of that his officer That murder’d Pompey. (III. v. 19. )It suits the dramatist too to free his hero from complicity in such adeed, and exhibit him as receiving the news with generous indignationand regret. Yet such regret is very skin-deep. Even Antony’s chiefcomplaint in regard to Pompey’s overthrow is that he gets none of theunearned increment; or, as Octavius says, that, having in Sicily Sextus Pompeius spoil’d, we had not rated him His part o’ the isle. (III. vi. 24. )Higher still in our respect, if not in our affection, but even inour respect not very high, is Octavius at the head of his statesmen,politicians, men of the world, his Mecaenases, Agrippas and therest, with their _savoir faire_ and _savoir vivre_. They never letthemselves go in thought or in deed; all their words and behaviour aredisciplined, reserved, premeditated. Antony’s description of theirprincipal is no doubt true, and it breathes the contempt of the bornsoldier, who has drunk delight of battle with his peers, for the meredeviser of calculations and combinations: He at Philippi kept His sword e’en like a dancer; while I struck The lean and wrinkled Cassius; and ’twas I That the mad Brutus ended: he alone Dealt on lieutenantry, and no practice had In the brave squares of war. (III. xi. 35. )Nor is there any prestige of genius or glamour of charm to conciliateadmiration for such men. Theirs are the practical, rather uninterestingnatures, that generally rise to the top in this workaday world. Theyknow what they wish to get; they know what they must do to get it; andthe light from heaven never shines on their eyes either to glorifytheir path or to lead them astray. The most obvious trait, as Kreyssig remarks, in the somewhat bourgeoispersonality of Octavius is his sobriety, in every sense of the word: aself-contained sobriety, which, though supposed to be a middle-classvirtue, is in him pushed so far as to become almost aristocratic. Forit fosters and cherishes his self-esteem; and his self-esteem rises toan enormous and inflexible pride, which finds expression alike in hisdignity and in his punctiliousness. In both respects it is outraged bythe levity of Antony, which he resents as compromising himself. Hiscolleague must No way excuse his soils, when we do bear So great weight in his lightness. (I. iv. 24. )A man like this, fast centred in himself, cannot but despise theimpulse-driven populace; he could never have courted it to sway it tohis purposes, as Antony did of old; to him it is a rotting water-weed. This temper, lofty and imposing in some respects, is apt to attachundue importance to form and etiquette, as when the “manner” ofEnobarbus’ interruption, not its really objectionable because all tooincontrovertible matter, arouses his disapproval: but it is a difficulttemper to take liberties with. None of his counsellors dreams ofventuring with him on the familiarity which Enobarbus, Canidius, andeven the common soldier, employ as a matter of course with Antony. And this is partly due to his lack of sympathy, to his deficientsocial feeling. Such an one plumes himself on being different fromand superior to his fellows. He is like the Prince of Arragon in the_Merchant of Venice_: I will not choose what many men desire, Because I will not jump with common spirits And rank me with the barbarous multitudes. (_M. of V. _ II. ix. 3. )It is because Antony’s vices are those of the common spirits and thebarbarous multitudes that Octavius despises him: You shall find there A man who is the abstract of all faults That all men follow. (I. iv. 8. )His own failings do not lie in the direction of vulgar indulgence. Heis a foe to all excess. When the feasters pledge him, he objects to thecompulsory carouse: I could well forbear ’t. It’s monstrous labour, when I wash my brain, And it grows fouler. . . . I had rather fast from all four days Than drink so much in one. (II. vii. 105. )And he can address a dignified remonstrance and rebuke to his lesstemperate associates: What would you more? Pompey, good night. Good brother, Let me request you off: our graver business Frowns at this levity. Gentle lords, let’s part: You see we have burnt our cheeks. . . . The wild disguise hath almost Antick’d us all. (II. vii. 126. )A man of this kind will be externally faultless in all the domesticrequirements, a good husband and a good brother, in so far as rigidfidelity to the nuptial tie and scrupulous care for his sister’sprovision are concerned. He is honestly shocked at Antony’s violationof his marriage bond. We feel that if Cleopatra did really entertainthe idea of subduing him by her charms, it was nothing but an undevoutimagination. One might as well think to set on fire “a dish of skimmilk,” as Hotspur calls men of this sort. But the better side of this is his genuine family feeling. His lovefor his sister may be limited and alloyed, but it is unfeigned. It hassometimes been pointed out that his indignation at Octavia’s scantyconvoy when she returns from Athens to Rome, is stirred quite as muchon his own behalf as on hers: Why have you stolen upon us thus? You come not Like Caesar’s sister. . . . You are come A market maid to Rome; and have prevented The ostentation of our love, which, left unshown, Is often left unlov’d. (III. vi. 42. )It is quite true that he thinks of what is due to himself, but hedoes not altogether forget her claims; and even when he regrets thedefective “ostentation” of love—a term that is apt to rouse suspicion,no doubt, but less so in Elizabethan than in modern ears—he baseshis regret on the just and valid ground that without expression loveitself is apt to die. That behind his own “ostentation” of fondness(which of course he is careful not to neglect, for it is a becoming andcreditable thing), there is some reality of feeling, is proved by theparting scene. His affectionate farewell and even his gathering tearsmight be pretence; but he promises to send her regular letters: Sweet Octavia, You shall hear from me still. (III. ii. 58. )It really means something when a man like Octavius, busy with theaffairs of the whole world, spares time for frequent domesticcorrespondence. And yet this admirable brother has not hesitated to arrange for hissister a “mariage de convenance” with Antony, a man whom he disapprovesand dislikes. From the worldly point of view it is certainly the mostbrilliant match she could make; and this perhaps to one of Octavius’arid nature, with its total lack of sympathy, imagination and generousideals, may have seemed the main consideration. All the same we cannothelp feeling that he was thinking mainly of himself, and, though withsome regrets, has sacrificed her to the exigencies of statecraft. Menasand Enobarbus, shrewd and unsentimental observers, agree that policyhas made more in the marriage than love. So much indeed is obvious,even if its purpose is what on the face of it it professes to be, thereconcilement of the men it makes brothers-in-law. But, as we shallsee, Octavius may have a more tortuous device in it than this. Treating it meanwhile, however, as an expedient for knitting thealliance with his rival, what inference does it suggest? If for thesake of his own interests, Octavius shows himself far from scrupulousin regard to the sister whom he loves and whose material well-beingis his care, what may we expect of him in the case of those who areindifferent or dangerous or hostile? He has no hesitation about ousting his colleague Lepidus, or ruiningthe reconciled rebel Pompeius, despite his compacts with both. Thenit is Antony’s turn; and Antony is a far more formidable antagonist,with all his superiority in material resources, fertility of genius,proven soldiership and strategic skill. It is not because Octavius isthe greater man that he succeeds. It is, in the first place, because heconcentrates all his narrow nature to a single issue, while Antony withhis greater width of outlook disperses his interest on many things atonce. How typical of each are the asides with which respectively theyenter their momentous conference. Antony is already contemplating othercontingencies: If we compose well here, to Parthia: Hark, Ventidius. (II. ii. 15. )Octavius will not be diverted from the immediate business: I do not know, Mecaenas; ask Agrippa. (II. ii. 16. )So, too, when the composition has taken place, Antony squanders hisstrength in the invasion of Parthia, the conquest of Armenia andother annexations, not to mention his grand distraction in Egypt. ButOctavius pursues his one purpose with the dogged tenacity of a sleuthhound, removes Pompey who might be troublesome, seizes the resources ofLepidus, and is able to oppose the solid mass of the West to Antony’sloose congeries of Asiatic allies and underlings, whose disunited crowdseems to typify his own unreconciled ambitions. But even so it is not so much that Octavius wins, as that Antony loses. In another sense than he means, the words of the latter are true: Not Caesar’s valour hath o’erthrown Antony, But Antony’s hath triumph’d on itself. (IV. xv. 14. )It is his extraordinary series of blunders, perversities, and folliesthat play into his antagonist’s hands and give him the trick, thoughthat antagonist holds worse cards and is less expert in many points ofthe game. But in so far as Octavius can claim credit for playing it, it is due tocunning and chicane rather than to any wisdom or ability of the higherkind. At the outset he prepares a snare for Antony, into which Antonyfalls, and by the fall is permanently crippled. It seems more thanprobable that the marriage with Octavia was suggested, not to confirmthe alliance, but to provoke a breach at a more convenient season. Thebiographer expressly assigns the same sort of ulterior motive to alater act of apparent kindliness, when Octavia was again used as theunconscious pawn. When she, just before the final breach, insists onsetting out to join her husband, Plutarch explains: Her brother Octavius was willing unto it, not for his (_i. e. _ Antony’s) respect at all (as most authors doe report) as for that he might have an honest culler to make warre with Antonius if he did misuse her, and not esteeme of her as she ought to be. This was quite enough to suggest to Shakespeare a similarinterpretation of the marriage project from the first. He does notindeed expressly state but he virtually implies it, as appears if werealise the characters and circumstances of those concerned. At thetime the match is being arranged, Enobarbus quite clearly foresees andopenly predicts the upshot to Mecaenas and Agrippa. Will they, andespecially Agrippa, who is nominal author of the plan and announces itas “a studied not a present thought,” have overlooked so probable anissue? Will it never have occurred to the circumspect and calculatingOctavius, who evidently leads up to Agrippa’s intervention andproposal? Or if through some incredible inadvertence it has hithertoescaped them all, will not the vigilant pair of henchmen hasten toinform their master of the unexpected turn that things seem likely totake? Not at all. Despite the convinced and convincing confidence ofEnobarbus’ prophecy, they waive it aside. Mecaenas merely replies withdiplomatic decorum: If beauty, wisdom, modesty, can settle The heart of Antony, Octavia is A blessed lottery to him. (II. ii. 247. )No doubt. But though Touchstone says, “Your If is your onlypeace-maker,” it can also be a very good peace-breaker on occasion. InEnobarbus’ opinion (and in his own way Octavius is just as shrewd),Octavia with her “holy, cold and still conversation” is no dish forAntony. But though this is now expressly pointed out to Octavius’confidants, the marriage goes on as though nothing could be urgedagainst it. The reason is that nothing can, from the point of view ofthe contrivers. If it turns out well, so far good; if it turns out ill,so much the better. Only when it is an accomplished fact, does Caesargive a glimpse of what it involves in the sinister exhortation: Let not the piece of virtue which is set Betwixt us, as the cement of our love, To keep it builded, be the ram to batter The fortress of it. (III. ii. 28. )Thus when Antony returns to Cleopatra, as he was bound to do, Octaviusmanages to represent himself as the aggrieved party, as champion ofthe sanctity of the hearth, the vindicator of old Roman pieties; andin this way gains a good deal of credit at the outset of the quarrel. And for the fortunate conduct of it, he is indebted, apart fromAntony’s demoralisation, to his adroitness in playing on the weaknessof others, rather than to any nobler strength in himself. Thus heirritates Antony’s reckless chivalry, both vain and grandiose, bydefying him to give battle by sea at Actium. Antony is not bound evenby any punctilio of honour to consent, for Octavius has twice declineda similar challenge. _Ant. _ Canidius, we Will fight with him by sea. _Cle. _ By sea! What else? _Can. _ Why will my lord do so? _Ant. _ For that he dares us to’t. _Eno. _ So hath my lord dared him to single fight. _Can. _ Ay, and to wage this battle at Pharsalia, Where Caesar fought with Pompey; but these offers, Which serve not for his vantage, he shakes off; And so should you. (III. vii. 28. )But Octavius knows his man, and this appeal to his audacity,enforced by the command of Cleopatra, determines Antony like a trueknight-errant to the fatal course. This passage is of great significance in Shakespeare’s delineation ofOctavius, because, though suggested by Plutarch, it completely altersthe complexion and some of the facts of Plutarch’s story. That recordsthe two-fold challenge of Antony, but represents it as answering, notpreceding the message of Octavius. Moreover that message contains noreference to a naval combat and has nothing in common with the shape itassumes in the play. Octavius Caesar sent unto Antonius, to will him to delay no more time, but to come on with his army into Italy: and that for his owne part he would give him safe harber, to lande without any trouble, and that he would withdraw his armie from the sea, as farre as one horse could runne, until he had put his army ashore, and had lodged his men. That is, in the original Octavius takes the lead in dare-devilry, andseems voluntarily to suggest such terms as even Byrhtnoth at the Battleof Maldon conceded only by request. Shakespeare could not fit this inwith his conception of the cold-blooded politician, and substitutes forit a proposal that will put the enemy at a disadvantage; while at thesame time he accentuates Octavius’ unblushing knavery, by making himapply this provocation after he has twice rejected offers that do notsuit himself. Again, having won his first victory through Cleopatra’s flight, Caesarcynically reckons for new success on her corruptibility: From Antony win Cleopatra: promise, And in our name, what she requires; add more, From thine invention, offers: women are not In their best fortunes strong; but want will perjure The ne’er-touch’d vestal: try thy cunning, Thyreus. (III. xii. 24. )This scheme indeed miscarries owing to Antony’s intervention, butmeanwhile it has become unnecessary owing to the torrent of deserters. So Octavius is sure of his case, and can dismiss with ridicule the ideaof a single fight. In Plutarch he does so too, but with the impliedbrag that he would certainly be victor: “Caesar answered him that hehad many other wayes to dye then so;” when the _he_ stands for Antony:but owing to North’s fortunate ambiguity Shakespeare takes it asreferring to the speaker: Let the old ruffian know I have many other ways to die; mean time Laugh at his challenge. (IV. i. 4. )A more subtle contumely; for it implies that Caesar with scornfulimpartiality acknowledges Antony’s superiority as a _sabreur_, but canafford to dismiss that as of no moment. His response has already beenannotated in advance by Enobarbus, when Antony was inditing his cartel: Yes, like enough, high-battled Caesar will Unstate his happiness, and be staged to the show, Against a sworder! . . . That he should dream, Knowing all measures, the full Caesar will Answer his emptiness! Caesar, thou hast subdued His judgement too. (III. xiii. 29. )Octavius has by this time the ball at his feet, and can even cast thecontemptuous alms of his pity on “poor Antony,” as he calls him (IV. i. 16). Nor are his expectations deceived, for he reckons out everything: Go, charge Agrippa. Plant those that have revolted in the van, That Antony may seem to spend his fury Upon himself. (IV. vi. 8. )And though he suffers a momentary check, he presently achieves thefinal triumph through the treason and baseness of Antony’s Egyptianfollowers, on which he rightly felt he might rely. And when he has won the match he makes use of his advantage with moreappearance than reality of nobleness. He wishes to have not only thesubstantial rewards of victory, but the shows and trappings of it aswell. He seeks to preserve Cleopatra alive, for her life in Rome Would be eternal in our triumph. (V. i. 65. )This is the secret of his clemency and generosity, that he wouldhave her “grace in captive bonds his chariot wheels. ” And if he hasanother reason for sparing her, it is not for the sake of clemency andgenerosity in themselves, but for the parade of these qualities: asindeed Proculeius unconsciously lets out in the naïf advice he givesher: Do not abuse my master’s bounty by The undoing of yourself: let the world see His nobleness well acted, which your death Will never let come forth. (V. ii. 44. )And ably does Octavius play his role: he “extenuates rather thanenforces,” gilds his covert threats with promises, and dismisses theepisode of the unscheduled treasure with Olympian serenity. His onlyfault is that he rather overacts the part. His excess of magnanimity,when by nature he is far from magnanimous, tells Cleopatra all sheneeds to know, and leaves little for the definite disclosures ofDolabella: He words me, girls, he words me, that I should not Be noble to myself. (V. ii. 191. )But, though not magnanimous, he is intelligent: and his intelligenceenables and enjoins him to recognise greatness when it is no longeropposed to his own interest, and when the recognition redounds tohis own credit, by implying that the conqueror is greater still. Hispanegyrics on Antony, and afterwards on Cleopatra, are very nearly theright things to say and are very nearly said in the right way. When hehears of his rival’s suicide, his first exclamation does not ill befitthe occasion: The breaking of so great a thing should make A greater crack: . . . the death of Antony Is not a single doom; in the name lay A moiety of the world. (V. i. 14. )But this disinterested emotion does not last long. The awe at fallengreatness soon leads to comparisons with the living greatness that hasproved its match. The obsequious bystanders find this quite natural andpoint it out without a hint of sarcasm: _Agr. _ Caesar is touch’d. _Mec. _ When such a spacious mirror’s set before him, He needs must see himself. So Octavius proceeds to a recital of Antony’s merits in which hebespeaks a double portion of the praise he seems to dispense: O Antony! I have follow’d thee to this; but we do lance Diseases in our bodies: I must perforce Have shown to thee such a declining day, Or look on thine: we could not stall together In the whole world: but yet let me lament, With tears as sovereign as the blood of hearts, That thou, my brother, my competitor, In top of all design, my mate in empire, Friend and companion in the front of war, The arm of mine own body, and the heart Where mine his thoughts did kindle,—that our stars, Unreconciliable, should divide Our equalness to this. (V. i. 35. )And here, as business calls, he breaks off and postpones the rest to“some meeter season. ” Similarly when he finds Cleopatra dead he has theinsight to do her justice: Bravest at the last, She levell’d at our purposes, and, being royal, Took her own way. (V. ii. 238. )Then follows the official valediction: She shall be buried by her Antony: No grave upon the earth shall clip in it A pair so famous. High events as these _Strike those that make them_; and their story is No less in pity than _his glory which Brought them to be lamented_. (V. ii. 361. )So the last word is a testimonial to himself. These are eulogies of the understanding, not of the heart. They arevery different in tone from the tributes of Antony to his patron Juliusor his opponent Brutus. The tears and emotion, genuine though facile,of the latter are vouched for even by the sarcasms of Agrippa andEnobarbus. Octavius’ utterance, when he pronounces his farewell, isbroken, we may be sure, by no sob and choked by no passion. His _éloge_has been compared to a funeral sermon, and will not interfere with thevictor’s appetite for the fruits of victory. But though his feeling isnot stirred to the depths, he is fairly just and fairly acute. He is nocontemptible character, this man who carries off the palm from one ofinfinitely richer endowment. The contrast between the two rivals, andthe justification of the success of the less gifted, is summed up ina couple of sentences they exchange at the banquet off Misenum. WhenOctavius shrinks from the carouse, Antony bids him: “Be a child o’ thetime” (II. vii. 106). “Possess it, I’ll make answer,” is Octavius’reply and reproof. CHAPTER VMARK ANTONY“Be a child o’ the time,” says Antony, and he carries out his maximto the letter. Only that time could bring forth such a devotee of thejoys of life and lavish on him such wealth of enjoyment. But the timewas one that devoured its own children. Those who chose to be merelyits products, must accept its ordinances, and it was cruel as well asindulgent. It was the manlier as well as the safer course for the childto possess the time, to repudiate its stock, and, if might be, to usurpthe heritage. We must bear the counter admonition of Octavius in mind when weapproach the personage to whom it was addressed. All who have awide range of interests, and with these warmth of imagination andspontaneity of impulse, must feel that their judgment is apt to bebribed by the attractions of Mark Antony. He is so many-sided, somany-ways endowed, so full of vitality and vigour, potentially soaffluent and bright, that we look to find his life a clear and abundantstream, and disbelieve our senses when we see a turbid pool that losesitself in the sands. If we listen to the promptings of our blood, wehail him as demi-god, but the verdict of our reason is that he is onlya futility. And both estimates base on Shakespeare who inspires andreconciles them both. Of course we are apt to carry with us to the present play theimpression we have received from the sketch of Antony in _JuliusCaesar_. And not without grounds. He is still a masquer and a reveller,he is still a shrewd contriver. But we gradually become aware of adifference. First, the precedence that these characteristics takes isreversed. In _Julius Caesar_ it is the contriving side of his naturethat is prominent, and the other is only indicated by the remarks ofacquaintances: in _Antony and Cleopatra_, it is his love of pleasurethat is emphasised, while of his contrivance we have only casualglimpses. And the contrast is not merely an alteration in the pointof view, it corresponds to an alteration in himself; in the earlierdrama he subordinates his luxury to his schemes, and in the latter hesubordinates his schemes to his luxury. But this is not all. In thesecond place, his two main interests have changed in the degree of whatmay be called their organisation. In _Julius Caesar_ he concentratesall his machinations on the one object of overthrowing the tyrannicidesand establishing his power; his pleasures, however notorious, arerandom and disconnected dissipations without the coherence of a singleaim. In _Antony and Cleopatra_, however manifold they may be, theyare all subdued to the service of his master passion, they are allfocussed in his love for Cleopatra; while his strategy is broken up tomere shifts and expedients that answer the demand of the hour. Passionhas become not only the regulative but the constitutive force in hischaracter. When the action begins, he is indemnifying himself with a round ofindulgence for the strenuous life between the fall of Julius and thevictories at Philippi, some of the toils and privations of which,passed over in the earlier play, Octavius now recalls in amazementat the contrast. It is not so strange. One remembers Professor vonKarsteg’s indictment of the English that they spare no pains becausethey live for pleasure. “You are all in one mass, struggling in thestream to get out and lie and wallow and belch on the banks. Youwork so hard that you have all but one aim, and that is fatness andease! ”[208] Something similar strikes us in Antony. It is naturalthat action should be followed by reaction and that abstinence shouldlead to surfeit. It is doubly natural, when effort and disciplineare not prized for themselves or associated with the public good,but have only been accepted as the means to a selfish aim. By themhe has acquired more than mortal power: why should he not use it inhis own behoof, oblivious of every call save the prompting of desire? A vulgar attitude, we may say; but it is lifted above vulgarity bythe vastness of the orbit through which his desire revolves. It isgrandiose, and almost divine; in so far at least as it is a circlewhose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. He hasa gust for everything and for everything in the highest degree, foreach several pleasure and its exact antithesis. In what does he notfeel zest? Luxury, banqueting, drunkenness, appeal to him, so thatPompey prays they “may keep his brain fuming” (II. i. 24). Or he actsthe god, and with Cleopatra as Isis, dispenses sovereignty from the“tribunal silver’d,” as they sit on their “chairs of gold” (III. vi. 3). Or he finds a relish in vulgar pleasures, and with the queen onhis arm, mingles incognito in the crowd, wandering through the streets“to note the qualities of people” (I. i. 52). Or he goes a-fishing, inwhich art he is a novice and presently becomes a dupe, when he pullsup the salt-fish “with fervency” (II. v. 18). And a willing dupe,the conscious humorous dupe of love to his tricksy enchantress, he ispleased to be in many other ways: That time,—O times! — I laugh’d him out of patience; and that night I laugh’d him into patience; and next morn, Ere the ninth hour, I drunk him to his bed: Then put my tires and mantles on him, whilst I wore his sword Philippian. (II. v. 18. )[208] _The Adventures of Harry Richmond. _In short his breathless pursuit of all sorts of experiences more thanjustifies the scandalised summary of Octavius: He fishes, drinks, and wastes The lamps of night in revel; is not more manlike Than Cleopatra; nor the queen of Ptolemy More womanly than he. (I. iv. 4. )And he goes on to describe how Antony has been so indiscriminate as to tumble on the bed of Ptolemy; To give a kingdom for a mirth; to sit And keep the turn of tippling with a slave; To reel the streets at noon, and stand the buffet With knaves that smell of sweat. (I. iv. 17. )Yet, however he may seem to sink in his pleasures, he is neversubmerged; such is his joyousness and strength that they seem to bearhim up and carry him along rather than drag him down. As Cleopatraperceives: His delights Were dolphin-like; they show’d his back above The element they lived in. (V. ii. 88. )It is this demand to share in all the _Erdgeist_ has to offer,that raises Antony above the level of the average sensualist. Hisdissipations impose by their catholicity and heartiness. His blitheeagerness never flags and nothing mundane leaves him unmoved: There’s not a minute of our lives should stretch Without some pleasure now. (I. i. 46. )This is his ideal, an infinity of pastimes under the presidency of hislove; and any ideal, no matter what, always dignifies those whom itinspires. But it also demands its sacrifice; and in the present caseAntony with a sort of inverse sublimity offers up to it all that theambitious, the honourable or the virtuous man counts good. For a life like his is hardly compatible even in theory with thearduous functions of the commander, the governor, the administrator;and in practice it inevitably leads to their neglect. In the openingscene we see him leave unheard the momentous tidings from Rome, andturn aside to embrace his royal paramour. His followers are filled withangry disgust: Nay, but this dotage of our general’s O’erflows the measure: those his goodly eyes That o’er the files and musters of the war Have glow’d like plated Mars, now bend, now turn, The office and devotion of their view Upon a tawny front. (I. i. 1. )The general voice cries out against him at home, where his faults aretaunted With such full licence as both truth and malice Have power to utter. (I. ii. 112. )His newly arrived friends find the worst libels verified, as Demetriusadmits: I am full sorry That he approves the common liar, who Thus speaks of him at Rome. (I. i. 59. )Octavius is not unduly severe in his condemnation: To confound such time, That drums him from his sport, and speaks as loud As his own state and ours,—’tis to be chid As we rate boys, who, being mature in knowledge, Pawn their experience to their present pleasure, And so rebel to judgement. (I. iv. 28. )Nor is he without qualms himself. Sudden revulsions of feeling disturbhis riots when “a Roman thought hath struck him” (I. ii. 87). He feelsthat stopping short in his labours and relaxing his energy, he giveshis baser tendencies the sway, and cries: O, then we bring forth weeds, When our quick minds lie still. (I. ii. 113. )This, however, makes things worse rather than better. It does not rousehim to any constant course, it only perplexes his purpose. He does notwish to give up anything: the life at Rome and the life at Alexandriaboth tug at his heart-strings; and he cannot see that the Eastern andthe Western career are not to be reconciled. It is still nominallyopen to him to make a choice, but at any rate the choice must be made. It must often have occurred to him to throw aside his civil ties, andto set up as independent Emperor with his Egyptian Queen. And apartfrom old associations there were only two reasons why he should not:lingering respect for his marriage with Fulvia, whom in a way he stillloved, and dread of the avenging might of Rome directed by all thecraft of Octavius. These impediments are suddenly removed; and theirremoval belongs to Shakespeare’s conception. It may be traced in partto his own invention, in part perhaps to the suggestion of Appian, butin any case it is of far-reaching significance. In the biography the situation is fundamentally different, thoughsuperficially alike. There Antony is threatened at once in the Westand the East. Octavius has driven his wife and brother out of Italy;Labienus, the old foe of Caesarism, has led the Parthians into theprovinces. It is to meet these dangers that Antony leaves Egypt, andto the Parthian as the more pressing he addresses himself first. Onlyat Fulvia’s entreaty does he alter his plan and sail for home with twohundred ships; but her opportune death facilitates a composition withOctavius. Then the alliance between them having been confirmed, and thepetty trouble with Sextus Pompeius having been easily settled, Antonyis able with ampler resources to turn against the troublesome Parthians. These are the facts as Caesar narrates them; and according to themAntony had no option but to break off his love affair and set outto face one or both of the perils that menaced him; the peril fromOctavius who has defeated him in his representatives, the peril fromLabienus who has overrun the Near East. These items are not wanting inShakespeare, and as the news of them arrives, his Antony exclaims asPlutarch’s might have done: These strong Egyptian fetters I must break, Or lose myself in dotage. (I. ii. 120. )But even as he speaks a second messenger arrives who supplementsthe tidings of the first with new circumstances that are really ofmuch later date and quite different significance in Plutarch, andthat entirely alter the complexion of affairs. He hears by word ofmouth that Fulvia is dead, and, apparently by letter, that SextusPompeius stands up against Caesar and commands the empire of the sea. In Plutarch he is called to Rome by the fact not of Fulvia’s beingdead but of her being alive; and her death only prepares the way fora reconciliation when he is already nearing home. Still less is hisreturn connected with the enterprise of Pompey which is mentioned onlyafter the reconciliation is accomplished, and, as we have seen, istreated quite as a detail. But Shakespeare, inserting these mattershere and viewing them as he does, dismisses altogether or in part themotive which Plutarch implies for Antony’s behaviour. Indeed theyshould rather be reasons for his continuing and proceeding further inhis present course. One main objection to his connection with Cleopatrais removed, and the way is smoothed to marriage with his beloved. Alldanger from Rome is for the time at an end; and the opportunity isoffered for establishing himself in Egypt while Pompey and Octaviuswaste each other’s strength, or for making common cause with Pompey,who, as we know, is well inclined to him and takes occasion to pay himcourt. But in Shakespeare’s Antony, the very removal of external hindrancesgives new force to those within his own heart. Regrets and compunctionsare stirred. The memory of his wife rises up with new authority, theentreaties of his friends and the call of Rome sound with louder appealin his ears: Not alone The death of Fulvia, with more urgent touches, Do strongly speak to us: but the letters too Of many our contriving friends in Rome Petition us at home. (I. ii. 186. )With a man of his emotional nature, precisely the opportunity soprocured to carry out one set of his wishes, gives the other set themastery. Of his wife’s death he exclaims: There’s a great spirit gone! Thus did I desire it: What our contempt doth often hurl from us, We wish it ours again; the present pleasure, By revolution lowering, does become The opposite of itself: she’s good, being gone; The hand could pluck her back that shoved her on. I must from this enchanting queen break off. (I. ii. 126. )It is no doubt the nobler and more befitting course that he proposesto himself, but it is so only on the condition that he follows it outwith his whole heart. If he takes it up to let it go; if one half ormore than one half of his soul lingers with the flesh-pots of Egypt,then nothing could be more foolish and calamitous. He merely throwsaway the grand chance of realising his more alluring ambition, andadvances no step to the sterner and loftier heights. For he will patchup the Roman Triumvirate and rehabilitate the power of Octavius to hisown hurt, unless he resolves henceforth to act as a Roman Triumvir andas the dominant partner with Octavius; and he will never again haveso good an occasion for legitimising and thus excusing his relationwith Cleopatra. This latter step was so obviously the natural one thatOctavius almost assumes he must have taken it. On making his proposalfor the match with Octavia, Agrippa says: “Great Antony is now awidower,” but Octavius interrupts: Say not so, Agrippa: If Cleopatra heard you, your reproof Were well deserved of rashness. (II. ii. 122. )But though he thus shrinks from the irrevocable choice, we see clearlyenough at his departure from Egypt that the impulse towards Rome mustsoon be spent, and that therefore his refusal to commit himself,and his whole enterprise, show rather weakness and indecision thanresolution and strength. To soothe Cleopatra he tells her: Be prepared to know The purposes I bear; which are, or cease, As you shall give the advice. By the fire That quickens Nilus’ slime, I go from thence Thy soldier, servant, making peace or war As thou affect’st. (I. iii. 66. )He is speaking too true when he says: Our separation so abides, and flies, That thou, residing here, go’st yet with me, And I, hence fleeting, here remain with thee. (I. iii. 102. )And his last message runs: Say, the firm Roman to great Egypt sends This treasure of an oyster; at whose foot, To mend the petty present, I will piece Her opulent throne with kingdoms: all the east, Say thou, shall call her mistress. (I. v. 44. )And with these pledges like so many mill-stones round his neck, he setsoff to swim in the dangerous cross-currents of Roman politics. It istrue that pledges do not weigh over heavily with him, but in this casetheir weight is increased by his inner inclinations. So the reconciliation with Octavius is hollow from the first, and beinghollow it is a blunder. Antony of course is able to blind himself toits hollowness and to conduct the negociations with great adroitness. His dignified and frank apology is just what he ought to say, supposingthat the particular end were to be sought at all, and it has an air ofcandour that could not well be consciously assumed: As nearly as I may, I’ll play the penitent to you: but mine honesty Shall not make poor my greatness, nor my power Work without it. Truth is, that Fulvia, To have me out of Egypt, made wars here; For which myself, the ignorant motive, do So far ask pardon as befits mine honour To stoop in such a case. (II. ii. 91. )But this is only another instance of the born orator’s faculty forthrowing himself into a situation, and feeling for the time what it isexpedient to express. It is a fatal gift, which betrays him oftenerthan it helps. If it prompts his moving utterances over the bodiesof Caesar and Brutus, and in so far directly or indirectly assistshis cause, it nevertheless even then to some cynical observers likeEnobarbus suggests a spice of hypocrisy. Hypocrisy it is not, but itcomes almost to the same thing; for the easily aroused emotion soonsubsides after it has done its work and yields to some quite contraryimpulsion. But meanwhile the worst of it is, that it carries away theeloquent speaker, and hurries him in directions and to distances thatare not for his good. With Antony’s real and permanent bias, even atemporary reconcilement with Octavius is a mistake; but what shall wesay of his marriage with Octavia? Yet he jumps at it at once; and withthat convincing air of sincerity that can only be explained by hisreally liking it for the moment, exclaims: May I never To this good purpose, that so fairly shows, Dream of impediment! Let me have thy hand: Further this act of grace: and from this hour The heart of brothers govern in our loves And sway our great designs. (II. ii. 146. )And again he realises just what is proper to feel and say to hisbetrothed, and says it so that we are sure he feels it so long as he isspeaking: My Octavia, Read not my blemishes in the world’s report: I have not kept my square: but that to come Shall all be done by the rule. (II. iii. 4. )Yet she has barely left him, when, at the warning of the soothsayer,and the thought of Octavius’ success in games of chance and sport, heresolves to outrage the still uncompleted marriage and return to hisEgyptian bondage: I will to Egypt: For though I make this marriage for my peace, I’ the East my pleasure lies. (II. iii. |
38. )But when this is his fixed determination, why make the marriage at all? Does he fail to see that it will bring not peace but a sword? Yet heis so hood-winked by immediate opportunism that he bears his share inmaking Pompey harmless to the mighty brother-in-law he is just aboutto offend. And knowing his own heart as he does, he can neverthelessassume an air of resentment at the veiled menace in Octavius’ partingadmonition: “Make me not offended in your mistrust” (III. ii. 33). He has truly with all diligence digged a pit for himself. Already he isthe wreck of the shrewd contriver whose machinations Cassius so justlyfeared. And this collapse of faculty, this access of presumption andhebetude belong to Shakespeare’s conception of the case. In Plutarchthe renewed agreement of the Triumvirs is expedient and even necessary;the marriage scheme is adopted in good faith and for a period servesits purpose; the granting of terms to Pompey is an unimportant act ofgrace. Nevertheless some powers of contrivance Shakespeare’s Antony stillretains. He despatches the capable Ventidius on the Parthian campaign,and he has the credit and _éclat_, when with his banners and his well-paid ranks, The ne’er-yet-beaten horse of Parthia (Are) jaded out o’ the field. (III. i. 32. )He himself over-runs and conquers Armenia, and other Asiatic kingdoms,and with his new prestige and resources is able to secure the supportof a formidable band of subject kings. When Octavia has returned toRome and he to Egypt, and war breaks out, he is still, thanks to theseallies and to his own veteran legionaries whom he has so often led tovictory and spoil, the master of a power that should more than sufficeto make the fortune his. But in his infatuation he throws all his advantages away. He pronounceson himself the verdict which his whole story confirms: When we in our viciousness grow hard— O misery on’t! —the wise gods seel our eyes; In our own filth drop our clear judgements; make us Adore our errors; laugh at’s, while we strut To our confusion. (III. xiii. 111. )Of the preliminary blunder, which Plutarch signalises as “among thegreatest faults that ever Antonius committed,” viz. , his failure togive Octavius battle, when universal discontent was excited at homeby Octavius’ exactions, there is no mention, or only a very slightand doubtful one in the play. When Eros has told the news of Pompey’soverthrow and Lepidus’ deposition, Enobarbus at once foresees thesequel: Then, world, thou hast a pair of chaps, no more: And throw between them all the food thou hast, They’ll grind the one the other. (III. v. 14. )And presently he continues: Our great navy’s rigg’d. _Eros. _ For Italy and Caesar. More, Domitius, My lord desires you presently; my news I might have told hereafter. _Eno. _ ’Twill be nought: But let it be. Bring me to Antony. (III. v. 20. )Here we seem to have a faint reminiscence of Plutarch’s statement. Erostakes for granted as the obvious course, that the great navy readyto start will make an immediate descent on the enemy’s stronghold. Enobarbus, who understands Antony, knows that nothing will come of it,and that their destination is Egypt. In point of fact we learn in thenext scene that Antony has arrived in Alexandria and there kept hisstate with Cleopatra. But if Shakespeare glides over this episode, he dwells with all thegreater detail on the array of imbecilities with which Antony followsit up. First, despite the advice of Enobarbus, he lets Cleopatrabe present in the war. Then to please her caprice, and gratify hisown fantastic chivalry, he sets aside the well-based objections ofEnobarbus, of Canidius, of the common soldiers; and accepts Octavius’challenge to fight at sea, though his ships are heavy, his marinersinexpert, and he himself and his veterans are more used to the dryland. Even so the inspiration of his soldiership and generalship isgiving him a slight superiority, when the panic of Cleopatra withdrawsher contingent of sixty ships: Yon ribaudred nag of Egypt,— Whom leprosy o’ertake! —i’ the midst o’ the fight, When vantage like a pair of twins appear’d, Both as the same, or rather ours the elder, The breese upon her, like a cow in June, Hoists sail and flies. (III. x. 10. )Not all is lost even then. But Antony follows the fugitive, when,if he were true to himself, the day might still be retrieved. Thisis the view that Shakespeare assigns to Canidius; and while all theprevious items he derived from Plutarch, only distributing them amonghis persons, and adding to their picturesqueness and force, this is anaddition of his own to heighten the ignominy of Antony’s desertion: Had our general Been what he knew himself, it had gone well. (III. x. 25. )And the explanation of his “most unnoble swerving,” if in one way anexcuse, in another is an extra shame to his manhood, and too welljustifies Enobarbus’ dread of Cleopatra’s influence: Your presence needs must puzzle Antony; Take from his heart, take from his brain, from’s time, What should not then be spared. (III. vii. 11. )The authority for the idea that Antony was in a manner hypnotised byher love, Shakespeare found, like so much else, in the _Life_, buthe enhances the effect immeasurably, first by putting the avowal inAntony’s own lips, and again by the more poignant and pitiful turn hegives it. Plutarch says: There Antonius shewed plainely, that he had not onely lost the corage and hart of an Emperor, but also of a valliant man, and that he was not his owne man: (proving that true which an old man spake in myrth that the soule of a lover lived in another body, and not in his owne) he was so caried away with the vaine love of this woman, as if he had bene glued into her, and that she could not have removed without moving of him also. Antony cries in the play: O, whither hast thou led me, Egypt? . . . Thou knew’st too well My heart was to thy rudder tied by the strings, And thou shouldst tow me after: o’er my spirit Thy full supremacy thou knew’st, and that Thy beck might from the bidding of the gods Command me. . . . You did know How much you were my conqueror: and that My sword, made weak by my affection, would Obey it on all cause. (III. x. 51. )But in Shakespeare’s view the final decision was not reached evenat the battle of Actium. Despite that disaster and the subsequentdesertions, Antony is still able to offer no inconsiderable resistancein Egypt. In direct contradiction of Plutarch’s statement, he says,after the reply to Euphronius and the scourging of Thyreus: Our force by land Hath nobly held; our sever’d navy too Have knit again, and fleet, threatening most sea-like. (III. xiii. 169. )Whether this be fact or illusion, it shows that in his own eyes atleast some hope remains: but in the hour of defeat he was quiteunmanned and seemed to give up all thought of prolonging the struggle. When for the first time after his reverse we meet him in Alexandria,he prays his followers to “take the hint which his despair proclaims”(III. xi. 18), and to leave him, with his treasure for their reward. This circumstance Shakespeare obtained from Plutarch, but in Plutarchit is not quite the same. There the dismissal takes place at Taenarusin the Peloponnesus, the first stopping-place at which Antony touchesin his flight, and apparently is dictated by the difficulty of all thefugitives effecting their escape. At any rate he was very far even thenfrom despairing of his cause, for in the previous sentence we readthat he “sent unto Canidius, to returne with his army into Asia, byMacedon”; and some time later we find him, still ignorant of the facts,continuing to act on the belief “that his armie by lande, which he leftat Actium, was yet whole. ”[209] Here on the other hand he has succeededin reaching his lair, and it is as foolish as it is generous to throwaway adherents and resources that might be of help to him at the last. But he is too despondent to think even of standing at bay. He tells hisfriends: I have myself resolved upon a course Which has no need of you. (III. xi. 9. )[209] He learns the truth however before he sends Euphronius asdelegate. That course was to beseech Octavius by his schoolmaster, To let him breathe between the heavens and earth, A private man in Athens. (III. xii. 14. )Here he touches the bottom mud of degradation and almost sinksto the level of Lepidus who did obtain permission to live undersurveillance at Circeii “till death enlarged his confine. ” And heretoo Shakespeare follows Plutarch, but here too with a difference. Forin the biography this incident comes after some time has elapsed, andnew disappointments and new indulgences have made deeper inroads inAntony’s spirit. In one aspect no doubt he is less pitiable in thusbeing brought to mortification by degrees. In Shakespeare he adoptsthis course before ever he has seen the Queen, and in so far showsgreater weakness of character. Like Richard II. he bows his head atonce, and without an effort takes “the sweet way to despair. ” Yet justfor that reason he is from another point of view less ignoble. It isthe sudden sense of disgrace, the amazement, the consternation at hisown poltroonery that turns his knees to water. But the very immediacyand poignancy of his self-disgust is a guarantee of surviving nobilitythat needs only an occasion to call it forth. The occasion comes inthe refusal of his own petition and the conditional compliance withCleopatra’s. Antony’s answer to this slighting treatment is his secondchallenge. This too Shakespeare obtained from Plutarch, but of thistoo he altered the significance and the date. In Plutarch it is sentafter Antony’s victorious sally, apparently in elation at that triflingsuccess, and is recorded without other remark than Octavius’ rejoinder. In Shakespeare it is the retort of Antony’s self-consciousness tothe depreciation of his rival, and it is the first rebound of hisrelaxed valour. When the victor counts him as nought he is stung tocomparisons, and feels that apart from success and external advantageshe is still of greater worth: Tell him he wears the rose Of youth upon him; from which the world should note Something particular: his coin, ships, legions, May be a coward’s; whose ministers would prevail Under the service of a child as soon As i’ the command of Caesar: I dare him, therefore, To lay his gay comparisons apart, And answer me declined, sword against sword, Ourselves alone. (III. xiii. 20. )Of course it is absurd and mad; and the madness and absurdity arebrought out, in the play, not in the _Life_, by the comments ofEnobarbus, Octavius and Mecaenas. Indeed at this juncture Antony’svalour, or rather his desperation, does not cease to prey on hisreason. His insult to Caesar in the scourging of his messenger is lessan excess of audacity than the gnash of the teeth in the last agony: asEnobarbus remarks: ’Tis better playing with a lion’s whelp Than with an old one dying. (III. xiii. 94. )Octavius may treat these transports of a great spirit in the throesas mere bluster and brutality, and find in them a warrant for hisruthless phrase, “the old ruffian. ” There is a touch of the ruffian inAntony’s wild outbursts. Even the mettlesome vein in which he commandsanother gaudy night on Cleopatra’s birthday is open to Enobarbus’disparagement: that a diminution of his captain’s brain restores hisheart. Truly the last shreds of prudence are whirled away in his stormof recklessness and anguish and love. At the defiant anniversary feasthis soul is so wrung with gratitude to his true servants and grief atthe near farewell, that he must give his feelings words though theywill discourage rather than hearten the company. Cleopatra does notunderstand it, for her own nature has not the depth of Antony’s, anddeep can only call to deep. “What means this? ” she asks. _Eno. _ ’Tis one of those odd tricks which sorrow shoots Out of the mind. (IV. ii. 14. )Again, in amazement at his tearful pathos, she exclaims: “What doeshe mean? ” And with an effort at cynicism, Enobarbus, who has scoffedat Antony’s emotion over the bodies of Caesar and Brutus, replies:“To make his followers weep”; for Enobarbus tries to think that it ismerely the orator’s eloquence that runs away with him in his meltingmood. Nevertheless his own sympathies are touched for the moment: “I,an ass, am onion-eyed. ” In truth none can mistake the genuine feelingof Antony’s words, though at the hint he can at once change their toneand give them an heroic and even a sanguine turn. [210] Know, my hearts, I hope well of to-morrow; and will lead you Where rather I’ll expect victorious life Than death and honour. (IV. ii. 41. )[210] Which latter for the rest may be found in North but not inPlutarch. “To salve that he had spoken he added this more unto it, thathe would not leade them to battell, where he thought not rather safelyto returne with victorie, then valliantly to dye with honor. ” _Cf. _ μὴπροάξειν ἐπὶ τὴν μάχην, ἐξ ἧς αὑτῷ θάνατον εὐκλεᾶ μᾶλλον ἢ σωτηρίανζητεῖν καὶ νίκην. But whatever deductions be made, Antony’s last days in Alexandria bringback a St. Martin’s summer of genial power and genial nobility that aredoubly captivating when set off against the foil of Caesar’s coldness. The grand proportions of his nature, that are obscured in the vintagetime of success and indulgence, show forth again when the branches arebare. No doubt he again and again does the wrong things, or at leastthe things that lead to no useful result. His patron god deserts him asin Plutarch, but that god in Shakespeare is not Bacchus but Hercules,and he departs earlier than in the story and not on the last nightbefore the end; for the withdrawal of the divine friend is now less thepresage of death than the symbol of inefficacy. Antony’s insight andjudgment may be failing; his flashes of power may be like his flashesof jealousy, and indicate the dissolution of his being. Still when allis said and done, he seems to become bolder, grander, more magnanimous,as the fuel is cut off from his inward fire and it burns and wastesin its own heat. His reflux of heroism cannot save him against thematerial superiority and concentrated ambition of Octavius, for it isnot the consequent energy that commands success and that implies aconsequent purpose in life: but all the more impressive and affectingis this gallant fronting of fate. As Cleopatra arms him for his lastlittle victory, he cries with his old self-consciousness: O love, That thou couldst see my wars to-day, and knew’st The royal occupation! thou shouldst see A workman in ’t. (IV. iv. 15. )He welcomes the time for battle: This morning, like the spirit of a youth, That means to be of note, begins betimes. (IV. iv. 26. )Cleopatra recognises his greatness and his doom: He goes forth gallantly. That he and Caesar might Determine this great war in single fight! Then, Antony,—but now—well, on. (IV. iv. 36. )That day he does well indeed. He pursues the recreant Enobarbus withhis generosity and the vanquished Romans with his valour. He returnsvictorious and jubilant to claim his last welcoming embrace. O thou day o’ the world, Chain mine arm’d neck; leap thou, attire and all, Through proof of harness to my heart, and there Ride on the pants triumphing. (IV. viii. 13. )Then the morrow brings the end. His fleet deserts, and for the momenthe suspects Cleopatra as the cause, and overwhelms her with curses andthreats. The suspicion is natural, and his nature is on edge at thefiasco, which this time is no fault of his. The soul and body rive not more in parting Than greatness going off. [211] (IV. xiii. 5. )[211] A familiar thought with Shakespeare. Compare Anne’s reference toKatherine in _Henry VIII. _: O, God’s will! much better She ne’er had known pomp: though’t be temporal, Yet, if that quarrel, fortune, do divorce It from the bearer, ’tis a sufferance panging As soul and body’s severing. (II. iii. 12. )This scene is almost certainly Shakespeare’s. But his mood changes. Even before he hears Cleopatra’s disclaimer andthe news of her alleged death, he has become calm, and only feels thefutility of it all; he is to himself “indistinct, as water is in water”(IV. xiv. 10). Then comes the message that his beloved is no more, andhis resolution is fixed: Unarm me, Eros; the long day’s task is done, And we must sleep. (IV. xiv. 36. )His thoughts are with his Queen in the Elysian fields where he willask her pardon,[212] and he only stays for Eros’ help. But whenEros chooses his own rather than his master’s death, Antony in hislarge-hearted way gives him the praise, and finds in his act a lesson. Thrice-nobler than myself! Thou teachest me, O valiant Eros, what I should, and thou couldst not. (IV. xiv. 95. )The wound he deals himself is not at once fatal. He lives long enoughto comfort his followers in the heroic words: Nay, good my fellows, do not please sharp fate To grace it with your sorrows: bid that welcome Which comes to punish us, and we punish it Seeming to bear it lightly. Take me up: I have led you oft: carry me now, good friends, And have my thanks for all. [213][212] Dido and her Æneas shall want troops, And all the haunt be ours. (IV. xiv. 52. )We have not got much further in explaining Shakespeare’s allusion thanwhen Warburton made the Warburtonian emendation of Sichaeus for Æneas. Shakespeare had probably quite forgotten Virgil’s Illa solo fixos oculos aversa tenebat: . . . atque inimica refugit In nemus umbriferum. (_Æ. _ vi. 469. )Perhaps he remembered only that Æneas, ancestor and representative ofthe Romans, between his two authorised marriages with ladies of the“superior” races, intercalated the love-adventure, which alone seizedthe popular imagination and which of all the deities Venus aloneapproved, with ran African queen. [213] No word of this in Plutarch. He has heard the truth about Cleopatra, and only importunes deaththat he may snatch that one last interview sacred to his love of her,his care for her, and to that serene, lofty dignity which now he hasattained. The world seems a blank when this full life is out; andlooking at the race that is left, we feel inclined to echo Cleopatra’swords above the corpse: O, wither’d is the garland of the war, The soldier’s pole is fall’n: young boys and girls Are level now with men; the odds is gone, And there is nothing left remarkable Beneath the visiting moon. (IV. xv. 64. )CHAPTER VICLEOPATRATo Cleopatra, the lodestar, the temptress, the predestined mateof Antony, we now turn: and perhaps even Shakespeare has no moremarvellous creation than she, or one in which the nature that inspiresand the genius that reveals, are so fused in the ideal truth. Campbellsays: “He paints her as if the gipsy herself had cast her spell overhim, and given her own witchcraft to his pencil. ” The witchcrafteverybody feels. It is almost impossible to look at her steadily, orkeep one’s head to estimate her aright. She is the incarnate poetryof life without duty, glorified by beauty and grace; of impulsewithout principle, ennobled by culture and intellect. But howeverit may be with the reader, Shakespeare does not lose his head. Heis not the adept mesmerised, the sorcerer ensorcelled. Such avatarsas the Egyptian Queen have often been described by other poets, butgenerally from the point of view either of the servile devotee or ofthe unsympathetic censor. Here the artist is a man, experienced andcritical, yet with the fires of his imagination still ready to leapand glow. He stands in right relation to the laws of life; and hisdelineation is all the more impressive and all the more aesthetic, themore remorselessly he sacrifices the one-sided claims of the conceptionin which he delights to the laws of tragic necessity. Cleopatra is introduced to us as a beauty of a somewhat dusky Africantype in the full maturity, or perhaps a little past the maturity, ofher bloom. The first trait is for certain historically wrong. [214] Theline of the Ptolemies was of the purest Grecian breed, with a purityof which they were proud, and which they sought to preserve by closeintermarriage within their house. But Shakespeare has so impressed hisown idea of Cleopatra on the world that later painters and poets havefollowed suit ever since. Tennyson, in the _Dream of Fair Women_ tellshow she summons him: I, turning, saw throned on a flowery rise One sitting on a crimson scarf unroll’d, A Queen with swarthy cheeks and bold black eyes, Brow-bound with burning gold. [214] Wrong; even if on numismatic evidence her features be consideredto fall short of and deviate from the Greek ideal. Professor Ferrerodescribes her face as “bouffie. ”Hawthorne in his _Transformation_, describing Story’s statue ofCleopatra, which here he attributes to Kenyon, goes further: The face was a marvellous success. The sculptor had not shunned to give the full Nubian lips and the other characteristics of the Egyptian physiognomy. His courage and integrity had been abundantly rewarded: for Cleopatra’s beauty shone out richer, warmer, more triumphantly beyond comparison, than if, shrinking timidly from the truth, he had chosen the tame Grecian type. Hawthorne goes astray through taking Shakespeare’s picture, or ratheranother picture which Shakespeare’s suggested to his own fancy, as aliteral portrait; but his very mistake shows how incongruous a fairCleopatra would now seem to us. Not often or obtrusively, but of set purpose and beyond thepossibility of neglect, does Shakespeare refer to her racialpeculiarities. Philo talks of her “tawny front” (I. i. 6), and both heand Antony call her a gipsy with reference not merely to the wily andvagabond character with which these landlopers in Shakespeare’s daywere stigmatised, but surely to the darkness of her complexion as well. But the most explicit and the most significant statement is her own: Think on me, That am with Phoebus’ amorous pinches black. (I. v. 27. )This is one of her ironical exaggerations; but does it not suggestsomething torrid and tropical, something of the fervours of the Eastand South, that burn in the volcanic fires of Othello and the impulsivesplendours of Morocco? Does it not recall the glowing plea of thelatter, Mislike me not for my complexion, The shadow’d livery of the burnish’d sun, To whom I am a neighbour and near bred. (_M. of V. _, II. i. 1. )The sun has indeed shone on her and into her. She has known the loveand adoration of the greatest. Broad-fronted Caesar, When thou wast here above the ground, I was A morsel for a monarch: and great Pompey Would stand and make his eyes grow in my brow; There would he anchor his aspect and die With looking on his life. (I. v. 29. )Shakespeare magnifies the glories of her conquests, for it was notPompey the Great but his son who had been her lover of old. But theseexperiences were only the preparation for the grand passion of herlife. She has outgrown them; and if the first freshness is gone, theintoxication of fragrance, the flavour and lusciousness are enhanced. However much she believed herself engrossed by these early fancies, nowthat she is under the spell of her Antony, her “man of men,” she looksback on them as of her salad days When (she) was green in judgement, cold in blood. (I. v. 73. )Talking of her preparations to meet Antony, Plutarch says: Gessing by the former accesse and credit she had with Julius Caesar and Cneus Pompey (the sonne of Pompey the Great) only for her beawtie; she began to have good hope that she might more easily win Antonius. For Caesar and Pompey knew her when she was but a young thing, and knew not then what the world ment: but now she went to Antonius, at the age when a womans beawtie is at the prime, and she also of best judgement. “At the prime” are Plutarch’s words; for in point of fact she was thentwenty-eight years of age. In this Shakespeare follows and goes beyondhis authority; he gives us the impression of her being somewhat older. Pompey talks of her contemptuously as “Egypt’s widow,” and prays: All the charms of love, Salt Cleopatra, soften thy waned lip. (II. i. 20. )She herself in ironical self-disparagement avows that she is “wrinkleddeep in time” (I. v. 29) and exclaims: Though age from folly could not give me freedom, It does from childishness. (I. iii. 57. )But what then? Like Helen and Gudrun and the ladies of romance, orlike Ninon de Lenclos in actual life, she never grows old. As eventhe cynical Enobarbus proclaims, “age cannot wither her. ” She hasonly gained skill and experience in the use and embellishment of herphysical charms, and with these the added charms of grace, culture,expressiveness. She knows how to set off her attractions with all theaids of art, wealth and effect, as we see from the _mise-en-scène_ atthe Cydnus: and her mobility and address, her wit, her surprises, herrange of interest do the rest. Again Shakespeare has got the clue fromPlutarch: Now her beawtie (as it is reported) was not so passing, as unmatchable of other women,[215] nor yet suche, as upon present viewe did enamor men with her; but so sweete was her companie and conversacion, that a man could not possiblie but be taken. And besides her beawtie, the good grace she had to talke and discourse, her curteous nature that tempered her words and dedes, was a spurre that pricked to the quick. Furthermore, besides all these, her voyce and words were marvelous pleasant; for her tongue was an instrument of musicke to divers sports and pastimes, the which she easely turned to any language that pleased her. In one respect Shakespeare differs from Plutarch; he bestows on hersurpassing and unmatchable beauty, so that she transcends the artist’sideal as much as that transcends mortal womanhood; she o’er-pictures that Venus where we see The fancy outwork nature. [216] (II. ii. 205. )[215] The sense is: “Her beauty was not so surpassing as to be beyondcomparison with other women’s,” etc. Compare the Greek: “καὶ γὰρ ἦν, ὡςλέγουσιν, αὐτὸ μὲν καθ’ αὑτὸ, τὸ κάλλος αὐτῆς οὐ πάνυ δυσπαράβλητον,οὐδ’ οἶον ἐκπλῆξαι τοῦς ἰδόντας. ”[216] Plutarch in the corresponding passage merely says that she was“apparelled and attired like the goddesse Venus commonly drawen inpicture. ”But he agrees with Plutarch in making her beauty the least part ofher spell. Generally speaking it is taken for granted rather thanpointed out; and of its great triumph on the Cydnus we hear only inthe enraptured reminiscences of Enobarbus. Thus it is removed from thesphere of sense to the sphere of imagination, and is idealised in thefervour of his delight; but, though this we never forget, it is of herother charms that we think most when she is present on the scene. She is all life and movement, and never the same, so that we aredazzled and bewildered, and too dizzy to measure her by any fixedstandard. Her versatility of intellect, her variety of mood, areinexhaustible; and she can pass from gravity to gaiety, from fondnessto banter, with a suddenness that baffles conjecture. We can forecastnothing of her except that any forecast will be vain. At her very firstentrance the languishing gives place in a moment to the exasperatingvein: If it be love indeed, tell me how much. (I. i. 14. ) Fulvia perchance is angry; or, who knows If the scarce-bearded Caesar have not sent His powerful mandate to you. (I. i. 20. )For she turns to account even the gibe and the jeer, stings her loverwith her venomous punctures, and pursues a policy of pin-pricks not torepel but to allure. The hint comes from Plutarch. When Cleopatra found Antonius jeasts and slents to be but grosse and souldier-like, in plaine manner; she gave it him finely and without feare taunted him throughly. And on the other hand she can faint at will, weep and sob beyondmeasure. We cannot call her winds and waters sighs and tears: they are greater storms and tempests than almanacs can report. (I. ii. 152. )Here, too, the hint is given by Plutarch, but in a later passage, whenshe fears Antony may return to Octavia: When he went from her, she fell a weeping and blubbering, looked rufully of the matter, and still found the meanes that Antonius should often tymes finde her weeping. In the play, when he announces his departure, she is ready to fall;her lace must be cut; she plays the seduced innocent; but she mingleswormwood with her pathos and overwhelms him with all sorts of oppositereproaches. Since he does not bewail Fulvia, that is proof ofinfidelity: O most false love! Where be the sacred vials thou shouldst fill With sorrowful water? Now I see, I see, In Fulvia’s death, how mine received shall be. (I. iii. 62. )When his distress is not to be confined, she taxes him with mourningfor his wife: I prithee, turn aside and weep for her; Then bid adieu to me, and say the tears Belong to Egypt. (I. iii. 76. )When he loses patience, she mocks at him: _Ant. _ You’ll heat my blood: no more. _Cle. _ You can do better yet; but this is meetly. _Ant. _ Now, by my sword,— _Cle. _ And target. Still he mends; But this is not the best. Look, prithee, Charmian, How this Herculean Roman does become The carriage of his chafe. (I. iii. 80. )But at the word of his leaving she is at once all wistful tenderness: Courteous lord, one word. Sir, you and I must part, but that’s not it: Sir, you and I have loved, but there’s not it; That you know well: something it is I would,— O, my oblivion is a very Antony, And I am all forgotten. [217] (I. iii. 86. )[217] See Appendix E. But thence again she passes on the instant to grave and quiet dignity: All the gods go with you! upon your sword Sit laurel victory! and smooth success Be strew’d before your feet! (I. iii. 99. )It is the unexpectedness of her transitions, the impossibility offoreseeing what she will say or do, the certainty that whatever shesays or does will be a surprise, that keeps Antony and everyone elsein perpetual agitation. [218] Tranquillity and dullness fly at thesound of her name. Her love relies on provocation in both senses ofthe word, and to a far greater extent in Shakespeare than in Plutarch. Thus Plutarch tells how Octavius’ expedition in occupying Toryne causeddismay among Antony’s troops: “But Cleopatra making light of it: ‘Andwhat daunger, I pray you,’ said she, ‘if Caesar keepe at Toryne? ’” Onwhich North has the long marginal note: The grace of this tawnt can not properly be expressed in any other tongue, bicause of the equivocation of this word Toryne, which signifieth a citie of Albania, and also, a ladell to scoome the pot with: as if she ment, Caesar sat by the fire side, scomming of the pot. Shakespeare makes no attempt to find an equivalent for theuntranslatable jest, but substitutes one of those bitter mocks beforewhich Antony has so often to wince. When he expresses wonder at hisrival’s dispatch, she strikes in: Celerity is never more admired Than by the negligent. (III. vii. 25. )[218] The love she inspires and feels is of the kind described by LaRochefoucauld: “L’amour, aussi bien que le feu, ne peut subsister, sansun mouvement continuel; et il cesse de vivre dès qu’il cesse d’espérerou de craindre. ” He has another passage that suggests an explanationof the secret of Cleopatra’s permanent attraction for the volatileAntony: “La constance en amour est une inconstance perpétuelle, quifait que notre coeur s’attache successivement à toutes les qualitésde la personne que nous aimons, donnant tantôt la préférence à l’une,tantôt à l’autre; de sorte que cette constance n’est qu’une inconstancearrêtée et renfermée dans un même sujet. ” It is curious how often anEnglish reader of La Rochefoucauld feels impelled to illustrate theReflections on Love and Women by reference to Shakespeare’s Cleopatra,but it is very natural. His friend the Duchess of Longueville andthe other great ladies of the Fronde resembled her in their charm,their wit, their impulsiveness; and when they engaged in the game ofpolitics, subordinated it like her to their passions and caprices. Sohis own experience would familiarise La Rochefoucauld with the type,which he has merely generalised, and labelled as the only authenticone. And she does this sort of thing on principle. She tells Alexas: See where he is, who’s with him, what he does: I did not send you: if you find him sad, Say I am dancing; if in mirth, report That I am sudden sick. (I. iii. 2. )Is it then all artifice? Are all her eddying whims and contradictionsmere stratagems to secure her sway? For a moment Antony seems tothink so. “She is cunning past man’s thought,” he says in referenceto her swooning: and perhaps it is because of her cunning as well asher sinuous grace that his endearing name for her is his “Serpent ofold Nile” (I. v. 25). Enobarbus’ reply is in effect that her displaysof emotion are too vehement to be the results of art; they are thequintessence of feeling: “her passions are made of nothing but thefinest part of pure love” (I. ii. 151). And both these views are correct. It is her deliberate programme tokeep satiety afar by the swiftness and diversity of the changes sheassumes; but it is a programme easy to carry out, for it corresponds toher own nature. She is a creature of moods. Excitement, restlessness,curiosity pulse in her life-blood. In Antony’s absence she is asflighty with herself as ever she was with him. She feeds on memoriesand thoughts of him, but they plague rather than soothe her. In littlemore than a breathing-space she turns to music, billiards, and fishing;and abandons them all to revel once in her day-dreams. When the messenger arrives after Antony’s marriage, she in herungovernable eagerness interrupts him and will not let him disclose thetidings for which she longs. When she hears what they are, she losesall restraint; she stuns him with threats, curses, blows; she haleshim by the hair and draws a knife upon him. Then, sinking down in afaint, she suddenly recovers herself with that irrepressible vitalityand inquisitiveness of hers, that are bone of her bone and flesh of herflesh: Go to the fellow, good Alexas; bid him Report the feature of Octavia, her years, Her inclination, let him not leave out The colour of her hair. (II. v. 111. )And while we are still smiling at the last little touch, comes thatmoving outburst of a sensitive and sorely stricken soul: Pity me, Charmian, But do not speak to me. (iI. v. 118. )Not long, however, is she in despair. Her knowledge of Antony’scharacter, her knowledge of her own charms, even her vanity andself-illusion combine to give her assurance of final triumph; and whenwe next meet her, she is once more hopeful and alert. “Why, methinks,”she sums up at the close of her not very scientific investigation,“this creature’s no such thing” (III. iii. 43); and she concludes, “Allmay be well enough” (III. iii. 50). The charm and piquancy of this nimble changefulness are obvious, and itis not without its value as a weapon in the warfare of life. But it isequally true that such shifting gusts will produce unreliability, andeven shiftiness. It is quite natural that Cleopatra, a queen and thedaughter of kings, should, in her presumptuous mood, insist on beingpresent in the campaign and on leading to battle her own sixty ships. It is no less natural that amid the actual horrors of the conflict, theluxuriously bred lady should be seized with panic and take to flight. Indeed it is precisely what we might expect. For despite the royaltyof soul she often displays, there is in Cleopatra a strain of physicaltimidity, for which Shakespeare has already prepared us. When themessenger of woe is to give his tidings to Antony, he hesitates andsays: The nature of bad news infects the teller,and Antony answers nobly and truly: When it concerns the fool or coward. (I. ii. 99. )We cannot help remembering Antony’s words when Cleopatra visits on thebearer the fault of the bad news to her: Hadst thou Narcissus in thy face, to me Thou wouldst appear most ugly. (II. v. 96. )Such a reception according to Antony stamps the fool or the coward. Cleopatra is no fool, but there is a touch of cowardice in her, thatappears over and over again. Thus it is perhaps fear, fear blended with worldliness, that gainsa hearing for Thyreus. There is absolutely no indication that sheis playing a part and temporising, out of faithfulness to Antony. She had already sent her own private petition to Caesar, confessinghis greatness, submitting to his might, and requesting “the circleof the Ptolemies” for her heirs. This, otherwise than in Plutarch,she had done without Antony’s knowledge, who tells her, as thoughfor her information, that he had sent his schoolmaster to bear histerms; with which Cleopatra’s were not associated. Her whole behaviourshows that she dreads Octavius’ power, and dreads the loss of her ownwealth and dignities. But, in the scene with Thyreus, is she reallyprepared to desert and betray her lover? Antony suspects that she is,and appearances are indeed against her. Enobarbus believes that sheis, and Enobarbus generally hits on the truth. Yet we have always toremember the temptation she would feel to try her spells on Thyreusand his master: and even after Enobarbus’ desertion she remains withAntony, clings to him, encourages him, arms him, is proud of him. Inany case it would not be cold-blooded perfidy, but one of those flawsof weakness, of fear, of self-pity, of self-interest, that take herunawares. [219] For the final treason of the fleet at any rate, ofwhich Antony imagines her guilty, she seems in no way responsible. Plutarch mentions Antony’s infuriated suspicion but adds no word inconfirmation, and Shakespeare, who would surely not have left uswithout direction on so important a matter, is equally reticent. Suchhints as he gives, point the other way. We may indeed discount thedisclaimers of Mardian and Diomedes who would probably say anythingthey were told to say. But when Antony greets Cleopatra, “Ah, thouspell! avaunt! ” her exclamation, Why is my lord enraged against his love? (IV. xii. 31. )[219] “L’on fait plus souvent des trahisons par foiblesse que par undessein formé de trahir. ”—_La Rochefoucauld. _seems to express genuine amazement rather than assumed innocence. Andin her conversation with her attendants her words, to all appearance,imply that she cannot understand his rage: to her it is merelyinexplicable frenzy: Help me, my women! O, he is more mad Than Telamon for his shield; the boar of Thessaly Was never so emboss’d. (IV. xiii. 1. )Moreover, if she had packed cards with Caesar, it is difficult to seewhy she should not claim a price for her treachery, instead of lockingherself up in the Monument as she does, and trying to keep the Romansout. All the negociations and interviews after Antony’s death seem toimply that she had no previous understanding with Octavius. But she recoils from her lover’s desperation, as she always does whenhe is deeply moved. She has ever the tact to feel the point at whichher blandishments and vexations are out of place and will no longerserve her turn. Just as after the disaster of Actium she only sobs: O my lord, my lord, Forgive my fearful sails! (III. xi. 54. )and then can urge no plea but “pardon”; just as after her interviewwith Thyreus, with no hint of levity, she solemnly imprecates curses onherself and her offspring if she were false; so now she bows before hiswrath and flees to the monument. Then follows the fiction of her death,a fiction in which the actress does not forget the _finesses_ of herart. Say, that the last I spoke was “Antony,” And word it, prithee, piteously. (IV. xiii. 8. )It is not the most candid nor dignified expedient, but probably itis the most effective one; for violent ills need violent cures; andperhaps there was nothing that could allay Antony’s storm of distrustbut as fierce a storm of regret. At any rate it has the result at whichCleopatra aims; but she knows him well, and presently foresees that theantidote may have a further working than she intends. Diomedes seems tostate the mere truth when he says that her prophesying fear dispatchedhim to proclaim the truth. But it is too late; and there only remains the lofty parting scene,when if she still fears to open the gates lest Caesar should enter, shedraws her lover up to the monument, and lightens his last moments noless with her queenliness than with her love. She feels the fitness andthe pathos in his ending, that none but Antony should conquer Antony:she not obscurely hints that she will take the same path. When he bidsher: Of Caesar seek your honour, with your safety; (IV. xv. 47. )she answers well, “They do not go together. ” Her passionate ejaculationere she faints above his corpse, her appeal to her frightened women, what’s brave, what’s noble, Let’s do it after the high Roman fashion, (V. xv. 87. )have a whole-heartedness and intensity that first reveal the greatnessof her nature. And yet even now she seems to veer from the prouder course on which shehas set out. We soon find her in appearance paltering with her Romandecision. She sends submissive messages to Caesar; she delays her deathso long that Proculeius can surprise her in her asylum; she acceptsher conqueror’s condescension; she stoops to hold back and conceal thegreater part of her jewels. It is a strange riddle that Shakespeare has here offered to thestudent, and perhaps no certain solution of it is to be found. In thisplay, even more than in most, he resorts to what has been called hisshorthand, to the briefest and most hurried notation of his meaning,and often it is next to impossible to explain or extend his symbols. The usual interpretation, which has much to commend it, accepts allthese apparent compliances of Cleopatra for what on the face theyare. They are taken as instances of Shakespeare’s veracious art thatabstains from sophisticating fact for the sake of effect, and attains ahigher effect through this very conscientiousness and self-restraint. Just as he makes the enthusiastic fidelity of Enobarbus fail to standthe supreme test, so he detects a flaw in the resolute yearningof Cleopatra. The body of her dead past weighs her down, and shecannot advance steadily in the higher altitudes. She wavers in herdetermination to die, as is implied by her retention of her treasure,and “the courtesan’s instincts of venality and falsehood”[220] stillassert their sway. She has too easily taken to heart Antony’s advice,and is but too ready, despite all her brave words, to grasp at hersafety along with her honour, or what she is pleased to consider herhonour to be. And, just as in the case of Enobarbus, an externalstimulus is needed to urge her to the nobler course. The gods intheir unkindness are kind to her. Dolabella’s disclosures and her ownobservations convince her that Caesar spares her only for his own gloryand for her shame; that, as she foreboded, her safety and her honour donot go together. Then, at the thought of the indignity, all her royaland aristocratic nature rises in revolt, and she at last chooses as sheought. [220] Boas, _Shakespeare and his Predecessors_. On the other hand it is possible to maintain that all these apparentlapses are mere subterfuges forced on Cleopatra to ensure the successof her scheme; and this interpretation receives some support not onlyfrom the text of the play, but from the comparison of it with North,and a consideration of what in the original narrative Shakespeare takesfor granted, of what he alters, and of what he adds. [221]After her more or less explicit statements in Antony’s death scene,her suppliant message from the monument is an interpolation of thedramatist’s; but so is the very different declaration which shesubsequently makes to her confidantes and in which her purpose ofsuicide seems unchanged: My desolation does begin to make A better life. ’Tis paltry to be Caesar; Not being Fortune, he’s but Fortune’s knave, A minister of her will: and it is great To do the thing that ends all other deeds; Which shackles accidents and bolts up change; Which sleeps, and never palates more the dung,[222] The beggar’s nurse and Caesar’s. (V. ii. 1. )[221] This was first suggested in A. Stahr’s _Cleopatra_. I prefer togive the arguments in my own way. [222] So in folio: some modern editions alter unnecessarily to “dug. ”Which of these two utterances gives the true Cleopatra, the onetransmitted at second hand for Octavius’ consumption, or the onebreaking from her in private to her two women who will be true toher till death? Quite apart from the circumstances in which, and thepersons to whom, they are spoken, there is a marked difference intone between the ceremonious official character of the first, and thespontaneous sincerity of the second. Then just at this moment Proculeius arrives and engages her in talk. Itis not wonderful that she should look for a moment to the man Antonyhad recommended to her; but, though she is deferential to Octavius, herone request is not for herself but for her son. And when the surpriseis effected, there is no question of the genuineness of her attemptat self-destruction. Even when she is disarmed, she persists, as withPlutarch, in her resolution to kill herself if need be by starvation. In Plutarch she is dissuaded from this by threats against her children;in Shakespeare events proceed more rapidly, and she has no time to putsuch a plan in practice; nor is any serious use made of the maternal“motif. ” From first to last it is, along with grief for Antony,resentment at the Roman triumph that moves her. And these feelings arein full activity when immediately afterwards she is left in charge ofDolabella. This passage also is an addition, and it is noteworthy thatit begins with her deification of Antony, and ends with Dolabella’sassurance, which in Plutarch only follows later where the play repeatsit, of her future fate. _Cle. _ He’ll lead me, then, in triumph? _Dol. _ Madam, he will; I know’t. (V. ii. 109. )It is just then that Caesar is announced; and it is hard to believethat Cleopatra, with her two master passions excited to the height,should really contemplate embezzling treasure as provision for a lifewhich surely, in view of the facts, she could not care to prolong. Moreover, in Plutarch’s narrative there is a contradiction or ambiguitywhich North’s marginal note brings into relief, and which would bequite enough to set a duller man than Shakespeare thinking about whatit all meant. At length, she gave him a breefe and memoriall of all the readie money and treasure she had. But by chaunce there stoode Seleucus by, one of her Treasorers, who to seeme a good servant, came straight to Caesar to disprove Cleopatra, that she had not set in al, but kept many things back of purpose. Cleopatra was in such a rage with him, that she flew upon him and tooke him by the heare of the head, and boxed him wellfavoredly. Caesar fell a-laughing, and parted the fray. “Alas,” said she, “O Caesar: is not this a great shame and reproche, that thou having vouchsaved to take the peines to come unto me, and hast done me this honor, poore wretche, and caitife creature, brought into this pitiefull and miserable estate: and that mine owne servaunts should come now to accuse me, though it may be I have reserved some juells and trifles meete for women, but not for me (poore soule) to set out my selfe withall, but meaning to geve some pretie presents and gifts unto Octavia and Livia, that they making meanes and intercession for me to thee, thou mightest yet extend thy favor and mercie upon me? ” Caesar was glad to heare her say so, _perswading him selfe thereby that she had yet a desire to save her life_. So he made her answere, that he did not only geve her that to dispose of at her pleasure, which she had kept backe, but further promised to use her more honorably and bountifully then she would thinke for: and so he tooke his leave of her, _supposing he had deceived her, but in deede he was deceived him selfe_. And North underlines the suggestive clauses with his comment: Cleopatra finely deceiveth Octavius Caesar, as though she desired to live. It is not hard therefore to see how the whole episode may be takenas contrived on her part. It would be a device of the serpent of oldNile, one of her triumphs of play-acting, by means of which she getsthe better of her conqueror and makes him indeed an ass unpolicied. And though the suggestion would come from Plutarch, whom Shakespearefollows in the main very closely throughout this passage, it is pointedout that some of Shakespeare’s modifications in detail seem to favourthis view. And to begin with it should be noticed that in all this episodehe passes over what is abject or hysterical or both in Plutarch’sCleopatra, and gives her a large measure of royal self-respect andself-command. This is how Octavius finds her in the original story: Cleopatra being layed upon a little low bed in poore estate, when she sawe Caesar come in to her chamber, she sodainly rose up, naked in her smocke, and fell downe at his feete marvelously disfigured: both for that she had plucked her heare from her head, as also for that she had martired all her face with her nailes, and besides, her voyce was small and trembling, her eyes sonke into her heade with continuall blubbering. Thus, and with other traits that we omit, Plutarch describes her “ouglyand pitiefull state,” when Caesar comes to see and comfort her. Wecannot imagine Shakespeare’s Cleopatra ever so forgetting what was dueto her beauty, her rank, and herself. Then the narrative proceeds: When Caesar had made her lye downe againe, and sate by her beddes side; Cleopatra began to cleere and excuse her selfe for that she had done, laying all to the feare she had of Antonius. Caesar, in contrarie maner, reproved[223] her in every poynt. [223] _i. e. _ confuted. In the play this suggestion is put back to the interview with Thyreus;and is made, not refuted, on the authority of Octavius. _Thy. _ He knows that you embrace not Antony As you did love, but as you fear’d him. _Cle. _ O! _Thy. _ The scars upon your honour, therefore, he Does pity as constrained blemishes, Not as deserved. _Cle. _ He is a god, and knows What is most right: mine honour was not yielded, But conquer’d merely. (III. xiii. 56. )But this was before the supreme sorrow had come to quicken in her, hernobler instincts. Now she has no thought of incriminating Antony andexculpating herself. She says with quiet dignity: Sole sir o’ the world, I cannot project mine own cause so well To make it clear: but do confess I have Been laden with like frailties, which before Have often shamed our sex. (V. ii. 120. )Even her wrath at Seleucus is less outrageous than in Plutarch. Shethreatens his eyes, but does not proceed to physical violence. Shedoes not fly upon him and seize him by the hair of the head and boxhim well-favouredly. These vivacities Shakespeare had remarked, buthe transfers them to the much earlier scene when she receives newsof Antony’s marriage and strikes the messenger to the ground, andstrikes him again, and drags him up and down. Now she has somewhat moreself-control, and is no longer carried beyond all limits of decency byher ungovernable moods. |
Shakespeare, therefore, gives her a new dignityand strength even in this most equivocal scene; and how could these bereconciled with a craven hankering for life and a base desire to retainby swindling a share of its gewgaws? But a further alteration, we are told, gives a definite thoughunobtrusive hint that all the while she is in collusion with Seleucus,and that the whole affair is a comedy arranged between them to keepopen the door of death. Not only does the treasurer escape unpunishedafter his disclosure, but he is invited to make it. In Plutarch hemerely happens to stand by, and intervenes “to seeme a good servant. ”Here Cleopatra calls for him; bids Caesar let him speak on his peril;and herself orders him, “Speak the truth, Seleucus. ”Moreover his statement and her excuse point to a much more seriousembezzlement than Plutarch suggests, and just in so far would giveOctavius a stronger impression of her desire to live. In the biographySeleucus confines himself to saying that “she had not set in al,but kept many things back of purpose”: and she confesses only to“some juells and trifles meete for women . . . meaning to geve somepretie presents and gifts unto Octavia and Livia. ” In the play to herquestion: “What have I kept back? ” Seleucus answers: Enough to purchase what you have made known: (V. ii. 148. )and she, after the express proviso she makes in advance, that she hasnot admitted petty things in the schedule, now acknowledges that shehas reserved not only “lady trifles, immoment toys“—these were alreadyaccounted for—but some “nobler token” for Octavius’ sister and wife. If these clues are unduly faint, we are reminded that such ellipticaltreatment is not without parallel in other incidents of the drama. Octavius’ policy in regard to Octavia’s marriage, for example, has, injust the same way, to be gathered from the general drift of events andthe general probabilities of the case, from an unimportant suggestionin Plutarch, from the opportunity furnished to Agrippa, and his agencyin that transaction, which are not more explicit than the opportunityfurnished to Seleucus, and his agency in this. These arguments are ingenious and not without their cogency, but theyleave one unconvinced. The difficulties in accepting them are fargreater than in the analogous question of Antony’s marriage. For inthe latter the theory of Octavius’ duplicity does not contradict theimpression of the scene. Nor does it contradict but only supplementsthe statement of the historian: the utmost we can say is that it is notmade sufficiently prominent. And, lastly, the doubt that is thus leftpossible does not concern a protagonist of the drama, but at most thechief or one of the chief of the minor characters. But in the presentcase the impression produced on the unsophisticated reader is certainlythat Cleopatra is convicted of fraud: and however that impression maybe weakened by a review of the circumstances as a whole, there is nosingle phrase or detail that brings the opposite theory home to theimagination. Besides, the complicity of Seleucus would be a much bolderfabrication than the complicity of Agrippa: the latter is not recorded,but the opposite of the former is recorded, and was accepted by allwho dealt with this episode from Jodelle to Daniel, and probably byall who read Plutarch: the treasurer was present by accident and usedthe opportunity to ingratiate himself. So Shakespeare, without givingadequate guidance himself, would leave people to the presuppositionsthey had formed under the guidance of his author. Surely this is a verysevere criticism on his art. But this is not all. The misconstructionwhich he did nothing to prevent and everything to produce, wouldconcern the heroine of the piece, an even more important personage thanthe hero, as is shown by her receiving the fifth act to herself, whileAntony is dismissed in the fourth. These objections, however, only apply to the view that the suppressionand discovery of the treasure were parts of a deliberate stratagem. They do not affect the arguments that Cleopatra has virtually accepteddeath as the only practical solution, and that the rest of herbehaviour at this stage accords ill with mercenary imposture. In a word both these antagonistic theories approve themselves in sofar as they take into account the facts alleged and the impressionsproduced by the drama. If we credit our feelings, it is quite truethat Cleopatra is taken by surprise and put out of countenance, thatshe seeks to excuse herself and passionately resents the disloyalty ofSeleucus. And again, if we credit our feelings, it is quite true thatfrom the time the mortally wounded Antony is brought before her, shehas made up her mind to kill herself, and that she is nobler and morequeenly for her decision than she was before or than Plutarch makes her. Of course, buoyant and versatile, feeling her life in every limb, andquick to catch each passing chance, she may even now without reallyknowing it, without really believing it, have hoped against hope thatshe might still obtain terms she could accept undisgraced. And the hopeof life would bring with it the frailties of life, for clearly it isonly the resolve to die that lifts her above herself. So here we shouldonly have another instance of the complexity of her strange nature thatcan consciously elect the higher path, and yet all the while in itssecret councils provide, if it may be, for following the lower. But is there not another interpretation possible? What are these “ladytrifles” and “nobler tokens” that together would purchase all thewealth of money, plate and jewels she has declared. Plutarch, talkingof her magnificence when she obeyed Antony’s first summons, evidentlydoes not expect to be believed, and adds that it was such “as iscredible enough she might bring from so great a house, and from sowealthie a realme as Ægypt was. ” And now she is “again for Cydnus,”and needs her “crown and all. ” Already to all intents and purposes shehas resolved on her death, as is shown by her frequent assurances. Shehas also resolved on the means of it; for scarcely has Caesar left,than she tells Charmian: I have spoke already, and it is provided. (V. ii. 195. )Will she not also have resolved on the manner of it; and both in theself-consciousness of her beauty and in memory of her first meetingwith Antony, does she not desire to depart life for the next meetingwith due pomp and state? If we imagine she was keeping back her regaliafor this last display, we can understand why Shakespeare inserted the“nobler token” in addition to the unconsidered trifles which she wasquite ready to own she had reserved, and of which indeed in Shakespearethough not in Plutarch she had already made express mention asuninventoried. [224] We can understand her consternation and resentmentat the disclosure; for just as in regard to the “nobler token” shecould not explain her real motives without ruining her plan. And we canadmire her “cunning past man’s thought” in turning the whole incidentto account as proof that she was willing to live on sufferance as_protégée_ of Caesar. [224] It is a rather striking coincidence that Jodelle, too, heightensPlutarch’s account of the treasures she has retained, and includesamong them the crown jewels and royal robes. Seleucus finishes apanegyric on her wealth: Croy, Cesar, croy qu’elle a de tout son or Et autres biens tout le meilleur caché. And she says in her defence: Hé! si j’avois retenu les joyaux Et quelque part de mes habits royaux, L’aurois-je fait pour moy, las! malheureuse! No doubt this suggestion is open to the criticism that it is nowhereestablished by a direct statement; but that also applies to the mostprobable explanation of some other matters in the play. And meanwhileI think that it, better than the two previous theories we havediscussed, satisfies the conditions, by conforming with the _data_ ofthe play, the treatment of the sources, and the feelings of the reader. On the one hand it fully admits the reality of Cleopatra’s fraud and ofher indignation at Seleucus. On the other it removes the discrepancybetween her dissimulation, and the loftiness of temper and readinessfor death, which she now generally and but for the usual interpretationof this incident invariably displays. It tallies with what we maysurmise from Shakespeare’s other omissions and interpolations; and ifit goes beyond Plutarch’s account of Caesar’s deception by Cleopatra,it does not contradict it, and therefore would not demand so fulland definite a statement as a new story entirely different from theoriginal. Be that as it may, there is at least no trace of hesitation orcompliance in the Queen from the moment when she perceives thatOctavius is merely “wording” her. Her self-respect is a stronger or,at any rate, a more conspicuous motive than her love. Antony, when hebelieved her false had said to her: Vanish, or I shall give thee thy deserving, And blemish Caesar’s triumph. Let him take thee, And hoist thee up to the shouting plebeians: Follow his chariot, like the greatest spot Of all thy sex; most monster-like be shown For poor’st diminutives, for doits: and let Patient Octavia plough thy visage up With her prepared nails. (IV. xii. 32. )These words of wrath have lingered in her memory and she echoes them inhis dying ears: Not the imperious show Of the full-fortuned Caesar ever shall Be brooch’d with me; if knife, drugs, serpents have Edge, sting, or operation, I am safe: Your wife Octavia, with her modest eyes And still conclusion, shall acquire no honour Demuring upon me. (IV. xv. 23. )The loathsomeness of the prospect grows in her imagination, andcompared with it the most loathsome fate is desirable. She tellsProculeius: Know, sir, that I Will not wait pinion’d at your master’s court; Nor once be chastised with the sober eye Of dull Octavia. Shall they hoist me up And show me to the shouting varletry Of censuring Rome? Rather a ditch in Egypt Be gentle grave unto me! rather on Nilus’ mud Lay me stark naked, and let the water-flies Blow me into abhorring! rather make My country’s high pyramides my gibbet, And hang me up in chains. (V. ii. 52. )And now in the full realisation of the scene, she brings it home to herwomen: _Cle. _ Now, Iras, what think’st thou? Thou, an Egyptian puppet, shalt be shown In Rome, as well as I: mechanic slaves With greasy aprons, rules and hammers, shall Uplift us to the view; in their thick breaths, Rank of gross diet, shall we be enclouded, And forced to drink their vapour. _Iras. _ The gods forbid! _Cle. _ Nay, ’tis most certain, Iras: saucy lictors Will catch at us, like strumpets; and scald rhymers Ballad us out of tune. (V. ii. 207. )Such thoughts expel once for all her mutability and flightiness: My resolution’s placed and I have nothing Of woman in me: now from head to foot I am marble constant; now the fleeting moon No planet is of mine. (V. ii. 238. )And the scene that follows with the banalities and trivialities ofthe clown who supplies the aspics among the figs, brings into reliefthe loneliness of a queenly nature and a great sorrow. Yet not merelythe loneliness, but the potency as well. Who would have given thefrivolous waiting-women of the earlier scenes credit for devotion andheroism? Yet inspired by her example they learn their lesson and areready to die as nobly as she. Iras has spoken for them all: Finish, good lady; the bright day is done, And we are for the dark. (V. ii. 193. )Now she brings the robe and crown Cleopatra wore at Cydnus, and then,like Eros, ushers the way. Charmian stays but to close the eyes andarrange the diadem of her dead mistress: Downy windows, close; And golden Phoebus never be beheld Of eyes again so royal. Your crown’s awry; I’ll mend it, and then play. (V. ii. 319. )Thereupon she too applies the asp and provokes its fang. O, come apace, dispatch. (V. ii. 325. )Even in the last solemn moment there is vanity, artifice, andvoluptuousness in Cleopatra. She is careful of her looks, of her state,of her splendour, even in death; and doubtless would have smiled if shecould have heard Caesar’s tardy praise: She looks like sleep, As she would catch another Antony In her strong toil of grace. (V. ii. 349. )And she does not depart quite in the high Roman fashion. She hasstudied to make her passage easy, and has taken all measures that mayenable her to liken the stroke of death to a lover’s pinch and thebiting of the asp to the suckling of a babe, and to say: As sweet as balm, as soft as air, as gentle. (V. ii. 314. )None the less her exit in its serene grace and dignity is imperial, anddeserves the praise of the dying Charmian and the reluctant Octavius. CHAPTER VIIANTONY AND CLEOPATRAHitherto this discussion of _Antony and Cleopatra_ has so far aspossible passed over the most distinctive thing in the history of thehero and heroine, the fatal passion that binds them together, givessignificance to their lives, and makes their memories famous. Knowingtheir environment and their nature we are in a better position to seein some measure what it meant. We have noted how in that generation all ties of customary moralityare loosed, how the individual is a law to himself, and howselfishness runs riot in its quest of gratification, acquisition,material ambition. Among the children of that day those make themost sympathetic impression who import into the somewhat casualand indefinite personal relations that remain—the relation of thelegionary to his commander, of the freedman to his patron, of thewaiting-woman to her mistress—something of universal validity andworth. But obviously no connection in a period like this at once arisesso naturally from the conditions, and has the possibilities of suchabiding authority, as the love of the sexes. On the one hand it isthe most personal bond of all. Love is free and not to be compelled. It results from the spontaneous motion of the individual. Were we toconceive the whole social fabric dissolved, men and women would stillbe drawn together by mutual inclination in more or less permanentunions of pairs. And yet this attraction that seems to be and that isso completely dictated by choice, that is certainly quite beyond thedomain of external compulsion, is in another aspect quite independentof the will of the persons concerned, and sways them like a resistlessnatural force. It has been said that the highest compliment the lovercan pay the beloved is to say, “I cannot help loving you. ” Necessity islaid upon him, and he is but its instrument. If then the inclinationis so pervasive and imperious that it becomes a master passion,clearly it will supply the grand effective bond when other socialbonds fail. When nothing else can, it will enable a man and woman tooverleap a few at least of the barriers of their selfishness, and insome measure to merge their egoism in sympathy. This is what justifiesAntony’s idolatry of Cleopatra to our feelings. The passion isenthusiastic, and in a way is self-forgetful; and passion, enthusiasm,self-forgetfulness, whatever their aberrations, always command respect. They especially do so in this world of greeds and cravings andcalculating self-interest. This infinite devotion that shrinks from nosacrifice, is at once the greatest thing within Antony’s reach, andwitness to his own greatness in recognising its worth. The greatestthing within his reach: when we remember what the ambitions of hisfellows and his rivals were, there is truth in the words with which hepostpones all such ambitions to the bliss of the mutual caress: Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch Of the ranged empire fall! Here is my space. Kingdoms are clay; our dungy earth alike Feeds beast as man: the nobleness of life Is to do thus: when such a mutual pair (_embracing_) And such a twain can do’t, in which I bind, On pain of punishment, the world to weet We stand up peerless. (I. i. 33. )And only one of grand general outlook could feel like this, when he hadtasted the sweets of conquest and power, and when all the kingdoms ofthe world were reached to his hand as the alternative for the kingdomof his love. It takes a hero, with such experiences behind him andsuch opportunities before, to make the disastrous choice. Heine tellsus how he read Plutarch at school and how the master “impressed on usthat Antony for this woman spoiled his public career, involved himselfin domestic unpleasantnesses, and at last plunged himself in ruin. In truth my old master was right, and it is extremely dangerous toestablish intimate relations with a person like Cleopatra. It may bethe destruction of a hero; but only of a hero. Here as everywhere thereis no danger for worthy mediocrity. ”But despite the sympathy with which Shakespeare regards Antony’spassion both as an object of pursuit and as an indication of nobility,he is quite aware that it is pernicious and criminal. Relatively it maybe extolled: absolutely it must be condemned. It is rooted in breachof troth and duty, and it bears within itself the seeds of infidelityand wrong. It has none of the inviolability and security of a lawfullove. After all, Cleopatra’s gibes about Antony’s relations with “themarried woman” and herself, despite their affectation of petulance,are only too much to the point, so far as he is concerned; and whenshe has yielded to Julius, Pompey, and Antony in turn, what guaranteehas the last favourite that she will not do so again to some latersupplanter? In point of fact each is untrue to the other, Antony by hismarriage with Octavia, Cleopatra by her traffickings with Octavius andThyreus. [225] She forfeits in the sequel her right to be angry at histruancy; he has forfeited in advance the right to be angry at hers. Butit is their penalty that these resentments should come between them;and at the very time when they most need each other’s support, theirrelation, being far from the perfect kind that casts out mistrust, isvitiated by jealousy on the one side and fear on the other. She fleesto the Monument, shuts herself up from his blind rage in craven panic,and seeks to save her life by lies. At the sight of the liberties shehas allowed Thyreus to take, he loses himself in mad outbursts whichhave but a partial foundation in the facts. Then he jumps to theconclusion that she has arranged for the desertion of the sailors, anddooms her to death, when in reality she seems to know nothing about it. Betray’d I am: O this false soul of Egypt! this grave charm,— Whose eye beck’d forth my wars and call’d them home; Whose bosom was my crownet, my chief end,— Like a right gipsy, hath, at fast and loose, Beguiled me to the very heart of loss. (IV. xii. 24. )These terrors and suspicions are inevitable in such love as theirs. [225] I take it as certain that with Thyreus she is for the moment atleast “a boggler,” and then she has already sent her private message toCaesar. Or is their feeling for each other to be called love at all? Thequestion has been asked even in regard to Antony. From first to last heis aware not only of her harmfulness but of her pravity. He is under noillusions about her cunning, her boggling, her falsity. And can thisinsight co-exist with devotion? Much more frequently it has been asked in regard to Cleopatra. Shefrankly avows even in retrospect her policy of making him her prey. Thus does she mimic fact in her pastime: Give me mine angle: we’ll to the river; there, My music playing far off, I will betray Tawny-finn’d fishes; my bended hook shall pierce Their slimy jaws; and, as I draw them up, I’ll think them every one an Antony, And say, “Ah, ha! you’re caught. ” (II. v. 10. )Moreover, her first capture of him at that banquet where he paidhis heart as ordinary, was a mere business speculation. He has beenuseful to her since, for he is the man to piece her opulent thronewith kingdoms. When he seems lost to her, she realises that she can nolonger gratify her caprices as once she did. _Alex. _ Herod of Jewry dare not look upon you But when you are well pleased. _Cle. _ That Herod’s head I’ll have: but how, when Antony is gone Through whom I might command it? (III. iii. 4. )Or, if other motives supervene, they belong to wanton whim and splendidcoquetry. Her deliberate allurements, her conscious wiles, hercalculated tenderness, are all employed merely to retain her commandof the serviceable instrument, and at the same time minister to hervanity, since Antony would accept such a rôle only from her. If both or either of these theories were adopted, the whole interestand dignity of the theme would be gone. If Antony were not genuinelyin love, his follies and delinquencies would cast him beyond the paleof our tolerance. If Cleopatra were not genuinely in love, she wouldat best deserve the description of Ten Brink, “a courtesan of genius. ”If the love were not mutual, Antony would be merely the toy of thecourtesan, Cleopatra merely the toy of the sensualist. But in point of fact, it is mutual and sincere. Antony’s feeling has todo with much more than the senses. It goes deeper and higher; and evenwhen he doubts Cleopatra’s affection, he never doubts his own: (Her) heart I thought I had, for she had mine. (IV. xiv. 16. )Cleopatra’s feeling may have originated in self-interest and may makeuse of craft. But in catching Antony she has been caught herself; andthough interest and vanity are not expelled, they are swallowed up invehement admiration for the man she has ensnared. Her artifices aresuccessful, because they are the means made use of by a heart that isdeeply engaged; and it is no paradox to say that they are evidence ofher sincerity. So often as she refers to her lover seriously, it iswith something like adoration. After the first separation, he is her“man of men. ” In her first bitterness at his marriage, she cannot lethim go, for Though he be painted one way like a Gorgon, The other way’s a Mars. (II. v. 116. )Even when he is fallen and worsted, she has no doubt how things wouldgo were it a merely personal contest between him and his rival. Whenhe returns from his last victory, she greets him: “Lord of lords! Oinfinite virtue! ” (IV. viii. 16). When he dies, the world seems to her“no better than a sty” (IV. xv. 62). When she recalls his splendour,his bounty, his joyousness, it seems not a reality, but a dream, whichyet must be more than a dream. If there be, nor ever were, one such, It’s past the size of dreaming: nature wants stuff To vie strange forms with fancy; yet, to imagine An Antony, were nature’s piece ’gainst fancy, Condemning shadows quite. (V. ii. 96. )Various interpretations have been given of these lines, but on anypossible interpretation they exalt Antony alike above fact andfancy. [226] And when we run through the whole gamut of the words anddeeds of the pair, from their squabbles to their death, it seems tome possible to doubt their love only by isolating some details andconsidering them to the exclusion of the rest. [226] To me the sense seems to be: Supposing the Antony I have depictednever existed, still the conception is too great to be merely my own. It must be an imagination of Nature herself, which she may be unable toembody, but which shames our puny ideals. In other words, Antony is the“form” or “type” which Nature aims at even if she does not attain. Isee no reason for changing the “nor” of the first line as it is in thefolio to “or. ”But the truth is that the love of Antony and Cleopatra is genuine andintense; and if it leads to shame as well as to glory, this is to beexplained, apart from the circumstances of the time, apart from thecharacters of the lovers, in the nature of the variety to which itbelongs. Plutarch, whose thoughts when he is discussing such subjects are neverfar from Plato’s, has a passage in which he characterises Antony’spassion by reference to the famous metaphor in the _Phaedrus_. In the ende, the horse of the minde, as Plato termeth it, that is so hard of rayne (I meane the unreyned lust of concupiscence), did put out of Antonius’ heade all honest and commendable thoughts. Certainly it is not the milder and more docile steed that takes thelead in Antony’s affection. But it is perhaps a little surprisingthat Plutarch did not rather go for his Platonic illustration to the_Symposium_, where the disquisitions of Aristophanes and Diotimaexplain respectively what Antony’s love is and is not. Aristophanes,with his myth that men, once four-legged and four-armed, were splitin two because they were too happy, and now are pining to find theircounterparts, gives the exact description of what the love of Antonyand Cleopatra is. Each of us when separated is but the indenture of a man, having one side only like a flat-fish, and he is always looking for his other half. . . . When one of them finds his other half, . . . the pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy, and one will not be out of the other’s sight, as I may say, even for a moment. [227]And, on the other hand, Diotima’s opposite theory does not apply tothis particular case, at least, to begin with or superficially: You hear people say that lovers are seeking for their other half; but I say that they are seeking neither for the half of themselves, nor for the whole, unless the half or the whole be also a good. And they will cut off their own hands and feet and cast them away, if they are evil. . . . For there is nothing which men love but the good. [228][227] Jowett’s _Plato_, Vol. II. , pages 42-43. [228] _Ibid_, pages 56-57. We may put the case in a somewhat more popular and modern fashion. Alllove that really deserves the name must base more or less completelyon sympathy, on what Goethe called _Wahlverwandschaft_, or electiveaffinity. But such affinity may be of different kinds and degrees,and according to its range will tend to approximate to one of twotypes. It may mean sympathy with what is deepest and highest in us,our aspiration after the ideal, our bent towards perfection; or itmay mean sympathy with our whole nature and with all our feelings andtendencies, alike with those that are high and with those that are low. The former is the more exacting though the more beneficent. It impliesthe suppression and abnegation in us of much that is base, of much thatis harmless, of much, even, that may be good, for the sake of the best. In it we must inure ourselves to effort and sacrifice for the sake ofadvance in that supersensible realm where the union took place. The second is less austere, and, for the time being, morecomprehensive. It is founded on a correspondence in all sorts ofmatters, great and small, noble and base, of good or of bad report. Ifit lacks the exclusive loftiness of the other, it affords many morepoints of contact and a far greater wealth of daily fellowship. Andof this latter variety, the love of Antony and Cleopatra is perhapsthe typical example. At first sight it is evident that they are, aswe say, made for each other. They are both past the first bloom ofyouth. Cleopatra, whom at the outset Plutarch makes twenty-eight yearsof age, and of whose wrinkles and waned lip Shakespeare, though inirony and exaggeration, finds it possible to speak, has relativelyreached the same period of life as Antony, whom Plutarch makes at theoutset forty-three or forty-six years of age, and whom Shakespearerepresents as touched with the fall of eld. And they correspond intheir experiences. Neither is a novice in love and pleasure: Cleopatra,the woman with a history, Antony, the masquer and reveller of Clodius’set, have both seen life. They are alike in their emotionalism, theirimpressibility, their quick wits, their love of splendour, their genialpower, their intellectual scope, their zest for everything. Plutarchnarrates—and it is strange that _à propos_ of this he did not quoteAristophanes’ saying in the _Symposium_— She, were it in sport, or in matter of earnest, still devised sundrie new delights to have Antonius at commaundement, never leaving him night nor day, nor once letting him go out of her sight. For she would play at dyce with him, drinke with him, and hunt commonly with him, and also be with him when he went to any exercise or activity of body. And sometime, also, when he would goe up and downe the citie disguised like a slave in the night, and would peere into poore men’s windowes and their shops, and scold and brawle with them within the house: Cleopatra would be also in a chamber-maides array, and amble up and downe the streets with him, so that oftentimes Antonius bare away both mockes and blowes. Here we have a picture of the completest _camaraderie_ in thingsserious and frivolous, athletic and intellectual, decorous andventuresome, with memories of which the play is saturated. We arewitnesses of Cleopatra’s impatience when he is away for a moment: wehear of her drinking him to bed before the ninth hour, and of theiroutdoor sports. Antony proposes to roam the streets with her and notethe qualities of the people. Perhaps it was some such expedition thatgave Enobarbus material for his description: I saw her once Hop forty paces through the public street; And having lost her breath, she spoke, and panted, That she did make defect perfection, And, breathless, power breathe forth. (II. ii. 233. )It is such doings that raise the gorge of the genteel Octavius, who hasno sense for popular pleasures, whether we call them simple or vulgar. But the daughter of the Ptolemies is less fastidious, and is as readyas Antony to escape from the etiquette of the court and take her sharein these unceremonious frolics. Yet it is not only these lighter moodsand moments that draw them together. In the depth of his mistrust,Antony recalls the “grave charm” of his enchantress; and she, when heis no more, remembers that his voice was propertied As all the tuned spheres. (V. ii. 83. )But what of serious and elevated they have in common gains warmth andcolour by their mutual delight in much that is neither one nor other. He tells her, But that your royalty Holds idleness your subject, I should take you For idleness itself. (I. iii. 91. )And he pays homage to her in every mood: Fie, wrangling queen! Whom everything becomes, to chide, to laugh, To weep; whose every passion fully strives To make itself, in thee, fair and admired! (I. i. 48. )It is as genuine and catholic admiration as Florizel’s for Perdita: What you do Still betters what is done. . . . Each your doing, So singular in each particular, Crowns what you are doing in the present deed, That all your acts are queens. (_W. T. _ IV. iv. 135. )But apart from their sincerity and range, how different are the twotributes: Florizel’s all innocence and simplicity, Antony’s _raffiné_and sophisticated. We feel from his words that he would endorseShakespeare’s ambiguous praise of his own dark lady: Whence hast thou this becoming of things ill, That in the very refuse of thy deeds There is such strength and warrantise of skill, That, in my mind, thy worst all best exceeds? (_Sonnet_ CL. 5. )Does not Enobarbus speak in almost exactly the same way of theCleopatra that Antony adores? Vilest things Become themselves in her; that the holy priests Bless her when she is riggish. (II. ii. 243. )Thus the two are alike not only in great and indifferent things,but in their want of steadfastness, their want of principle, theircompliance with baseness. Hence they encourage each other in whatdebilitates and degrades, as well as in what fortifies and exalts. Atits worst their love has something divine about it, but often it seemsa divine orgy rather than a divine inspiration. Not seldom does itlead to madness and ignominy. That Antony loses the world for it is asmall matter and even proves his grandeur of soul. But for it, besides“offending reputation,” he profanes his inward honour as well; andthat unmasks it as the Siren and Fury of their lives. Indeed, suchlove is self-destructive, and for it the lovers sacrifice the meansof securing it against the hostile power of things. Yet, just becauseit is so plenary and permeating, it becomes an inspiration too. Whenits prodigal largesse fails, at the hour when it is stripped of itsinessential charms, the lovers are thrown back on itself; and at onceit elevates them both. Antony, believing Cleopatra dead, and not yetundeceived as to the part that he fancies she played at the last,thinks only of following her to entreat and obtain a reconciliation. I will o’ertake thee, Cleopatra, and Weep for my pardon. (IV. xiv. 44. )When he learns that she still lives, no reproach crosses his lips forthe deceit; his only wish as the blood flows from his breast is to beborne “where Cleopatra bides” to take a last farewell. He wrestles withdeath till he receives the final embrace: I am dying, Egypt, dying: only I here importune death awhile, until Of many thousand kisses the poor last I lay upon thy lips. (IV. xv. 18. )Thereafter he has no thought of himself but only of her, counsellingher in complete self-abnegation to seek of Caesar her honour with hersafety, and recommending her to trust only Proculeius—one who, as wesoon learn, would be eager to preserve her life. And her love, too, though perhaps more fitfully, yet all the morestrikingly, is deepened and solemnised by trial. After Actium itquite loses its element of mockery and petulance. Her flout atAntony’s negligence before the battle is the last we hear her utter. Henceforth, whether she protests her faith, or speeds him to the fight,or welcomes him on his return, her words have a new seriousnessand weight. [229] Her feeling seems to become simpler and sincereras her fortunes cloud, and at her lover’s death it is nature alonethat triumphs. In the first shock of bereavement Iras, attemptingconsolation, addresses her as “Royal Egypt, Empress”; and she replies: No more, but e’en a woman, and commanded By such poor passion as the maid that milks And does the meanest chares. (IV. xv. 72. )[229] Le plus grand miracle de l’amour, c’est de guérir de lacoquetterie. —_La Rochefoucauld. _Her grief for her great loss, a grief, perhaps, hardly anticipated byherself, is in her own eyes her teacher, and “begins to make a betterlife. ” Even now she may falter, if the usual interpretation of herfraud with the treasure is correct. Even now, at all events, she has tobe urged by the natural and royal but not quite unimpeachable motive,the dread of external disgrace. Cleopatra is very human to the last. Her weaknesses do not disappear, but they are but as fuel to the flamesof her love by which they are bred and which they help to feed. It isstill as the “curled Antony” she pictures her dead lover, and it is in“crown and robe” that she will receive that kiss which it is her heavento have. But even in this there is a striking similarity to Antony’sexpectation of the land where “souls do couch on flowers,” and wherethey will be the cynosure of the gazing ghosts. Their oneness of heartand feeling is indeed now complete, and their love is transfigured. Itis at his call she comes, and his name is the last word she utters,before she lays the second asp on her arm. The most wonderful touch ofall is that now she feels her right to be considered his wife. This, ofcourse, is due to Shakespeare, but it is not altogether new. It occursin Daniel’s tragedy, when she calls on Antony’s spirit to pray the godson her behalf: O if in life we could not severd be, Shall death divide our bodies now asunder? Must thine in Egypt, mine in Italy, Be kept the Monuments of Fortune’s wonder? If any powres be there whereas thou art (Sith our country gods betray our case), O worke they may their gracious helpe impart To save thy wofull _wife_ from such disgrace. It also occurs twice in Plutarch, from whom Daniel probably obtainedit. In the _Comparison of Demetrius and Marcus Antonius_, hewrites:[230] Antonius first of all married two wives together, the which never Romane durst doe before, but him self. [230] Cleopatra was actually married to Antony, as has been proved byProfessor Ferrero. But Plutarch nowhere else mentions the circumstance,and it contradicts the whole tenor of his narrative. In the biography, when Cleopatra has lifted him to the Monument, we aretold: Then she dryed up his blood that had berayed his face, and called him her Lord, _her husband_, and Emperour, forgetting her owne miserie and calamity for the pitie and compassion she tooke of him. It is not, therefore, the invention of the idea, but the new positionin which he introduces it, that shows Shakespeare’s genius. It has nogreat significance, either in Plutarch or Daniel. In the one, Cleopatrais speaking in compassion of Antony; in the other, she is bespeakingAntony’s compassion for herself. But in Shakespeare, when she scornslife for her love, and prefers honour with the aspic’s bite to safetywith shame, she feels that now at last their union has the highestsanction, and that all the dross of her nature is purged away from thepure spirit: Husband, I come: Now to that name my courage prove my title! I am fire and air: my other elements I give to baser life. (V. ii. 290. )Truly their love, which at first seemed to justify Aristophanes againstDiotima, just because it is true love, turns out to answer Diotima’sdescription after all. Or perhaps it rather suggests the conclusionin the _Phaedrus_: “I have shown this of all inspirations to be thenoblest and the highest, and the offspring of the highest; and that hewho loves the beautiful, is called a lover, because he partakes of it. ”Antony and Cleopatra, with all their errors, are lovers and partake ofbeauty, which we cannot say of the arid respectability of Octavius. Itis well and right that they should perish as they do: but so perishingthey have made their full atonement; and we can rejoice that they haveat once triumphed over their victor, and left our admiration for themfree. _CORIOLANUS_CHAPTER IPOSITION OF THE PLAY BEFORE THE ROMANCES. ITS POLITICAL AND ARTISTICASPECTS_Coriolanus_ seems to have been first published in the folio of 1623,and is one of the sixteen plays described as not formerly “entered toother men. ” In this dearth of information there has naturally been somedebate on the date of its composition, yet the opinions of critics withfew exceptions agree as to its general position and tend more and moreto limit the period of uncertainty to a very few months. This comparative unanimity is due to the evidence of style,versification, and treatment rather than of reminiscences andallusions. Though a fair number of the latter have been discoveredor invented, some of them are vague and doubtful, some inapposite oruntenable, hardly any are of value from their inherent likelihood. Of these, one which has been considered to give the _terminus a quo_in dating the play was pointed out by Malone in the fable of Menenius. Plutarch’s account is somewhat bald: On a time all the members of mans bodie, dyd rebell against the bellie, complaining of it, that it only remained in the middest of the bodie, without doing any thing, neither dyd beare any labour to the maintenaunce of the rest: whereas all other partes and members dyd labour paynefully, and was very carefull to satisfie the appetites and desiers of the bodie. And so the bellie, all this notwithstanding, laughed at their follie, and sayed: “It is true, I first receyve all meates that norishe mans bodie: but afterwardes I send it againe to the norishement of other partes of the same. Even so (quoth he) O you, my masters, and cittizens of Rome: the reason is a like betwene the Senate, and you. For matters being well digested, and their counsells throughly examined, touching the benefit of the common wealth; the Senatours are cause of the common commoditie that commeth unto every one of you. ”This is meagre compared with Shakespeare’s full-blooded anddramatic narrative, and though in any case the chief credit for thetransformation would be due to the poet, who certainly contributes mostof the picturesque and humorous details and all of the interruptionsand rejoinders, it has been thought that he owes something to theexpanded version in Camden’s _Remaines concerning Britaine_, whichappeared in 1605. All the members of the body conspired against the stomacke, as against the swallowing gulfe of all their labors; for whereas the eies beheld, the eares heard, the handes labored, the feete traveled, the tongue spake, and all partes performed their functions, onely the stomacke lay idle and consumed all. Here uppon they ioyntly agreed al to forbeare their labors, and to pine away their lasie and publike enemy. One day passed over, the second followed very tedious, but the third day was so grievous to them all, that they called a common Counsel; the eyes waxed dimme, the feete could not support the bodie, the armes waxed lasie, the tongue faltered, and could not lay open the matter; therefore they all with one accord desired the advise of the Heart. Then Reason layd open before them that hee against whome they had proclaimed warres, was the cause of all this their misery: For he as their common steward, when his allowances were withdrawne of necessitie withdrew theirs fro them, as not receiving that he might allow. Therefore it were a farre better course to supply him, than that the limbs should faint with hunger. So by the perswasion of Reason, the stomacke was served, the limbes comforted, and peace re-established. Even so it fareth with the bodies of Common weale; for albeit the Princes gather much, yet not so much for themselves, as for others: So that if they want, they cannot supply the want of others; therefore do not repine at Princes heerein, but respect the common good of the whole publike estate. It has been pointed out,[231] in criticism of Malone’s suggestion,that in some respects Shakespeare’s version agrees with Plutarch’s anddisagrees with Camden’s. Thus in Camden it is the stomach and not thebelly that is denounced, the members do not confine themselves to wordsbut proceed to deeds, it is not the belly but Reason from its seat inthe heart that sets forth the moral. This is quite true, but no onedoubted that Shakespeare got from Plutarch his general scheme; the onlyquestion is whether he fitted into it details from another source. Ithas also been objected that Shakespeare was quite capable of making theadditions for himself; and this also is quite true as the other andmore vivid additions prove, if it needed to be proved. Nevertheless,when we find Shakespeare’s expansions in the play following some of thelines laid down by Camden in the _Remaines_, occasionally with verbalcoincidence, it seems not unlikely that the _Remaines_ were known tohim. Thus he does not treat the members like Plutarch in the mass,but like Camden enumerates them and their functions; the stomach inCamden like the belly in Shakespeare is called a gulf, a term that isvery appropriate but that would not occur to everyone; the heart whereReason dwells and to which Camden’s mutineers appeal for advice, isthe counsellor heart in Shakespeare’s list. [232] Moreover, it has beenshown by[231] _E. g. _, by Delius. _Shakespeare’s Coriolanus in seinemVerhältness zum Coriolanus des Plutarch_ (_Jahrbuch der D. -Sh. Gesellschaft_, xi. 1876). [232] In some respects Shakespeare’s details remind me more of Livythan either of Plutarch or Camden; _e. g. , “Inde apparuisse ventrisquoque haud segne ministerium esse, nec magis ali quam alere eum,reddentem in omnis corporis partes hunc, quo vivimus vigemusque,divisum pariter in venas maturum confecto cibo sanguinem_. ” (II. 32. )Cf. I receive the general food at first, Which you do live upon; . . . . . . but, if you do remember, I send it through the rivers of your blood, . . . And through the cranks and offices of man, The strongest nerves and small inferior veins From me receive that natural competency Whereby they live. (I. i. 135 seq. )This certainly is liker Livy than Plutarch; and besides the chances ofShakespeare having read Livy in the original, we have to bear in mindthat in 1600 Philemon Holland published the _Romane Historie written byTitus Livius of Padua_. His version, as it is difficult to procure, maybe quoted in full: Whilome (quoth he) when as in mans bodie, all the parts thereof agreed not, as now they do in one, but each member had a several interest and meaning, yea, and a speech by it selfe; so it befel, that all other parts besides the belly, thought much and repined that by their carefulness, labor, and ministerie, all was gotten, and yet all little enough to serve it: and the bellie it selfe lying still in the mids of them, did nothing else but enjoy the delightsome pleasures brought unto her. Wherupon they mutinied and conspired altogether in this wise, That neither the hands should reach and convey food to the mouth, nor the mouth receive it as it came, ne yet the teeth grind and chew the same. In this mood and fit, whiles they were minded to famish the poore bellie, behold the other lims, yea and the whole bodie besides, pined, wasted, and fel into an extreme consumption. Then was it wel seen, that even the very belly also did no smal service, but fed the other parts, as it received food it selfe: seeing that by working and concocting the meat throughlie, it digesteth and distributeth by the veines into all parts, that fresh and perfect blood whereby we live, we like, and have our full strength. Comparing herewith, and making his application, to wit, how like this intestine, and inward sedition of the bodie, was to the full stomacke of the Commons, which they had taken and borne against the Senatours, he turned quite the peoples hearts. Mr. Sidney Lee that there were friendly relations between the two men. So it is a conjecture no less probable than pleasing that Shakespeareowed a few hints to the great and patriotic scholar whom Ben Jonsonhailed as “most reverend head. ”It is clear, however, that if the debt to Camden was more certain thanit is, this would only give us the year before which _Coriolanus_ couldnot have been written, and it would not of itself establish a dateshortly after the publication of the _Remaines_. Such a date has beensuggested, but the reference to Camden has been made merely auxiliaryto the argument of a connection between the play and the generalcircumstances of the time. This surmise, for it can hardly be calledmore, will presently be noticed, and meanwhile it may be said that theinternal evidence is all against it. On the other hand, an excessively late date has been proposed for_Coriolanus_ on the ground of its alleged indebtedness to the fourthedition of North, of which it is sometimes maintained that Shakespearepossessed a copy. Till 1612, Volumnia says in her great appeal: Think now with thy selfe, how much more _unfortunatly_, then all the women livinge we are come hether;but in the fourth edition this becomes _unfortunate_, and soShakespeare has it: Think with thyself How more unfortunate than all living women Are we come hither. (V. iii. 96. )But the employment of the adjectival for the adverbial form is avery insignificant change, and is, besides, suggested by the rhythm. Moreover, such importance as it might have, is neutralised by a counterargument on similar lines, which would go to prove that one of thefirst two editions was used. In them Coriolanus tells Aufidius: If I had feared death, I would not have come hither to have put my life in hazard: but prickt forward with _spite_ and desire I have to be revenged of them that thus have banished me, etc. In 1603, this suffers the curtailment, “pricked forward with desire tobe revenged, etc. ” But Shakespeare says: If I had fear’d death, of all men i’ the world I would have ’voided thee, but in mere _spite_, To be full quit of those my banishers, Stand I before thee here. (IV. v. 86. )This argument is no doubt of the same precarious kind as the other;still in degree it is stronger, for the persistence of _spite_ is muchmore distinctive than the disappearance of a suffix. In any case this verbal detail is a very narrow foundation to builda theory upon, which there is nothing else to support, except one ofthose alluring and hazardous guesses that would account for the play inthe conditions of the time. This, too, as in the previous case, may bereserved for future discussion. Meanwhile the dating of _Coriolanus_,subsequently to 1612, is not only opposed to internal evidences ofversification and style, but would separate it from Shakespeare’stragedies and introduce it among the romantic plays of his final period. If, however, we turn to the supposed allusions that make for theintermediate date of 1608 or 1609, we do not find them much moresatisfactory. Thus it has been argued that the severe cold in January, 1608, wheneven the Thames was frozen over, furnished the simile: You are no surer, no, Than is the coal of fire upon the ice. (I. i. 176. )But surely there must have been many opportunities for such things topresent themselves to Shakespeare’s observation or imagination, by thetime that he was forty-four years old. Again Malone found a reference to James’s proclamation in favour ofbreeding silk-worms and the importation of young mulberry trees during1609, in the expression: Now humble as the ripest mulberry That will not hold the handling. (III. ii. 79. )But even in _Venus and Adonis_ Shakespeare had told how, in admirationof the youth’s beauty, the birds Would bring him mulberries and ripe-red cherries; (1103. )and in _Midsummer-Night’s Dream_, Titania orders the fairies to feedBottom With purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries. (_III. _ i. 170. )A third of these surmises is even more gratuitous. Chalmers callsattention to the repeated references in the play to famine and dearth,and supposes they were suggested by the scarcity which prevailed inEngland during the years 1608 and 1609. But the lack of corn among thepeople is one of the presuppositions of the story, to which Plutarchalso recurs. There is only one allusion that has strength to stand by itself,though even it is doubtful; and it belongs to a different class, for,if authentic, it is suggested not to Shakespeare by contemporaryevents, but to a contemporary writer by Shakespeare. Malone noticed thecoincidence between the line, “He lurch’d all swords of the garland”(II. ii. 105), and a remark in _Epicoene_: “You have lurched yourfriends of the better half of the garland” (V. i. ); and consideredthat here, as not infrequently, Ben Jonson was girding at Shakespeare. Afterwards he withdrew his conjecture because he found a similarexpression in one of Nashe’s pamphlets, and concluded that it wasproverbial; but it has been pointed out in answer to this[233] thatNashe has only the _lurch_ and not the supplementary words, _of thegarland_, while it is to the phrase as a whole, not to the componentparts, that the individual character belongs. This, if not absolutelybeyond challenge, is at least very cogent, and probably few will denythat _Coriolanus_ must have been in existence before _Epicoene_ wasacted in January 1609, old style. [233] Introduction to the Clarendon Press Edition. How long before? And did it succeed or precede _Antony and Cleopatra_? Attempts have been made to find in that play immediate anticipationsof the mental attitude and of particular thoughts that appear in_Coriolanus_. Thus Octavia’s dilemma in her petition has been quoted: A more unhappy lady, If this division chance, ne’er stood between, Praying for both parts: The good gods will mock me presently, When I shall pray, “O, bless my lord and husband! ” Undo that prayer, by crying out as loud, “O, bless my brother! ” Husband win, win brother, Prays, and destroys the prayer; no midway ’Twixt these extremes at all. (III. iv. 12. )And this has been taken as a link with Volumnia’s perplexity: And to poor we Thine enmity’s most capital: thou barr’st us Our prayers to the gods, which is a comfort That all but we enjoy: for how can we, Alas, how can we for our country pray, Whereto we are bound, together with thy victory, Whereto we are bound? Alack, or we must lose The country, our dear nurse, or else thy person, Our comfort in the country. We must find An evident calamity, though we had Our wish, which side should win. (V. iii. 103. )But then the same sort of conflict puzzles the Lady Blanch in _KingJohn_: Which is the side that I must go withal? I am with both: each army hath a hand; And in their rage, I having hold of both, They whirl asunder and dismember me. Husband, I cannot pray that thou mayst win; Uncle, I needs must pray that thou mayst lose; Father, I may not wish the fortune thine; Grandam, I will not wish thy wishes thrive: Whoever wins, on that side shall I lose Assured loss before the match be play’d. (III. i. 327. )Could not this style of argument be used to prove that _Coriolanus_ and_Antony and Cleopatra_ immediately followed _King John_? Or again the contemptuous descriptions of the people by Octavius,Cleopatra and Antony himself have been treated as preludes to themore savage vituperations in _Coriolanus_. But _Julius Caesar_ givesan equally unflattering account of mob law, and some of Casca’s gibeswould quite fit the mouth of Coriolanus or Menenius. On these lines weshould be as much entitled to make this play the direct successor ofthe first as of the second of its companions, a theory that would meetwith scant acceptance. The truth is that whenever Shakespeare dealswith the populace, he finds some one to disparage it in the mass. Still there is little doubt that _Coriolanus_ does occupy the positionthese arguments would assign to it, but the real evidence is of anotherkind. To begin with there is what Coleridge describes in _Antony andCleopatra_ as the “happy valiancy of style,” which first becomes markedin that play, which is continued in this, and which henceforth in agreater or less degree characterises all Shakespeare’s work. Theneven more conclusive are the peculiarities of metre, and especiallythe increase in the total of weak and light endings together with thedecrease of the light by themselves. Finally, there is the conduct ofthe story to a conclusion that proposes no enigma and inflicts no pang,but even more than in the case of _Macbeth_ satisfies, and even morethan in the case of _Antony and Cleopatra_ uplifts the heart, withouttroublesome questionings on the part of the reader. “As we closethe book,” says Mr. Bradley, “we feel more as we do at the close of_Cymbeline_ than as we do at the close of _Othello_. ” We cannot be farwrong in placing it in the last months of 1608 or the first months of1609. Attempts have been made to find suggestions of a personal kind forShakespeare’s choice of the subject. The extreme ease with which theyhave been discovered for the various dates proposed may well teach uscaution. Thus Professor Brandl who assigns it an earlier position thanmost critics and discusses it before _Lear_ sees in it the outcome ofevents that occurred in the first years of the century. The material for _Coriolanus_ was perhaps put in Shakespeare’s way by a contemporary tragedy which keenly excited the Londoners, and especially the courtly and literary circles, about 1603 and 1604. Sir Walter Raleigh had been one of the most splendid gentlemen at the court of Elizabeth, was a friend of Spenser and Ben Jonson, had himself tried his hand at lyric poetry, and in addition as adventurous officer had discovered Virginia and annexed Guiana. He was the most highly considered but also the best hated man in England: for his behaviour was domineering, in the consciousness of his innate efficiency he showed without disguise his contempt for the multitude, the farm of wine-licenses granted him by the Queen had made him objectionable to the pothouse politicians, and his opposition in parliament to a bill for cheapening corn had recently drawn on him new unpopularity. He, therefore, shortly after the accession of James succumbed to the charge, that he, the scarred veteran of the Spanish wars, the zealous advocate of new expeditions against Spain, had involved himself in treasonous transactions with this, the hereditary foe of England. In November 1603 the man who had won treasure-fleets and vast regions for his country, almost fell a victim to popular rage as he was being transferred from one prison to another. [234] A month later he was condemned to death on wretched evidence: he was not yet executed however but locked up in the Tower, so that men were in suspense as to his fate for many years. To depict his character his biographer Edwards involuntarily hit on some lines of Shakespeare’s _Coriolanus_. The figure of the Roman, who had deserved well but incurred hatred, of the patriot whom his aristocratic convictions drive to the enemy, was already familiar to the dramatist from North’s translation of Plutarch; and Camden’s _Remaines concerning Britaine_, which had newly appeared in 1605 contributed a more detailed version of the fable of the belly and the members, first set forth by Livy. From this mood and about this time _Coriolanus_, for the dating of which only the very relative evidence of metre and style is available, may most probably have proceeded. [235][234] Strictly speaking, from the Tower to Winchester for trial. [235] _Shakespeare_, in the _Führende Geister_ Series. In this passage, Professor Brandl has brought out some of theconsiderations that would lend the case of Raleigh a peculiar interestin the eyes of men like Shakespeare, and has made the most of theparallels between his story and the story of Coriolanus. [236] It isnecessary of course to look away from almost all the points exceptthose enumerated, for when we remember Sir Walter’s robust adulationof Elizabeth, and tortuous policy at court, it is difficult to pairhim with the Roman who “would not flatter Neptune for his trident,”and of whom it was said, “his heart’s his mouth. ” Still the analogiesin career and character are there, so far as they go; but they areinsufficient to prove that the actual suggested the poetical tragedy,still less to override the internal evidence, relative though thatbe; for they could linger and germinate in the poet’s mind to bringforth fruit long afterwards: as for example the treason and executionof Biron in 1602 inspired Chapman to write _The Conspiracie_ and _TheTragedie_ which were acted in 1608. Again, in connection with what seems to be the actual date, an attempthas been made to explain one prominent characteristic of the playfrom a domestic experience through which Shakespeare had just passed. His mother died in September 1608, and her memory is supposed to beenshrined in the picture of Volumnia. As Dr. Brandes puts it:[237] The death of a mother is always a mournfully irreparable loss, often the saddest a man can sustain. We can realise how deeply it would go to Shakespeare’s heart when we remember the capacity for profound and passionate feeling with which nature had blessed and cursed him. We know little of his mother; but judging from that affinity which generally exists between famous sons and their mothers, we may suppose she was no ordinary woman. Mary Arden, who belonged to an old and honourable family, which traced its descent (perhaps justly) back to the days of Edward the Confessor, represented the haughty patrician element in the Shakespeare family. Her ancestors had borne their coat of arms for centuries, and the son would be proud of his mother for this among other reasons, just as the mother would be proud of her son. In the midst of the prevailing gloom and bitterness of his spirits,[238] this fresh blow fell upon him, and out of his weariness of life as his surroundings and experiences showed it to him, recalled this one mainstay to him—his mother. He remembered all she had been to him for forty-four years, and the thoughts of the man and the dreams of the poet were thus led to dwell upon the significance in a man’s life of this unique form, comparable to no other—his mother. Thus it was that, although his genius must follow the path it had entered upon and pursue it to the end, we find, in the midst of all that was low and base in his next work, this one sublime mother-form, the proudest and most highly-wrought that he has drawn, Volumnia. [236] Rather more than the most. It is special pleading to interpretRaleigh’s arguments against the _Act for sewing Hemp_ and the _Statuteof Tillage_ in 1601, as directed against cheap corn. His point wasrather that coercive legislation in regard to agriculture hinderedproduction and was oppressive to poor men. Nor am I aware that hisspeeches on these occasions increased his unpopularity,—which, nodoubt, was already great. [237] _William Shakespeare, a critical study. _[238] In point of fact “gloom and bitterness” can be less justlyattributed to _Antony and Cleopatra_ and _Coriolanus_ than to any ofthe later tragedies, and less justly to _Coriolanus_ than to _Antonyand Cleopatra_; but Dr. Brandes treats _Troilus and Cressida_ as comingbetween them, and if that position could be vindicated for it, thephrase would be defensible. Thus Shakespeare, in a mood of pessimism, and in the desolation ofbereavement, turned to a subject that he treated on its seamy side,but redeemed from its meanness by exalting the idea of the mother inobedience to his own pious regrets. Even, however, if we grant theassumptions in regard to Mary Arden’s pedigree and her aristocraticfamily pride, and the unique support she gave to her son, does thisstatement give a true account of the impression the play produces? Is it the fact that, apart from the figure of Volumnia, the storyis “low and base,” and is it not rather the record of grand thoughperverted heroism? Is it the fact that Volumnia stands out as astudy of motherhood, such as the first heartache at a mother’s deathwould inspire? The most sympathetic traits in her portrait are drawnby Plutarch. Shakespeare’s many touches supply the harshness, theambition, the prejudice. If these additions are due to Shakespeare’swistful broodings on his own mother, a woman with a son of genius maywell hope that he will never brood on her. Then, especially by those who advocate a later date for the play, apolitical motive for it has been discovered. Mr. Whitelaw, who wouldassign it to 1610, when James’s first parliament was dissolved,conjectures that “in _Coriolanus_ Shakespeare intended a two-foldwarning, to the pride of James, and to the gathering resistance of theCommons. ”[239] Mr. Garnett,[240] on the other hand, maintains that“Coriolanus, to our apprehension, manifestly reflects the feelings of aconservative observer of the contests between James and his refractoryparliaments,” and placing it after the _Tempest_, would connect itwith the dissolution of the Addled Parliament in 1614. But since thefriction between King and Commons, though it intensified with theyears, was seldom entirely absent, this theory adapts itself prettywell to any date, and Dr. Brandes, while refusing to trace the spiritof the play to any “momentary political situation,” adopts the generalprinciple as quite compatible with the state of affairs in 1608. Heputs the case as follows: Was it Shakespeare’s intention to allude to the strained relations existing between James and his parliament? Does Coriolanus represent an aristocratically-minded poet’s side-glance at the political situation in England? I fancy it does. Heaven knows there was little resemblance between the amazingly craven and vacillating James and the haughty, resolute hero of Roman tradition, who fought a whole garrison single-handed. Nor was it personal resemblance which suggested the comparison, but a general conception of the situation as between a beneficent power on the one hand, and the people on the other. He regarded the latter wholly as mob, and looked upon their struggle for freedom as mutiny, pure and simple. [239] _Coriolanus. _ Rugby Edition. [240] In the conclusion of his essay on the _Date and Occasion of theTempest_. |
_Universal Review, 1889. _This theory, however, in all its varieties seems to attribute toodefinite an influence to the controversies of the hour, and toturn Shakespeare too much into the politician prepense. Certainly_Coriolanus_ is not meant to be a constitutional manifesto; probablyit does not, even at unawares, idealise a contemporary dispute; it ishardly likely that Shakespeare so much as intrudes conscious allusionsto the questions then at issue. And this on account not only of theparticular opinions attributed to him, but, much more, of his usualpractice in poetic creation. Do any of these alleged incentives inthe circumstances, public or private, of his life go far to explainhis attraction to a story and selection of it, its power over him andhis power over it? Doubtless in realising the subject that took hisfancy, he would draw on the stores of his experience as well as hisimagination. In dealing with the tragedy of a proud and unpopularhero of antiquity, very possibly he would be helped by what he knewof the tragedy of a proud and unpopular worthy of his own time. Indealing with the influence of a mother and the reverence of a son, veryprobably the memories of his own home would hover before his mind. Indealing with the plebeians and patricians of Rome, he would inevitablyfill in the details from his knowledge of the burgesses and nobles ofEngland, and he might get hints for his picture of the bygone struggle,from the struggle that he himself could watch. But it is the story ofCoriolanus that comes first and that absorbs all such material intoitself, just as the seed in its growth assimilates nourishment fromthe earth and sunshine and rain. These things are not the seed. Theexperiences are utilised in the interest of the play; the play is notutilised in the interest of the experiences. It is particularly important to emphasise this in view of thecircumstance that _Coriolanus_ has often been regarded as a drama ofprinciples rather than of character, even by those who refrain fromreading into it any particular reference. But Shakespeare’s supremepreoccupation is always with his fable, which explains, and isexplained by, human nature in action. He does not set out to commend orcensure or examine a precept or a theory or a doctrine. Of course thelife of men is concerned with such matters, and he could not excludethem without being untrue to his aim. Thus, to take the most obviousexample, it is impossible to treat of character with a total omissionof ethical considerations, since character is connected with conduct,and conduct has its ethical aspect; and, indeed, success in getting tothe truth of character depends very much on the keenness of the moralinsight. It is very largely Shakespeare’s moral insight that gives himhis unrivalled position among the interpreters of men; and we may, ifwe like, derive any number of improving lessons from his works. But heis an artist, not a moralist; and he wrote for the story, not for themoral. Just in the same way an architect seeks to design a beautiful orconvenient building, not to illustrate mechanical laws. Nevertheless,in proportion as these are neglected, the building will not rise orwill not last; and if they are obeyed, however unconsciously, theillustration of them will be provided. In Charlotte Brontë’s _Shirley_,when Caroline gives Robert Moore this very play to read, he asks, “Isit to operate like a sermon? ” And she answers: “It is to stir you; togive you new sensations. _It is to make you feel life strongly_”—(thatis the main thing, and then comes the indirect consequence)—“not onlyyour virtues but your vicious perverse points. ”Now just as in all Shakespeare’s dramas, though or rather because theyare personal, the ethical considerations cannot be excluded; so in adrama that moves through a constitutional crisis, though or ratherbecause it, too, is personal, political considerations cannot beexcluded. They are there, though it is on the second plane. And justas his general delineation of character would be unsatisfactory ifhis moral insight were at fault, so his delineation of the charactersthat play their part in this history would be unsatisfactory if hispolitical insight were at fault. He is not necessarily bound toappreciate correctly the conditions that prevailed in reality or byreport: that is required only for historical accuracy or fidelity totradition. But he is bound to appreciate the conditions as he imaginesthem, and not to violate in his treatment of them the principles thatunderlie all political society. Yet this he has been accused of doing. He has been charged with ahatred of the people that is incompatible even with a benevolenttyranny, and with a glorification of the protagonist’s ruthlessdisregard of popular claims. Thus Dr. Brandes, in the greater partof a chapter, dwells upon Shakespeare’s “physical aversion for theatmosphere of the people,” and “the absence of any humane considerationfor the oppressed condition of the poor”; and, on the other hand,upon his “hero-worship” for Marcius, whom he glorifies as a demi-god. Though admitting the dramatist’s detestation of the crime of treason,this critic sees no implicit censure of what preceded it. To himShakespeare’s impression of life as conveyed in the play is that “theremust of necessity be formed round the solitary great ones of the earth,a conspiracy of envy and hatred raised by the small and mean. ”It is no doubt true that this and many other Shakespearian playsabound in hostile or scornful vituperation of the people; and not onlyof their moral and mental demerits; their sweaty clothes, their rankbreaths, their grossness and uncleanness are held up to derision andexecration. But are we to attribute these sentiments to Shakespeare? Such utterances are _ex hypothesi_ dramatic, and show us merelythe attitude of the speakers, who are without exception men of theopposite camp or unfriendly critics. Only once does Shakespeare givehis personal, or rather, impersonal estimate. It is in the _Induction_to the second part of _Henry IV. _, when Rumour, whose words, in thisrespect at least, cannot be influenced by individual bias, speaks of the blunt monster of uncounted heads, The still-discordant, wavering multitude. (line 18. )That is, the populace as a whole is stupid, disunited, fickle. And this is how, apart from the exaggerations of their opponents,Shakespeare invariably treats crowds of citizens, whether in theancient or modern world. He therefore with perfect consistency regardsthem as quite unfit for rule, and when they have it or aspire to it,they cover themselves with ridicule or involve themselves in crime. But this is by no means to hate them. On the contrary he is kindlyenough to individual representatives, and he certainly believes inthe sacred obligation of governing them for their good. Where thenare the governors to be found? Shakespeare answers: in the royal andaristocratic classes. It is the privilege and duty of those born inhigh position to conduct the whole community aright. Shakespeare cando justice to the Venetian oligarchy and the English monarchy. Butwhile to him the rule of the populace is impossible, he also recognisesthat nobles and kings may be unequal to their task. The majority ofhis kings indeed are more or less failures; his nobles—and in thisplay, the patricians—often cut a rather sorry figure. In short, populargovernment must be wrong, but royal or aristocratic government need notbe right. And this was exactly what historical experience at the time seemed toprove. The Jacqueries, the Peasants’ Wars, the Wat Tyler or Jack CadeInsurrections, were not calculated to commend democratic experiments;and, on the other hand, the authority of king and nobles had often,though not always, secured the welfare of the state. Now, holding these opinions, would Shakespeare be likely to glorifyCoriolanus? Of course, in a sense he does. There is a _LuesBoswelliana_ to which the dramatist like the biographer should and mustsuccumb. He must have a fellow-feeling for his hero and understand fromwithin all that can be urged on his behalf. So Shakespeare glorifiesCoriolanus in the same way that he glorifies Hamlet or Brutus orAntony. That is, he appreciates their greatness and explains theiroffences so that we sympathise with them and do not regard them asunaccountable aberrations; but offences they remain and they are notextenuated. On the contrary they receive all due prominence and areshown to bring about the tragic catastrophe. This is even more the casewith Coriolanus than with some of the others. So much stress is laid onhis violence and asperities that to many he is antipathetic, and theantipathy is reflected on the cause that he champions. Gervinus saysvery truly: It will be allowed that from the example of Brutus many more would be won over to the cause of the people, than would be won over to aristocratic principles by Coriolanus. Quite apart from the final apostasy he strikes the unprejudiced readeras an example to eschew rather than to imitate. Charlotte Brontë, not aShakespearian scholar but a woman of no less common sense than genius,gives the natural interpretation of his career in the passage I havealready referred to. After Caroline and Moore have finished the play,she makes the former ask concerning the hero: “Was he not faulty as well as great? ” Moore nodded. “And what was his fault? What made him hated by the citizens? What caused him to be banished by his countrymen? ”She answers her own question by quoting Aufidius’ estimate, andproceeds: “And you must not be proud to your work people; you must not neglect the chance of soothing them; and you must not be of an inflexible nature, uttering a request as austerely as if it were a command. ”That, so far as it goes, is a quite legitimate “moral” to draw from thestory; and it is the obvious one. How then does Shakespeare conceive the political situation? On theone side there is a despised and famished populace, driven by itsmisery to demand powers in the state that it cannot wisely use, andtrusting to leaders that are worse than itself. On the other sidethere is a prejudiced aristocracy, numbering competent men in itsranks, but disorganised and, to some extent, demoralised by plebeianencroachments, so that it can no longer act with its old efficiencyand consistency. And there is one great aristocrat, pre-eminentlyconsistent and efficient, but whose greatness becomes mischievousto himself and others, partly because it is out of harmony with thetimes, partly because it is corrupted by his inordinate pride. Andto all these persons, or groups of persons, Shakespeare’s attitude,as we shall see, is at once critical and sympathetic. Admitting theconditions, we can only agree with Coleridge’s verdict: “This playillustrates the wonderfully philosophic impartiality of Shakespeare’spolitics. [241] And there is no reason why the conditions should notbe admitted. It is easy to imagine a society in which the masses arenot yet ripe for self-government, and in which the classes are nolonger able to steer the state, while a gifted and bigoted champion oftradition only makes matters worse. Indeed, something similar has beenexemplified in history oftener than once or twice. Whether in pointof fact Shakespeare’s conception is correct for the particular set ofcircumstances he describes is quite another question, that concernsneither the excellence of _Coriolanus_ as a drama nor the fairness ofits political views, but solely its fidelity to antiquarian truth andthe accuracy of its antiquarian _data_. ”[241] _Notes on Plays of Shakespere_, 1818. Clearly it was impossible for Shakespeare to revive the spirit ofthe times in _Coriolanus_, even to the extent that he had done so in_Julius Caesar_ or _Antony and Cleopatra_, for the simple reason thatin them, with whatever trespasses into fiction on the part of himselfor his authority, he was following the record of what had actuallytaken place, while now he was dealing with a legend that seems to havethe less foundation in fact the more it is examined. The tribunate,with the establishment of which the whole action begins, the oppositionto which by Marcius is his main offence, and the occupants of whichplay so important a part in the proceedings, is now generally held tobe of much later origin than the supposed date of the story. Thereis no agreement as to the names of the chief persons; Coriolanusis Cneius or Caius, his mother is Veturia or Volumnia, his wife isVolumnia or Vergilia, the Volscian leader Tullus Aufidius or Amfidiusor Attius Tullius. Even the appellation Coriolanus rouses suspicion,for the bestowal of such titles seems to have been unknown till longafterwards, and, in the view of some, points not to conquest but toorigin; and there are contradictory accounts of the hero’s end. It hasbeen conjectured[242] that the whole story arose in connection withreligious observances and contains a large mythological admixture; andwe may remember how at the end it is associated with the erection ofthe temple to _Fortuna Muliebris_. [242] By Ettore Pais. _Storia di Roma. _ Vol. I. This much at least is beyond doubt, that the account given by Plutarch,from whom Shakespeare took his material, and even by Livy, whom he mayhave read, has much less matter-of-fact reality than characterises thelater Roman lives. There are many discrepancies and contradictions,especially in Plutarch’s description. Now he gives what we may consideran idealised picture of the plebs, attributing to it extraordinaryself-control and sagacity, and again it is to him merely the rascalvulgar. Now he seems to approve the pliancy which the Senate showed onthe advice of the older and wiser men, and again he seems to blame itas undignified. And the mixture of bravado and pusillanimity duringthe siege is almost unintelligible. Now the city sends the humblestembassages to the rebel, now it haughtily refuses to treat till he haswithdrawn from Roman soil, and again it despatches what North calls “agoodly rabble of superstition and priestes” with new supplications. From a narrative that teemed with incongruities like the above,Shakespeare was entitled to select the alternatives that would combineto a harmonious whole, and he rightly chose those that were nearestto his own comprehension and experience, though perhaps in doing sohe failed to make the most of such elements of historic truth as thetradition may contain, and certainly effaced some of the antiquecolouring. But if Plutarch’s _Coriolanus_ has less foundation in fact than someof the later Lives, it is not without compensating advantages. Thecircumstance that it is in so large measure a legend, implies thatthe popular imagination has been busy working it up, and it alreadyfalls into great scenic crises which lend themselves of their ownaccord to the dramatist’s art. It is rather remarkable in view ofthis that it had received so little attention from the tragedians ofthe time. Perhaps its two-fold remoteness, from worldwide historicalissues on the one hand, and from specifically romantic feeling on theother, may have told against it. The stories of Lucretia and Virginiahad as primitive and circumscribed a setting, and were neverthelesspopular enough: but they have an emotional interest that appeals tothe general taste. The story of Julius Caesar lacks the sentimentallure, but concerns such mighty issues that it was the best beloved ofall. And next comes the story of Antony and Cleopatra, which in a highdegree unites both attractions. But _Coriolanus_, even as treated byShakespeare, is unsympathetic to many, and the legend is of so littlehistoric significance that it is often omitted from modern handbooks ofRoman history; so, for these reasons, despite its pre-eminent fitnessfor the stage, it was generally passed over. Not universally, however. It seems already to have engaged theattention of one important dramatist in France, the prolific and giftedAlexandre Hardy. Hardy began to publish his works only in 1623, and thevolume containing his _Coriolan_ appeared only in 1625; so there ishardly any possibility of Shakespeare’s having utilised this play. And,on the other hand, it was certainly written before 1608, probably inthe last years of the sixteenth century, but in any case by 1607, sothere is even less possibility of its being influenced by Shakespeare’streatment. All the more interesting is it to observe the coincidencesthat exist between them, and that are due to their having selected agreat many of the same _motifs_ from Plutarch’s story. It shows thatin that story Plutarch met the playwright half way, and justifies thestatement of Hardy in his argument that “few subjects are to be foundin Roman history which are worthier of the stage. ”[243] The number ofsubsequent French dramas with Coriolanus as hero proves that he wasright, though in England, as so frequently, Shakespeare’s name put aveto on new experiments. Hardy’s tragedy in style and structure follows the Senecan manner ofJodelle and Garnier, but he compromised with mediaeval fashions in sofar as to adopt the peculiar modification of the “simultaneous” or“complex” decoration which is usual in his other plays. In accordancewith that, several scenes were presented at the same time on the stage,and actors made their first speeches from the area appropriated to thatone of them which the particular phase of the action required. Therewas thus considerable latitude in regard to the unity of place, andeven more in regard to the unity of time; but the freedom was not sogreat as in the Elizabethan theatre, for after all there was space onlyfor a limited number of scenes, or “mansions” as they would formerlyhave been called. Generally there were five, two at each side and oneat the back. In the _Coriolan_ there were six, and there is as well aseventh place indicated in the play without scenical decoration. [244]Even so they are few, compared with the two and twenty[245] thatShakespeare employs; and though no doubt that number might beconsiderably reduced without injury to the effect, by running togetherlocalities that approximate in character and position, one street withanother street, the forum with a public place and the like, still itwould in any case exceed what Hardy allows himself. This may accountfor some of his omissions as compared with Shakespeare. [243] See _Théâtre d’Alexandre Hardy_, ed. Stengel. [244] See M. Rigal’s admirable treatise on _Hardy_. [245] Of course these scenes are not marked in the folio, but on thewhole there are good grounds for the division that has been adopted bymodern editors. His scenarium includes the house of Coriolanus and the forum at Rome,the house of Coriolanus and the house of Amfidius at Antium, theVolscian camp near Rome, the council-hall at Antium, and in additionto these an indeterminate spot where Coriolanus soliloquises after hisexpulsion. [246] There is no room for Corioli, and this may be why Hardybegins somewhat later than Shakespeare with the collision between thehero and the people, and gets as far as the banishment by the end ofthe first act. In the second, Marcius leaves Rome, presents himselfto Amfidius, and obtains the leadership of the Volscians. The thirdportrays the panic of the Romans and the reception of their embassageby Coriolanus. In the fourth, the Roman ladies make ready to accompanyVolumnia on her mission, Amfidius schemes to use all Coriolanus’faults for his destruction, Volumnia arrives in the camp and makes herpetition, which her son at length grants though he foresees the result. The fifth is occupied with his murder in the Senate House at Antium,and concludes with his mother’s reception of the news. [246] See footnote 2 on previous page. Thus the sequence and selection of episodes are much the same in thetwo tragedies, except that Hardy, perhaps, as I have said, owing to theexigencies of his decorative system, does not begin till the exploitat Corioli is over, and adds, as he could do so by using once moreCoriolanus’ house in Rome, the final scene with Volumnia. Otherwisethe scaffolding of the plays is very similar, and it is becauseboth follow closely the excellent guidance of Plutarch. But it isinteresting also to note that some of their additions are similar, forwhen they were independently made, it shows how readily Plutarch’snarrative suggested such supplements. Thus, as in Shakespeare, but notas in Plutarch, Volumnia counsels her son to bow his pride before thepeople, and he, though in the end consenting, at first refuses. _Volomnie. _ Voicy le jour fatal qui te donne (mon fils) Par une humilité tes hayneurs deconfits; Tu vaincras, endurant, la fiere ingratitude Et le rancoeur malin de ceste multitude. Tu charmes son courroux d’une submission; Helas! ne vueille donc croire à ta passion. Cede pour un moment, et la voila contente, Et tu accoiseras une horrible tourmente, Que Rome divisée ébranle à ton sujet: La pieté ne peut avoir plus bel objet, Et faire mieux paroistre à l’endroit d’une mere, A l’endroit du païs, qu’escoutant ma priere. _Coriolan. _ Madame, on me verroit mille morts endurer, Plustôt que suppliant sa grace procurer, Plustôt qu’un peuple vil à bon tiltre se vante D’avoir en mon courage imprimé l’épouvante, Que ceux qui me devroient recognoistre seigneur, Se prévallent sur moy du plus petit honneur: Moy, fléchir le genoüil devant une commune! Non, je ne le veux faire, et ne crains sa rancune. Thus Coriolanus, again as in Shakespeare but not as in Plutarch,accepts his banishment as a calamity to those that inflict it. Je luy obeirai, ouy ouy, je mettrai soin De quitter ces ingrats plustost qu’ils n’ont besoin. Thus the machinations of Amfidius before the final cause of offenceare amplified far beyond the limits of Plutarch, and these are inpart excused by his previous rivalry with Coriolanus which, as inShakespeare, is made ever so much more personal and graphic. Un esperon d’honneur cent fois nous a conduits, Aveugles de fureur, à ces termes reduits De sentre-deffier[247] au front de chaque armée, Vouloir mourir, ou seul vaincre de renommée. In short, though Hardy’s drama, as compared with Shakespeare’s, is awork of talent as compared with a work of genius, it shows that the_Life_ had in it the material for a tragedy already rough-dressed,with indications, obvious to a practised playwright, of some of theprocesses that still were needed. Shakespeare, then, was now dealing with a much more tractable themethan in his previous Roman plays, and this is evident in the finishedproduct. Technically and artistically it is a more perfect achievementthan either of them. In _Julius Caesar_ the early disappearance ofthe titular hero does not indeed affect the essential unity of thepiece, but it does, when all is said and done, involve, to the feelingsof most readers, a certain break in the interest. In _Antony andCleopatra_ the scattering of the action through so many short scenesdoes not interfere with the main conception, but it does make theexecution a little spasmodic. In both instances Shakespeare had tosuit his treatment to the material. But that material in the case of_Coriolanus_ offered less difficulty. It lay ready to the dramatist’shand and took the shape that he imposed, almost of itself. The resultis a masterpiece that, as an organic work of art, has been placed onthe level of Shakespeare’s most independent tragedies. [248][247] S’entre-défier. [248] _E. g. _ by Viehoff, in his interesting essay, _Shakespeare’sCoriolan_ (_Jahrbuch der D. -Sh. Gesellschaft_, Bd. iv. 1869), which hasbeen used in the following paragraphs. Thus it is easy to see how the personality of the hero dominates thecomplex story, as the heart transmits the life-blood through the bodyand its members, and receives it back again; how his character containsin itself the seeds of his offence and its reparation; how the otherfigures are related to him in parallel and contrast; how the two grandinterests, the conflict between Coriolanus and Aufidius, the conflictbetween Coriolanus and the people, intertwine, but always so that thelatter remains the principal strand; how the language is suited to thepersons, the circumstances, and the prevailing tone. In short, whateverthe relations in which we consider the play, they seem, like the radiiof a circle, to depart from and meet in one centre. Hardly less admirable are the balance and composition of the whole,which yet in no wise impair the interest of the individual scenes. Dr. Johnson indeed makes the criticism: “There is perhaps too muchbustle in the first act and too little in the last. ” This possibly ismore noticeable when the play is acted than when it is read; but it isfitting that from the noise and hubbub of the struggle there should bea transition to the outward quietude of the close that harmonises withthe inward acquiescence in the mind of reader or spectator. Nor is theelement of tumult entirely lacking at the last. To the uproar in thestreet of Rome, where the life of Marcius is threatened, correspondsthe uproar in the public place of Antium where it is actually taken. But Dr. Johnson was probably thinking of those battle scenes beloved byElizabethan audiences and generally wearisome to modern taste. Thereare no fewer than five of them in the first act, a somewhat plentifulallowance. But they are written by no means exclusively in thedrum-and-trumpet style. On the contrary they are rich in psychologicalinterest, and bring home to us many characteristics of the hero thatwe have to realise. Not only are we witnesses of his prowess, but hispride in Rome, his contempt of baseness, his rivalry with Aufidius,his power of rousing enthusiasm in the field, are all shown in relief. Such things lift these concessions to temporary fashion above the levelof outworn crudities. And the construction is very perfect too. Perhaps the crisis,understood as the acme of Coriolanus’ success, when he is voted tothe consulship in the middle of the third scene of the second actcomes a little early. But crisis may bear another meaning. It maydenote the decisive point of the conflict, and this is only reachedin the centre of the play. To the supreme tension of the scenes thatdescribe Coriolanus’ denunciation of the Tribunes, the consultationsin his house, his final condemnation, all that goes before graduallyleads up, and from that all that follows after gradually declines. Inthe first act we are introduced to the circumstances, the oppositionbetween the Romans and the Volsces, the Senate and the Plebs, and toall the leading characters, as well as Coriolanus and his friendsand opponents, in an exposition that is not merely declaratory butis full of action and life: and we see that the situation is fraughtwith danger. In the second act we are shown more definitely how thegrand disaster will come from the collision of Coriolanus with thepeople, and the cloud gathers even in the instant of his success. Inthe third the storm breaks, and, despite a momentary lull, in the endsweeps away all wonted landmarks. The fourth presents the change thatfollows in the whole condition of things: the rival of Aufidius hasrecourse to his generosity, the champion of Rome becomes her foe, andthe people, after its heedless triumph, is plunged into dismay. In thefifth we proceed by carefully considered ways to the catastrophe: thedeliverance of Rome from material and the hero from moral perdition,the expiation of his passion in death and the fruitless triumph of hisrival. But through this symmetrical rise and fall of the excitement, there isno abatement of the interest. Attention and suspense are always kept onthe alert. They are secured partly by the diversity of the details andthe swiftness of the fluctuations. Dr. Johnson says: The Tragedy of _Coriolanus_ is one of the most amusing of our author’s performances. The old man’s merriment in Menenius, the lofty lady’s dignity in Volumnia, the bridal modesty in Virgilia, the patrician and military haughtiness in Coriolanus, the plebeian malignity and tribunitian insolence in Brutus and Sicinius, make a very pleasing and interesting variety; and the various revolutions of the hero’s fortune fill the mind with anxious curiosity. This is so because, while the agitation culminates in the third act,the emotion is neither overtaxed in the two that precede nor allowedto subside in the two that follow. For though this movement, first ofintensification, then of relaxation, is discernible in the play as awhole, it is not uniform or uninterrupted. There is throughout a throband pulse, an ebb and flow. The quieter scenes alternate with the morevehement: Coriolanus’ fortune by turns advances and retires. Only whenwe reflect do we become aware that we have risen so high out of ourdaily experience, and have returned “with new acquist” of wisdom to aspot whence we can step back to it once more. But to produce so consummate a masterpiece from the material ofhistory, no matter how dramatic that material was, Shakespeare wasbound to reshape it more freely than he was wont to do when dealingwith historical themes. We have seen from Hardy’s example what storesof half-wrought treasure Plutarch’s narrative offered to a dramatistwho knew his business. Still it was only half-wrought, and in workingit up Shakespeare consciously or unconsciously allowed himself moreliberties than in his other Roman plays. His loans indeed are nonethe fewer or the less on that account; nowhere has he borrowed morenumerous or so lengthy passages. But it almost seems as though with thetact of genius he had the feeling that he was at work, not on fact, buton legend. Though he is far from recasting the Roman tradition as herecast the pseudo-historic traditions of his own island in _Lear_ and_Macbeth_, yet he gives a new colouring to the picture as he hardlydoes to genuine histories like _Richard II. _ or _Antony and Cleopatra_. This will appear from a comparison of the play with the _Life_. CHAPTER IIPARALLELS AND CONTRASTS WITH PLUTARCHThe first impression produced by a comparison of the biography and theplay is that the latter is little more than a scenic replica of theformer. Shakespeare has indeed absorbed so many suggestions from thetranslation that it is difficult to realise how much he has modifiedthem, or to avoid reading these modifications into his authority whenwe try to distinguish what he has received from what he has supplied. And the illusion is confirmed by the frequency with which we light onfamiliar words, familiar traits, familiar incidents. For the similarityseems at first to pervade the language, the characterisation, and theaction. [249][249] A good many of the parallels and contrasts noted in this chapterare to be found in the excellent paper by Delius already cited. In the language it is most marked. Nowhere has Shakespeare borrowed somuch through so great a number of lines as in Volumnia’s appeal to thepiety of her son. This passage, even if it stood alone, would serveto make the play a notable example of Shakespeare’s indebtedness toNorth. [250] But it does not stand alone. Somewhat shorter, but stilllonger than any loan in the other plays, is Coriolanus’ announcementof himself to Aufidius, and in it Shakespeare follows North even moreclosely than in the former instance. [250] See Appendix B. If thou knowest me not yet, Tullus, and seeing me, dost not perhappes beleeve me to be the man I am in dede, I must of necessitie bewraye my selfe to be that I am. I am that Caius Martius, who hath done to thy self particularly, and to all the Volsces generally, great hurte and mischief, which I cannot denie for my surname of Coriolanus that I beare. For I never had other benefit nor recompence, of all the true and paynefull service I have done, and the extreme daungers I have bene in, but this only surname: a good memorie and witnes, of the malice and displeasure thou showldest beare me. In deede the name only remaineth with me: for the rest, the envie and crueltie of the people of Rome have taken from me, by the sufference of the dastardlie nobilitie and magistrates, who have forsaken me, and let me be banished by the people. This extremitie hath now driven me to come as a poore suter, to take thy chimney harthe, not of any hope I have to save my life thereby. For if I had feared death, I would not have come hither to have put my life in hazard: but prickt forward with strife and desire I have to be revenged of them that thus have banished me, whom now I beginne to be avenged on, putting my persone betweene their enemies. Wherefore, if thou hast any harte to be wrecked[251] of the injuries thy enemies have done thee, spede thee now, and let my miserie serve thy turne, and so use it, as my service maye be a benefit to the Volsces: promising thee, that I will fight with better good will for all you, then ever I dyd when I was against you, knowing that they fight more valliantly, who know the force of their enemie, then such as have never proved it. And if it be so that thou dare not, and that thou art wearye to prove fortune any more; then am I also weary to live any lenger. And it were no wisedome in thee, to save the life of him, who hath bene heretofore thy mortall enemie, and whose service now can nothing helpe nor pleasure thee. [251] wreaked, avenged. Shakespeare gives little else than a transcript, though, of course, apoetical and dramatic transcript, of this splendid piece of forthrightprose. _Coriolanus. _ If, Tullus, Not yet thou knowest me, and, seeing me, dost not Think me for the man I am, necessity Commands me name myself. _Aufidius. _ What is thy name? _Coriolanus. _ A name unmusical to the Volscians’ ears, And harsh in sound to thine. _Aufidius. _ Say, what’s thy name? Thou hast a grim appearance, and thy face Bears a command in’t: though thy tackle’s torn, Thou show’st a noble vessel: what’s thy name? _Coriolanus. _ Prepare thy brow to frown; know’st thou me yet? _Aufidius. _ I know thee not: thy name? _Coriolanus. _ My name is Caius Marcius, who hath done To thee particularly, and to all the Volsces Great hurt and mischief: thereto witness may My surname, Coriolanus: the painful service, The extreme dangers, and the drops of blood Shed for my thankless country are requited But with that surname; a good memory, And witness of the malice and displeasure Which thou should’st bear me: only that name remains; The cruelty and envy of the people, Permitted by our dastard nobles, who Have all forsook me, hath devoured the rest: And suffer’d me by the voice of slaves to be Whoop’d out of Rome. Now this extremity Hath brought me to thy hearth; not out of hope— Mistake me not—to save my life, for if I had fear’d death, of all men i’ the world I would have ’voided thee, but in mere spite, To be full quit of those my banishers, Stand I before thee now. Then if thou hast A heart of wreak in thee, that wilt revenge Thine own particular wrongs and stop those maims Of shame seen through thy country, speed thee straight, And make my misery serve thy turn: so use it That my revengeful services may prove As benefits to thee, for I will fight Against my canker’d country with the spleen Of all the under fiends. But if so be Thou darest not this and that to prove more fortunes Thou’rt tired, then, in a word, I also am Longer to live most weary, and present My throat to thee and to thy ancient malice; Which not to cut would show thee but a fool, Since I have ever follow’d thee with hate, Drawn tuns of blood out of thy country’s breast And cannot live but to thy shame, unless It be to do thee service. (IV. v. 60. )As much material, though it is amplified and rearranged, has beenincorporated, as we shall have to point out, in Coriolanus’ invectiveagainst the tribunate and the distribution of corn. Within a narrowercompass we see the same adherence to North’s phraseology in Brutus’instructions to the people, where, very notably, Shakespeare’s fidelityto his author has made it possible to supply an omission in the textwith absolute certainty as to the sense and great probability as to thewording. The opening sentences of the _Life_ run as follows: The house of the Martians at Rome was of the number of the patricians, out of the which hath sprong many noble personages: whereof Ancus Martius was one, King Numaes daughters sonne, who was king of Rome after Tullus Hostilius. Of the same house were Publius, and Quintus, who brought Rome their best water they had by conducts. Censorinus also came of that familie, that was so surnamed, bicause the people had chosen him Censor twise. Shakespeare puts the notifications in the Tribune’s mouth: Say we read lectures to you, How youngly he began to serve his country, How long continued, and what stock he springs of, The noble house o’ the Marcians, from whence came That Ancus Martius, Numa’s daughter’s son, Who, after great Hostilius, here was king: Of the same house Publius and Quintus were, That our best water brought by conduits hither: _And Nobly nam’d, so twice being Censor, Was his great Ancestor_. (II. iii. 242. )Many editors saw that something had dropped out, but no attempt tofill the gap was satisfactory, till Delius, having recourse to North,supplemented, [And Censorinus, that was so surnamed] And nobly named so, twice being censor. [252][252] This seems preferable to the reading of the Cambridge Editors And [Censorinus,] nobly named so, Twice being [by the people chosen] censor. In the first place it is closer to North, and agrees with Shakespeare’susual practice of keeping to North’s words so far as possible. Inthe second place, it is closer to the Folio text, involving only thedisplacement of a comma. In the third place, it is simpler to supposethat a whole single line has been missed out than that parts of twohave been amputated, and the remainders run together. These lines also show how Shakespeare reproduces Plutarch’s statementeven when they are for him not quite in keeping. Plutarch, writing inthe second century, could instance Publius, Quintus and Censorinus asornaments of the Marcian gens; but Brutus’ reference to them is ananachronism as they come after the supposed date of the play. So tooPlutarch says of the attack on the Romans before Corioli: But Martius being there at that time, ronning out of the campe with a fewe men with him, he slue the first enemies he met withall, and made the rest of them staye upon a sodaine, crying out to the Romaines that had turned their backes, and calling them againe to fight with a lowde voyce. For he was even such another, as Cato would have a souldier and a captaine to be: not only terrible, and fierce to laye about him, but to make the enemie afeard with the sounde of his voyce, and grimnes of his countenaunce. Shakespeare makes short work of chronology by putting this allusioninto the mouth of Titus Lartius: Thou wast a soldier Even to Cato’s[253] wish, not fierce and terrible Only in strokes; but, with thy grim looks, and The thunder-like percussion of thy sounds, Thou madest thine enemies shake, as if the world Were feverous and did tremble. (I. iv. 56. )Occasionally even mistakes in North’s text or marginal notes, or inShakespeare’s interpretation or recollection of what he had read, havepassed into the play. Thus it has been shown[254] that North, owing toa small typographical error in the French, misunderstood the scope ofCominius’ offer to Marcius. Amyot says:[253] Here again Plutarch has furnished an emendation: Folio, _Calues_. [254] By Büttner, _Zu Coriolan und seiner Quelle_ (_Jhrbch. der D. -Sh. Gesellschaft_, Bd. xli. 1905). “Et en fin lui dit, que de _tous les cheveaux prisonniers_, et autres biens qui avoient esté pris et gaignés en grande quantité, il en choisist dix de chaque sorte à sa volonté, avant que rien en fust distribué, ni desparti aux autres. ”There should be a comma after _cheveaux_, as appears on referenceto the Greek,[255] and Marcius is told to select ten of the horses,prisoners, and other chattels; but North took the _prisonniers_ as usedadjectivally in agreement with the preceding noun and translated: So in the ende he willed Martius, he should choose _out of all the horses they had taken_ of their enemies, and of all the goodes they had wonne (whereof there was great store) tenne of every sorte which he liked best, before any distribution should be made to other. [255] πολλῶν χρημάτων καὶ ἵππων γεγονότων αἰχμαλώτων καὶ ἀνθρώπων,ἐκέλευσεν αὐτὸν ἐξελέσθαι δέκα πάντα πρὸ τοῦ νέμειν τοῖς πολλοῖς. Ἄνευδὲ ἐκείνων ἀριστεῖον αὐτῷ κεκοσμημένον ἵππον ἐδωρήσατο. Further there is the quite incorrect abridgment in the margin: The tenth parte of the enemies goods offered Martius for rewarde of his service by Cominius the Consul. Shakespeare combines these misstatements: Of all the horses, Whereof we have ta’en good and good store, of all The treasure in this field achieved and city, We render you the tenth, to be ta’en forth, Before the common distribution, at Your only choice. (I. ix. 31. )Of great frequency are the short sentences from North that are embeddedin Shakespeare’s dialogue. Thus, the preliminary announcement ofMarcius’ hardihood is introduced with the remark: Now in those dayes, valliantnes was honoured in Rome above all the other vertues. Cominius begins his panegyric: It is held That valour is the chiefest virtue, and Most dignifies the haver. (II. ii. 87. )When Marcius drives the Volscians back to Corioli and the Romanshesitate to pursue, we are told: He dyd encorage his fellowes with wordes and deedes, crying out to them, that fortune had opened the gates of the cittie more for the followers, then for the flyers. Compare his exhortation: So, now the gates are ope: now prove good seconds: ’Tis for the followers fortune widens them, Not for the fliers. (I. iv. 43. )When the proposal to distribute the corn is being discussed, manysenators are in favour of it: But Martius standing up on his feete, dyd somewhat sharpely take up those, who went about to gratifie the people therein, and called them people pleasers and traitours to the nobilitie. Brutus charges him with this in the play: When corn was given them gratis, you repined; Scandal’d the suppliants for the people, call’d them Time-pleasers, flatterers, foes to nobleness. (III. i. 43. )Sometimes the debt is confined to a single phrase or word and yet isunmistakable. When Coriolanus has reached Antium, Plutarch quotes Homeron Ulysses: So dyd he enter into the enemies towne. In the play Coriolanus before the house of Aufidius soliloquises: My love’s upon This enemy town. I’ll enter. (IV. iv. 23. )Now and then some apparently haphazard detail can be explained if wetrace it to its source. Thus, Cominius talks of the “seventeen battles”which the hero had fought since his first exploit. Why seventeen? Doubtless Shakespeare had in his mind the account of the candidature,when Marcius showed the wounds “which he had receyved in seventeeneyeres service at the warres, and in many sundrie battells. ” In Plutarchthe number of years is prescribed by his mythical chronology, for hedates the beginning of Marcius’ career from the wars with the Tarquins,which were supposed to have broken out in 245 A. U. C. , while Corioli wastaken in 262: but when transferred to the battles it becomes a meresurvival which serves at most to give apparent definiteness. But occasionally such survivals have a higher value. It is instructive,for example, to notice how Shakespeare utilises the tradition dearto Plutarch’s antiquarian tastes but not very interesting to anElizabethan audience of the acknowledgment made to the goddess,_Fortuna Muliebris_, after the withdrawal of Coriolanus from Rome. The Senate ordeined, that the magistrates to gratifie and honour these ladyes, should graunte them all that they would require. And they only requested that they would build a temple of Fortune of the women, for the building whereof they offered them selves to defraye the whole charge of the sacrifices, and other ceremonies belonging to the service of the goddes. Nevertheles, the Senate commending their good will and forwardnes, ordeined, that the temple and image should be made at the common charge of the cittie. And the marginal note sums up: “The temple of Fortune built for thewomen. ” This seems to be the archaeological ore from which is forgedCoriolanus’ gallant hyperbole: Ladies, you deserve To have a temple built you. (V. ii. 206. )From the worshippers they become the worshipped. Sometimes in the survival the fact is transformed to figure, the proseto poetry. After Marcius’ miracles of valour at Corioli, Cominius giveshim, “in testimonie that he had wonne that day the price of prowesabove all other, a goodly horse with a capparison, and all furniture tohim. ” This Shakespeare does not omit. Cominius declares: Caius Marcius Wears this war’s garland: in token of the which My noble steed,[256] known to the camp, I give him With all his trim belonging. (I. ix. 59. )[256] Shakespeare, following North (“Martius accepted the gift of _his_horse”) makes it, instead of _a_ horse, Cominius’ own horse, whichwould be a violation of antique usage. See Büttner as above. But the same episode furnishes Titus Lartius with his imagery as hepoints to the wounded and victorious hero: O general, Here is the steed, we the caparison! (I. ix. 11. )This illustrates the sort of sea-change that always takes place in thelanguage of North under the hands of the magician, though it may notalways be equally perceptible. But it is never entirely lacking, evenwhere we are at first more struck by the amount that Shakespeare hasretained without alteration. The _Life_, for instance, describes whattakes place after Marcius has joined Cominius, before they hurry off tothe second fight. Martius asked him howe the order of their enemies battell was, and on which side they had placed their best fighting men. The Consul made him aunswer, that he thought the bandes which were in the voward of their battell, were those of the Antiates, whom they esteemed to be the war-likest men, and which for valliant corage would give no place, to any of the hoste of their enemies. Then prayed Martius to be set directly against them. Here is what Shakespeare makes of this: _Mar. _ How lies their battle? Know you on which side They have placed their men of trust? _Com. _ As I guess, Marcius, Their bands in the vaward are the Antiates, Of their best trust; o’er them Aufidius, Their very heart of hope. _Mar. _ I do beseech you, By all the battles wherein we have fought, By the blood we have shed together, by the vows We have made to endure friends, that you directly Set me against Aufidius and his Antiates; And that you not delay the present, but, Filling the air with swords advanced and darts, We prove this very hour. (I. vi. 51. )Here to begin with Shakespeare hardly does more than change theindirect to the direct narrative and condense a little, but presentlyhe adds picturesqueness, passion, and, by the introduction of Aufidius,dramatic significance. And this is invariably his method. It is unfairto quote the parallel passages without the context, for, apart from thesubtle transmutation they have undergone, they are preludes to originalutterance and almost every one of them is a starting point rather thanthe goal. Shakespeare’s normal practice is illustrated in the fable ofMenenius, in which, with every allowance made for possible assistancefrom Camden, the words of his authority or authorities are only so manyspur-pricks that set his own imagination at a gallop. And what goesbefore and comes after is pure Shakespeare. And it should be noticed that his textual appropriations from North,long or short, obvious or covert, never clash with his more personalcontributions, which in bulk are far more important. They are allsubdued to the tone that the purpose of the dramatist imposes. Delius says with absolute truth: “This harmonious colouring wouldmake it impossible for us, in respect of style, to discover realor suppositious loans from Plutarch in Shakespeare’s drama, anddefinitely identify them as such, if by chance North’s translationwere inaccessible. ” Yet this harmonious colouring, that has its sourcein the author’s mind and that is required by the theme, does notprevent an individualisation in the utterance, whether wholly originalor partly borrowed, that fits it for the lips of the particularspeaker. The language, even when it is suggested by North, is not onlyspontaneous and consistent, it is dramatic as well, and apposite to thestrongly marked characters of whom the story is told. To these characters, and their development by Shakespeare, we nowturn. It may be remarked that all of them, except the quite episodicalAdrian and Nicanor, are nominally to be found in Plutarch, by whomthe hero himself is drawn at full length and in great detail. For hisdelineation then there was a great deal to borrow and Shakespearehas borrowed a great deal. In his general bearing and in many of hisfeatures the Coriolanus of the play is the Coriolanus of the _Life_,though of course imagined with far more firmness and comprehension. Only on very close scrutiny do we see that each has a physiognomy ofhis own, and that the difference in the impressions they produce is duenot merely to the execution but to the conception. This will becomeclear as the general discussion proceeds and will incidentally occupyour attention from time to time. Meanwhile it should be noticed that,Coriolanus excepted, Plutarch’s persons are very shadowy and vague. Ifwe compare this biography with those that Shakespeare had used for hisearlier Roman plays, it is obvious that it is much more of a monograph. In the others room is found for sketches of many subordinate figures inconnection with the titular subject, but Marcius stands out alone andthe remaining personages are scarcely more than names. In the tragedy,too, he is in possession of the scene, but his relatives, his friends,and his enemies are also full of interest and life; and for theirportraiture Shakespeare had to depend almost entirely on himself. Next to the hero, for example, it is his mother who is mostconspicuous in the play; and how much did Plutarch contribute to theconception of her concrete personality? He supplies only one or twohints, some of which Shakespeare disregards or contradicts. They bothattribute to her the sole training of the boy, but Plutarch impliesthat her discipline was slack and her instruction insufficient, whilein Shakespeare she incurs no such blame except in so far as we infera certain lack of judiciousness from her peculiar attitude to hergrandson and from her son’s exaggeration of some of her own traits. Butinjudiciousness is not quite the same as the laxity that Plutarch’sapologetic paragraph would insinuate: Caius Martius, whose life we intend now to write, being left an orphan by his father, was brought up under his mother a widowe, who taught us by experience, that orphanage bringeth many discommodities to a childe, but doth not hinder him to become an honest man, and to excell in vertue above the common sorte; as they, are meanely borne, wrongfully doe complayne, that it is the occasion of their casting awaye, for that no man in their youth taketh any care of them to see them well brought up, and taught that were meete. This man is also a good proofe to confirme some mens opinions, that a rare and excellent witte untaught, doth bring forth many good and evill things together; like as a fat soile bringeth forth herbes and weedes, that lieth unmanured. [257] For this Martius naturell wit and great harte dyd marvelously sturre up his corage, to doe and attempt notable actes. But on the other side for lacke of education, he was so chollericke and impacient, that he would yeld to no living creature; which made him churlishe, uncivill, and altogether unfit for any mans conversation. [257] _Unworked, untilled_, from _manoeuvrer_. Again, in reference to Marcius’ strenuous career, Plutarch writes: The only thing that made him to love honour, was the joye he sawe his mother dyd take of him. For he thought nothing made him so happie and honorable, as that his mother might heare every bodie praise and commend him, that she might allwayes see him returne with a crowne upon his head, and that she might still embrace him with teares ronning downe her cheekes for joye. In the play, it is not with tears of joy that Volumnia welcomes herwarrior home. Here is another instance of piety that Plutarch cites: Martius thinking all due to his mother, that had bene also due to his father if he had lived; dyd not only content him selfe to rejoyce and honour her, but at her desire tooke a wife also, by whom he had two children, and yet never left his mothers house therefore. In Shakespeare there is no word of Marcius’ marrying at his mother’sdesire, and though she apparently lives with him, it is in his, not inher house. All these notices occur in the first pages of the _Life_. Thenceforwardtill her intervention at the close there is only a passing mention ofher affliction at her son’s banishment. When he was come home to his house againe, and had taken his leave of his mother and wife, finding them weeping, and shreeking out for sorrowe, and had also comforted and persuaded them to be content with his chaunce; he immediately went to the gate of the cittie. Even in regard to the intercession, where Shakespeare follows Plutarchmost closely, he makes one significant omission. In the original, it isthe suggestion of Valeria “through the inspiration of some god above,”that the women should sue for peace, and she visits Marcius’ kinswomanto secure their help: by the suppression of this circumstance,the prominent place is left to Volumnia. And in the appeal itselfShakespeare, besides the various vivifying and personal touches, makesone important addition. In Plutarch her words are throughout forcibleand impassioned, but they do not burst into the wrathful indignationof the close, which alone is sufficient to break down Coriolanus’resolution. Now it is clear that the presence of Volumnia does not pervade the_Life_ as it does the play, and she has not nearly so much to do. Moreover, besides being less important, she is less masculine andmasterful. Indeed, from Plutarch’s hints it would be possible toconstruct for her a character that differed widely from that ofShakespeare’s heroine. She is like the latter in her patriotism, herlove for and delight in her son, and, at the critical moment, in herinfluence over him. But even her influence is less constant, andseems to be stronger in the way of unconscious inspiration than ofpositive direction. It would be quite legitimate to picture her as anessentially womanly woman, high-souled and dutiful, but finding herchosen sphere in the home, overflowing with sympathy and affection,and failing in her obligations as widowed mother only by a lack ofsternness. And if Shakespeare has given features to Volumnia, much more has hedone so to Virgilia and young Marcius. Both, of course, are presentedin the merest outline, but in Plutarch the wife is only once named andthe children are not named at all. Shakespeare’s Virgilia, on the otherhand, by the few words she speaks and the few words spoken to her, byher very restraint from speech and the atmosphere in which she moves,produces a very definite as well as a very pleasing impression. Ruskin,after enumerating some other of Shakespeare’s female characters,concludes that they “and last and perhaps loveliest, Virgilia, are allfaultless; conceived in the highest heroic type of humanity. ” Thisenthusiasm may be, as Ruskin’s enthusiasms sometimes were, exaggeratedand misplaced, but it could not be roused by a nonentity; and anonentity Plutarch’s Virgilia is. Young Marcius, again, is not merely one of the two children mentionedin the _Life_. As Mr. Verity remarks,[258] in this case “the half iscertainly better than the whole”; and the named half has a wholeness ofhis own that the anonymous brace can lay no claim to. He is a thoroughboy, and an attractive though boisterous one. If he is cruel to wingedthings, he is brave and circumspect withal. He has a natural objectionto be trodden on even for a patriotic cause; if the risk is too great,“he’ll run away till he’s bigger, but then he’ll fight. ”[258] _Coriolanus. _ (The Students’ Shakespeare, Cambridge UniversityPress. ) Volumnia indeed refers to “children” in her petition (V. iii. 118), but this seems merely a reminiscence of Plutarch’s language, foreverywhere else young Marcius is treated as an only child. Passing from Coriolanus’ kinsfolk to his friends, we meet withvery similar results. Titus Lartius is sketched very slightly inShakespeare, but a good deal more visually than in Plutarch, who saysof him in two sentences that he was “one of the valliantest men theRomaines had at that time,” and that, having entered Corioli withMarcius, he, “when he was gotten out, had some leysure to bring theRomaines with more safetie into the cittie. ” Cominius is hardly moredistinct. As Consul he conducts the campaign against Corioli; welcomesMarcius from his first exploit, and gives him the opportunity for hissecond, in the double engagement that then took place; thereafterofficially rewards and eulogises his gallantry, which “he commendedbeyond the moone”; and that is practically all that is said abouthim. In the play, though in it too his part was a small one, he hascharacteristics of his own which Shakespeare has created for himwithout much help from these vague suggestions. Nor has Marcius, inthe original story, any intimate association with either of his fellowsoldiers. It is stated that at first he is in Lartius’ division of thearmy, and afterwards joins Cominius and wins his praises, but it isonly in the affair of Corioli that their names are mentioned together. In the drama, however, Menenius is undoubtedly the chief of the youngman’s friends as well as one of the most prominent persons; and whathas Plutarch to say about him? He is introduced only in connectionwith the fable which he tells the seceders to the Holy Hill, and,apart from the fable, all that we hear of him is confined to thefollowing few sentences: The Senate being afeard of their departure, dyd send unto them certaine of the pleasauntest olde men, and the most acceptable to the people among them. Of those, Menenius Agrippa was he, who was sent for chief man of the message from the Senate. He, after many good persuasions and gentle requestes made to the people, on the behalfe of the Senate, knit up his oration in the ende, with a notable tale. . . . These persuasions pacified the people, conditionally, that the Senate would graunte there should be yerely chosen five magistrates, which they now call _Tribuni Plebis_. Even the few particulars given in this passage Shakespeare alters orneglects. It is not to the secessionists on the Mons Sacer, but to astreet mob in Rome, that the fable is told. It not merely serves tolubricate in advance the negotiations that result in the tribunate,but effectually discomfits the murmurers, and Menenius learns onlysubsequently and to his surprise that the Senate has meanwhile concededthe political innovation. There is no hint in Plutarch of his beinghimself one of the patricians, and if Shakespeare glanced at Holland’sLivy he would see that in point of fact tradition assigned to hima plebeian origin. [259] Above all he has no dealings whatever withMarcius, and, according to Livy, died a year before his banishment. Plutarch thus furnishes hardly anything for the portrait of the man,and nothing at all for his relations with the hero. [259] Placuit igitur oratorem ad plebem mitti Menenium Agrippam,facundum virum et, quod inde oriundus erat, plebi carum. (II. 32Weissenborn & Müller’s edition. )And it is the same, or nearly the same, if we turn from Marcius’friends to his enemies. The tribunes, for example, are comparatively colourless. On theinstitution of the new magistracy, Junius Brutus, and Sicinius Vellutus were the first tribunes of the people that were chosen, who had only bene the causes and procurers of this sedition. Then we hear of their opposition to the colonisation of Velitraebecause it was infected with the plague, and to a new war with theVolscians, because it was in the interest only of the rich; but theyhave nothing to do with the rejection of Marcius when he is candidatefor the consulship. Only at a later time, when he inveighs againstthe relief of the people and the tribunitian power, do they stir up apopular tumult and insist that he shall answer their charges, adoptingtactics not unlike those that are attributed to them in the play. All this was spoken to one of these two endes, either that Martius against his nature should be constrained to humble him selfe, and to abase his hawty and fierce minde: or els if he continued still in his stowtnes, he should incurre the peoples displeasure and ill-will so farre, that he should never possibly winne them againe. Which they hoped would rather fall out so, then otherwise; as in deede they gest unhappely, considering Martius nature and disposition. He answers not only with his wonted boldness, but “gave him selfe inhis wordes to thunder and looke therewithall so grimly as though hemade no reckoning of the matter. ” This affords his opponents theirchance: Whereupon Sicinius, the cruellest and stowtest of the Tribunes, after he had whispered a little with his companions, dyd openly pronounce in the face of all the people, Martius as condemned by the Tribunes to dye. Matters do not end here. A formal trial is agreed to, at which theresourceful magistrates procure the sentence of banishment, partly byarranging that the votes shall be taken not by centuries but by tribes,so that “the poore needy people” and the rabble may be in the majority,partly by eking out the indictments to which they are pledged toconfine themselves, with other accusations. Then they drop out. It may be observed that Brutus is only once named, and nothing is saidof his disposition or ways. Even of Sicinius, who is more conspicuous,we only read that he was “the cruellest and stowtest” of the two. Butit is less their character than their policy that occupies Plutarch,and even their policy is presented in an ambiguous light. They aredescribed as the only authors of the rising which culminated in theexodus from the city; but with that exodus Plutarch on the whole seemsto sympathise. They are described as “seditious tribunes” when theyoppose the colonisation of Velitrae and the renewal of the war; butPlutarch shows they had good grounds for doing so. Even their actionagainst Coriolanus for opposing the grant of corn and advocating theabolition of their office, was from their own point of view, andperhaps from any point of view, perfectly legitimate. We can only saythat in the measures they took they were violent and unscrupulous. Yetwhen we consider the bitterness of party feeling and the exigenciesof public life, they seem no worse than many statesmen who have beenaccounted great. Even their overt policy then is more respectablethan that of Shakespeare’s pair of demagogues, and of course it isShakespeare who has created, or all but created, for them their vulgarbut life-like characters. Nor are things greatly different in the case of the third of Marcius’enemies, Tullus Aufidius, though Plutarch tells us somewhat more abouthim, and Shakespeare in the main fills in rather than alters Plutarch’ssketch. The first mention of him occurs when the exile determines onhis revenge. Now in the cittie of Antium, there was one called Tullus Aufidius, who for his riches, as also for his nobilitie and valliantnes, was honoured emong the Volsces as a king. Martius knewe very well that Tullus dyd more malice and envie him, then he dyd all the Romaines besides: bicause that many times in battells where they met, they were ever at the encounter one against another, like lustie coragious youthes, striving in all emulation of honour, and had encountered many times together. In so muche, as besides the common quarrell betweene them, there was bred a marvelous private hate one against another. Yet notwithstanding, considering that Tullus Aufidius was a man of a greate minde, and that he above all other of the Volsces, most desired revenge of the Romaines, for the injuries they had done unto them; he dyd an act that confirmed the true wordes of an auncient Poet, who sayed: It is a thing full harde, mans anger to withstand. After the welcome at Antium, Tullus and Coriolanus combine to bring onthe war and are entrusted with the joint command; but Tullus choosesto remain at home to defend his country, while Coriolanus conducts theoperations abroad, in which he is wonderfully successful. A truce hegrants the Romans is however the occasion for a rift in their alliance. This was the first matter wherewith the Volsces (that most envied Martius glorie and authoritie) dyd charge Martius with. Among those, Tullus was chief: who though he had receyved no private injurie or displeasure of Martius, yet the common faulte and imperfection of mans nature wrought in him, and it grieved him to see his owne reputation bleamished, through Martius great fame and honour, and so him selfe to be lesse esteemed of the Volsces, then he was before. We do not hear of him after this till Coriolanus has come back from thesiege of Rome. Now when Martius was returned againe into the cittie of Antium from his voyage, Tullus that hated him and could no lenger abide him for the feare he had of his authoritie; sought divers meanes to make him out of the waye, thinking that if he let slippe that present time, he should never recover the like and fit occasion againe. So he contrives and effects the assassination of his rival. Thus the chief features of Aufidius’ character and the story of itsdevelopment, the emulation that is dislodged by generosity, thegenerosity that is submerged in envy, were already supplied forShakespeare’s use. But the darker hues are lacking in the earlierpicture. There is neither the unscrupulous rancour in his initialrelations with Marcius that Shakespeare attributes to them, nor thehypocritical pretence at the close. Plutarch does not bring thecontrast with Coriolanus to a head. And in connection with this itshould be observed that Tullus appears late and intervenes onlyincidentally. Less than a sentence is spared to his earlier antagonismwith Coriolanus, nor is he present in the march on Rome or duringthe siege. And this is typical of Plutarch’s treatment of all thesubordinate persons. They enter for a moment, and are dismissed. Butin Shakespeare they accompany the action throughout, and do this insuch a way that they illustrate and influence the character and careerof the hero, and have their own characters and careers illustrated andinfluenced by him. They are all, even young Marcius by description,introduced in the first four scenes, with an indication of theirgeneral peculiarities and functions, and with the single exception ofTitus Lartius, they continue to reappear almost to the end. The recurrent presence of the agents of itself involves considerablemodification in the conduct of the plot, but in this respect too we areat first more struck by the resemblances than the differences betweenthe two versions; and it is possible to exhibit the story in such amanner that its main lines seem the same in both. The setting is furnished by the primitive Roman state when it hasnewly assumed its republican form. Less than a score of years before,it passed through its first great crisis in its successful rejectionof the kingship, and ever since has been engaged in a life-and-deathstruggle with representatives of the exiled dynasty and with jealousneighbours somewhat similar in power and character to itself. It hasmade good its position under the direction of a proud and valiantaristocracy, but not without paying the price. The constant wars haveresulted in widespread poverty and distress among the lower classestill they can bear it no longer and demand constitutional changes bywhich, as they think, their misery may be redressed. Rome is thusconfronted with the internal peril of revolution as well as the foreignperil of invasion, and the future mistress of the world runs therisk of being cut off at the outset of her career by tribal broilsand domestic quarrels. It is this that gives the legend a certaingrandeur of import. The Senate, finding itself and its partisans inthe minority, concedes to the commons rights which have the effect ofweakening its old authority, and for that reason are bitterly resentedby upholders of the old order. Meanwhile, however, Rome is able to takethe field against the Volscians and gains a decisive victory over them,mainly owing to the soldiership of the young patrician, Marcius, whowins for himself in the campaign the name of Coriolanus. The ability hehas shown, the glory he has achieved, the gratitude that is his due,seem to mark him out for a leading role. He almost deserves, and almostattains, the highest dignity the little state has to confer: but he hasalready given proof of his scorn for popular demands and oppositionto the recent innovations, and at the last moment he is set aside. Not only that, but the new magistrates, in dread of his influence,incite the people against him and procure his condemnation to death,which, however, is afterwards mitigated to banishment. His friends ofthe nobility dare not or cannot interpose, and he departs into exile. Then his civic virtue breaks beneath the strain, and, reconcilinghimself with the Volscians, he leads them against his country. Nothingcan stay his advance, and he is on the point of reducing the city,when, yielding to filial affection what he had refused to patrioticobligation, he relinquishes his revenge when he has it within hisgrasp. But this gives a pretext to those among his new allies who envyhis greatness, and soon afterwards he is treacherously slain. This general scheme is common to the biography and the play, and manyof the details, whether presented or recounted, are derived from theformer by the latter. Such, in addition to those already mentionedin another connection, are Marcius’ first exploit in the battle withTarquin, when he bestrides a citizen, avenges his injury, and iscrowned with the garland of oak; the dispersion of the soldiers to takespoil in Corioli, and Marcius’ consequent indignation; the response tohis call for volunteers; his petition on behalf of his former host;the initial approval of his candidature by the plebs from a feeling ofshame; the custom of candidates wearing the humble gown and showingtheir old wounds at an election; the popular joy at his banishment;the muster of nobles to see him to the gates; his popularity withthe Volscian soldiery and their eagerness to serve under him; theperturbation and mutual recriminations in Rome at his approach; hisreception of former friends when they petition him for mercy; thedevice of interrupting his speech in Antium lest his words shouldsecure his acquittal. To this extent Shakespeare and Plutarch agree, and the agreement isimportant and far-reaching. Has the dramatist, then, been contentto embellish and supplement the diction of the story, and give newlife to the characters, while leaving the fable unchanged except inso far as these other modifications may indirectly affect it? On thecontrary we shall see that the design is thoroughly recast, that eachof the borrowed details receives a new interpretation or a heightenedcolouring, that significant insertions and no less significantomissions concur to alter the effect of the whole. Sometimes Shakespeare’s innovations followed almost necessarily andwithout any remoter result from the greater fullness and concretenessof his picture, and the care with which he grouped the persons roundhis hero. Such are many of the conversations and subordinate scenes,by means of which the story is conveyed to us in all its reality andmovement; the episode of Valeria’s call, the description and words ofMarcius’ little son, Aufidius’ self-disclosure to his soldiers and hislieutenant, even the interview between the Volscian scout and the Romaninformer. Still in this class, but more important, are the inventions that haveno authority in Plutarch, but that are not opposed to and may even havebeen suggested by some of his hints. Thus in the _Life_, Volumnia’sinterposition is not required to make Marcius submit himself to thejudgment of the people, and in this connection she is not mentionedat all; but at any rate her action in Shakespeare does not belie theinfluence that Plutarch ascribes to her. Occasionally, again, the deviation from and observance of thebiographer’s statements follow each other so fast, and are both sodominated by truth to his spirit, that it needs some vigilance to noteall the points where the routes diverge or coincide. Take, for example,the account of the candidature: Shortely after this, Martius stoode for the Consulshippe; and the common people favored his sute, thinking it would be a shame to denie, and refuse, the chiefest noble man of bloude, and most worthie persone of Rome, and specially him that had done so great service and good to the common wealth. For the custome of Rome was at that time, that such as dyd sue for any office, should for certen dayes before be in the market place, only with a poore gowne on their backes, and without any coate underneath, to praye the cittizens to remember them at the daye of election: which was thus devised, either to move the people the more, by requesting them in suche meane apparell, or els bicause they might shewe them their woundes they had gotten in the warres in the service of the common wealth, as manifest markes and testimonie of their valliantnes. . . . Now Martius following this custome, shewed many woundes and cuttes upon his bodie, which he had receyved in seventeene yeres service at the warres, and in many sundrie battells, being ever the formest man that dyd set out feete to fight. So that there was not a man emong the people, but was ashamed of him selfe, to refuse so valliant a man: and one of them sayed to another, “We must needes chuse him Consul, there is no remedie. ” But when the daye of election was come, and that Martius came to the market place with great pompe, accompanied with all the Senate, and the whole Nobilitie of the cittie about him, who sought to make him Consul, with the greatest instance and intreatie they could, or ever attempted for any man or matter: then the love and good will of the common people, turned straight to an hate and envie toward him, fearing to put this office of soveraine authoritie into his handes, being a man somewhat partiall toward the nobilitie, and of great credit and authoritie amongest the Patricians, and as one they might doubt would take away alltogether the libertie from the people. Now Shakespeare borrows from Plutarch the explanation of the ratherremarkable circumstance that the people at first gave Martius theirsupport, and, like Plutarch, he emphasises it by giving it twice over,though he avoids the dullness of repetition by making one of thestatements serious and one humorous. The first is put in the mouth ofthe official of the Capitol: He hath so planted his honours in their eyes, and his actions in their hearts, that for their tongues to be silent, and not confess so much, were a kind of ingrateful injury: to report otherwise, were a malice, that giving itself the lie, would pluck reproof and rebuke from every ear that heard it. (II. ii. 32. )The second is given in the language of the plebeians themselves: _First Citizen. _ Once, if he do require our voices, we ought not to deny him. _Second Citizen. _ We may, sir, if we will. _Third Citizen. _ We have power in ourselves to do it, but it is a power that we have no power to do: for if he show us his wounds and tell us his deeds, we are to put our tongues into those wounds and speak for them; so, if he tell us his noble deeds, we must also tell him our noble acceptance of them. Ingratitude is monstrous, and for the multitude to be ingrateful, were to make a monster of the multitude: of the which we being members, should bring ourselves to be monstrous members. (II. iii. 1. )But this is only before he wears the candidate’s gown, for, otherwisethan in Plutarch, he does not show his wounds—“No man saw them,” saythe citizens (III. iii. 173)—and gives such offence by his contumacythat it is on this the tribunes are able to take further action. Inthe biography he is rejected only because the indiscreet advocacy ofthe nobles makes the plebeians fear that he will be too much of apartizan. He shows no reluctance either to stand or to comply with theconditions. All these things are the inventions of Shakespeare, and aremade to bring about the catastrophe which in his authority was due tovery different causes. Nevertheless, they are suggested by Plutarch inso far as they are merely additional illustrations of that excess ofaristocratic pride, on which Plutarch, too, insists as the source ofMarcius’ offences and misfortunes. But this example merges into another kind of alteration which mayprimarily have been due to the need of greater economy and dramaticcondensation, but which in its results involves a great deal more. In Plutarch, Coriolanus’ unsuccessful candidature has, except as itadds to his private irritation, no immediate result; and only sometime later does his banishment follow on quite another occasion. Cornhad come from Sicily, and in the dearth it was proposed to distributeit gratis: but Marcius inveighed against such a course and urgedthat the time was opportune for the abolition of the Tribunate, ina speech which, in the play, he “speaks again” when his election ischallenged. But the _Life_ reports it only as delivered in the Senate;and the tribunes, who are present, at once leave and raise a tumult,attempt to arrest him and are resisted. The senators, to allay thecommotion, resolve to sell the corn cheap, and thus end the discontentagainst themselves, but the tribunes persist in their attack on theringleader, hoping, as we have seen, that he will prove refractory andgive a handle against himself. When he does this and the death-sentenceis pronounced, there is still so much feeling of fairness that alegal trial is demanded, which the tribunes consent to grant him, andto which he consents to submit on the stipulation that he shall becharged only on the one count of aspiring to make himself king. Butwhen the assembly is held the tribunes break their promise and accusehim of seeking to withhold the corn and abolish the Tribunate, and ofdistributing the spoils of the Antiates only among his own followers. For shortly after the fall of Corioli, the people had refused to marchagainst the Volsces, and Coriolanus, organising a private expedition,had won a victory, taken great booty, and given it to all those who hadbeen of the party. So the unexpectedness and injustice of this lastindictment throws him out. This matter was most straunge of all to Martius, looking least to have been burdened with that, as with any matter of offence. Whereupon being burdened on the sodaine, and having no ready excuse to make even at that instant: he beganne to fall a praising of the souldiers that had served with him in that jorney. But those that were not with him, being the greater number, cried out so lowde, and made such a noyse, that he could not be heard. To conclude, when they came to tell the voyces of the Tribes, there were three voyces odde, which condemned him to be banished for life. Now there are several things to notice in Shakespeare’s very differentversion. The first is the tact with which he compresses a greatmany remotely connected incidents into one. He antedates the affairabout the corn with Marcius’ speech against the distribution and theTribunate, and only brings it in as a supplementary circumstance inthe prosecution. The real centre of the situation is Coriolanus’behaviour when a candidate, and round this all else is grouped: andthis behaviour, it will be remembered, is altogether a fabrication onShakespeare’s part. Two other things follow from this. In the first place, the unreasonableness of the Romans as a wholeis considerably mitigated. More prominence, indeed, is given to themachinations of the tribunes, but on the other hand the body ofelectors is not only acting less on its own initiative than on theprompting of its guides, but it proceeds quite properly to avengegrievances that do exist and avert dangers that do threaten. And thisexcuse is to some extent valid for the leaders too. In Plutarch, theSenate has come to terms on the question of the corn, yet Coriolanus ishounded down for an opposition which has turned out to be futile. Inthe play, though he has met with a check, both he and his friends hopethat even now he may win the election, and the evils that would resultto the people from his consulship are still to be feared. Again, Plutarch dwells on the unfairness of the arrangements for takingthe votes, which has the effect of packing the jury: And first of all the Tribunes would in any case (whatsoever became of it) that the people would proceede to geve their voyces by Tribes, and not by hundreds: for by this meanes the multitude of the poore needy people (and all such rabble as had nothing to lose, and had lesse regard of honestie before their eyes) came to be of greater force (bicause their voyces were numbered by the polle) then the noble honest cittizens: whose persones and purse dyd duetifully serve the common wealth in their warres. This is not exactly omitted in the drama, but it is slurred over, andPlutarch’s clear explanation is entirely suppressed, so that few ofShakespeare’s readers and still fewer of his hearers could possiblysuspect the significance. _Sicinius. _ Have you a catalogue Of all the voices that we have procured Set down by the poll? |
_Ædile. _ I have; ’tis ready. _Sicinius. _ Have you collected them by tribes? _Ædile. _ I have. (III. iii. 8. )Above all, the accusations brought against Coriolanus, in Shakespeare,are substantially just. He may not seek to wind himself into apower tyrannical, if we take _tyrant_, as Plutarch certainly didbut as Shakespeare probably did not, in the strict classical senseof _tyrannus_, but with his disregard of aged custom and his avowedopinions of the people, there can be no doubt that he would havewielded the consular powers tyrannically, in the ordinary acceptationof the word. For there can be as little doubt about his ill-will to themasses and his abhorrence of the tribunitian system. And it is on thesegrounds that he is condemned. It is very noticeable that the divisionof the Antiate spoil, which in Plutarch is the most decisive andunwarrantable allegation against him, is mentioned by Shakespeare onlyin advance as a subordinate point that may be brought forward, but, asa matter of fact, it is never urged. _Brutus. _ In this point charge him home, that he affects Tyrannical power: if he evade us there, Enforce him with his envy to the people, And that the spoil got on the Antiates Was ne’er distributed. (III. iii. 1. )Shakespeare makes no further use of a circumstance to which Plutarchattaches so great importance that he dwells on it twice over and givesit the prominent place in the narrative of the trial. This piece ofsharp practice becomes quite negligible in the play, and the onlychicanery of which the tribunes are guilty in the whole transactionis that, as in the _Life_, but more explicitly, they goad Coriolanusto a fit of rage in which he avows his real sentiments—a tacticalexpedient that many politicians would consider perfectly permissible. Shakespeare, as has often been pointed out, in some ways shows evenless appreciation than Plutarch of the merits of the people; so it isall the more significant that, at the crisis of the play, he softensdown and obliterates the worst traits in their proceedings againsttheir enemy. And the second thing we observe is that by all this Shakespeareemphasises the insolence and truculence of the hero. It is Coriolanus’pride that turns his candidature, which begins under the happiestauspices, to a snare. It is still his pride that plays into thetribunes’ hands and makes him repeat in mere defiance his offensivespeech. It is again his pride, not any calumny about his misapplyingthe profits of his raid, that gives the signal for the adversesentence. Just as in this respect the plebs is represented as on thewhole less ignoble than Plutarch makes it, so Coriolanus’ conduct isportrayed as more insensate. And this two-fold tendency, to palliate the guilt of Rome and to stressthe violence that provoked it, appears in the more conspicuous ofShakespeare’s subsequent deviations from his authority. In Plutarch, Tullus and Aufidius have great difficulty in persuadingthe magnates of Antium to renew the war, and only succeed when theRomans expel the Volscian residents from their midst. On a holy daye common playes being kept in Rome, apon some suspition, or false reporte, they made proclamation by sound of trumpet, that all the Volsces should avoyde out of Rome before sunne set. Some thincke this was a crafte and deceipt of Martius, who sent one to Rome to the Consuls, to accuse the Volsces falsely, advertising them howe they had made a conspiracie to set upon them, whilest they were busie in seeing these games, and also to sette their cittie a fyre. At any rate, the proclamation brings about a declaration ofhostilities, and war speedily follows. Now in Shakespeare, Lartius, for fear of attack, has to surrenderCorioli even before Coriolanus meets with his rebuff. _Coriolanus. _ Tullus Aufidius then had made new head? _Lartius. _ He had, my lord, and that it was which caused Our swifter composition. (III. i. 1. )Moreover, all the preparations of the Volsces are complete for a newincursion. Cominius, indeed, cannot believe that they will again temptfortune so soon. They are worn, lord consul, so That we shall hardly in our ages see Their banners wave again. (III. i. 6. )But Cominius is wrong. In the little intercalated scene between theRoman and the Volsce, we learn that they have mustered an army whichthe latter thus describes: A most royal one; the centurions and their charges, distinctly billeted, already in the entertainment, and to be on foot at an hour’s warning. (IV. iii. 47. )And Aufidius welcomes Coriolanus to the feast with the words: O, come, go in, And take our friendly senators by the hands: Who now are here, taking their leaves of me, Who am prepared against your territories, Though not for Rome itself. (IV. v. 137. )The arrival of such an auxiliary, however, at once alters that plan,and we presently learn that they are now going to make direct for thecity: To-morrow; to-day; presently; you shall have the drum struck up this afternoon: ’tis, as it were, a parcel of their feast, and to be executed ere they wipe their lips. (IV. v. 229. )Now in Plutarch we cannot but be struck by the pusillanimous partthe Romans play when menaced by their great peril. They answer thedeclaration of war with a bravado which events quite fail to justify,but, despite the warning they have received, they make no resistanceand do not even prepare for it. In Shakespeare there is more excuse forthem. They are taken completely by surprise. Their foe has almost beentheir match before, when they were equipped to meet him, and had theirchampion on their side. Now that champion is not only gone, but is atthe head of the invading army. Nor is this all. In Plutarch, Coriolanus begins operations by makinga raid on the Roman territories with light-armed troops, retiringagain with his plunder. Still the Romans do not take any precautions. In a second campaign he gets within five miles of the city, and stillthey do nothing but send an embassage. Even when, at the peril of hispopularity, he grants them a truce of thirty days, they make no useof it for defence, but only continue to transmit arrogant or abjectmessages. This further opportunity, too, which they so strangelyneglect, is wisely omitted by Shakespeare. With him the irruption isswift and sudden beyond the grasp of human thought. Coriolanus breaksacross the border and strikes straight for Rome. There is no timefor defensive measures, no possibility of aid. Even so, the part theRomans play is not so heroic as might be expected, but it is at leastintelligible and much less dastardly than in the history. Or take another instance. In describing the first inroad of Coriolanus,Plutarch writes: His chiefest purpose was, to increase still the malice and dissention betweene the nobilitie, and the communaltie: and to drawe that on, he was very carefull to keepe the noble mens landes and goods safe from harme and burning, but spoyled all the whole countrie besides, and would suffer no man to take or hurte any thing of the noble mens. This made greater sturre and broyle betweene the nobilitie and people, then was before. For the noble men fell out with the people, bicause they had so unjustly banished a man of so great valure and power. The people on thother side, accused the nobilitie, how they had procured Martius to make these warres, to be revenged of them: bicause it pleased them to see their goodes burnt and spoyled before their eyes, whilest them selves were well at ease, and dyd behold the peoples losses and misfortunes, and knowing their owne goods safe and out of daunger: and howe the warre was not made against the noble men, that had the enemie abroad, to keepe that they had in safety. In Shakespeare there is no word of Coriolanus making any suchdistinction either from policy or partisanship: he is incensed againstall the inhabitants of Rome, “the dastard nobles” quite as much as theoffending plebeians. And, on the other hand, though the patriciansrevile the populace and its leaders, there is no division betweenthe orders, and they show no inclination to disregard the solidarityof their interests. This contrast becomes more marked in the sequel. According to Plutarch, the people in panic desire to recall the exile;but the Senate assembled upon it, would in no case yeld to that. Who either dyd it of a selfe will to be contrarie to the peoples desire: or bicause Martius should not returne through the grace and favour of the people. Afterwards, however, when he encamps so near Rome, the majority has itsway: For there was no Consul, Senatour, nor Magistrate, that durst once contrarie the opinion of the people, for the calling home againe of Martius. Accordingly, the first envoys are instructed to announce to him hisre-instatement in all his rights. In Shakespeare’s account the action of Rome becomes much moredignified. In none of the negociations, in no chance word of citizen,tribune or senator, is there any hint of the sentence on Coriolanusbeing revoked. Only when peace is concluded does his recall followquite naturally, as an act of gratitude, in the burst of jubilantrelief: Unshout the shout that banish’d Marcius, Repeal him with the welcome of his mother. (V. v. 4. )This, too, is one of the indications of Shakespeare’s feeling for Romangreatness, that we should bear in mind when elsewhere he seems to showless sense even than Plutarch of her civic virtue. The last notable deviation of the play from the biography occurs in thepassage which deals with the murder of Coriolanus, and the differenceis such as to make the victim far more responsible for the crime. In Plutarch, after his return to Antium, Tullus, wishing to make awaywith him, demands that he should be deposed from his authority andtaken to task. Marcius replies that he is willing to resign, if thisbe required by all the lords, and also to give account to the peopleif they will hear him. Thereupon a common council is called, at whichproceedings begin by certain orators inciting popular feeling againsthim. When they had tolde their tales, Martius rose up to make them aunswer. Now, notwithstanding the mutinous people made a marvelous great noyse, yet when they sawe him, for the reverence they bare unto his valliantnes, they quieted them selves, and gave still audience to alledge with leysure what he could for his purgation. Moreover, the honestest men of the Antiates, and who most rejoyced in peace, shewed by their countenaunce that they would heare him willingly, and judge also according to their conscience. Whereupon Tullus fearing that if he dyd let him speake, he would prove his innocencie to the people, bicause emongest other things he had an eloquent tongue, besides that the first good service he had done to the people of the Volsces, dyd winne him more favour, then these last accusations could purchase him displeasure: and furthermore, the offence they layed to his charge, was a testimonie of the good will they ought him, for they would never have thought he had done them wrong for that they tooke not the cittie of Rome, if they had not bene very neare taking of it, by meanes of his approche and conduction. For these causes Tullus thought he might no lenger delaye his pretence and enterprise, neither to tarie for the mutining and rising of the common people against him: wherefore those that were of the conspiracie, beganne to crie out that he was not to be heard, nor that they would not suffer a traytour to usurpe tyrannicall power over the tribe of the Volsces, who would not yeld up his estate and authoritie. And in saying these wordes, they all fell upon him, and killed him in the market place, none of the people once offering to rescue him. Howbeit it is a clear case, that this murder was not generally consented unto, of the most parte of the Volsces: for men came out of all partes to honour his bodie, and dyd honorablie burie him, setting out his tombe with great store of armour and spoyles, as the tombe of a worthie persone and great captaine. Here the conspirators do not give him a chance, but kill him before aword passes his lips. In the tragedy, on the contrary, all might havebeen well, if in his rage of offended pride at Tullus’ insults andtaunts, he had not been carried away with his vaunts and remindersto excite and excuse the passions of his hearers. And thus withShakespeare his ungovernable insolence is now made the cause of hisdeath, just as before it has been accentuated as the cause of hisbanishment. Still, though the exasperation against Coriolanus in Rome as in Corioliis thus in a measure justified, his own violence also receives itsapology. In the latter case it is the provocation of Aufidius thatrouses him to frenzy. In the former, it is the ineptitude of thecitizens that fills him with scorn for their claims. And it is withreference to this and his whole conception of the Roman plebs thatShakespeare has made the most momentous and remarkable change in hisstory, the consideration of which we have purposely left to the last. The discussion of the difference in Plutarch’s and in Shakespeare’sattitude to the people will show us some of the most important aspectsof the play. CHAPTER IIITHE GRAND CONTRAST. SHAKESPEARE’S CONCEPTION OF THE SITUATION IN ROMEIt is difficult to describe with any certainty the reasons forShakespeare’s variations from Plutarch in his treatment of the people. They may, like some of those already discussed, be due to the dramaticrequirement of compression. They may be due to the deliberate purposeof exonerating the hero. They may, and this is more likely, have arisenquite naturally and unconsciously from Shakespeare’s indifference toquestions of constitutional theory and his inability to understand theideals of an antique self-governing commonwealth controlled by allits free members as a body. In any case the result is a picture ofthe primitive society, from which some of Plutarch’s inconsistencies,but with them some of the most typical traits, have been removed. Thegrand characteristic which the Tudor Englishman rejects, or all butrejects, is the intuitive political capacity which Plutarch, perhapsin idealising retrospect, attributes to all classes of citizens in theyoung republic, and which at any rate in after development formed thedistinctive genius of the Roman state. He has indeed an inarticulatesense of it that enables him to suggest the general impression. Hecould not but have a sense of it; for few men have been so pentratedwith the greatness of later Rome as he, and he seems to have felt, asthe shapers of the tradition and as Plutarch felt, that such a treemust have sprung from a healthy seed. So when we examine what his storyinvolves, we have evidence enough of a general spirit of moderation,accommodation, compromise, that flow from and minister to an efficientpractical patriotism; an ingrafted love of the city; and a convictionof the community of interests among high and low alike. Mr. WatkissLloyd puts this with great emphasis, and on the whole with great truth. Rome is preserved from cleaving in the midst by the virtues of the state, the reverence for the political majority which pervades both contending parties. The senate averts the last evil by the timely concession of the tribunitian power first, and then by sacrifice of a favourite champion of their own order, rather than civil war shall break out and all go to ruin in quarrel for the privilege and supremacy of a part. Rather than this they will concede, and trust to temporising, to negociating, to management, to the material influence of their position and the effect of their own merits and achievements, to secure their power or recover it hereafter. Among the people, on the other hand, there is also a restraining sentiment, a religion that holds back from the worst abuses of successful insurrection and excited faction. The proposition to kill Marcius is easily given up. Even the tribunes are capable of being persuaded to forego the extremity of rancour against the enemy of the people and of their authority, when he is fairly in their power, and commute death for banishment; and, the victory achieved, they counsel tranquility, as Menenius, on the other hand, softens down; and all goes smoothly again like a reconciled household, after experience of the miseries of adjusting wrongs by debate and anger. Similarly the interests of the country are supreme when Coriolanus,with his new allies, advances to the attack: Some impatience of the people against the tribunes is natural, but the tribunes with all their faults, take their humiliation not ignobly, and the nobles never for a moment dream of getting a party triumph by foreign aid. The danger of the country engrosses all, and at last Volumnia presses upon her son the right and the noble, and employs all the influences of domestic and natural affection—but all entirely to the great political and national end,—and is as disregardful of the fortunes or interests of the aristocratical party, which might have hoped to seize the opportunity for recovering lost ground, as she is apparently unaware, unconscious, regardless of what may be the consequences personally to her much loved son. And Mr. Lloyd clinches his plea by his estimate of the catastrophe. In the concluding scene we appear to see the supremacy of Rome assured. . . . In the senate house of the Volscians is perpetrated the assassination, from the disgrace of which the better spirit of the Romans preserved their city: Aufidius and his fellows with equal envy and ingratitude take the place of the plotting tribunes, and the senators are powerless to control the conspirators and mob of citizens who abet them. They are, in short, in comparison with Rome self-condemned; and thisbecomes more manifest if we contrast the finale of the play with theconcluding sentences in Plutarch, which Shakespeare leaves unused. Now Martius being dead, the whole state of the Volsces hartely wished him alive again. For first of all they fell out with the Æques (who were their friendes and confederates) touching preheminence and place: and this quarrell grew on so farre betwene them, and frayes and murders fell out apon it one with another. After that, the Romaines overcame them in battell, in which Tullus was slaine in the field, and the flower of all their force was put to the sworde: so that they were compelled to accept most shameful conditions of peace, in yelding them selves subject unto the conquerors, and promising to be obedient at their commandement. It is at first sight rather strange that Shakespeare should give noindication that the Volscians, first by condoning Tullus’ crime, thebreach of friendship from desire for pre-eminence, then by repeatingit as a community, prepare the way for their own downfall. Perhaps hefelt that no finger-post was necessary, and that all must see how inthe long run such a state must inevitably succumb to the greater moralforce of Rome. A few slight qualifications would have to be made in Mr. Lloyd’sstatement of his thesis to render it absolutely correct, but it is truein the main. Nevertheless, true though it be, it makes no account oftwo very important considerations. One of these is that despite thegeneral appreciation which Shakespeare shows for the attitude of theRoman _Civitas_, he has no perception of the real issues between theplebeians and the patricians, or of the course which the controversytook, though these matters constitute the chief claim of the citizensof early Rome to the credit they receive in Plutarch’s narrative. Andthe other consideration is, that Shakespeare’s general appreciation ofthe community he describes is perceptible only when we view the play ata distance and in its mass: the impression in detail as we follow itfrom scene to scene is by no means so favourable to either party. The first point is well brought out by the total omission in the dramaof the initial episode in the discussion between the populace and thesenate, and between the populace and Marcius. And the omission is allthe more noticeable since Plutarch gives it particular prominence asdirectly leading to the establishment of the tribunate, which thedrama, as we shall see, ascribes merely to an insignificant breadriot. Here is what Shakespeare must have read, and what slips from himwithout leaving more than a trace, though to modern feeling it is oneof the most impressive passages in the whole _Life_. Now (Martius) being growen to great credit and authoritie in Rome for his valliantnes, it fortuned there grewe sedition in the cittie, bicause the Senate dyd favour the riche against the people, who dyd complaine of the sore oppression of userers, of whom they borowed money. For those that had litle, were yet spoyled of that litle they had by their creditours, for lack of abilitie to paye the userie: who offered their goodes to be solde, to them that would geve most. And suche as had nothing left, their bodies were layed holde of, and they were made their bonde men, notwithstanding all the woundes and cuttes they shewed, which they had receyved in many battells, fighting for defence of their countrie and common wealth: of the which, the last warre they made, was against the Sabynes, wherein they fought apon the promise the riche men had made them, that from thenceforth they would intreate them more gently, and also upon the worde of Marcus Valerius chief of the Senate, who by authoritie of the counsell, and in the behalfe of the riche, sayed they should performe that they had promised. But after that they had faithfully served in this last battell of all, where they overcame their enemies, seeing they were never a whit the better, nor more gently intreated, and that the Senate would geve no eare to them, but make as though they had forgotten their former promise, and suffered them to be made slaves and bonde men to their creditours, and besides, to be turned out of all that ever they had; they fell then even to flat rebellion and mutinie, and to sturre up daungerous tumultes within the cittie. The Romaines enemies, hearing of this rebellion, dyd straight enter the territories of Rome with a marvelous great power, spoyling and burning all as they came. Whereupon the Senate immediatly made open proclamation by sounde of trumpet, that all those which were of lawfull age to carie weapon, should come and enter their names into the muster masters booke, to goe to the warres: but no man obeyed their commaundement. Whereupon their chief magistrates, and many of the Senate, beganne to be of divers opinions emong them selves. For some thought it was reason, they should somewhat yeld to the poore peoples request, and that they should a little qualifie the severitie of the lawe. Other held hard against that opinion, and that was Martius for one. For he alleaged, that the creditours losing their money they had lent, was not the worst thing that was thereby: but that the lenitie that was favored, was a beginning of disobedience, and that the prowde attempt of the communaltie, was to abolish lawe, and to bring all to confusion. Therefore he sayed; if the Senate were wise, they should betimes prevent, and quenche this ill favored and worse ment beginning. The Senate met many dayes in consultation about it: but in the end they concluded nothing. The poore common people seeing no redresse, gathered them selves one daye together, and one encoraging another, they all forsooke the cittie, and encamped them selves upon a hill, called at this daye the holy hill, alongest the river of Tyber, offering no creature any hurte or violence, or making any shewe of actuall rebellion; saving that they cried as they went up and down, that the riche men had driven them out of the cittie, and that all Italie through they should finde ayer, water and ground to burie them in. Moreover, they sayed, to dwell at Rome was nothing els but to be slaine, or hurte with continuell warres and fighting for defence of the riche mens goodes. Plutarch goes on to tell how in this crisis the Senate adopts aconciliatory attitude, and how after the fable of Menenius, themutineers are pacified by the concession of five _Tribuni plebis_,“whose office should be to defend the poore people from violence andoppression. ” Then he concludes this part of his recital: Hereupon the cittie being growen againe to good quiet and unitie, the people immediatly went to the warres, shewing that they had a good will to doe better than ever they dyd, and to be very willing to obey the magistrates in that they would commaund concerning the warres. Now, in this account there is no question which side is on the rightand has a claim on our sympathies. The plebs is reduced to distressby fighting for the state and for the aristocratic _régime_ that wasset up some twenty years before: its misery is aggravated by harsh andinadequate laws, the redress of which it seeks by a policy of passiveresistance; its demands are so equitable that they are approved by aportion of the Senate, and so urgent that they are conceded by theSenate as a whole: but such is the strength of class selfishness, thatwhen the hour of need is past, the patricians violate their explicitpromise, and the grievances become more intolerable than before. Evennow the plebeians break out in no violent rebellion, and hardly showtheir discontent in a casual riot. In their worst desperation theymerely secede, and in their very secession they are far from stubborn. They admit Menenius’ moral that the Senate has an essential function inthe state: and as a preliminary to their return, only stipulate for amachinery that will protect them against further oppression. But hardly a line in the description of this movement which theplebeians conducted so moderately and sagaciously to a successfulend, has passed into the picture of Shakespeare. He ignores thereasonableness of their cause, the reasonableness of their means,and fails to perceive the essential efficiency and steadiness oftheir character, though all these things are expressed or implied inPlutarch’s narrative. This episode, in which the younger contemporaryof Nero favours the people, the elder contemporary of Pym summarilydismisses, and substitutes for it another far less important, in whichthey appear in no very creditable light, but which had nothing to dowith the institution of the Tribunate, and occurred in consequence ofthe dearth only after the capture of Corioli. Now when this warre was ended, the flatterers of the people beganne to sturre up sedition againe, without any newe occasion, or just matter offered of complainte. For they dyd grounde this seconde insurrection against the Nobilitie and Patricians, apon the people’s miserie and misfortune, that could not but fall out, by reason of the former discorde and sedition, betweene them and the Nobilitie. Bicause the most parte of the errable land within the territorie of Rome, was become heathie and barren for lacke of plowing, for that they had no time nor meane to cause corne, to be brought them out of other countries to sowe, by reason of their warres which made the extreme dearth they had emong them. Now those busie pratlers that sought the peoples good will, by suche flattering wordes, perceyving great scarsitie of corne to be within the cittie, and though there had bene plenty enough, yet the common people had no money to buye it: they spread abroad false tales and rumours against the Nobilitie, that they in revenge of the people, had practised and procured the extreme dearthe emong them. This circumstance, combined with the still later demand for adistribution of corn, Shakespeare transposes, and makes the surelyrather inappropriate cause of the appointment of the tribunes. Inappropriate, that is, to what the logic of the situation requires,and to what the sagacity of the traditional plebs would solicit. Theyask for bread and they get a magistrate. But not inappropriate to theunreasoning demands of a frenzied proletariat. Many parallels mightbe cited from the French revolutions. But this is just an instance ofShakespeare’s inability to conceive a popular rising in other termsthan the outbreak of a mob. And this leads us to the second point. The general moderationand dignity implied in the attitude of Rome, viewed broadly andcomprehensively, almost disappears when we are confronted with the fullconcrete life of the participants in all its picturesque and incisivedetails. For consider first a little more closely the treatment of thepeople. We have seen that in many ways the proceedings which it andits representatives take against Coriolanus are more defensible inShakespeare than in Plutarch: but, on the other hand, they have lessrational grounds for the original insurrection, and are much lessclear-sighted and consequent in choosing the means of redress. They arecomparatively well-meaning and fair, neither bitter nor narrow-minded,but they are quite inefficient, far from self-reliant, very childishand helpless. They are conspicuously lacking in political aptitude,but they make up for it by a certain soundness of feeling. Plutarch’splebeians go the right way about protecting themselves from unjustlaws, but they pursue Coriolanus with rancorous chicane even whenhis policy has been overturned. Shakespeare’s plebeians seek tolegislate against a natural calamity, but at the crisis they turn quitejustifiably, if a little tardily, on a would-be governor who makes nosecret of his ill-will. Taken as separate units, they may be unwashedand puzzle-headed, but they are worthy fellows whom misery has drivendesperate, yet whose misery claims compassion, though their desperationmakes them meddle in things too high for them. In the opening scene,the First Citizen, even when calling for the death of Marcius, does somerely because he imagines that it is the preliminary to getting cheapfood: The gods know I speak this in hunger for bread, not in thirst for revenge. (I. i. 15. )But even among the maddened and famishing crowd, Marcius is not withouthis advocate. The Second Citizen admonishes them: Consider you what services he has done for his country? (I. i. 30. )And though these the ringleader discounts on the ground that they weredue not to patriotism, but to personal pride and filial affection,his apologist, persisting in his defence, points out that he is notresponsible for his inborn tendencies. What he cannot help in his nature, you account a vice in him. (I. i. 42. )All this is candid enough: a benevolent neutral could not say more. These rioters have no thought of libelling their adversary. They denyneither his claims nor his merits; they only assert that these areoutweighed by his offences. The Second Citizen proceeds in his plea: You must in no way say he is covetous;and the First rejoins: If I must not, I need not be barren of accusations; he hath faults, with surplus, to tire in repetition. (I. i. 43. )We have seen how Shakespeare adopts from Plutarch the motive for theplebeians’ initial support of Coriolanus at the election, but he makesit a more striking instance of their fairness, for he represents themas quite aware and mindful of the reasons on the other side. _Fourth Citizen. _ You have deserved nobly of your country, and you have not deserved nobly. _Coriolanus. _ Your enigma? _Fourth Citizen. _ You have been a scourge to her enemies, you have been a rod to her friends; you have not indeed loved the common people. (II. iii. 94. )It is all very well for the candidate to turn this off with a flout,but it is the sober truth. That the despised plebeian should see bothsides of the case shows in him more sanity of judgment than Coriolanusever possessed: that he should nevertheless cast his vote for such anapplicant shows more generosity as well. And the generosity, if alsothe simplicity, of the electors is likewise made more pronounced thanin Plutarch by their persevering in their course despite the scornwith which Coriolanus treats them; of which Plutarch of course knowsnothing. Even that they forgive till the tribunes irritate the woundsand predict more fatal ones from the new weapon that has been put intosuch ruthless hands. Did you perceive He did solicit you in free contempt When he did need your loves, and do you think That his contempt shall not be bruising to you, When he hath power to crush? (II. iii. 207. )All these instances of right feeling and instinctive appreciation ofgreatness are in Shakespeare’s picture, while they are either not atall or in a much less degree in Plutarch’s. And these citizens arecapable of following good leadership as well as bad. They listen toMenenius, and are “almost persuaded” by his argument, without, as inPlutarch, making their acceptance of it merely provisional. UnderCominius they quit themselves, as he says, “like Romans,” and he givesthem the praise: Breathe you, my friends: well fought. (I. vi. 1. )Afterwards too he recognises that they are earning their share of thespoil, even as before they had borne themselves stoutly: March on, my fellows: Make good this ostentation, and you shall Divide in all with us. (I. vi. 85. )This is said to the volunteers who come forward at Marcius’ summons, anepisode for which there is hardly a hint in Plutarch. There, indeed, weread that he cannot call off the looters from the treasures of Corioli: Whereupon taking those that willingly offered them selves he went out of the cittie:which supplies the sentence, I, with those that have the spirit, will haste To help Cominius. (I. v. 14. )But this hint, if hint it were, Shakespeare uses anew with far strongerand brighter colouring in the incident of Marcius’ stirring appeal toCominius’ men and their enthusiastic response: which is to be foundonly in the drama: If any such be here— As it were sin to doubt—that love this painting Wherein you see me smear’d: if any fear Lesser his person than an ill report; If any think brave death outweighs bad life And that his country’s dearer than himself; Let him alone, or so many so minded, Wave thus, to express his disposition, And follow Marcius. [_They all shout and wave their swords, take him up in their arms, and cast up their caps. _] (I. vi. 67. )If they are handled in the right way, these citizen soldiers can playtheir part well. But they need to be rightly handled, they need tohave their feelings stirred. They have no rational initiative of theirown, and cannot do without inspiration and guidance. For, consider thegrounds for their rising. Shakespeare not only completely suppressesthe remarkable secession to the Mons Sacer, but barely mentions thesocial grievances that led to it. The First Citizen says indeed of thepatricians: [They] make edicts for usury, to support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act established against the rich, and provide more piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will. (I. i. 83. )But this is a mere passing remark, and no stress is laid on these, thereal causes of the discontent, in comparison with the dearth, whichfor the rest seems to end with the Coriolan campaign, when there is,as Cominius promises, a “common distribution” of the spoils. Now thedearth is represented as a mere disastrous accident, for which no oneis responsible, and for which there is no remedy save prayer—or such aforay as presently took place. Menenius expressly says so: For the dearth, The gods, not the patricians, made it, and Your knees to them, not arms, must help. (I. i. 74. )It is alleged, no doubt, by the mutineers that the “storehouses arecrammed with grain,” but there is no confirmation of this in the play,and the way in which “honest” Menenius reports the rumour, and Marcius,who is never less than honest receives it, implies that it is meretittle tattle and gossip of the chimney corner. _Marcius. _ What’s their seeking? _Menenius. _ For corn at their own rates: whereof, they say, The city is well stored. _Marcius. _ Hang ’em! They say! They’ll sit by the fire, and presume to know What’s done i’ the Capitol; who’s like to rise, Who thrives and who declines; side factions and give out Conjectural marriages; making parties strong And feebling such as stand not in their liking Below their cobbled shoes. They say there’s grain enough! (I. i. 192. )In short their temper is hardly parodied in the modern skit, Who fills the butchers’ shops with large blue flies? And if they resemble the ignorant fanatics of later days in theunreasonableness of their complaints, they resemble them too, as wehave seen, in the unreasonableness of their remedies. If things were asthe play implies what help would lie in constitutional reform? They areno better than the starving _Sansculottes_ who sought to allay theirhunger by snatching new morsels of the royal prerogative. It reallyreads like a scene in Carlyle’s Paris of 1790 A. D. , and not like anyscene in Plutarch’s Rome of 494 B. C. , when Coriolanus describes thedelight of the famine-stricken crowds at getting their representatives: They threw their caps As they would hang them on the horns o’ the moon, Shouting their emulation. (I. i. 216. )Moreover, when left to themselves, or when their sleeping manhood isnot awakened, these plebeians, otherwise than those of Plutarch, havenot even the average of physical courage. They can fight creditablyunder the competent management of Cominius, or heroically under thestimulus of Marcius’ rousing appeal: but if such influences arelacking, they fail. Menenius says of them: Though abundantly they lack discretion, Yet are they passing cowardly. (I. i. 206. )Marcius ironically invites them to the wars by indicating what wouldbe, and turns out to be, provision for their needs: The Volsces have much corn: take these rats thither To gnaw their garners. Worshipful mutineers, Your valour puts well forth: pray, follow. (I. i. 253. )And the citizens steal away. In truth the low opinion of their mettleseems justified by events. At Corioli the troops under Cominius dowell, but those in Marcius’ division, perhaps because his treatmentdoes not call out what is best in them, seem to deserve a part at leastof his imprecations: All the contagion of the south light on you, You shames of Rome! You herd of——. Boils and plagues Plaster you o’er, that you may be abhorr’d Further than seen, and one infect another Against the wind a mile! You souls of geese, That bear the shapes of men, how have you run From slaves that apes would beat! Pluto and hell! All hurt behind! backs red, and faces pale With flight and agued fear! (I. iv. 30. )Nor do they appear in a better light in the moment of partial victory,for they at once fall to plunder instead of following it up and helpingtheir fellows. This touch, of course, Shakespeare derived from Plutarch. The most parte of the souldiers beganne incontinently to spoyle, to carie awaye, and to looke up the bootie they had wonne. But Martius was marvelous angry with them, and cried out on them, that it was no time now to looke after spoyle, and to ronne straggling here and there to enriche them selves, whilest the other Consul and their fellowe cittizens peradventure were fighting with their enemies; and howe that leaving the spoyle they should seeke to winde them selves out of daunger and perill. Howbeit, crie, and saye to them what he could, very fewe of them would hearken to him. But Shakespeare is not content with this. He quite without warrantdescribes the articles as worthless, to emphasise the baseness of thepillagers. See here these movers that do prize their hours At a crack’d drachma! Cushions, leaden spoons, Irons of a doit, doublets that hangmen would Bury with those that wore them, these base slaves, Ere yet the fight be done, pack up. (I. v. 5. )This strain of baseness appears in another way afterwards, when theyyell and hoot at their banished enemy, like a pack of curs at aretreating mastiff, or when at his threatened return they eat theirwords and their deeds. _First Citizen. _ For mine own part, When I said, banish him, I said ’twas pity. _Second Citizen. _ And so did I. _Third Citizen. _ And so did I: and, to say the truth, so did very many of us. . . . _First Citizen. _ I ever said we were i’ the wrong when we banished him. _Second Citizen. _ So did we all. (IV. vi. 139 and 155. )What then is Shakespeare’s opinion of the people as a whole? Despitehis sympathy with those of whom it is composed, it is to him agiant not yet in his teens, with formidable physical strength, withcrude natural impulses to the good and the bad, kindly-natured andsimple-minded, not incapable of fair-dealing and generosity; but rude,blundering, untaught, and therefore subject to spasms of fury, panic,and greed, fit for useful service only when it finds the right leader,but sure to go wrong if abandoned to its own or evil guidance. To the danger of evil guidance, however, it is specially exposed, forit loves flattery and is imposed on by professions of goodwill: soShakespeare reserves his severest treatment for those who cajole it,the demagogues of the Tribunate. No doubt in his tolerant objective wayhe concedes even to them a measure of justification. He was bound to doso, else they would have been outside the pale of dramatic sympathy;and also the culpability of Coriolanus would have been obscured. Sothere is something to be said even for their policy and management. They are quite right in fearing the results of Coriolanus’ elevation tothe chief place in Rome: _Sicinius. _ On the sudden, I warrant him consul. _Brutus. _ Then our office may During his power, go sleep. (II. i. 237. )Their admonitions to the electors are such as the organisers of a partyare not only entitled but bound to give to a constituency: Could you not have told him As you were lesson’d, when he had no power, But was a petty servant to the state, He was your enemy, ever spake against Your liberties and the charters that you bear I’ the body of the weal: and now, arriving A place of potency and sway o’ the state, If he should still malignantly remain Fast foe to the plebeii, your voices might Be curses to yourselves. (II. iii. 180. )These forebodings of what is likely to occur are not only thoroughlyjustifiable but obvious. Then, though their abandonment of the methods of violence andacceptance of a trial are discounted partly by the perils of openforce, partly by their confidence in and manipulation of a verdict totheir minds, their willingness to substitute the penalty of banishmentfor the extreme sentence of death, must stand, as we have seen, to thecredit, if not of their placability, at least of their moderation andprudence. Moreover, if we could disregard the dangers of war, their“platform,” as we should now call it, seems approved by its success. One cannot but sympathise with the satisfaction of Sicinius at theresults of Marcius’ expulsion: We hear not of him, neither need we fear him: His remedies are tame i’ the present peace And quietness of the people, which before Were in wild hurry. Here do we make his friends Blush that the world goes well, who rather had, Though they themselves did suffer by ’t, behold Dissentious numbers pestering streets, than see Our tradesmen singing in their shops and going About their functions friendly. (IV. vi. 1. )And when the citizens pass with their greetings, the tribune has aright to say to Menenius: This is a happier and more comely time Than when these fellows ran about the streets, Crying confusion. (IV. vi. 27. )Even Menenius has to give a modified and grudging approval of the newposition of things: All’s well: and might have been much better, if He could have temporised. (IV. vi. 16. )And when the disastrous news comes in, after the first outburst ofincredulous wrath and terrified impatience, the two colleagues bearthemselves well enough. There is shrewdness and good sense in Sicinius’words to the citizens: Go, masters, get you home: be not dismay’d; These are a side that would be glad to have This true which they so seem to fear. Go home, And show no sign of fear. (IV. vi. 149. )When this very natural and probable conjecture proves false, they bothrise to the occasion, or seek to do so, the cross-grained Siciniussomewhat more effectually than the glib-tongued Brutus, and show acertain dignity and justness of feeling. Their remonstrance with andpetition to Menenius, if we grant the patriotism on the one side aswell as the other, are not without their cogency: Nay, pray, be patient: if you refuse your aid In this so never-needed help, yet do not Upbraid’s with our distress. (V. i. 33. )When Menenius objects that his mission will be futile, Sicinius’ replycomes near being noble: Yet your good will Must have that thanks from Rome, after the measure As you intended well. (V. i. 45). When Menenius, returning from his fruitless mission, describesCoriolanus in his unapproachable, inexorable power, the tribune’srejoinder is again the true one: _Menenius. _ He wants nothing of a god but eternity and a heaven to throne in. _Sicinius. _ Yes, mercy, if you report him truly. (V. iv. 24. )Yet these various traits so little interfere with the generalimpression, that perhaps many tolerably careful readers who arefamiliar with the play, hardly take them into account. In the totaleffect they both seem to us pitiful busybodies, whose ill-earnedinfluence only leads to disaster; or, as Menenius describes them: A pair of tribunes that have rack’d for Rome, To make coals cheap. (V. i. 16. )The first feature we notice in them is their pride, a vice which theyblame in Coriolanus, and with which their own is expressly contrasted. For his is the haughty, unbending self-consciousness that is based onthe sense of indwelling force, and has a shrinking disgust for praise. Theirs, on the other hand, revels in popularity, and their powerdepends entirely on the support which that popularity secures them. AsMenenius tells them: You are ambitious for poor knaves’ caps and legs. (II. i. 76. ) Your helps are many, or else your actions would grow wondrous single: your abilities are too infant-like for doing much alone. (II. i. 39. )They are really consequential and overweening rather than proud. Andmagnifying their importance and their office, they are apt to taketoo seriously any trifle in which they are concerned, and to becomeirritated at any mishap to their own convenience. Having no standardbut themselves by which to measure the proportion of things, they arefussy over minor points and lose their tempers over petty troubles. This is the point of Menenius’ banter. You wear out a good wholesome forenoon in hearing a cause between an orange-wife and a fosset-seller; and then rejourn the controversy of three pence to a second day of audience. When you are hearing a matter between party and party, if you chanced to be pinched with the colic, you make faces like mummers; set up the bloody flag against all patience; and, in roaring for a chamber-pot, dismiss the controversy bleeding, the more entangled by your hearing: all the peace you make in their cause is, calling both the parties knaves. (II. i. 77. )This is, they are disposed to treat a molehill as a mountain, but ifthey are galled, to break out in indiscriminate and unjustified abuse. Menenius gives it them home in respect of these foibles: You talk of pride: O that you could turn your eyes toward the napes of your necks, and make but an interior survey of your good selves! O that you could! _Brutus. _ What then, sir? _Menenius. _ Why, then you should discover a brace of unmeriting, proud, violent, testy magistrates, alias fools, as any in Rome. (II. i. 41. )This is the utterance of an enemy; nevertheless it is confirmed bytheir behaviour, and is moreover a prophecy of their action in regardto Marcius. In the first place their pride has been insulted by his: _Sicinius. _ Was ever man so proud as is this Marcius? _Brutus. _ He has no equal. _Sicinius. _ When we were chosen tribunes of the people,— _Brutus. _ Mark’d you his lip and eyes? _Sicinius. _ Nay, but his taunts. _Brutus. _ Being moved, he will not spare to gird the gods— _Sicinius. _ Bemock the modest moon. (I. i. 256. )A man who gibes at the gods, the moon, and above all the tribunes, isevidently a profane and irreverent fellow who should be got rid of. Andperhaps it is anxiety not only for the public good but for their ownauthority that makes them dread their office may “go sleep,” duringhis consulship. At any rate the disrespect with which they have beentreated is one main motive of their indignation: “_Our_ Aediles smote,_ourselves_ resisted! ” they exclaim in pardonable horror (III. i. 319). Then the means they take to ruin Coriolanus, though not without itsastuteness, and similar enough to what is practised every day inparliamentary tactics, is altogether base: it is the device of mean,paltry, inferior natures. They speculate on the defect of their enemy’sgreatness, they reckon on his heroic vehemence and forcefulness todestroy him, and lay plans to betray his nobility to a passion thatwill embroil him with the people. It is as easy, says Sicinius, todrive him to provocation “as to set dogs on sheep” (II. i. 273). Buteasy though it is, they are careful to give minute directions to theirgang. Sicinius tells them that any condition proposed to him, Would have gall’d his surly nature, Which easily endures not article Tying him to aught; so putting him to rage, You should have ta’en the advantage of his choler And pass’d him unelected. (II. iii. 203. )Then, after engineering the disavowal of the elected candidate, Brutuscalculates If, as his nature is, he fall in rage With their refusal, both observe and answer The vantage of his anger. (II. iii. 266. )And here are his final instructions for the behaviour of the people atthe trial: Put him to choler straight: he hath been used Ever to conquer, and to have his worth Of contradiction: being once chafed, he cannot Be rein’d again to temperance; then he speaks What’s in his heart; and that is there which looks To break his neck. (III. iii. 25. )The suggestion for these proceedings comes, as we saw, from Plutarch;but in this one respect his tribunes are by no means so wily. Theycontrive a dilemma in which Coriolanus will have either to humbleor to compromise himself; but though they would prefer the latteralternative, they do nothing to bring it about. Yet with all their activity in the matter, they are meanly desirous ofevading responsibility and saving their own skins. _Brutus. _ Lay A fault on us, your tribunes; that we labour’d, No impediment between, but that you must Cast your election on him. _Sicinius. _ Say you chose him More after our commandment than as guided By your own true affections, and that your minds, Pre-occupied with what you rather must do Than what you should, made you against the grain To voice him consul: lay the fault on us. (II. iii. 234. )And parallel with this is the crowning vulgarity of their triumph: Go, see him out at gates, and follow him, As he hath follow’d you, with all despite; Give him deserved vexation. (III. iii. 138. )This is perhaps the supreme instance of their headstrong, testy andinconsiderate violence, for, as we shall see, it embitters the waveringMarcius and drives him to alliance with the foe. But the same violencehas abundantly appeared before. The rest do all in their power toappease the tumult and procure a hearing for Sicinius, he uses theopportunity to add fuel to the fire and deserves Menenius’ rebuke: This is the way to kindle, not to quench. (III. i. 197. )When Brutus proceeds in the same way, Cominius interrupts: That is the way to lay the city flat; To bring the roof to the foundation, And bury all, which yet distinctly ranges, In heaps and piles of ruin. (III. i. 204. )Menenius has to admonish them: Do not cry havoc, where you should but hunt With modest warrant. (III. i. 274. )And again: One word more, one word. This tiger-footed rage, when it shall find The harm of unscann’d swiftness, will too late Tie leaden pounds to’s heels. (III. i. 311. )They do yield at last, but clearly the game they were playing inunreflecting impatience was most hazardous for the populace itself. Indeed, even when they have accepted more moderate counsels, theexpulsion of Coriolanus seems an act not only of ingratitude but ofrecklessness. Their low cunning has attained an end, good perhapsin itself for the party they represent, but even for that party ofinsignificant advantage in view of the wider issues. Volumnia’s tauntis very much to the point: Hadst thou foxship To banish him that struck more blows for Rome Than thou hast spoken words? (IV. ii. 18. )For after all, the pressing need in that period of constant war,as Plutarch and Shakespeare imagine it, was defence of the wholestate, the plebs as well as the senate, against the foreign enemy,and the danger of an invasion was one of the ordinary probabilitiesof the case. Most men who had any sense of proportion would, in thecircumstances, pause before they banished the sword and soldiership ofRome. No doubt the tribunes were to be excused for not foreseeing therenegacy of Coriolanus; when it is announced as a fact Menenius canhardly credit it. This is unlikely: He and Aufidius can no more atone Than violentest contrariety. (IV. vi. 71. )It is less excusable that they should neglect the danger of a newattack from the Volsces, for though Cominius, as we saw, makes asimilar error, he does so when Marcius is still on the side of theRomans. Menenius’ exclamation, when the invasion actually takesplace and when the news of it is first brought to Rome, describes asituation, the possibility or probability of which every public manshould have anticipated. ’Tis Aufidius, Who, hearing of our Marcius’ banishment, Thrusts forth his horns again into the world: Which were inshell’d when Marcius stood for Rome, And durst not once peep out. (IV. vi. 42. )This, though of course an understatement, for in point of fact Aufidiusdid not wait for Marcius’ banishment, is at any rate the least thatwas to be expected. But the tribunes, with a sanguine and criminalshortsightedness that suggests a distinguished pair of Britishpoliticians in our own day, refuse to admit as conceivable a fact thelikelihood of which the circumstances of the case and recent experienceavouch. _Brutus. _ It cannot be The Volsces dare break with us. _Menenius. _ Cannot be! We have record that very well it can, And three examples of the like have been Within my age. (IV. vi. 47. )Besides, the Volscians were not the only jealous neighbours the youngrepublic had to guard herself against. But their reception of the unwelcome tidings is a new instance of theignoble strain in the tribunes’ nature. The first effect they have onBrutus is to enrage him against the informant: “Go see this rumourerwhipp’d”; and Sicinius seconds the humane direction, but improves onit that the public may be duly cautioned against telling unpalatabletruths: “Go whip him ’fore the people’s eyes. ” Menenius may wellremonstrate: Reason with the fellow, Before you punish him, where he heard this, Lest you shall chance to whip your information, And beat the messenger who bids beware Of what is to be dreaded. (IV. vi. 51. )This is not merely an illustration of their habitual touchiness andirritability at whatever thwarts them. Once more we think of thewords of the messenger in _Antony and Cleopatra_ when he fears toreport the worst: “The nature of bad news infects the teller”; and ofAntony’s reply: “When it concerns the fool and coward. ” There is beyonddoubt more than a spice of folly and cowardice in the self-importantquidnuncs, with their purblind temerity and shifty meanness. We arevery glad to hear in the end of Brutus being mishandled by the moband very sorry that Sicinius goes free: but at least he has had hisdose of alarm and mortification, and in the future his influence willbe gone; which is well. Yet they are not bad men. They are very likethe majority of the citizens of Great and Greater Britain, and noinconsiderable portion of those who govern the Empire and its members. They have a certain amount of principle, shrewdness, and, if the testof misfortune comes, even of proper feeling. They would have made veryworthy aldermen of a small municipality. But measured against thegreatness of Rome, or even of Coriolanus, they are as gnats to the lion. The picture, then, of the people and its elect is not flattering ifwe follow it in detail, but a similar examination is hardly morefavourable to the nobles. Of course their behaviour is to a certainextent accounted for by the peculiarity of their position. Hitherto,since the expulsion of the kings, the “honoured number” have hadit all their own way in the state, and Shakespeare imputes no blameto their management, unless it be their excessive arrogance towardsthe populace they rule and employ. But now bad times have made thatpopulace seditious, and they have discovered that, rightly or wrongly,they must give it a share of the power. Their pride, their traditions,the consciousness of their faculty for government, pull them oneway, the necessities of the case pull them another. A dominant casteis placed in a false position when it is forced to capitulate toassailants for whom it feels an unreasonable contempt and a reasonablemistrust. When we consider the difficulties of the situation and thebroad results, the patricians, as we saw, come off respectably enough,and we must give them credit for circumspection, adaptability, andcivic cohesion. But in detail their attitude betrays the uncertaintyand weakness that cannot but ensue in a man or a body of men whenthere is a conflict between conviction and expediency, and an attemptto obey them both. Their scorn of the plebeians, followed by thevery brief effort for their champion and very prompt acquiescence inhis expatriation, makes an unpleasant impression; and this is morenoticeable in the drama than in the biography. Plutarch repeatedlystates that they disagree among themselves, many of them sympathisingwith the popular demands and only the younger men favouring the harshand reactionary views of Coriolanus. [260] This distinction has leftno trace in the play except in the stage direction which representshim as departing into exile escorted to the gates by his friends, hisrelatives, and “the young nobility of Rome”: but otherwise Shakespearemakes no use of it. Coriolanus is mouthpiece for the ideals not ofheedless youth but of all the aristocracy, though most of them may bemore politic than he and not so frank. Nevertheless his presuppositionsare theirs, and therefore they seem temporisers and poltroons besidetheir outspoken advocate. Indeed, through Menenius, they admit theyhave been to blame: We loved him; but, like beasts And cowardly nobles, gave way unto your clusters, Who did hoot him out o’ the city. (IV. vi. 121. )[260] See especially the passage that describes his behaviour afterhe has been rejected for the consulship: “Coriolanus went home to hishouse, full fraighted with spite and malice against the people, beingaccompanied with all the lustiest young gentlemen, whose mindes werenobly bent, as those that came of noble race, and commonly used forto followe and honour him. But then specially they floct about him,and kept him companie, to his muche harme; for they dyd but kyndle andinflame his choller more and more, being sorie with him for the injuriethe people offred him. ”Nor do they act very vigorously when destruction threatens Rome. Theydo not indeed seek to separate their cause from that of the wholecommunity and make terms with their former friend for their own class. |
Beyond some naturally bitter gibes at the “clusters” and their leaders,not unaccompanied for the rest by bitter outbursts against themselves,there is no trace of the dissensions with the people which Plutarchdescribes. But they have no thought of organising any attempt atresistance. True, there are circumstances in Shakespeare that accountfor this supineness as it is not explained in his authority. It ispartly due to the feeling that they are in the wrong, which Shakespearein a much greater degree than Plutarch attributes to them. As their ownwords show: _Cominius_. For his best friends, if they Should say, “Be good to Rome,” they charged him even As those should do that had deserved his hate, And therein show’d like enemies. _Menenius. _ ’Tis true: If he were putting to my house the brand That should consume it, I have not the face To say, “Beseech you, cease. ” (IV. vi. 111. )And again: If he could burn us all into one coal, We have deserved it. (IV. vi. 137. )Partly, too, there has been no time for preparation, for, as wehave seen, the invasion is a bolt from the blue, and after it hasfirst struck there is no convenient truce of thirty days before itsrecurrence. Entreaty, says Sicinius, might help More than the instant army we can make; (V. i. 37. )and it is the opinion of all. Partly, too, the inertness of Rome is a tribute to the greatness of theadversary, which is enhanced beyond the hyperboles of Plutarch, andwith which to inspire them the Volscians are irresistible. He is their god: he leads them like a thing Made by some other deity than nature That shapes men better: and they follow him, Against us brats, with no less confidence Than boys pursuing summer butterflies, Or butchers killing flies. (IV. vi. 90. )But contrition, unpreparedness, despair of success hardly excuse thepalsy of incompetence into which this proud aristocracy has now fallen. It does not of course sink so low as in Plutarch. Of the first of therepeated deputations he narrates: The ambassadours that were sent, were Martius familliar friendes and acquaintaunce, who looked at the least for a curteous welcome of him, as of their familliar friende and kynesman. Howbeit they founde nothing lesse. For at their comming, they were brought through the campe, to the place where he was set in his chayer of state, with a marvelous and unspeakable majestie, having the chiefest men of the Volsces about him: so he commaunded them to declare openly the cause of their comming. Which they delivered in the most humble and lowly wordes they possiblie could devise, and with all modest countenaunce and behaviour agreeable for the same. When they had done their message; for the injurie they had done him, he aunswered them very hottely and in great choller. This is evidently the foundation of the interviews with Cominius andMenenius respectively, and it is worth while noting the points ofdifference. In the first place single individuals are substituted for anunspecified number. Just in the same way the final deputationconsists of “Virgilia, Volumnia, leading young Marcius, Valeria,and Attendants,” without any of “all the other Romaine Ladies” thataccompany them in Plutarch. In the last case it is the members and thefriend of Coriolanus’ family, in the previous cases it is his sworncomrade Cominius and his idolatrous admirer Menenius who make theappeal: and this at once gives their intercessions more of a personaland less of a public character. One result of this with which we arenot now concerned, is that the rigour of Coriolanus’ first two answersis considerably heightened; but at present it is more important toobserve that the impression of a formal embassy is avoided. Cominiusand Menenius strike us less as delegates from the Roman state, thanas private Romans who may suppose that their persuasions will havespecial influence with their friend. There is nothing to indicate thatCominius was official envoy of the republic, and we know that Meneniuswent without any authorisation, in compliance with the request madeby Sicinius and Brutus in the street. Shakespeare’s senate is sparedthe ignominy of the recurring supplications to which Plutarch’s senatecondescends. If these are not altogether suppressed, the references tothem are very faint and vague. And also the suppliants bear themselves more worthily. Menenius is farfrom employing “the most humble and lowly wordes” that could possiblybe devised or “the modest countenaunce and behaviour agreeable for thesame. ” Cominius indeed tells how at the close of the interview, we maysuppose as a last resort, he “kneeled before” Coriolanus, but there wasno more loss of dignity in his doing so, consul and general though hehad been, than there was afterwards in Volumnia’s doing the same; andhis words as he repeats them do not show any lack of self-respect. Still the inactivity, the helplessness, the want of nerve in the Romannobles in the hour of need are somewhat pitiful. It was the time tojustify their higher position by higher patriotism, resourcefulnessand courage. They do not make the slightest effort to do so. Remorsefor their desertion of Coriolanus need not have lamed their energies,since now they would be confronting him not for themselves but for thestate. Even their “instant armies” might do something if commandedand inspired by devoted captains. At the worst they could lead theirfellow-citizens to an heroic death. One cannot help feeling that if aCoriolanus, or anyone with a tithe of his spirit, had been among them,things would have been very different. But while they retain much ofthe old caste pride, they have lost much of the old caste efficiency. Thus Shakespeare, when he comes to the concrete, views with someseverity both the popular and the senatorial party. They showthemselves virulent and acrimonious in their relations with each other,yet inconsequent even in their virulence and acrimony: then, afterhaving respectively enforced and permitted the banishment of theirchief defender, they are ready to succumb to him without a blow when,it has well been said, he returns not even as an _émigré_ using foreignaid to restore the privileges of his own order and the old _régime_,but as a barbarian bringing the national foe to exterminate the stateand all its members. And we cannot help asking: Is this an adequaterepresentation of the young republic that was ere long to become themistress of the world? We must look steadily at those general aspectsof the story which we have noticed above, as well as at the doings ofthe persons and parties amidst which Coriolanus is set, if we would getthe total effect of the play. Then it produces something of the feelingwhich prompted Heine’s description of the ancient Romans: They were not great men, but through their position they were greater than the other children of earth, for they stood on Rome. Immediately they came down from the Seven Hills, they were small. . . . As the Greek is great through the idea of Art, the Hebrew through the idea of one most holy God; so the Romans are great through the idea of their eternal Rome; great, wheresoever they have fought, written or builded in the inspiration of this idea. The greater Rome grew, the more this idea dilated: the individual lost himself in it: the great men who remain eminent are borne up by this idea, and it makes the littleness of the little men more pronounced. [261][261] _Reisebilder_, 2ter Theil; “Italien, Reise nach Genua,” Cap. xxiv. The Idea of Rome! It is the triumph of that which yields the promiseand evidence of better things that the final situation contains. Thetitanic intolerance of Coriolanus after being expelled by fear andhatred from within, has threatened destruction from without, andthe threat has been averted. The presumptuous intolerance of thedemagogues, after imperilling the state, has been discredited by itsresults, and their authority is destroyed. The Idea of Rome in thepatriotism of Volumnia has led to her self-conquest and the conquest ofher son, and is acclaimed by all alike. Thus we have borne in upon usa feeling of the majesty and omnipotence of the Eternal City, and weunderstand how it not only inspires and informs the units that composeit, but stands out aloft and apart from its faulty representatives as akind of mortal deity that overrules their doings to its own ends, andagainst which their cavilling and opposition are vain. What Meneniussays to the rioters applies to all dissentients: You may as well Strike at the heaven with your staves as lift them Against the Roman state, whose course will on The way it takes, cracking ten thousand curbs Of more strong link asunder than can ever Appear in your impediment. (I. i. 69. )This, then, is the background against which are grouped with more orless prominence, as their importance requires, Coriolanus’ family, hisassociates, his rival, round the central figure of the hero himself. CHAPTER IVTHE KINSFOLK AND FRIENDS OF CORIOLANUSOf the subordinate persons, by far the most imposing and influentialis Volumnia, the great-hearted mother, the patrician lady, the Romanmatron. The passion of maternity, whether interpreted as maternal loveor as maternal pride, penetrates her nature to the core, not, however,to melt but to harden it. In her son’s existence she at first seemsliterally wrapped up, and she implies that devotion to him rather thanto her dead husband has kept her from forming new ties: Thou hast never in thy life Show’d thy dear mother any courtesy, When she, poor hen, fond of no second brood, Has cluck’d thee to the wars and safely home, Loaden with honour. (V. iii. 160. )Marcius is thus the only son of his mother and she a widow; but thesereminiscences show how strictly the tenderness, and still more theindulgence, usual in such circumstances, have been banished from thathome. In Plutarch the boy seeks a military career from his irresistiblenatural bent: Martius being more inclined to the warres, then any young gentleman of his time: beganne from his Childehood to geve him self to handle weapons, and daylie dyd exercise him selfe therein. In Shakespeare the direction and stimulus are much more directlyattributed to his mother, and it is she who first despatches him to thefield. This she herself expressly states in her admonition to Virgilia: _Volumnia. _ I pray you, daughter, sing; or express yourself in a more comfortable sort: if my son were my husband, I should freelier rejoice in that absence wherein he won honour, than in the embracements of his bed where he would show most love. When yet he was but tender-bodied and the only son of my womb, when youth with comeliness plucked all gaze his way, when for a day of kings’ entreaties a mother should not sell him an hour from her beholding, I, considering how honour would become such a person, that it was no better than picture-like to hang by the wall, if renown made it not stir, was pleased to let him seek danger where he was like to find fame. To a cruel war I sent him; from whence he returned, his brows bound with oak. I tell thee, daughter, I sprang not more in joy at first hearing he was a man-child than now in first seeing he had proved himself a man. _Virgilia. _ But had he died in the business, madam; how then? _Volumnia. _ Then his good report should have been my son; I therein would have found issue. Hear me profess sincerely: had I a dozen sons, each in my love alike, and none less dear than thine and my good Marcius, I had rather had eleven die nobly for their country than one voluptuously surfeit out of action. (I. iii. 1. )He is the object of her love because he is to be the ideal which sheadores. She trains him to all the excellence she understands, and wouldhave him a captain of Rome’s armies and a force in the state. She hasto the full the sentiment of _noblesse oblige_, and is inspired by thesame feeling which in Plutarch moves Marcius to bid the patricians showthat they dyd not so muche passe the people in power and riches as they dyd exceede them in true nobilitie and valliantnes. She is full of the virtues and prejudices of her class, and, withthe self-consciousness of an aristocrat, looks from the plebs onlyfor the obedience and approval due to their betters. They are quiteunqualified for self-government or for the criticism of those abovethem. In comparison with the noble Coriolanus, the people, whom shecalls the rabble, are “cats” (IV. ii. 34). Naturally she is tenaciousof the supremacy of her order, and would fain see it make good itsthreatened privileges. She remonstrates with her son for his contumacy: I am in this, Your wife, your son, these senators, the nobles; And you will rather show our general louts How you can frown than spend a fawn upon ’em, For the inheritance of their loves and safeguard Of what that want might ruin. (III. ii. 64. )Her dream has been that Marcius shall be consul to establish once morethe power of the patricians. When he enters in his great triumph fromCorioli, she exclaims in expectation of that result: I have lived To see inherited my very wishes, And the buildings of my fancy: only There’s one thing wanting, which I doubt not but Our Rome will cast upon thee. (II. i. 214. )Yet she has one feeling that outweighs both her maternal and heraristocratic instincts, and that is devotion to her country. Thisis the first and last and noblest thing in her. It is the basisand mainspring of the training of her son; she wishes him to servethe fatherland. It is the basis and mainspring of her patricianpartisanship; she honestly believes that the nobles alone are fit tosteer Rome to safety and honour. And to it she is willing to sacrificethe two other grand interests of her life. When the call comes she isready for Rome, with its mechanics and tribunes as well as its senatorsand patricians, to persuade her son to the step that will certainlyimperil and probably destroy him. It is public spirit of no ordinarykind that makes such a nature disregard the dearest ties of family andcaste, and all personal motives of love and vengeance, to intercede forthe city as a whole. But she puts her country first, and her words showthat she never even questions the sacredness of its claim: Thou know’st, great son, The end of war’s uncertain, but this certain, That, if thou conquer Rome, the benefit Which thou shalt thereby reap is such a name, Whose repetition will be dogg’d with curses; Whose chronicle thus writ: “The man was noble, But with his last attempt he wiped it out: Destroy’d his country, and his name remains To the ensuing age abhorr’d. ” (V. iii. 140. )She feels, as well she may, that she is basing her plea on eternalright, and is willing to stake her success on the irresistible truth ofher argument. Say my request’s unjust, And spurn me back: but if it be not so, Thou art not honest. (V. iii. 164. )Such a woman is made to be the mother of heroes. It is no wonder thatshe has bred that colossal _Übermensch_, her son. But she has thedefects of her qualities. Her devotion is narrow in its intensity,and in normal circumstances spares little recognition or tolerancefor those beyond its pale. Her contempt for the plebeians is open andunrestrained. She was wont, says Coriolanus, To call them woollen vassals, things created To buy and sell with groats, to show bare heads In congregations, to yawn, be still and wonder, When one but of my ordinance stood up To speak of peace or war. (III. ii. 9. )Even when trying to pacify her son, she cannot bridle her ownresentment. When he recklessly cries of his opponents: “Let themhang! ” she instinctively approves: “Ay, and burn too. ”[262] The energyof her love of glory has nothing sentimental about it, but oftenbecomes savage and sanguinary. She gloats over her robust imaginings ofthe fight: Methinks I hear hither your husband’s drum, See him pluck Aufidius down by the hair, As children from a bear, the Volsces shunning him: Methinks I see him stamp thus, and call thus: “Come on, you cowards! you were got in fear, Though you were born in Rome”: his bloody brow With his mail’d hand then wiping, forth he goes, Like to a harvest-man that’s tasked to mow Or all or lose his hire. _Virgilia. _ His bloody brow! O Jupiter, no blood! _Volumnia. _ Away, you fool! it more becomes a man Than gilt his trophy: the breasts of Hecuba, When she did suckle Hector, look’d not lovelier Than Hector’s forehead when it spit forth blood At Grecian sword, contemning. (I. iii. 32. )[262] There is no authority for taking this most characteristicutterance from Volumnia and assigning it to “a patrician” as someeditions do. And when she has heard the actual news, she triumphantly exclaims: O, he is wounded; I thank the gods for’t. (II. i. 133. )As Kreyssig points out, even great-hearted mothers, proud of theirwarrior sons, do not often like to dwell so realistically on havocand slaughter and blood. But tenderness and humanity are alien to hernature. When Valeria narrates how young Marcius tore in pieces thebutterfly, she interrupts with obvious satisfaction: “One on’s father’smoods” (I. iii. 72). At her hearth Coriolanus would not be taughtmuch kindliness for Volscians or plebeians or any other of the loweranimals. Indeed, her own relations with her son depend on his reverencerather than on his fondness. In the two collisions of their wills heresists all her entreaties and endearments, but yields in a moment toher anger and indignation. She beseeches him to submit to the judgmentof the people—all in vain till she loses patience: At thy choice, then: To beg of thee, it is my more dishonour Than thou of them. Come all to ruin: let Thy mother rather feel thy pride than fear Thy dangerous stoutness, for I mock at death With as big heart as thou. Do as thou list. (III. ii. 123. )At this his efforts to propitiate her are almost amusing: Pray, be content: Mother, I am going to the market-place: Chide me no more. I’ll mountebank their loves, Cog their hearts from them, and come home beloved Of all the trades in Rome. Look, I am going. (III. ii. 130. )Similarly, at the end, all argument and complaint, all pressure on theaffections of Coriolanus are without avail, till she turns upon himwith a violence for which, as in the previous case, Shakespeare foundno authority in Plutarch: Come, let us go: This fellow had a Volscian to his mother; His wife is in Corioli, and his child Like him by chance. Yet give us our dispatch: I am hush’d until our city be afire, And then I’ll speak a little. (V. iii. 177. )And the great warrior and rebel cannot bear her rebuke. These are instances both of the degree and the manner in whichVolumnia’s forceful character influences her son. Indeed it is easy tosee that for good and evil he is what she has made him. She is entitledto say: Thou art my warrior: I holp to frame thee. (V. iii. 62. )And though elsewhere she puts it, Thy valiantness was mine, thou suck’dst from me, But owe thy pride thyself; (III. ii. 129. )the impartial onlooker cannot make the distinction. He is bone of herbone and blood of her blood; and all her master impulses reappear inhim, though not so happily commingled or in such beneficent proportion. The joint operation is different and in some respects opposite, butthere is hardly a feature in him that cannot be traced to its origin inVolumnia, whether by heredity or education. This is just what we mightexpect. Modern conjecture points to the mother rather than the fatheras the source of will-power and character in the offspring; and in theup-bringing of the boy Volumnia has had it all her own way. Plutarch,as we saw, in his simple fashion, notices this as a disadvantage: andthough we may be sure that Plutarch’s insinuation of laxity could neverbe breathed against Shakespeare’s Volumnia, still she could not giveher son more width and flexibility than her own narrow and rigid idealsenjoined. Moreover, her limitations when transferred to the largersphere of his public efforts, would cramp and congest his powers, anddisplace his interests. Nor was there any other agency to divide the young man’s allegiance tohis mother or to counteract or temper her authority. Generally the mostpowerful rivals of home influence are the companionship of friends,and the love that founds a new home in marriage. But both of theseare either wanting in Coriolanus’ life, or serve only to deepen theimpressions made on him by Volumnia. If, for example, we consider the relation of friendship, we cannotbut notice that Shakespeare gives him no intimate of his own years. AFrench tragedian would infallibly have placed by his side the figure ofa confidant. Shakespeare was dispensed from the necessity by the freerusage of the Elizabethan stage and was at liberty to follow out thehints which he found in Plutarch. Marcius was churlishe, uncivill, and altogether unfit for any mans conversation. . . . They could not be acquainted with him, as one cittizen useth to be with another in the cittie. His behaviour was so unpleasaunt to them, by reason of a certaine insolent and sterne manner he had, which bicause it was to lordly, was disliked. So in Shakespeare he has no personal relations with any of the youngergeneration, even their resort to him as their congenial leadersurviving, as has already been pointed out, only in the desiccatedphrase of a stage direction; and his only associates are old or elderlymen like Titus Lartius, the Consul Cominius, and Menenius Agrippa. Whatsort of antidote could they supply against his mother’s intolerantvirtue? As Shakespeare conceives them, they respectively follow inMarcius’ wake, or are powerless to change and check his course, or evenurge him forward. Take Lartius, whom Shakespeare has drawn in a few rapid and vigorousstrokes. He is old and stiff, but ready if need be to lean on onecrutch and fight with the other, prompt to take a sporting wager, and,when he wins, eager to remit the stake in his admiration for the nobleyoungster, to whom with all his years he grants priority, whom on hissupposed death he laments as an irreplaceable jewel, whom he hails asthe living force that dwells within the trappings of their armament. Clearly from this cheery old fighting man, with his reverentialenthusiasm for Marcius’ fighting powers in voice, looks and blows, weneed not expect much correction of Marcius’ restiveness at the civiccurb. Cominius would seem more likely to prove a fitting Mentor, for to hislove and esteem he adds discretion. In Shakespeare, though he “hasyears upon him,” he is the avowed friend and comrade-in-arms of theyounger man; the brave and prudent general, “neither foolish in hisstands, nor cowardly in retire”; who, perhaps from seniority, holds theposition to which the other might aspire, but who confidently appealsto his promise of service. For their mutual affection is untouched byjealousy, and Cominius not only extols his heroism in the camp, but ishis warmest advocate in the Senate. He resents the citizens’ ficklenessand the tribunes’ trickery at the election as unworthy of Rome as wellas insulting to her hero, and is indignant at the attempt to arrestCoriolanus; but he abhors civil brawls, and, just as in the field so inthe city, he bows to “odds beyond arithmetic,” and considers that Manhood is call’d foolery, when it stands Against a falling fabric. (III. i. 246. )So he counsels Marcius’ withdrawal from the hostile mob, and afterwardsdispassionately states the three courses open to him, with somehesitation sanctioning the method of compromise if the hothead canbring himself to give it fair play. When his doubts prove true, heinterposes first with a remonstrance to his friend, and then with asolemn appeal to the people; and though in neither case is he allowedto finish, his efforts do not flag. He wishes to accompany the exilefor a month, and maintain a correspondence with him and have everythingin readiness for his recall. And if, when the invasion takes place,he rails at those who have brought about the calamity, that doesnot hinder him from his vain but zealous attempt at intercession. Altogether a sagacious, loyal, generous, but somewhat ineffectivecharacter, who wins our respect rather for what he essays than for whathe achieves; for he brings nothing to a successful issue. With the bestwill in the world, which he has, and with more freedom from classprejudice than can in point of fact be attributed to him, such an onecould do little to tame or bridle his friend. There remains Menenius, with his much more strongly marked character,and with the fuller opportunities that a close intimacy could procure. Were Marcius and he of the same flesh and blood, their affection couldhardly be greater. When debating with himself whether to try hismediation, this thought encourages the old man: “He call’d me father”(V. i. 3). He tells the Volscian sentinel: You shall perceive that a Jack guardant cannot office me from my son Coriolanus. (V. ii. 67. )And when they meet, he hails him: The glorious gods sit in hourly synod about thy particular prosperity, and love thee no worse than thy old father Menenius does! O, my son, my son! (V. ii. 72. )Nor are these statements idle brags; they are borne out by Coriolanus’own words when he dismisses him: For I loved thee, Take this along; I writ it for thy sake, [_Gives a letter_ And would have sent it. (V. ii. 95. )And again he tells Aufidius: This last old man, Whom with a crack’d heart I have sent to Rome, Loved me above the measure of a father; Nay, godded me, indeed. (V. iii. 8. )But the last expression may give an explanation both of the youngman’s condescension to fondness and of the unprofitableness ofMenenius’ influence. He is too much dazzled by the glories of hissplendid adoptive son. His enthusiasm knows no bounds. No lover is moreenraptured at receiving a _billet doux_ from his mistress, than is theold man when the youth on whom he dotes, deigns to write to him. A letter for me! it gives me an estate of seven years’ health; in which time I will make a lip at the physician; the most sovereign prescription in Galen is but empiricutic, and, to this preservative, of no better report than a horse-drench. (II. i. 125. )He may occasionally interpose a mild hint of remonstrance againstMarcius’ vehemence, but it is solely on the ground of expediency, notat all on the ground of principle; and on the whole he belongs to thatnot very edifying class of devotees who can say of a friend, Whate’er he does seems well done to me. Of which he himself is not altogether unaware. He tells the Volsciansentinel: I tell thee, fellow, Thy general is my lover: I have been The book of his good acts, whence men have read His fame unparallel’d, haply amplified: For I have ever verified my friends, Of whom he’s chief, with all the size that verity Would without lapsing suffer: nay, sometimes, Like to a bowl upon a subtle ground, I have tumbled past the throw; and in his praise Have almost stamp’d the leasing. (V. ii. 13. )This attitude, then, accounts for Coriolanus’ predilection for the oldsenator, and also reduces the value of the relation as an educativeagency. Youthful recklessness will meet with no inconvenient thwarting,_i. e. _ with no salutary rebuke, from such an adorer. But of course inthe blindest friendship there is always the unconscious influence andcriticism of the admirer’s own walk and conversation. And at firstsight it might seem that this influence and criticism Menenius was wellfitted to supply. He, too, like Volumnia, puts Rome before all otherconsiderations, as is shown not only by his undertaking the mission tothe Volscian camp, but by his action all through the drama. He is everwilling to play the part of mediator. Now we find him soothing thepeople, now we find him soothing Coriolanus. When the banishment is anaccomplished fact, he endeavours to mitigate the outbursts of Volumnia;and Sicinius bears witness: O, he is grown most kind of late. (IV. vi. 11. )During all the tumult of the election and the _émeute_ he keeps hishead and his heart; for he is inspired by the right civic feeling thatthere must be no civil war. Proceed by process; Lest parties, as he is beloved, break out, And sack great Rome with Romans. (III. i. 314. )And with this patriotism, partly as its result, he combines singularmoderation, at least in principle and thought, if not in language. He is always ready to commend and accept compromises. He says to thetribune, Be that you seem, truly your country’s friend, And temperately proceed to what you would Thus violently redress. (III. i. 218. )On the other hand, when Marcius draws he sees the mistake andinterposes: “Down with that sword” (III. i. 226); and only when thetribunes persist in their attack does he himself resort to force,which, however, he is glad to abandon at the first opportunity. Andthis moderation comes the more easily to him that he has a realkindliness even for the plebeians. It is assuredly no small complimentthat at the very height of the popular violence this patrician andsenator, the known and avowed friend of Coriolanus, should be chosen bythe tribunes themselves as their own delegate: Noble Menenius, Be you then as the people’s officer. (III. i. 329. )This confirms the testimony given him by the First Citizen in theopening scene: “He’s one honest enough” (I. i. 54); and the SecondCitizen describes him as Worthy Menenius Agrippa; one that hath always loved the people. (I. i. 52. )He has indeed a sympathy with them, that shows itself in the russet andkersey of his speech. The haughty Coriolanus despises the householdwords of the common folk, and cites them only to ridicule them,but Menenius’ phrases of their own accord run to the homespun andproverbial. He addresses the obtrusive citizen: “You, the great toe ofthis assembly” (I. i. 159). The dissension at Rome is a rent that “mustbe patch’d with cloth of any colour” (III. i. 252). Coriolanus’ roughwords he excuses on the ground that he is ill school’d In bolted language: meal and bran together He throws without distinction. (III. i. 321. )He figures the relentlessness of the returned exile as “yon coigno’ the Capitol, yon corner-stone” (V. iv. 1), and is at no loss forillustrations of the change that has come over the outcast: There is a differency between a grub and a butterfly, yet your butterfly was a grub. (V. iv. 11. )And with similes for Coriolanus’ present temper he positively overflows: He no more remembers his mother now than an eight-year-old horse. The tartness of his face sours ripe grapes. (V. iv. 16. ) There is no more mercy in him than there is milk in a male tiger. (V. iv. 29. )All his thoughts clothe themselves in the pat, familiar image, andthis is no doubt a great help to him in persuading his auditors, forwhich he has an undeniable talent. His famous apologue, besides being amasterpiece in its kind, worthy of La Fontaine at his best, completelyanswers its immediate purpose; and in the later scene he is able tolull the storm that Coriolanus and the tribunes have raised, and obtainfrom the infuriated demagogues what are in some sort favourable terms. But he is assisted in this by his genuine joviality and _bonhomie_. He is one of those people who permit themselves a little indulgencethat we hardly blame, for it is only one side of their pervasive goodnature. Menenius is in truth something of a belly-god and wine-bibber. When he hears news of Marcius he promptly decides how to celebrate theoccasion: I will make my very house reel to-night; (II. i. 121. )and he has already confessed that he is known to be one that loves a cup of hot wine with not a drop of allaying Tiber in’t; . . . one that converses more with the buttock of the night than with the forehead of the morning. (II. i. 52 and 56. )It is almost comic to hear him consoling Volumnia on her son’sbanishment when she moves off to lament “in anger, Juno-like,” with aninvitation: “You’ll sup with me? ” (IV. ii. 49). And wholly comic is hisexplanation of Cominius’ rebuff by Coriolanus, an explanation suggestedno doubt by subjective considerations: He was not taken well; he had not dined: The veins unfill’d, our blood is cold, and then We pout upon the morning, are unapt To give or to forgive; but when we have stuff’d These pipes and these conveyances of the blood With wine and feeding, we have suppler souls Than in our priest-like fasts; therefore I’ll watch him Till he be dieted to my request, And then I’ll set upon him. (V. i. 50. )But the worthy _bon-vivant_ is thoroughly in earnest, and in the crisisof his altercation with the sentinel harks back to this key of theposition, as he supposes it to be: Has he dined, canst thou tell? for I would not speak with him till after dinner. (V. ii. 36. )All these, however, are very human weaknesses, that sort well withthe geniality of the man, and, just because they are very humanweaknesses, might have a wholesome rather than a prejudicial effect onthe overstrained tensity of Marcius. So far then, despite the excessiveand uncritical in Menenius’ love, his patriotism, his moderation, hispopular bent, commended by his persuasive tongue and companionableways, might tend to supplement the defects and transcend thelimitations of Volumnia’s training. But Menenius has other qualitiesakin to, or associated with, those that we have discussed, which wouldhave a more questionable and not less decisive influence. He admitsthat he is said to be something imperfect in favouring the first complaint. (II. i. 53. )That is, he neglects the wise counsel, “Hear the other side,” andjumps to his conclusion at once. This is quite in keeping with thepartiality that makes him magnify the virtues of his friends, andwith his assumption that, since his own intercession has failed, thatof Volumnia can have no effect. He prejudges, in other words he isprejudiced. We do not have any instance of this in his acts, but wehave many in his unconsidered sayings, that, as he imagines, are tohave no consequence beyond the moment. Then he goes on to confess that he has the reputation of being “hastyand tinder-like upon too trivial motion” (II. i. 55), which meansthat he loses patience and fires up without adequate ground; and ofthis too we have ample evidence. He is wonderfully forbearing andlongsuffering if matters of any moment are at stake, but if he hasgained his point, or if there is nothing to gain and nothing to lose,he rails and mocks in Coriolanus’ own peculiar vein. Thus, when hehas convinced the mob, he feels free to make the ringleader his butt. When the tribunes profess to “know him,” that is, to understand hischaracter, he overwhelms them with peppery banter. When the news ofCoriolanus’ invasion arrives, in unrestrained indignation he upbraidsthe people and their blind guides with their imbecility. But it willbe observed that no harm ever comes by any of these ebullitions. Theyhave no after-effects. If something has to be done, no one could bemore sagacious and conciliatory than Menenius. Dr. Johnson said of him,perhaps more in exercise of his right as a sturdy old Tory to twitthose in high places, than in deliberate appreciation of the facts:“Shakespeare wanted a buffoon and he went to the Senate House forthat with which the Senate House would certainly have supplied him. ”Similarly, in the play Brutus is rash enough to answer him back: Come, come, you are well understood to be a perfecter giber for the table than a necessary bencher in the Capitol. (II. i. 90. )But Menenius deserves neither taunt. It was no parliamentary wag orsocial lampooner whom the Senate entrusted with the task of addressingthe rioters, or who persuaded the triumphant tribunes to a compromise. The charges nevertheless have a foundation in so far that Menenius,partly in jest, partly in irritation, gives his tongue rein unlesshe sees reason to curb it, and allows his choleric impulses fullexpression. These random ejaculations are taken at their proper valueby himself and others. As he says: What I think I utter, and spend my malice in my breath. (II. i. 58. )He is obviously one of those estimable and deservedly popular peoplewhose deliberate views are just and penetrating, and who are giftedwith the power of commending them, but who are none the less likedbecause they do not always think it necessary to have themselvesin hand, but let themselves go on the full career of their ownhalf-jocular, half-serious likes and dislikes, when for the moment theyare free from graver responsibilities. Now this of itself was no very good example for Coriolanus. Headopts Menenius’ headlong frankness, but without Menenius’ tacitpresupposition of good-humoured hyperbole. He utters what he thinks buthe does not spend his malice in his breath. His friend would do nothingto teach him restraint and reserve, but would rather, if he influencedhim at all, influence him to surcharge his invectives and double-barbhis flouts. But not only so. These instinctive likes and dislikes, which the oldpatrician could not but feel but which he never allowed to interferewith his practical policy, were the guiding principles of his lesscautious friend. It must be admitted that there is no abuse of thecitizens or their officers to which Coriolanus gives vent, but can beparalleled with something as strong from the mouth of Menenius. Thisworthy senior who hath always loved the people, turns from the tribuneswith the insult: God-den to your worships: more of your conversation would infect my brain, being the herdsmen of the beastly plebeians. (II. i. 103. )In this mood he asks them in regard to Coriolanus: Your multiplying spawn how can he flatter— That’s thousand to one good one? (II. ii. 82. )He has to the full the aristocratic loathing for the uncleanly populace: You are they That made the air unwholesome, when you cast Your stinking greasy caps in hooting at Coriolanus’ exile. (IV. vi. 129. ) You are the musty chaff: and you are smelt Above the moon. (V. i. 31. )These are his authentic innate prejudices that he controls andrepresses by the help of his reason and his patriotism, when theemergency requires: but they are there; and he would be no more carefulto restrain them in his familiar circle than a squatter at his clubfeels called upon to restrain his opinions about the Labour Party,though he may be very proud of Australia, and a very kindly master,and though he would neither publish them in an election address norperhaps justify them in his serious moments to himself. And this, wemay suppose, was the sort of conversation Marcius would hear as a ladfrom his old friend. There would be little in it to modify the prideand prejudice he derived from his mother. And lastly, coming to the other possible corrective, would his wifebe likely to soften the asperities of temper and opinion that werehis by nature and by second nature? At first we might say Yes. Shetakes comparatively little pleasure in the brilliance of his careerand is more concerned for his life than for his glory. When Volumniarecalls how she sent him forth as a lad to win honour, Virgilia’s heartpictures his possible death, and how would that have been compensated? For she loves in the first place not the hero but the husband, and herlove makes her timorous. She has none of her mother-in-law’s assurancethat his prowess is without match and beyond comparison. When “wondrousthings” are told of him how characteristic are their respectivecomments: _Virgilia. _ The gods grant them true! _Volumnia. _ True! pow, wow. (II. i. 154. )How differently they feel about his contest with his rival: _Virgilia. _ Heavens bless my lord from fell Aufidius! _Volumnia. _ He’ll beat Aufidius’ head below his knee And tread upon his neck. (I. iii. 48. )So she shrinks from the thoughts of blood and wounds over whichVolumnia gloats, and trembles at the dangers of the campaign. Devouredby suspense, she is in no mood to meet the ordinary social claimson her rank and sex, but shuts herself up within her four walls,and wears out the time over household tasks. Her seclusion, and theattempts to withdraw her from it, must not be misunderstood. Theyhave sometimes been taken as pictures of domestic narrow-mindednesson the one hand, and callous frivolity on the other. But frivolity isunthinkable in Volumnia; we may be sure she would never advise or doanything unbefitting the Roman matron. And it is quite opposed to theimpression Valeria produces; we may be sure she would never suggest it. In Plutarch’s story it is she who proposes and urges the deputation ofwomen to Coriolanus, and though Shakespeare, to suit his own purpose,transfers by implication the credit of this to Volumnia, Plutarch’sstatement was enough to prevent him from transforming the trueauthoress of the idea into the fashionable gadabout that some criticshave alleged her to be. On the contrary, with him she calls forth themost purely poetical passage in the whole play, and she does so by thevestal dignity and severity of her character. Coriolanus greets her inthe camp: The noble sister of Publicola, The moon of Rome, chaste as the icicle That’s curdied by the frost of purest snow And hangs on Dian’s temple: dear Valeria! (V. iii. 65. )The woman to whom this splendid compliment is paid by one who neverspeaks otherwise than he thinks, is assuredly no more obnoxiousthan Volumnia herself to the charge of levity. They are both greathigh-hearted Roman ladies who do not let their private or publicsolicitudes interfere with their customary social routine, and Valeriavisits her friend to cheer her in her anxiety, as she would have her,in turn, visit and comfort their common acquaintance. But Virgilia iscast in a gentler mould; though neither is she lacking in character,spirit and magnanimity. Of course she is not an aggressive woman, andshe feels that the home is the place for her. She speaks seldom, andwhen she does her words are few. It is typical that she greets herhusband when he returns a victor with no articulate welcome, but withher more eloquent tears. He addresses her in half humorous, half tenderreproach: My gracious silence, hail! Wouldst thou have laugh’d had I come coffin’d home, That weep’st to see me triumph? (II. i. 192. )A wonderful touch that comes from a wonderful insight. It may well beasked, as it has been asked, how Shakespeare _knew_ that Virgilia’sheart was too full for words. But with all this, she shows abundant resolution, readiness andpatriotism. She is adamant to the commands of her imperiousmother-in-law and the entreaties of her insistent friend when they urgeher to break her self-imposed retirement. She, too, has her rebuke forthe insolent tribunes. Above all, she, too, plays her part in turningCoriolanus from his revenge. In that scene, after her wont, she doesnot say much, less than two lines in all, that serve to contain thesimple greeting and the quick answer to her husband’s warning that heno longer sees things as he did: The sorrow that delivers us thus changed Makes you think so. (V. iii. 39. )But who shall say that those dove’s eyes Which can make gods forsworn, (V. iii. 27. )did not shed their influence on his mother’s demand, and help himto break his vindictive vow. Remember, too, that the sacrifice thisimplied would mean more to her than to Volumnia, for though shelikewise can dedicate what she holds dearest on the altar of hercountry, her affections, her home, Marcius as an individual, bulk morelargely in her life. And if she loves him, we see how fondly he loves her. More than once ortwice he alludes to his happiness as bridegroom, husband, and father. When she appears before him, his ejaculations and the tenderness of hisappeal, Best of my flesh, Forgive my tyranny, (V. iii. 42. )speak volumes in a mouth like his for the keenness of his affection. To express the bliss that he feels in the salute of reunion, thishero-lover can find analogues only in his banishment and his vengeance: O, a kiss Long as my exile, sweet as my revenge! Now, by the jealous queen of heaven, that kiss I carried from thee, dear: and my true lip Hath virgin’d it e’er since. (V. iii. 44. )This woman, then, with her love and sweetness, that strike suchresponsive chords in the rude breast of her lord, is apparently wellfitted to smooth the harshness of his dealings with his fellow-men: andthis would seem all the more likely since her gentleness is not of thatflabby kind that cannot hold or bind, but is strengthened by firmnessof will and largeness of feeling. All the same, she exerts no influence whatever before the very end onher husband’s public life or even on his general character, becauseshe has no interest in or aptitude for concerns of his busy, practicalcareer. She has chosen her own orbit in her home, and her love hasno desire to step beyond. We have seen that, according to Plutarch,Volumnia was entrusted with the selection of her son’s wife. ThisShakespeare omits, perhaps as incongruous with the spontaneousness ofthe relation between his wedded lovers, but it may have left a tracein the position he assigns to Virgilia. The mother-in-law has andclaims the leading place; and, as Kreyssig remarks, with a woman ofthe daughter-in-law’s steady inflexibility, collisions more proper forcomedy than for tragedy must inevitably ensue, unless there were astrict delimitation of spheres. Volumnia continues to be prompter andguide in all matters political. She has all the outward precedence. On his return from Corioli, her son gives her the prior reverence andsalutation, and, only as it were by her permission, turns to his wife. When the deputation of ladies appears in his presence before Rome,he seems for a moment to be surprised out of his decorum, and hisfirst words of passionate greeting are for Virgilia; but he presentlyrecovers, and, with a certain accent of reproof, turns on himself: You gods! I prate, And the most noble mother of the world Leave unsaluted: sink, my knee, i’ the earth: Of thy deep duty more impression show Than that of common sons. (V. iii. 48. )Evidently, his love for his wife, intense though it be, is a thingapart, a sanctuary of his most inmost feeling, and is quite out ofrelation with the affairs of the jostling world. In them his mother hassupreme sway, and Virgilia’s unobtrusive graciousness does not exerciseeven an indirect influence on his ingrained principles and prejudices. She is no makeweight against the potent authority of Volumnia. CHAPTER VTHE GREATNESS OF CORIOLANUS. AUFIDIUSIn the atmosphere then of Volumnia’s predominance we are to imagineyoung Marcius growing up from infancy to boyhood, from boyhoodto youth, environed by all the most inspiring and most exclusivetraditions of an old Roman family of the bluest blood. After theexpulsion of the Tarquins, we must suppose that there was no moredistinguished _gens_ than his. The tribune Brutus gives the longbead-roll of his ancestry, the glories of which, as has already beenshown, are even exaggerated in his statement through Shakespeare’shaving made a little mistake in regard to Plutarch’s account, andhaving included representatives of later among those of formergenerations. But Volumnia is not the mother to let him rest on theachievements of his predecessors; he must make them his own byequalling or excelling them. He begins as a boy, and already in hismaiden fight his exploits rouse admiration. Plutarch describes thecircumstance: The first time he went to the warres, being but a strippling, was when Tarquine surnamed the prowde . . . dyd come to Rome with all the ayde of the Latines, and many other people of Italie. . . . In this battell, wherein were many hotte and sharpe encounters of either partie, Martius valliantly fought in the sight of the Dictator; and a Romaine souldier being throwen to the ground even hard by him, Martius straight bestrid him, and slue the enemie with his owne handes that had overthrowen the Romaine. Hereupon, after the battell was wonne, the Dictator dyd not forget so noble an acte, and therefore first of all he crowned Martius with a garland of oken boughs. This furnishes Cominius with the prologue to his eulogy: At sixteen years, When Tarquin made a head for Rome, he fought Beyond the mark of others: our then dictator, Whom with all praise I point at, saw him fight, When with his Amazonian chin he drove The bristled lips before him: he bestrid An o’erpress’d Roman and i’ the consul’s view Slew three opposers: Tarquin’s self he met And struck him on his knee: in that day’s feats, When he might act the woman in the scene, He proved the best man i’ the field, and for his meed Was brow-bound with the oak. (II. ii. 91. )But it will be noticed that in Shakespeare’s version Marcius’prowess is enhanced: not one opponent but three fall before him; heconfronts the arch-enemy himself, and has the best of it. Similarlyhis derring-do at Corioli is raised to the superhuman. Plutarch’sstatement, as he feels, makes demands, but it is moderate compared withShakespeare’s. Martius being in the throng emong the enemies, thrust him selfe into the gates of the cittie, and entred the same emong them that fled, without that any one of them durst at the first turne their face upon him, or els offer to slaye him. But he looking about him and seeing he was entred the cittie with very fewe men to helpe him, and perceyving he was envirouned by his enemies that gathered round about to set apon him: dyd things then as it is written, wonderfull and incredible: . . . By this meanes, Lartius that was gotten out, had some leysure to bring the Romaines with more safetie into the cittie. Here he is accompanied at least by a few, among whom, it is implied,the valiant Lartius is one, and Lartius having extricated himself,comes back with reinforcements to help him. But in Shakespeare he isfrom beginning to end without assistance, and his boast, “Alone I didit,” is the literal truth. The first soldier says, discreetly passingover the disobedience of the men: Following the fliers at the very heels, With them he enters; who, upon the sudden, Clapp’d to their gates: he is himself alone To answer all the city. (I. iv. 49. )And Cominius reports: Alone he enter’d The mortal gate of the city, which he painted With shunless destiny; aidless came off. (II. ii. 114. )But he is not merely, though he is conspicuously, a soldier. He isalso a general who once and again gives proof of his strategic skill. Nor do his qualifications stop here. He has the forethought and insightof a statesman, at any rate in matters of foreign and military policy. He has anticipated the attack of the Volsces with which the playbegins, as we learn from the remark of the First Senator: Marcius, ’tis true that you have lately told us; The Volsces are in arms. (I. i. 231. )So after their disaster at Corioli, he estimates the situation aright,when even Cominius is mistaken, and conjectures that the enemy is onlywaiting an opportunity for renewing the war: So then the Volsces stand but as at first, Ready, when time shall prompt them, to make road Upon’s again. (III. i. 4. )And this, as we presently learn, is quite correct. Even in political statesmanship, the department in which he is supposedto be specially to seek, he has a sagacity and penetration that showhim the centre of the problem. This does not necessarily mean that hissolution is the true one; and still less does it mean that he is wisein proclaiming his views when and where he does so: but the viewsthemselves are certainly deep-reaching and acute, and such as would winapproval from some of the greatest builders of states, the Richelieus,the Fredericks, the Bismarcks. He is quite right in denying that hisinvectives against the policy of concession are due to “choler”: Choler! Were I as patient as the midnight sleep, By Jove, ’twould be my mind! (III. i. 84. )His objections are in truth no outbreaks of momentary exasperation,though that may have added pungency to their expression, but mature andsober convictions, that have a worth and weight of their own. As wemight expect; for Shakespeare derives almost all of them from Plutarch;and Plutarch, who had thought about these things, puts several of hisfavourite ideas in Coriolanus’ mouth, even while condemning Coriolanus’bigotry and harshness; and while, for dramatic fitness, suppressing thequalifications and provisos that he himself thought essential. To Marcius the root of the matter is to be found in the fact that theRoman Republic is not a democracy but an aristocracy, and in thisrespect he contrasts it with some of the Greek communities. Therefore sayed he, they that gave counsell, and persuaded that the corne should be geven out to the common people _gratis_, as they used to doe in citties of Graece, where the people had more absolute power; dyd but only nourishe their disobedience, which would breake out in the ende, to the utter ruine and overthrowe of the whole state. Shakespeare’s transcription is, but for the interpolated interruption,fairly close: _Coriolanus. _ Whoever gave that counsel, to give forth The corn o’ the storehouse gratis, as ’twas used Sometime in Greece,— _Menenius. _ Well, well, no more of that. _Coriolanus. _ Though there the people had more absolute power, I say, they nourished disobedience, fed The ruin of the state. (III. |
i. 113. )That being so, he regards it as a kind of treason to the constitutionto pay court to the plebs, or let it have a share of the government. He sayed they nourished against them selves, the naughty seede and cockle of insolencie and sedition, which had bene sowed and scattered abroade emongest the people, whom they should have cut of, if they had bene wise, and have prevented their greatnes. This is only a little more explicit in Shakespeare: I say again, In soothing them, we nourish ’gainst our senate The cockle of rebellion, insolence, sedition, Which we ourselves have plough’d for, sow’d, and scatter’d, By mingling them with us, the honour’d number, Who lack not virtue, no, nor power, but that Which they have given to beggars. (III. i. 68. )For, and this is one of Shakespeare’s additions, if they have any shareat all, being the majority they will swamp the votes of the superiororder. You are plebeians, If they be senators; and they are no less, When, both your voices blended, the great’st taste Most palates theirs. (III. i. 101. )And their magistrate, strong in the support he receives, dictates hisignorant will to the experience and wisdom of the senate. [They should] not to their owne destruction to have suffered the people, to stablishe a magistrate for them selves, of so great power and authoritie, as that man had, to whom they had graunted it. Who was also to be feared, bicause he obtained what he would, and dyd nothing but what he listed, neither passed for any obedience to the Consuls, but lived in all libertie acknowledging no superieur to commaund him, saving the only heades and authors of their faction, whom he called his magistrates: . . . [The Tribuneshippe] most manifestly is the embasing of the Consulshippe. This arraignment of the populace and its elect as mischief-makerswhenever they try to rule and interfere with competent authority, goesto Shakespeare’s heart, and he makes the passage much more nervous andvivid; but the idea is the same. O good but most unwise patricians! why, You grave but reckless senators, have you thus Given Hydra here to choose an officer, That with his peremptory “shall,” being but The horn and noise of the monster’s, wants not spirit To say he’ll turn your current in a ditch, And make your channel his. (III. i. 91. ) By Jove himself! It makes the consuls base. (III. i. 107. )The result must be division and altercation with all the resultinganarchy. The state [of the cittie] as it standeth, is not now as it was wont to be, but becommeth dismembred in two factions, which mainteines allwayes civill dissention and discorde betwene us, and will never suffer us againe to be united into one bodie. Here, too, with some variation in the wording Shakespeare keeps closeto the sense. My soul aches To know, when two authorities are up, Neither supreme, how soon confusion May enter ’twixt the gap of both, and take The one by the other. (III. i. 108. )The grand mistake was the distribution of corn, for, as Plutarch putsit very clearly: They will not thincke it is done in recompense of their service past, sithence they know well enough they have so ofte refused to goe to the warres, when they were commaunded: neither for their mutinies when they went with us, whereby they have rebelled and forsaken their countrie: neither for their accusations which their flatterers have preferred unto them, and they have receyved, and made good against the Senate: but they will rather judge we geve and graunt them this, as abasing our selves, and standing in feare of them, and glad to flatter them every waye. These weighty arguments, which Coriolanus is quite entitled to callhis “reasons,” for reasons they are, are substantially reproduced inShakespeare: They know the corn Was not our recompense, resting well assured They ne’er did service for’t: being press’d to the war, Even when the navel of the state was touched, They would not thread the gates. This kind of service Did not deserve corn gratis. Being i’ the war, Their mutinies and revolts, wherein they show’d Most valour, spoke not for them: the accusation Which they have often made against the senate, All cause unborn, could never be the motive Of our so frank donation. Well, what then? How shall this bisson multitude digest The senate’s courtesy? Let deeds express What’s like to be their words: “We did request it; We are the greater poll, and in true fear They gave us our demands. ” Thus we debase The nature of our seats and make the rabble Call our cares fears: which will in time Break ope the locks o’ the senate, and bring in The crows to peck the eagles. (III. i. 120. )That seems convincing enough. Their refusal of military service showsthat the citizens merited no leniency from the state, the chargethat the patricians were hoarding stores was universally known tobe baseless, so the malcontents can only infer that the senate gavethe largesse in fright, and find in this encouragement for theirusurpations. And in the meantime, while doubt exists as to the realcentre of authority, the effect must be vacillation in the policyof the republic and neglect of the most urgent measures. This was aconsideration that came home to Shakespeare, who never forgot theweakness and misery of his own country when it was torn by civilstrife, so he calls urgent attention to it at the close. This is theonly portion of the speech that is quite original so far as the thoughtis concerned. This double worship, Where one part does disdain with cause, the other Insult without all reason, where gentry, title, wisdom, Cannot conclude but by the yea and no Of general ignorance,—it must omit Real necessities, and give way the while To unstable slightness: purpose so barr’d, it follows, Nothing is done to purpose. (III. i. 142. ) Your dishonour Mangles true judgment and bereaves the state Of that integrity which should become’t, Not having the power to do the good it would, For the ill which doth control’t. (III. i. 157. )All this contains a measure of truth that is valid in all times; fromthe point of view of the aristocratic republican it is absolutelytrue. Coriolanus’ diagnosis of the case is minutely correct and everyone of his prognostics is fulfilled. The plebs does proceed withits encroachments; the power of Rome is strangely weakened as theimmediate result of the struggle; the foreign policy is short-sightedand unwise; the pressing need of defence is overlooked. Of course theanswer is that his uncompromising suggestions might have led to a worserevolution, and that in the long run a great deal more was gained thanlost: but the important point to note is that his views are certainlyarguable, that much could be said for them, that at the very leastthey assert one aspect of the real facts, and are as far as possiblefrom being the mere tirades of a brainless aristocratic swashbuckler. As already pointed out they give just the sort of estimate that someof the wisest statesmen who have ever lived would have formed of thesituation. It is quite conceivable that his proposals if carriedthrough with vigour and ruthlessness would have settled thingssatisfactorily at least for the moment. So besides his pre-eminence inwar and generalship and his foresight in foreign affairs, we may claimfor Coriolanus not indeed political tact but political grip. And to these qualifications of physical prowess and intellectual forcehe adds others of a more distinctively moral description. Among these the most obvious is his extreme truthfulness. He has noidea of equivocation or even of reticence. Menenius says of him: His heart’s his mouth: What his breast forges, that his tongue must vent. (III. i. 257. )Nor is his veracity confined to words; he is honest and genuine to thecore of his nature and will not stoop to a gesture that belies hisfeeling: I will not do’ Lest I surcease to honour mine own truth And by my body’s action teach my mind A most inherent baseness. (III. ii. 120. )And following on this is his innate loyalty. Nothing revolts him likea breach of that obligation, and in the crises of his career it is theaccusation of treason that rouses him to a frenzy. Thus, after hisimprudent speech, Sicinius cries: Has spoken like a traitor, and shall answer As traitors do. (III. i. 162. )And Coriolanus bursts out: Thou wretch, despite o’erwhelm thee. It is the same word that scatters his prudent resolutions in the trialscene: _Sicinius. _ You are a traitor to the people. _Coriolanus. _ How! traitor! _Menenius. _ Nay, temperately; your promise. _Coriolanus. _ The fires i’ the lowest hell fold-in the people! Call me their traitor! Thou injurious tribune! Within thine eyes sat twenty thousand deaths, In thy hands clutch’d as many millions, in Thy lying tongue both numbers, I would say “Thou liest” unto thee with a voice as free As I do pray the gods. (III. iii. 66. )And similarly when Aufidius calls him traitor, he repeats theword “Traitor! how now! ” in a wrath that is for the moment almostspeechless, till it overflows in a torrent of reckless abuse. It ispart of the tragic irony of the play that with his ingrained horror ofsuch an offence, he should yet in very truth let himself be hurriedinto treason against his country. For all his instincts are on theside of faith and troth and obligation. When he wishes to express hishostility to Aufidius he can think of no better comparison than this: I’ll fight with none but thee; for I do hate thee Worse than a promise-breaker. (I. viii. 1. )One result of this is that he has a simple reverence for allprescriptive ties, which suffuses his stern nature with a certaintinge of kindly humanity. His piety to his mother comes of coursefrom Plutarch; but his tenderness for his wife and delight in hisson, lightly but strongly marked, are Shakespearean traits. So isthe intimacy with Menenius, which greatly removes the impression of“churlishness” and “solitariness” that Plutarch’s portrait conveys; andhis self-effacement in obedience to the powers that be and to the wordthat he has pledged, appears in his willing acceptance of a subordinaterank. The tribunes wonder that His insolence can brook to be commanded Under Cominius; (I. i. 266. )and attribute it to base calculation in keeping with their own natures;but to this view Shakespeare’s story gives no support. The realexplanation is simpler: it is his former promise and he is constant (I. i. 241). Even more pleasant is the famous instance of his respect for the claimsof hospitality. This episode is obtained from Plutarch, but in severalrespects it is completely altered. After describing how Coriolanusdeclined all special reward, the original narrative proceeds: “Only this grace (sayed he) I crave, and beseeche you to graunt me. Among the Volsces there is an olde friende and hoste of mine, an honest wealthie man and now a prisoner, who living before in great wealthe in his owne countrie, liveth now a poore prisoner in the handes of his enemies: and yet notwithstanding all this his miserie and misfortune, it would do me great pleasure if I could save him from this one daunger: to keepe him from being solde as a slave. ” The souldiers hearing Martius wordes, made a marvelous great showte among them. Compare this with the scene in Shakespeare: _Coriolanus. _ The gods begin to mock me. I, that now Refused most princely gifts, am bound to beg Of my lord general. _Cominius. _ Take’t; ’tis yours. What is’t? _Coriolanus. _ I sometime lay here in Corioli At a poor man’s house: he used me kindly: He cried to me; I saw him prisoner; But then Aufidius was within my view, And wrath o’erwhelmed my pity: I request you To give my poor host freedom. _Cominius. _ O well begg’d! Were he the butcher of my son, he should Be free as is the wind. Deliver him, Titus. _Lartius. _ Marcius, his name? _Coriolanus. _ By Jupiter! forgot. I am weary; yea, my memory is tired. Have we no wine here? (I. ix. 79. )The postponement of pity to wrath is a new characteristic detail whichshows how these gentler impulses in Coriolanus must yield to his rulingpassions. On the other hand his host is transformed from a rich to apoor man, and thus his humanity acquires a wider range, and we see howit can extend beyond his own class if only there is a personal claimon it. Above all there is the new illuminating touch of the lapse ofmemory. Sometimes this has been taken as betraying the indifference ofthe aristocrat for an inferior whose name he does not think it worthwhile to remember. Surely not. Coriolanus is experiencing the collapsethat follows his superhuman exertions, the exhaustion of body andmind when one cannot think of the most familiar words: but he rallieshis strength for a last effort, and is just able to intercede for hishumble guest-friend ere he succumbs. And this last passage brings before us another of his magnanimousqualities. He has refused most princely gifts. No one can accuse him ofcovetousness. His patrician bigotry aims at power and leadership, notat material perquisites. After the double battle, won almost entirelyby his instrumentality, when Cominius offers him the tenth, he makesthe generous answer: I thank you, general; But cannot make my heart consent to take A bribe to pay my sword: I do refuse it. (I. ix. 36. )He deserves the encomium of the consul: Our spoils he kick’d at, And look’d upon things precious as they were The common muck of the world: he covets less Than misery itself would give; rewards His deeds with doing them, and is content To spend the time to end it. (II. ii. 128. )He “rewards his deeds with doing them,” without thought of ulteriorprofit or of anything beyond the worthy occupation of the moment. Thisleads to the next point, his cult of honour; and it must be confessedthat he conceives it in a very lofty and noble way. His view of itreminds one of Arthur’s saying in Tennyson’s _Idylls_: For the deed’s sake my knighthood do the deed, Not to be noised of. Honour, of course, is not the highest possible principle. It implies acertain quest for recognition, and in so far has a personal and evenselfish aspect. But in the right kind of honour the recognition issought, in the first place, for real excellences that, in the secondplace, are determined only by competent judges, in some cases only bythe individual’s own conscience. In both respects Coriolanus bearsexamination. Of course, when there is any pursuit of honour at all, it is almostimpossible to exclude some admixture of rivalry and emulation: for thedesire of recognition, if only by oneself, carries with it the desireof being recognised as having achieved the very best: and rivalry andemulation must to that extent have an egoistic direction. Coriolanushas these feelings to the full, and often gives them extreme expressionin regard to his one possible competitor Aufidius. He calls him“the man of my soul’s hate” (I. v. 11); and tells him: “I have everfollowed thee with hate” (IV. v. 104). Aufidius has equal animosityagainst Coriolanus. His correspondent, to give an idea of his rival’sunpopularity with his townsmen, writes of Marcius your old enemy, Who is of Rome worse hated than of you. (I. ii. 12. )Lartius reports how the Volscian has said, That of all things upon the earth, he hated Your person most. (III. i. 14. )Marcius, hearing he is at Antium, sums up for both: I wish I had a cause to seek him there, To oppose his hatred fully. (III. i. 19. )As Tullus sums up on his side: We hate alike; Not Afric owns a serpent I abhor More than thy fame and envy. (I. viii. 2. )Still, it is precisely in his relations with Aufidius, and incomparison with Aufidius’ passions and purposes, that Coriolanus’ finerconception of honour becomes apparent. The true warrior values theseencounters for themselves, and has a rapture in them second to nonethat he knows. He exclaims: Were half to half the world by the ears, and he Upon my party, I’ld revolt, to make Only my wars with him: he is a lion That I am proud to hunt. (I. i. 237·)This has sometimes been regarded as a hint in advance of Marcius’readiness to desert the national cause. But that seems to be taking_au pied de la lettre_ one of those conversational audacities thatmuch discreeter men than he often permit themselves. It is rather anexaggerated expression of his delight in the contest, and an ironicalcomment on his later abandonment of it for the sake of revenge. At anyrate even if the worst interpretation be put on it, it suggests a morerespectable motive for desertion than the parallel outburst of Aufidius: I would I were a Roman; for I cannot, Being a Volsce, be that I am. (I. x. 4. )For Coriolanus would change sides in order to confront the severesttest, Aufidius would do so in order not to be of the defeated party. There is a meanness and bitterness in Tullus from which his rival iswholly free. All through, Marcius shows the generosity of consciousheroism. He is very handsome in his acknowledgment of Aufidius’ merits: They have a leader, Tullus Aufidius, that will put you to’t. I sin in envying his nobility, And were I anything but what I am, I would wish me only he. (I. i. 232. )In their trials of valour he takes no advantage, but rather makesa point, first of facing his foe though he himself is wearied andwounded, and, second, of rousing him to put forth all his strength. The blood I drop is rather physical Than dangerous to me: to Aufidius thus I will appear, and fight. (I. v. 19. )Then, when they meet, he dissembles his hurts, and cries: Within these three hours, Tullus, Alone I fought in your Corioli walls, And made what work I pleased: _’tis not my blood_ Wherein thou seest me mask’d: for thy revenge Wrench up thy power to the highest. (I. viii. 7. )They are pledged to slay each other or be slain. Tullus has told thesenators: If we and Caius Marcius chance to meet, ’Tis sworn between us we shall ever strike Till one can do no more. (I. ii. 34. )And to this he adds boasts of his own, which Coriolanus omits. Nevertheless, though his professions are the loudest, Aufidius makesgood neither pledge nor boasts, but lets himself be driven back despitethe assistance of his friends. And then, just as he would rather be asuccessful Roman than a defeated Volsce, his thoughts turn to gettingthe better of his victor by whatever means; he cannot take his beatingin a sportsmanlike way, and thus shows finally how hollow is the honourafter which he strives. Whether intentionally or not, Lartius’ reportgives a true description of his feeling: He would pawn his fortunes To hopeless restitution, so he might Be call’d your vanquisher. (III. i. 15. )“Be call’d”; as though the vain ascription of superiority were all thathe desired. But in truth he has already made the same confession inso many words, with the more damaging admission that he now feels asthough he no longer cared by what foul play such ascription is won. By the elements, If e’er again I meet him beard to beard, He’s mine, or I am his: mine emulation Hath not that honour in’t it had: for where I thought to crush him in an equal force, True sword to sword, I’ll potch at him some way Or wrath or craft may get him. (I. x. 10. ) My valour’s poison’d With only suffering stain by him: for him Shall fly out of itself: nor sleep, nor sanctuary, Being naked, sick, nor fane nor Capitol, The prayers of priests, nor times of sacrifice, Embarquements all of fury, shall lift up Their rotten privilege and custom ’gainst My hate to Marcius: where I find him, were it At home, upon my brother’s guard, even there, Against the hospitable canon, would I Wash my fierce hand in’s blood. (I. x. 17. )On this passage Coleridge comments: I have such deep faith in Shakespeare’s heart-lore, that I take for granted that this is in nature, and not as a mere anomaly; although I cannot in myself discover any germ of possible feeling, which could wax and unfold itself into such a sentiment as this. It seems strange that Coleridge should say this, for it is provedby not a few examples that baffled emulation may issue in an envywhich knows few restraints. Perhaps it was the avowal rather thanthe temper which struck him as verging on the unnatural or abnormal. Those who deliberately adopt such an attitude do not usually admitit to themselves, still less to their victims, and least of all to athird party. Which may admonish us that Aufidius’ threats were notdeliberate, but mere frantic outcries wrung from him in rage andmortification. Yet they spring from authentic impulses in his heart,and though they may for a time be hidden by his superficial chivalry,they will spread and thrive if the conditions favour their growth. Whenthey have overrun his nature and choked the wholesome grain, he willnot point to them so openly and will name them by other names. Butthey are the same and differ from what they were only as the thornythicket differs from its parent seeds. They have always been thereand it is well that we should be aware of their presence from thefirst. Coleridge concludes his criticism: “However I perceive that inthis speech is meant to be contained a prevention of the shock at theafter-change in Aufidius’ character. ” In short, it is not to be takenas his definite programme from which he inconsistently deviates whenthe opportunity is offered at Antium for carrying it out, but as theinvoluntary presentiment, which the revealing power of anguish awakensin his soul, of the crimes he is capable of committing for his masterpassion, a presentiment that in the end is realised almost to theletter. And in the fulfilment, as in the anticipation, he has an eye merelyto the results, and seeks only to obtain the first place for himselfwhether he deserve it or no. When Coriolanus consents to the peace withRome, Aufidius soliloquises: I am glad thou hast set thy mercy and thy honour At difference in thee: out of that I’ll work Myself a former fortune. (V. iii. 200. )It is the adventitious superiority and the judgment by appearances thatalways appeal to him. Listen to the interchange of confidences betweenhis accomplice and himself: _Third Conspirator. _ The people will remain uncertain whilst ’Twixt you there’s difference; but the fall of either Makes the survivor heir of all. _Aufidius. _ I know it: And my pretext to strike at him admits A good construction. (V. vi. 17. )He will be heir of all, and his action will admit a good construction;that is enough for him. It only remains to keep another constructionfrom being suggested; and he approves the conspirator’s advice: When he lies along, After your way his tale pronounced shall bury His reasons with his body. (V. vi. 57. )It has sometimes been questioned whether such a man would give hisfugitive rival a welcome which at the first and for some time seems somagnanimous, and if he did, whether the magnanimity was sincere. ButAufidius, though he is above all a lover of pre-eminence at whatevercost and therefore cannot for long stand the ordeal of being surpassed,is not without a soldier’s generosity; and moreover, the course whichhe was moved to adopt (and this is a more important consideration)would be one congenial to his meretricious love of ostentation anddisplay. There is no rôle more soothing to worsted vanity and at thesame time more likely to gain it the admiration it prizes, than thatof patron to a formerly successful and now unfortunate rival. In thereflected glory, the benefactor seems to acquire the merits of theother in addition to a magnificence all his own. This, we may assume,was in part the motive of Aufidius; as appears from his own words, inwhich he shows himself well aware of his own generous behaviour: He came unto my hearth; Presented to my knife his throat: I took him; Made him joint-servant with me; gave him way In all his own desires; nay, let him choose Out of my files, his projects to accomplish, My best and freshest men; served his designments In mine own person; holp to reap the fame Which he did end all his; and _took some pride_ _To do myself this wrong_; till, at the last, I seem’d his follower, not partner, and He waged me with his countenance, as if I had been mercenary. (V. vi. 30. )The hasty flash of generosity, the hope of winning new credit, wouldsoon be extinguished or transmuted by such persistent success,superiority and pride. And Coriolanus’ popularity with the troops atthe expense of his Volscian colleague, would be bitter to the mosthigh-minded benefactor. It is brought out to us by his question to hislieutenant in the camp near Rome: “Do they still fly to the Roman? ”(IV. vii. 1). Evidently the soldiers of Antium flock to the bannersof this foreigner rather than to those of their own countrymen. Thesuggestion for this is furnished by Plutarch, but with Shakespeare asting is added. In the _Life_ Tullus stays behind as reserve with halfthe army to guard against any inroad, while Coriolanus acts on theoffensive and captures a number of towns. Thereupon, the other Volsces that were appointed to remaine in garrison for defence of theur countrie, hearing this good newes, would tary no lenger at home, but armed them selves, and ranne to Martius campe, saying they dyd acknowledge no other captaine but him. It is much less wounding to Aufidius that his men should wish toexchange inaction for the excitement of war, than that he shouldwitness their resort to his rival who is, in name, only his equal incommand. Indeed his lieutenant in the play regrets that he did not doprecisely what he did do according to Plutarch. I wish, sir,— I mean for your particular,—you had not Join’d in commission with him; but either Had borne the action of yourself, or else To him had left it solely. (IV. vii. 12. )Thus Shakespeare gives Tullus a stronger motive, and in so far abetter policy for his treason. On the other hand he bases it moreexclusively on personal envy. For in Plutarch the truce of thirty dayswhich Coriolanus grants Rome is the original occasion of the movementagainst him, in which other Volscians besides Aufidius share; and thismovement culminates only after he has conceded peace on conditionswhich even Plutarch considers unfair to his employers. But in the play,as we have seen, the truce is omitted, and Tullus has determined onthe destruction of his supplanter even at a time when he confidentlyexpects that Rome cannot save herself: When, Caius, Rome is thine, Thou art poor’st of all: then shortly art thou mine. (IV. vii. 56. )Thus the last shred of public spirit is torn away from his selfishambition and spite. In contrast with all this lust for precedence and vainglorious egotism,we cannot but feel that Marcius is striving for the reality of honourand is eager to fulfil the conditions on which honour is due. And connected with this is another point which we might regard as thenatural and inevitable consequence, but which Shakespeare only inferredand did not obtain from Plutarch, who gives no indication of it. Thisis Marcius’ indifference to or rather detestation of all professedpraise. His distaste for eulogy does not of course lead him to rejecta distinction and acknowledgment like the surname of _Coriolanus_that he is conscious of having deserved. On the contrary he prizesit and clings to it, and among the circumstances that overthrow hisself-control in the final scene, the fact that Aufidius withholds fromhim this appellation has a chief place. _Aufidius. _ Marcius! _Coriolanus. _ Marcius! _Aufidius. _ Ay, Marcius, Caius Marcius; dost thou think I’ll grace thee with that robbery, thy stol’n name Coriolanus in Corioli? Just in the same way, his aversion from mercantile profit does not leadhim to refuse a gift from a friend when he feels that he has earnedthat friend’s approval. So when Cominius bestows on him the charger,and bids the host hail him with his new title, he answers graciouslyenough if a little awkwardly: I will go wash; And when my face is fair, you shall perceive Whether I blush or no: howbeit I thank you. I mean to stride your steed, and at all times To undercrest your good addition To the fairness of my power. (I. ix. 68. )But except on such semi-official occasions, which he is obliged torecognise, any sort of commendation abashes him and puts him out. EvenLartius’ burst of admiration he immediately checks: Pray now, no more: my mother, Who has a charter to extol her blood, When she does praise me, grieves me. (I. ix. 13. )When Cominius persists, he would fain cut him short: I have some wounds upon me, and they smart To hear themselves remember’d. (I. ix. 28. )When the host spontaneously breaks out in acclamation, he feels it isover much, and is more irritated than pleased: May these same instruments, which you profane, Never sound more! When drums and trumpets shall I’ the field prove flatterers, let courts and cities be Made all of false-faced soothing! When steel grows soft as the parasite’s silk, Let him be made a coverture for the wars! No more, I say! For that I have not wash’d My nose that bled, or foil’d some debile wretch,— Which, without note, here’s many else have done,— You shout me forth In acclamations hyperbolical; As if I loved my little should be dieted In praises sauced with lies. (I. ix. 42. )So, too, with the welcome of the crowd at his homecoming: No more of this; it does offend my heart; Pray now, no more. (II. i. 185. )Where the formal, and therefore up to a certain point, conventionalpanegyrics have to be pronounced in the senate, he is honestly ill atease and would rather go away. To the senator who seeks to stay him, heanswers: Your honour’s pardon: I had rather have my wounds to heal again Than hear say how I got them. (II. ii. 72. )And he adds, as he actually leaves his seat: I had rather have one scratch my head i’ the sun When the alarum were struck, than idly sit To hear my nothings monster’d. (II. ii. 79. )He can dispense with the admiration of others, because he seeks “theperfect witness” of his own approval, and abhors any extravagantapplause because he measures his actions by the standard of absolutedesert. In other words, both his self-respect and his ideal ofattainment are abnormally, one might say morbidly, developed. And thisexplains both his humility and his self-assertion. Volumnia tells him: Thou hast affected the fine strains of honour, To imitate the graces of the gods. (V. iii. 149. )If that is the goal, how far must even the mightiest fall short of it,and how much must he resent the adulation of his prowess as the highestto be attained. On the contrary he “waxes like the sea,” sets himselfto advance From well to better, daily self surpassed;and every glory he achieves is, as Shakespeare read in Plutarch, less awage that he has earned than a pledge that he must redeem. It is daylie seene, that honour and reputation lighting on young men before their time, and before they have no great corage by nature, the desire to winne more, dieth straight in them, which easely happeneth, the same having no deepe roote in them before. Where contrariwise, the first honour that valliant mindes doe come unto, doth quicken up their appetite, hasting them forward as with force of winde, to enterprise things of highe deserving praise. For they esteeme, not to receave reward for service done, but rather take it for a remembraunce and encoragement, to make them doe better in time to come: and be ashamed also to cast their honour at their heeles, not seeking to increase it still by like deserte of worthie valliant dedes. This desire being bred in Martius, he strained still to passe him selfe in manlines: and being desirous to shewe a daylie increase of his valliantnes, his noble service dyd still advaunce his fame. But, on the other hand, though he, as not having attained, pressesforward to the mark of his high calling, he has but to spend a glanceon his fellows, and being an honest man he must perceive that hisperformance quite eclipses theirs. When the citizen asks him what hasbrought him to stand for the consulship, his reply is from the heart:“Mine own desert” (II. iii. 71). He feels poignantly the indignity ofhaving to ask for what seems to him his due, and this partly explainsthe reluctance, which Shakespeare invents for him, to face a popularelection. Better it is to die, better to starve, Than crave the hire which first we do deserve. (II. iii. 120. )In bitter self-irony he belies the disinterestedness of his exploits,and libels them as mere contrivances to win favour: Your voices: for your voices I have fought; Watch’d for your voices; for your voices bear Of wounds two dozen odd; battles thrice six I have seen and heard of; for your voices have Done many things, some less, some more. (II. iii. 133. )His fault lies in an opposite direction. His sense of dignity andself-esteem makes him inflexible to any concession that would seem todisparage himself and the truth. His nature is too noble for the world: He would not flatter Neptune for his trident. Or Jove for’s power to thunder. (III. i. 255. )And he is entitled to this consciousness of his worth, for it is notmerely individual. It collects in a focus the most valued traits ofvarious social fellowships that are greater and wider than himself. Heis—he has been taught to consider himself and to become—the peculiarrepresentative of the great family of the great aristocracy of thegreat city of Rome. If he transcends the dimensions of ordinary humanpower and human error, this consideration enables us to see how he hascome to do so, and brings him back to our ordinary human sympathies. These are the three concentric orbits in which his universe revolves,the three well-heads that feed the current of his life. They giveimpetus to his love of honour and volume to his pride. His civic patriotism he lives to abjure, but at first it is eager andintense. It is this feeling that is affronted by the retreat of histownsmen before Corioli and that boils over in curses and abuse: heis wroth with them because they are “shames of Rome. ” The climax tohis appeal for volunteers is to ask if any thinks “that his country’sdearer than himself” (I. vi. 72): and in the moment of triumph heclasses himself unreservedly among all his comrades who have beenactuated by his own and the only right motive, love for the _patria_. I have done What you have done; that’s what I can: induced As you have been; that’s for my country: He that hath but effected his good will Hath overta’en my act. (I. ix. 15. )He cherishes a transcendent idea of the state, and is wounded to theheart that its members fall short of it. I would they were barbarians—as they are, Though in Rome litter’d—not Romans—as they are not, Though calved i’ the porch o’ the Capitol. (III. i. 238. )And he is similarly, but more closely bound up in his own order. The nobles, the patricians, the senate, are to him the core of thecommonwealth, the very Rome of Rome. They are, as he says, “thefundamental part of state” (III. i. 151). His first thought on hisreturn from the campaign is to pay his due respects to their dignity: Ere in my own house I do shade my head, The good patricians must be visited. (II. i. 211. )He is scandalised by the insolence of the plebs in revolting againstsuch authority: What’s the matter, That in these several places of the city You cry against the noble senate, who, Under the gods, keep you in awe? (I. i. 188. )His gorge rises at the thought of a representative of the peopleimposing his mandate on so august a body. They choose their magistrate, And such a one as he, who puts his “shall,” His popular “shall” against a graver bench Than ever frown’d in Greece. (III. i. 104. )He hates any innovation that is likely To break the heart of generosity And make bold power look pale. (I. i. 215. )For to him the power that is vested in the generous, that is, thehigh-born classes, is a sacred thing. But the domestic tie is the closest of all. The whole story bringsout its compulsive pressure and no particular passages are neededto illustrate it. Yet in some passages we are made to realisewith special vividness how it binds and entwines him, as in thatexclamation when he sees the deputation of women approaching: My wife comes foremost; then the honour’d mould Wherein this trunk was framed, and in her hand The grandchild to her blood. (V. iii. 22. )It is as son, husband and father that the depths of Coriolanus’ naturecan be reached. In his greetings to his wife, in his prayers for hisboy, we have glimpses of his inward heart; but of course this familyfeeling is concentrated on his mother who, as it were, sums up hisancestry to him, and who, by her personal qualities and her parentalauthority, fills his soul with a kind of religious reverence. We haveseen how she has fashioned him, how she commands and awes him. When sheinclines her head as she appears before him, he already feels that itis incongruous and absurd: My mother bows: As if Olympus to a molehill should In supplication nod. (V. iii. 29. )When she kneels, it is prodigious, incredible; he cannot believe hiseyes: What is this? Your knees to me? to your corrected son? Then let the pebbles on the hungry beach Fillip the stars; then let the mutinous winds Strike the proud cedars ’gainst the fiery sun: Murdering impossibility, to make What cannot be, slight work. (V. iii. 56. )Not only then is Coriolanus in other respects a singularly noblepersonality, but even his pride is certainly not devoid of ethicalcontent when it embodies the consciousness of the city republic, thegoverning estate, the organised family, with all their claims andobligations. These are the constituent elements that have suppliedmatter for his self-esteem, and all of them are formative, and capable,as we saw, of producing such a lofty, though limited moral characteras that of Volumnia. Yet it is precisely to them, or at least to theway in which they are mingled in his pride, that Coriolanus’ faults andmisfortunes may be traced. CHAPTER VITHE DISASTERS OF CORIOLANUS AND THEIR CAUSESFeeling for his country, feeling for his caste, feeling for his familythus form the triple groundwork of Coriolanus’ nobleness, but they failto uphold it in the storm of temptation. As furnishing the foundationsof conduct they have dangers and defects, inherent in themselves, orincident to their combination, and these it is to which the guilt andruin of Coriolanus are due. These drawbacks may be illustrated under three heads. They are unfitcompletely to transfigure egoism, for they have all an egoistic aspect,and are indeed merely extended forms of selfishness. They are primarilythe products of nature, instinct, passion; and may exist without beingraised to the rank of rational principles and without having theirjust scope delimited and defined. And, lastly, for that reason theirrelative importance may be mistaken, and one that is the strongernatural impulse may usurp the place of one that is of more bindingmoral authority. It has often been pointed out, and sometimes as a matter of complaint,that family affection is very restricted in its range and may conflictwith the larger interests of mankind. It produces an intense unitywithin the one household, but it is apt to be jealous, repellent,aggressive as regards other households and their members. Further,in so far as it is _my_ parents, _my_ brothers, _my_ children, whosewelfare I promote, the ground of preference has nothing to do withimpartial equity: it is determined by the nearness of the persons to_me_, by _my_ fondness for them, by my looking on them as appurtenancesof _mine_; in short it is selfish. And those who maintain thesacredness of the family give this no absolute denial, but reply,first, that in the long run the true interests of one family, rightlyunderstood, do not conflict with the true interests of other families,of the state, or the rest of mankind; and, second, that even before thetrue interests are rightly grasped, the family relation forms at leasta stage in the process by which the individual learns to enlarge hisself-interest, a preliminary stage but an inevitable stage, and stillfor the vast majority of men the stage of most practical importance. Many a one is ready to give up his personal pleasure or advantage forthose of his own house, who would be deaf to all more general appeals. Thus the family so widens self-love as to include in it some otherpeople, but in one of its aspects it nevertheless depends on self-love. And the same thing holds good of the enlarged kindred that we call anaristocracy. The nobility of blood forms a sort of family on a largescale, a family of caste, an amplified household united by commonpursuits, privileges, education and ideals, and often further blendedby frequent intermarriage. The aristocrat finds himself born into thisartificial, which is in some respects almost like a natural fraternity;and his ethos to his order, ethos though it be, is largely the ethos ofthe individual who recognises his own reflection in his fellow nobles. Nor is it otherwise with the state, especially, we may say, theantique city state, where often the aristocracy really was the nativenucleus, and which in the greatest expansion of which it was capable,did not exceed the dimensions of a modern municipality. The patriotismof the citizens had the fervour of domestic piety, their disputes hadthe bitterness of family quarrels. In the community its sons exultedand lived and moved and had their being: it was theirs and they wereits, in opposition to the alien states, the states of other people, towhich they were apt to be indifferent or hostile. Now it is evident that all these principles in the case of a man witha strong consciousness of his own worth and superlative self-respect,might give substance and validity to his egoism, but would ratherencourage than counteract it. And so with Coriolanus. His independent,individual, isolated sufficiency passes all bounds. He derivessustenance for it from the three layers of atmosphere that envelopehim, but he thinks he can if necessary dispense with these externalaids. In so far as he can separate the people in his mind from thewhole body politic of Rome, he excludes them from his sympathy, or evenhis tolerance, and glories in his ostentation of antagonism. Take hisspeech about the popular demonstration: They said they were an-hungry, sigh’d forth proverbs, That hunger broke stone walls, that dogs must eat, That meat was made for mouths, that the gods sent not Corn for the rich men only: with these shreds They vented their complainings. (I. i. 209. )In reference to this Archbishop Trench has a very true remark. Hepoints out that where there is a marked and conscious division of ranks, [proverbs] may go nearly or quite out of use among the so-called upper classes. No gentleman, says Lord Chesterfield, “ever uses a proverb. ” And with how true a touch of nature, Shakespeare makes Coriolanus, the man who with all his greatness, is entirely devoid of all sympathy with the people, to utter his scorn of them in scorn of their proverbs and of their frequent employment of them. He has indeed no sense of their homely wisdom or their homely virtues. He has no common charity for them, and his attitude to them if theyventure to assert themselves, is that of a less human slaveholder torefractory slaves. Would the nobility lay aside their ruth, And let me use my sword, I’ld make a quarry With thousands of these quarter’d slaves, as high As I could pick my lance. (I. i. 201. )After such counsel, we feel that the exclamation of Sicinius is notwithout its warrant: Where is this viper That would depopulate the city, and Be every man himself? (III. i. 263. )His self-centred confidence and egotism culminates in his retort to hissentence: You common cry of curs? whose breath I hate As reek o’ the rotten fens, whose loves I prize As the dead carcasses of unburied men That do corrupt my air, I banish you. (III. iii. 120. )But it is characteristic of this spirit which really makes a man alaw to himself and the measure of things, that though by all histraining and prejudices inclined to the traditional and conservative inpolitics, yet, if use-and-wont presses hard against his own pride, heshows himself an innovator of the most uncompromising kind. He objectsonce and again to the prescriptive forms of election, and at lastbreaks out: Custom calls me to ’t! What custom wills, in all things should we do ’t, The dust on antique time would lie unswept And mountainous error be too highly heapt For truth to o’er-peer. (II. iii. 124. )Here he blossoms out as the reddest of radicals, though a radical ofthe Napoleonic type. But, further, his feeling for family, class and country ispre-eminently feeling. It belongs to those natural tendencies thatalmost seem to come to us by heredity and environment, and haveanalogies with the instincts of animals. It is, at least in the formit assumes with him, not to be ranked among the moral convictionswhich can stand the examination of conscience and reason, and in theproduction of which conscience and reason have co-operated. It israther an innate impulse, a headlong passion, and resembles a blindphysical force of which he can give no account. His understanding iswithout right of entry into this part of his life. We have seen, nodoubt, that his presuppositions once granted he can form a very acuteestimate of the situation. But he never uses his judgment eitherin examining his presuppositions or in discovering the treatmentthat the situation requires. He has not the width of outlook or theself-criticism that enable Menenius and Cominius, and even the ordinarysenators, to see the relative importance of the principles for whichthey contend, and prefer any compromise to laying the city flat andsacking great Rome with Romans. He has not the astuteness of Volumnia,who perceives that strategy is to be used in government as in war andbids him stoop to conquer: I have a heart as little apt as yours, But yet a brain that leads my use of anger To better vantage. (III. ii. 29. ) If it be honour in your wars to seem The same you are not, which, for your best ends, You adopt your policy, how is it less or worse, That it shall hold companionship in peace With honour, as in war, since that to both It stands in like request? (III. ii. 46. )Both in regard to end and means, he listens to the counsels not of hisreason but of his passion and hot blood. As how could he do otherwise? It is passion not reason that oversways his nature, determiningeverything in him from these first fundamental principles to the mosttransitory mood. More particularly, that tyrannous self-respect of his,the personal flame in which all his interests, domestic, aristocratic,national, are fused, is his central passion, and one that gives moreheat than light. Sometimes, indeed, it kindles him to great things. When the Volscian army abandons the shelter of Corioli he feels it aninsult to his country, therefore to himself; and the outrage to his_amour propre_ incites him to do wonders. They fear us not, but issue forth their city. Now put your shields before your hearts, and fight With hearts more proof than shields. Advance, brave Titus: _They do disdain us much beyond our thoughts, Which makes me sweat with wrath_. (I. iv. 23. )But again, it may make it impossible for him to take the right path. When asked to show some outward submission to the people, he answers: To the market place! You have put me now to such a part which never I shall discharge to the life. (III. ii. 104. )He was justified in objecting to methods of dissimulation and flattery,but, if only he had been reasonable, a middle course would not havebeen hard to find, which should safeguard his self-respect whilepacifying the populace. It is because his self-respect is of passionnot of reason, that he is so unconciliatory, and therefore almost asculpable as if he were guilty of the opposite fault. Plutarch, indeed,thinks he is more so. In his comparison between him and Alcibiades, heis in this matter more lenient to the latter: He is lesse to be blamed, that seeketh to please and gratifie his common people; then he that despiseth and disdaineth them, and therefore offereth them wrong and injurie, bicause he would not seeme to flatter them, to winne the more authoritie. For as it is an evill thing to flatter the common people to winne credit; even so it is besides dishonesty, and injustice also, to atteine to credit and authoritie, for one to make him selfe terrible to the people, by offering them wrong and violence. This passage has inspired the criticism of the officer of the Capitol;who, however, impartially holds the scales. If he did not care whether he had their love or no, he waved indifferently ’twixt doing them neither good nor harm: but he seeks their hate with greater devotion than they can render it him; and leaves nothing undone that may fully discover him their opposite. Now, to seem to affect the malice and displeasure of the people is as bad as that which he dislikes, to flatter them for their love. (II. ii. 18. )With this temper it is natural that the arrogance of success, lackof nous, and want of adaptability—which is often merely another formof self-will—should bring about his ruin; and it is these threecharacteristics, or a modicum of them, to which Aufidius in point offact attributes his banishment. First he was A noble servant to them; but he could not Carry his honours even: whether ’twas pride, Which out of daily fortune ever taints The happy man; whether defect of judgement, To fail in the disposing of those chances Which he was lord of; or whether nature, Not to be other than one thing, not moving From the casque to the cushion, but commanding peace Even with the same austerity and garb As he controll’d the war; but one of these— As he hath spices of them all, not all, For I dare so far free him—made him fear’d, So hated, and so banish’d. (IV. vii. 35. )But, lastly, not only are the three objective ethical principles thatgive Coriolanus his moral equipment, inadequate in so far as theirrange is largely selfish and their origin largely natural; he misplacesthe order in which they should come. In the case of Volumnia, despiteall her maternal preference and patrician prejudice, Rome is the grandconsideration, as her deeds unequivocally prove. Nor is she singular;she is only the most conspicuous example among others of her caste. Cominius, too, postpones the family to the state: I do love My country’s good with a respect more tender, More holy and profound, than mine own life, My dear wife’s estimate, her womb’s increase, And treasure of my loins. (III. iii. 111. )And this is more or less the attitude of the rest. But Coriolanusreverses the sequence, and gives his chief homage precisely to the mostrestricted and elementary, the most primitive and instinctive principleof the three. He loves Rome indeed, fights for her, grieves for hershames, and glories in her triumphs; but he loves the nobility more,and would by wholesale massacre secure their supremacy. He loves thenobility indeed, but when they, no doubt for the common good, sufferhim to be expelled from Rome, they become to him the “dastard nobles”;and he makes hardly any account of his old henchman and intimateMenenius, and none at all of his old comrade and general Cominius. Buthe loves his family as himself, and though he strives to root out itsclaims from his heart, the attempt is vain. He may exclaim: Out, affection! All bond and privilege of nature, break! (V. iii. 24. ) I’ll never Be such a gosling to obey instinct, but stand, As if a man were author of himself And knew no other kin. (V. iii. 34. )But it is mere histrionic make-believe and pretence: at the first wordsof Virgilia he cries: Like a dull actor now, I have forgot my part, and I am out, Even to a full disgrace. (V. |
iii. 40. )How could this man, whose personal pride and family pride areso interwoven, whose self-love and whose virtues are so much aninheritance of his line, ever hope to sever himself from what makes uphis very being? The home instincts must triumph. It is well that they should, and this is the redeeming touch thatcancels much of the guilt of apostasy which brands the close of hiscareer. But all the same we feel that his self-surrender to theobligations of the family is a less noble thing than his mother’sself-surrender to the obligations of the state. Of course, in a way,family and class must with all come before the whole community. Men,that is, are bound to be more interested in those of their own circleand their own set than in their fellow-citizens with whom they haveless relation. That gives a very good ground for a man’s constantunremitting occupation with his nearest and dearest. But, nevertheless,when the call comes, it is the wider community that has the moreimperative claim. And it is easy to see that Volumnia, though at the supreme momentshe shows that she herself has the right feeling for the relation,is responsible for the inverted order in the conception of her son. Her contempt for the masses, her exaltation of the patricians, herhigh-handed insistence on the family authority were almost bound to beexaggerated in a child growing up under her influence and subjectedto no corrective views. And she must have added to the dangers of hertuition by dangling before his eyes the ideal personal honour as thegrand prize of life. He wins it and lets it slip again and again, andwhen he grasps it at last, it is rent and mangled in his hands. Thereis something typical in the episode of his son and the butterfly, asValeria narrates it: I saw him run after a gilded butterfly; and when he caught it, he let it go again; and after it again; and over and over he comes, and up again; catched it again; or whether his fall enraged him, or how ’twas, he did so set his teeth and tear it: Ο, I warrant, how he mammocked it! (I. iii. 65. )Young Marcius is described as the facsimile and “epitome” of hisfather, and Volumnia is well pleased with this example of the familybent. She must not disclaim her share in the preparation, when thefather enacts the apologue in the larger theatre of life. And she is even responsible for some of the mistaken courses thatdirectly lead to the disaster. For Coriolanus, with all his blind sides and rough corners, might stillbe the faithful and honoured champion of Rome if he were left to followhis own predestined and congenial path as military leader. In the fieldhe can rouse the courage of the citizens and fire their enthusiasm,while on his part, when he wins their recognition and devotion, helays aside some of his asperity to them, and is even gracious in hisawkward, convincing way. They forget their hatred, he forgets hisscorn. And to him as warrior the whole population, not only the portionof it that has the franchise, is ready to do honour. The descriptionwhich the chagrined tribune gives of his triumphal progress throughthe streets shows with what cordial pride all ranks were eager to payhim homage. There is no reason why he should not continue to dischargein this his proper sphere the functions that none could discharge sowell. His political weight is from the first small. Despite his urgentdissuasion he has been powerless to prevent the distribution of cornor the concession of the tribunate. And when he does not intrude intothis outlying domain, where he effects nothing, he seems to go his ownway peaceably enough, occupied mainly in watching for the common goodthe movements of Aufidius and the Volscians; so that, so far as hisantipathy to the people is concerned, his bark is worse than his bite. That is the point of the similes that Brutus and Menenius exchangeabout him when Menenius has compared the plebs to a wolf and Coriolanusto a lamb. Says the tribune: He’s a lamb indeed, that baes like a bear. And the senator answers: He’s a bear indeed, that lives like a lamb. (II. i. 12. )But thrust him into a position that involves political authority, andall will be changed. It will be impossible for him to confine himselfto harmless growls; the bear will have the people in his hug, andthey are not to blame if they take to their weapons. In short theantagonism, which before was, so to speak, academic and led to nothing,must become a matter of life and death. Now it must not be overlookedthat it is in obedience to his mother’s ambitions and in opposition tohis own better judgment that Coriolanus stands for the consulship. Ofcourse, in a way, it is the natural goal of his career. Even Meneniusis so blinded by the glamour of the situation that he interposes noprudent warning. Nevertheless, if he had only exercised his accustomedshrewdness he would have seen the mischievousness of such a course; forin a remark to the tribune he sums up admirably the perils it involves: He loves your people; But tie him not to be their bedfellow; (II. ii. 68. )yet for all that, Menenius is the candidate’s most activeelectioneering agent. When his sagacity so neglects its ownsuggestions, it is perhaps not wonderful that Volumnia’s narrowerintellect should ignore everything but her visions of glory forherself and her son. And yet she might have laid to heart his sincereremonstrance: Know, good mother, I had rather been their servant in my way, Than sway with them in theirs. (II. i. 218. )She cannot be acquitted of driving him into the false position. And she is equally responsible for the fiasco and disaster in which hisattempted submission ends. Observe that this is not the only course hemight have adopted. Cominius, entering in the middle of the discussion,suggests two others: I have been i’ the market-place; and, sir, ’tis fit You make strong party, or defend yourself By calmness or by absence. (III. ii. 93. )The first expedient of making strong party and resorting to force isout of the question, both because, as Cominius has already pointedout, it is practically hopeless in face of the odds, and because, ashe and others have also pointed out, even if successful it would ruinthe state. The second expedient of calmness and conciliation is theone that Volumnia and Menenius in their pertinacious craving to seeCoriolanus consul, strongly advocate; and in the abstract it is theright one. But it suffers from a drawback which makes it worse thanhopeless, and which Cominius has the foresight to recognise. “Only fairspeech,” says Menenius, and Cominius rejoins very doubtfully: I _think_ ’t will serve, _if_ he Can thereto frame his spirit. (III. ii. 95. )That is just the point; and one wonders how anyone who knew Coriolanuscould expect of him so impossible a feat. There remains the expedientof absence, which Cominius, from the third place he assigns to it,himself seems to prefer. And in the circumstances it is obviously thebest. If only the accused had withdrawn for a time, he would soonhave been recalled. It is inconceivable that when the new expeditionof the Volscians, which he alone foresaw, broke into Roman territory,the state would not at once have had recourse to the great commander. Nor would there have been much difficulty in doing so, since he wouldmerely have betaken himself to voluntary retirement; and even hadhe been exiled in default, the mutual exasperation on both sides,which the last collision was to produce, would have been avoided. But again it is Volumnia’s overbearing self-will that imposes on himthe pernicious choice. And though, as I have said, this proposal isideally the best, for in such cases management and compromise arelegitimate enough and may be laudable, it is not only the worst inthe present instance, but she gives it a turn that must have made itpeculiarly revolting to her son. In her covetousness for the consulardignity she recommends such hypocrisy, trickery and base cringing asthe self-respect of no honest man, much less of a Coriolanus, couldtolerate: I prithee now, my son, Go to them, with this bonnet in thy hand; And thus far having stretch’d it—here be with them— Thy knee bussing the stones—for in such business Action is eloquence, and the eyes of the ignorant More learned than the ears—waving thy head, Which often, thus, correcting thy stout heart, Now humble as the ripest mulberry that will not hold the handling: or say to them, Thou art their soldier, and being bred in broils Hast not the soft way which, thou dost confess, Were fit for thee to use as they to claim, In asking their good loves, but thou wilt frame Thyself, forsooth, hereafter theirs, so far As thou hast power and person. (III. ii. 72. )The amicable policy need not have been painted in such colours asthese. It is inevitable that Coriolanus, already inclined to regardit as a degradation, should after these words construe it in the mosthumiliating-sense: Well, I must do’t: Away, my disposition, and possess me Some harlot’s spirit! My throat of war be turn’d, Which quired with my drum, into a pipe Small as an eunuch, or the virgin voice That babies lulls asleep! The smile of knaves Tent in my cheeks, and schoolboys’ tears take up The glasses of my sight! a beggar’s tongue Make motion through my lips, and my arm’d knees, Who bow’d but in the stirrup, bend like his That hath received an alms. (III. ii. 110. )What wonder that his conclusion is to reject such tactics lest theyshould dishonour his integrity and degrade his soul? His mother’s angerindeed makes him abandon this decision, but his instincts are right. It is a part that of course he could not play under any circumstances,but she has done nothing to show it in its more honourable aspect, andeverything to confirm and increase his feeling of its vileness. Hissourness and recalcitrance at being false to himself makes him boilover the more fiercely at the first provocation, and all is lost. It is sometimes said that defeat and the desire for vengeance teachhim the lessons which his mother had inculcated in vain, and thathenceforth he shows himself a master of dissimulation, flattery, anddeception. In proof of this it is usual to cite, in the first place,the farewell scene, when he breathes no word to Cominius, Menenius,Virgilia, or Volumnia of his intention to join the Volscians and returnto overthrow Rome. But was any such intention as yet in his mind? InPlutarch he has adopted no definite plan before he sets out. Aftertelling how he comforts his family, the biography proceeds: He went immediatly to the gate of the cittie, accompanied with a great number of Patricians that brought him thither, from whence he went on his waye with three or foure of his friendes only, taking nothing with him, nor requesting any thing of any man. So he remained a fewe dayes in the countrie at his houses, turmoyled with sundry sortes and kynde of thoughtes, suche as the fyer of his choller dyd sturre up. In the ende, seeing he could resolve no waye, to take a profitable or honorable course, but only was pricked forward still to be revenged of the Romaines, he thought to raise up some great warres against them, by their neerest neighbours. Of course it is quite true, and it has been one purpose of this essayto show, that Shakespeare often completely recasts Plutarch. But itis also true that, when he does not expressly do so, he often keepsPlutarch’s statements in his mind, even when, as in the case of thevoting by tribes, he does not cite them. It counts for something then,that in the _Life_, Coriolanus on leaving Rome has no fixed purposeof seeking foreign help. And if we turn to the parting scene in thetragedy, and let it make its own impression, without reading intoit suggestions from subsequent occurrences, I think we feel not somuch that he is still undecided as that the idea has not yet enteredinto his head. We seem to hear the very accent of sincerity in hisrepetition of the maxims that erewhile he learned from his mother’s ownlips, and that he clinches with the reminder: You were used to load me With precepts that would make invincible The heart that conn’d them. (IV. i. 9. )Surely it is a real attempt at consolation, when he interrupts hermaledictions on the plebeians who have banished him: What, what, what! I shall be loved, when I am lack’d. (IV. i. 14. )He seems to hint at seeking out new adventures and a new career in newregions beyond the reach of Rome, when he says: My mother, you wot well My hazards still have been your solace: and Believe’t not lightly—though I go alone, Like to a lonely dragon, that his fen Makes fear’d and talk’d of more than seen—your son Will or exceed the common or be caught With cautelous baits and practice. (IV. i. 27. )It was not cautelous baits and practice that he would have to fear,but the open violence of Aufidius if he already thought of going toAntium, and the simile of the lonely dragon more talked of than seenwould be abundantly inappropriate if it referred to his reappearanceat the head of the Volscian forces: but the expressions would be quiteapt if he meant to make his name redoubtable by his single prowess instrange places amidst the risks of an errant life. It is in professedanticipation of this that he rejects the companionship which Cominiusoffers: Thou hast years upon thee; and thou art too full Of the wars’ surfeits, to go rove with one That’s yet unbruised. (IV. i. 45. )Are these utterances mere pretence? And have not his last farewellsthe genuine note of cordiality and good will? If we could imagine thathe would bring himself to address those whom he afterwards called the“dastard nobles” as “my friends of noble touch,” it would still beimpossible to believe him guilty of cold-hearted deceit to Virgilia andVolumnia. Come, my sweet wife, my dearest mother, and My friends of noble touch, when I am forth Bid me farewell, and smile. I pray you, come. While I remain above the ground, you shall Hear from me still, and never of me aught But what is like me formerly. (IV. i. 48. )It would not be like the former champion of Rome to return as itsassailant; but we may take it that at this moment he is expecting tocarve his way to glory in a different world and perhaps eventually berecalled to his country, but in any case to proceed merely on the oldlines in so far as that is possible, and meanwhile to be reported of,as Menenius continues, “worthily as any ear can hear. ”If, then, he is speaking honestly in this scene, how are we to accountfor his change of purpose when we next meet him a renegade in Antium? No explanation was needed in Plutarch, for the circumstances were notquite the same. There he had only not resolved to join the enemy; herehe apparently has resolved to do something else. In the _Life_ afterleaving the city he merely comes to a decision, in the play he reversesthe decision he has formed. So some statement is needed of the causefor the alteration of his plans, and at first sight there seems to benone. Yet there is a hint and a fairly emphatic one, though it has notbeen worked out; a hint, moreover, which is the more significant thatit is one of Shakespeare’s interpolations. When the sentence of banishment is pronounced and Coriolanus hasretired to his house, there follows a passage which has no parallel orfoundation in Plutarch. It is the one already referred to in anotherconnection in which Sicinius gives his mean and malicious order to thepeople: Go, see him out at gates, and follow him, As he hath follow’d you, with all despite: Give him deserved vexation. (III. iii. 138. )And the citizens promptly agree: Come, come; let’s see him out at gates; come. (III. iii. 141. )This is at the very close of the Third Act, and the Fourth Act beginsin “Rome, before a gate of the city” with the scene of leave-takingdiscussed above. We naturally expect that it will be interrupted by thepopular demonstrations which the tribunes have contrived, especiallyas these exist only in Shakespeare’s imagination; but it passes offwithout any hint of them. Only patrician persons appear by whomCoriolanus is beloved and who are beloved by him: and no hostile murmurjars on the solemnity of their grief. But that does not mean that itmay not do so even now. He is not yet beyond the walls, and towards theclose bids his friends: “Bring me out at gate”; which, we assume, theydo forthwith. There is still time for the plebeians to execute theirmasters’ orders, and though we witness nothing of the kind, there is noreason to believe that they failed to do so. It is easy to conjecturewhy Shakespeare thought it unnecessary to present this incident toeye and ear. It would have disturbed the quiet dignity of the partinginterview; it would have repeated at a lower pitch, without theaccompaniment of suspense, and therefore with the risk of monotony andflatness, the tumultuary _motif_ of preceding scenes. But Shakespeare’svariations from his authority are not idle, and we cannot suppose thatthe tribune’s direction, though we do not actually see it carried out,was a meaningless tag. There is room enough in the economy of theplay for its fulfilment beyond the stage. We may imagine that just asCoriolanus’ friends proceed to “bring him out at gate” the insultingirruption takes place; and in the next scene, “a street near the gate,”we find the tribunes, the work done, dismissing their agents: Bid them all home; he’s gone, and we’ll no further. (IV. ii. i. )It seems probable that this last indignity, a hurt to his pride moregalling than any refusal of office or sentence of banishment, drivesCoriolanus to his fury of vindictiveness; and that the failure of thenobles to protect him from the outrage has in his eyes confoundedthem with his more ignoble enemies. Indeed, he almost says as much inhis speech to Aufidius. In that speech, as we have seen, Shakespeareadheres more closely to North than in any other continuous passage inthe play, and the greatest variation occurs in a line that would applywith peculiar aptness to the purely Shakespearian episode of the lastaffront, and that sets forth the main cause of the exile’s resentment. In Plutarch, after saying that only the surname of Coriolanus remainsto him, he continues: The rest the envie and crueltie of the people of Rome have taken from me, by the sufferance of the dastardly nobilitie and magistrates, who have forsaken me, and let me be banished by the people. This becomes: The cruelty and envy of the people, Permitted by our dastard nobles, who Have all forsook me, hath devour’d the rest: _And suffer’d me by the voice of slaves to be Whoop’d out of Rome_. (IV. v. 80. )Considering all these things there seems to be no evidence in Marcius’parting professions of acquired duplicity. But, again, it is said that for his revenge he condescends to fawn uponAufidius and the Volscians. This is not very plausible. His speech ofgreeting certainly shows no servile propitiation, and according toTullus it is conspicuously absent in his subsequent behaviour: He bears himself more proudlier, Even to my person, than I thought he would When first I did embrace him: yet his nature In that’s no changeling; and I must excuse What cannot be amended. (IV. vii. 8. )And elsewhere Tullus complains that his guest has “waged him with hiscountenance. ” The only ground for saying that he paid court to theVolsces is alleged in Tullus’ speech that just precedes this accusationof haughtiness to himself: He water’d his new plants with dews of flattery, Seducing so my friends; and, to this end, He bow’d his nature, never known before But to be rough, unswayable and free. (V. vi. 23. )But the speaker is an enemy, and an enemy who has to account for thedisagreeable circumstance that his own adherents have gone over tohis rival, and who, moreover, at the time is looking for a plea that“admits of good construction. ” There is nothing that we see or hear ofCoriolanus elsewhere that supports the charge. We are told, indeed,that the Volscians throng to him and do him homage. The very magnatesof Antium, Aufidius included, treat him like a demi-god: Why, he is so made on here within, as if he were son and heir to Mars; set at upper end o’ the table: no question asked by any of the senators, but they stand bald before him: our general himself makes a mistress of him; sanctifies himself with ’s hand and turns up the white o’ the eye to his discourse. (IV. v. 203. )Recruits throng to his standard and the army worships him. TheLieutenant tells Aufidius: I do not know what witchcraft’s in him, but Your soldiers use him as the grace ’fore meat, Their talk at table, and their thanks at end. (IV. vii. 2. )Doubtless this enthusiasm would have its effect on Marcius. Eagernessof service, coupled with confidence in himself, has before now warmedhim to graciousness, and in his own despite wrung from him inspiringcompliments. When at Cominius’ camp before Corioli the volunteerscrowded round him, waved their swords, and took him up in their arms,he was almost hyperbolical in his praises: O, me alone! make you a sword of me? If these shows be not outward, which of you But is four Volsces? none of you but is Able to bear against the great Aufidius A shield as hard as his. (I. vi. 76. )So we may well believe that his soldierly spirit would respondpromptly and lavishly when the Volscians rallied round him. But suchappreciation, however his outstripped competitor might interpret it,would have nothing in common with the arts of the sycophant and thetime-server; nor is there anything else in Coriolanus’ conduct thatexplains or confirms ever so slightly the charge of the interested andenvious Aufidius. On the contrary he remains true, and even too true, to his originalnature. It is the outrage on his self-respect that drives him to theVolscians, and his self-respect still gives the law to his life, andwould forbid all petty vices, though it enjoins heroic crime. A manlike this could not be expected to palliate or overlook the profanationof his cherished dignity. The passion of pride at his ear, he setshimself to rupture all weaker ties of passion or instinct. And yet hehimself is half aware of his mistake, and he has to fortify himself inhis obstinate perversity. This is shown in two ways: first, he has asmothered sense of the inadequacy of his justification; and, second, hecannot with all his efforts be quite consistent in his revenge. Of his repressed feeling that the offence does not excuse theretaliation, we have repeated confessions on his part, all the morestriking that they are involuntary and perhaps unconscious. Thus, justafter he has sought out the enemy of his country, he soliloquises: O world, thy slippery turns! Friends now fast sworn, Whose double bosoms seem to wear one heart, Whose hours, whose bed, whose meal, and exercise, Are still together, who twin, as ’twere, in love Unseparable, shall within this hour, On a dissension of a doit, break out To bitterest enmity: so, fellest foes, Whose passions and whose plots have broke their sleep To take the one the other, by some chance, Some trick not worth an egg, shall grow dear friends And interjoin their issues. So with me: My birth-place hate I, and my love’s upon This enemy town. (IV. iv. 12. )Here he acknowledges that his change of sides has the most trivialoccasion. Friends fall out on a dissension of a doit while foes arereconciled for some trick not worth an egg; and he applies thisprinciple to his own case: “So with me. ” After all he has infinitelymore in common with the Romans than he can ever have in common with theVolscians, infinitely more reason for hating this enemy town than hecan ever have for hating his own birth-place. Or again, when on the point of dismissing Menenius, he says: That we have been familiar Ingrate forgetfulness shall poison, rather Than pity note how much. (V. ii. 91. )He admits, then, that his wilful oblivion is “ingrate,” and realisesthat pity would consider the old relations. Or, once more, almost at the close, when he feels himself in danger ofyielding to the voice of nature, he utters the truculent prayer: Let it be virtuous to be obstinate; (V. iii. 26. )which implies that he knew it was not. On the other hand, with all his doggedness, he cannot be quiteconsequent in his rancour. He may lead her foes against his “thanklesscountry” as he calls it, but he has a lurking kindliness even for theRome he thinks he detests. As we learn from Aufidius’ speech: Although it seems, And so he thinks, and is no less apparent To the vulgar eye, that he bears all things fairly, And shows good husbandry for the Volscian state, Fights dragon-like, and does achieve as soon As draw his sword; yet he hath left undone That which shall break his neck or hazard mine, Whene’er we come to our account. (IV. vii. 19. )This is no doubt suggested by the incident of the thirty days’truce, of which Plutarch makes so much and which Shakespeare totallysuppresses. But the vague reference becomes all the more pregnant, whenwe are to understand that Coriolanus has at unawares and against hispurpose granted some little concessions to the victims of his wrath. That Aufidius’ statement has some foundation, is made probable bythe words of the First Antium Lord, who is no enemy to Marcius, butreproaches Tullus with his murder and reverently bewails his death: What faults he made before the last, I think, Might have found easy fines. (V. vi. 64. )Faults, then, from the Volscian point of view he has committed in theopinion of a sympathetic and impartial onlooker: which means that as aRoman he has shown forbearance. So much for the toll that he pays to his patriotism; but neither canhe quite uproot the old associations with his class. He may denouncethe “dastard nobles,” but he does concede something to Menenius, thepatrician whose aristocratic prejudices are most akin to his own: Their latest refuge Was to send him; for whose old love I have, Though I show’d sourly to him, once more offer’d The first conditions, which they did refuse And cannot now accept: to grace him only That thought he could do more, _a very little_ _I have yielded to_. (V. iii. 11. )And, coming to the chief in his trinity of interests, he may seekto break all bond and privilege of nature and refuse to be such agosling to obey instinct, but the natural instinct of the family is toostrong for him; before it his resolution crumbles to pieces, though heforesees the result. O mother, mother! What have you done? Behold, the heavens do ope, The gods look down, and this unnatural scene They laugh at. O my mother, mother! O! You have won a happy victory to Rome; But for your son,—believe it, O, believe it, Most dangerously you have with him prevail’d, If not most mortal to him. (V. iii. 182. )Still this collapse of Coriolanus’ purpose means nothing more thanthe victory of his strongest impulse. There is no acknowledgmentof offence, there is no renovation of character, there is not evensubmission to the highest force within his experience. Our admirationof his surrender is not unmixed. It is a moving spectacle to see aman, despite all the solicitations of wrath and revenge, of interestand fear, obedient to what is on the whole so salutary an influenceas domestic affection. But loyalty to this will not of itself availto safeguard anyone from criminal entanglements, or to equip him forbeneficent public action, or to change the current of his life. Itmay mean the triumph of a natural tendency that happens to be goodover other natural tendencies that happen to be bad, but it does notmean acceptance of duty as duty, or anxiety to satisfy the claimsthat different duties impose. Hence Coriolanus, to the very end,leaves unredeemed his inherited obligations to Rome, while he leavesunfulfilled his voluntary pledges to his allies. Even in Plutarch’snarrative Shakespeare’s insight is not required to detect thisunderlying thought, but in the _Comparison_, which there is proof thatShakespeare had studied, it is set forth so clearly that he who runsmay read. He made the Volsces (of whome he was generall) to lose the oportunity of noble victory. Where in deede he should (if he had done as he ought) have withdrawen his armie with their counsaill and consent, that had reposed so great affiance in him, in making him their generall: if he had made that accompt of them, as their good will towards him did in duety binde him. Or else, if he did not care for the Volsces in the enterprise of this warre, but had only procured it of intent to be revenged, and afterwards to leave it of, when his anger was blowen over; yet he had no reason for the love of his mother to pardone his contrie; but rather he should in pardoning his contrie have spared his mother, bicause his mother and wife were members of the bodie of his contrie and cittie, which he did besiege. For in that he uncurteously rejected all publike petitions . . . to gratifie only the request of his mother in his departure; that was no acte so much to honour his mother with, as to dishonour his contrie by, the which was preserved for the pitie and intercession of a woman, and not for the love of it selfe, as if it had not bene worthie of it. And so was this departure a grace, to say truly, very odious and cruell, and deserved no thanks of either partie, to him that did it. For he withdrew his army, not at the request of the Romaines, against whom he made warre: nor with their consent, at whose charge the warre was made. That Shakespeare, with his patriotism and equity, perceived the doubleflaw in Coriolanus’ act of grace can hardly be doubted. He was the lastman to put the household above the national gods, or to glorify breachof contract if only it were sanctioned by domestic tenderness. In pointof fact, he does not acquit his hero on either count. On the one hand, if Coriolanus remits the extreme penalty, he neitherforgets nor forgives, and has no thought of return to the offendingcity or resumption of the old ties. Scarcely has he granted the ladiestheir boon, when he addresses Aufidius: For my part I’ll not to Rome, I’ll back with you. (V. iii. 197. )And his speech to the senators of Antium shows no revival of formerloyalties: Hail, lords! I am return’d your soldier, No more infected with my country’s love Than when I parted hence, but still subsisting Under your great command. You are to know That prosperously I have attempted and With bloody passage led your wars even to The gates of Rome. Our spoils we have brought home Do more than counterpoise a full third part The charges of the action. We have made peace With no less honour to the Antiates Than shame to the Romans. (V. vi. 71. )The insolent announcement of the invasion carried to the gates of thecapital, of the plunder that substantially exceeds the cost, of thehumiliating terms imposed on his countrymen, is ample proof that inCoriolanus there is no recrudescence of patriotism. Yet, despite his words, he has been false to the Volscians. Howeverbase were his motives, Aufidius speaks the truth when he says: Perfidiously He has betray’d your business, and given up, For certain drops of salt, your city Rome, I say “your city,” to his wife and mother; Breaking his oath and resolution like A twist of rotten silk, never admitting Counsel o’ the war. (V. vi. 91. )It is the opinion of the First Lord, despite his impartiality and hissympathy with Marcius: There to end Where he was to begin, and give away The benefit of our levies, answering us With our own charge; making a treaty where There was a yielding,—this admits no excuse, (V. vi. 65. )Thus both his native and his adopted country have reason to complain. He remains a traitor to the one, while yet he breaks faith with theother. Of course, in theory there was a middle course possible, which wouldhave served the best interests of the two states equally. He might haveused his influence to establish a lasting and intimate alliance; andthis was the policy that Volumnia outlined in her plea: If it were so that our request did tend To save the Romans, thereby to destroy The Volsces whom you serve, you might condemn us As poisonous to your honour: no; our suit Is, that you reconcile them: while the Volsces May say, “This mercy we have show’d”; the Romans, “This we received”; and each in either side Give the all-hail to thee, and cry “Be blest For making up this peace! ” (V. iii. 132. )But such an all-hail was not for Coriolanus to win. It is one of thecharges which Plutarch brings against him in the _Comparison_, that heneglected the opportunity. By this dede of his he tooke not away the enmity that was betwene both people. But how could he, when he had no special desire for the well-being ofeither, and when his heart was unchanged? His family affection has gotthe better of his narrower egoism, but even after sacrificing a portionof his revenge, he remains essentially the man he was, and is no morecapable of pursuing a judicious and conciliatory policy now for thegood of the whole and his own good, than of old in the market-place ofRome. For to the end he is imprudent, headstrong, and violent as ever. Hesees quite clearly that his compliance with his mother’s prayer must bedangerous, if not mortal, to him. Dangerous it is, mortal it need notbe. With a little more self-restraint and circumspection, a little lessaggressiveness and truculence, he might still preserve both his lifeand his authority. It is his unchastened spirit, not the questionabletreaty, that is the direct cause of his death. Indeed, in a sense,the treaty had nothing to do with it. In Shakespeare, though not inPlutarch, Tullus, as we have seen, when he still anticipated thecapture of Rome, determined to make away with his rival so soon as thatshould take place; and from what we know of Coriolanus’ character, andTullus’ comprehension of it[263] and general astuteness in management,we feel sure that the scheme was bound to succeed, if Coriolanuspersisted in his old ways. Even as things have turned out, Marciushas all the odds in his favour. His triumphal entry into Antium is arepetition of his triumphal entry into Rome. When, according to thestage direction, “Drums and trumpets sound, with great shouts of thePeople,” the malcontents turn to Aufidius: _First Conspirator. _ Your native town you enter’d like a post, And had no welcomes home; but he returns, Splitting the air with noise. _Second Conspirator. _ And patient fools, Whose children he hath slain, their base throats tear With giving him the glory. (V. vi. 50. )[263] See Appendix F. That is, the admiration of the populace, constrained by his prowess,is the same sort of obstacle to these factionaries as it formerly wasto the tribunes; and with that, and his great services as well, hecommands the situation. He needs only a minimum of skill and moderationto carry all before him. So the problem of his antagonists is thesame in both cases: namely, to neutralise these advantages by rousinghis passion, and provoking him to show his pride, his recklessness,his uncompromising rigour. In both cases he falls into the trap, andconverts the popular goodwill to hatred by defiantly harping on theinjuries he has inflicted on his admirers. He is the unregenerate“superman” to the last. The suppression of his victorious surname,the taunts of “traitor” and “boy,” drive him mad. He lets himself betransported to a bravado that must shake from sleep all the latenthostility of the Volscians. Measureless liar, thou hast made my heart Too great for what contains it. Boy! O slave! Pardon me, lords, ’tis the first time that ever I was forc’d to scold. Your judgements, my grave lords, Must give this cur the lie: and his own notion— Who wears my stripes impress’d upon him; that Must bear my beating to his grave—shall join To thrust the lie unto him. _First Lord. _ Peace, both, and hear me speak. _Coriolanus. _ Cut me to pieces, Volsces; men and lads, Stain all your edges on me. Boy! false hound! If you have writ your annals true, ’tis there, That like an eagle in a dove-cote, I Flutter’d your Volscians in Corioli; Alone I did it. Boy! The patient fools, whose children he had slain, are not patient now,and no longer tear their throats in acclaiming his glory. Their cries,“Tear him to pieces,” “He killed my son,” and the like, give theconspirators the cue, and Aufidius is presently standing on his body. It is not, then, as a martyr to retrieved patriotism that Coriolanusperishes, but as the victim of his own passion. In truth, the victoryhe won over himself under the influence of his mother, though real, isvery incomplete. His piety to the hearth saves him from the superlativeinfamy of destroying his country, which is something, and even a gooddeal; but it is not everything; and beyond that it has no result,public or personal. On the contrary, Coriolanus’ isolated and butpartly justified act of clemency receives its comment from the motivesthat induced it, the troth-breach that accompanied it, and the ragein which he passed away. If, like his son with the butterfly, he didgrasp honour at the close, it was disfigured by his rude handling. But at least he never belies his own great though mixed nature, andit is fitting that his death, needless but heroic, should have itscause in his nature and be such as his nature would select. Indeed,it is both his nemesis and his guerdon. For he would not be a Roman,he could not be a Volsce; what part could he have played in the yearsto come? Perhaps Shakespeare read in Philemon Holland’s rendering thealternative account that Livy gives of the final scene. I find in Fabius, a most ancient writer, that he lived untill he was an old man: who repeateth this of him: that oftentimes in his latter daies he used to utter this speech: _A heavie case and most wretched, for an aged man to live banisht_. At all events some such feeling as his regrets in this varianttradition suggest, makes us prefer the version that Plutarch followedand that Shakespeare adapted. Coriolanus deserves to be spared the woesthat the future has in store. As it is, he falls in the fulness of hispower, inspired by great memories to greater audacity, and, no doubt,elated at the thought of challenging and outbraving death, when deathis sure to win. APPENDIX ANEAREST PARALLELS BETWEEN GARNIER’S _CORNELIE_, IN THE FRENCH ANDENGLISH VERSIONS, AND _JULIUS CAESAR_It should be remembered that it is not on these particular equivalents,mostly very loose, that those who uphold the theory of connectionbetween the two plays rely, but on the general drift of thecorresponding scenes which in this respect strikingly resemble eachother and in no way produce the same impression as the narrative ofPlutarch. _French. English. _ _Cassie. _ Miserable Cité, tu _Cassius. _ Accursed Rome, armes contre toy that arm’st against thy selfe La fureur d’un Tyran pour le A Tyrants rage, and mak’st a faire ton Roy: wretch thy King: Tu armes tes enfans, injurieuse For one mans pleasure Romme, (O injurious Rome! ) Encontre tes enfans, pour le Thy chyldren gainst thy plaisir d’un homme: chyldren arm’d: Et ne te souvient plus _And thinkst not of the_ _d’avoir faict autrefois_ _riuers of theyr bloode,_ _Tant ruisseler de sang four_ _That earst were shed to_ _n’avoir point de Rois,_ _ saue thy libertie,_ _Pour n’estre point esclave,_ _Because thou euer hatedst_ _et ne porter flechie_ _Monarchie_. [264]. . . _Au sendee d’un seul, le joug de_ _Monarchie_. [265] (line 1065. )[264] Shall Rome stand under one man’s awe? What, Rome? My ancestors did from the streets of Rome The Tarquin drive when he was call’d a King. (II. i. 51. )[265] Shall Rome stand under one man’s awe? What, Rome? My ancestors did from the streets of Rome The Tarquin drive when he was call’d a King. (II. i. 51. ) . . . Quoy Brute? et nous faut-il But, Brutus, shall wee trop craignant le danger, dissolutelie sitte Laisser si laschement sous un And see the tyrant line Prince ranger? to tyranize? _Faut-il que tant de gens morts_ Or shall _theyr ghosts,_ _pour nostre franchise_ _that dide to doe us good_, _Se plaignent aux tombeaux de_ _Plaine in their Tombes of_ _nostre couardise? _ _our base cowardise_. . . . Et que les _peres vieux voisent_ _disant de nous_, “_Ceux-là ont mieux aimé, tant_ “_See where they goe that haue_ _ils ont le coeur mous,_ _theyr race forgot! _ _Honteusement servir en_ _And rather chuse, (unarm’d)_ _dementant leur race,_ _to serue with shame,_ _Qu’armez pour le païs mourir_ _Then, (arm’d), to saue their_ _dessus la place. _”[266] _freedom and their fame! _”[267] (line 1101. )[266] Age, thou art shamed! Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods! (I. ii. 150. ) Our fathers’ minds are dead And we are govern’d by our mothers’ spirits, Our yoke and sufferance show us womanish. (I. iii. 82. )[267] Age, thou art shamed! Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods! (I. ii. 150. ) Our fathers’ minds are dead And we are govern’d by our mothers’ spirits, Our yoke and sufferance show us womanish. (I. iii. 82. ) _Brute. _ Je jure par le Ciel, _Brutus. _ I swear by heauen, thrône des Immortels, th’ Immortals highest throne. Par leurs images saincts, leurs Their temples, Altars, and temples, leurs autels, theyr Images, De ne souffrir, vray Brute, To see (for one) that Brutus aucun maistre entreprendre suffer not Sur nostre liberte, si je la His ancient liberty to be puis defendre. represt. J’ai Cesar en la guerre I freely marcht with Caesar ardentement suyvi, in hys warrs, Pour maintenir son droit, Not to be subject, but to ayde non pour vivre asservi . . . his right, . . . . . . Il verra que Decime But he shall see, that Brutus a jusques aujourdhuy thys day beares Porté pour luy l’estoc qu’il The self-same Armes to be trouvera sur luy. aueng’d on hym. . . . . . . _Je l’aime cherement_, _I loue, I loue him deerely. _ _je l’aime, mais le droit_ But the loue _Qu’on doit à son païs_, _That men theyr Country and_ _qu’à sa naissance on doit,_ _theyr birth-right beare,_ _Tout autre amour surmonte. _[268]. . . _Exceeds all loues. _[269]. . . (line 1109. ) _Cassie. _ Tandisque Cassie aura _Cassius_. . . . Know, while goutte de sang Cassius hath one drop of blood En son corps animeux, il voudra To feede this worthles body vivre franc, that you see, _Il fuira le servage ostant_ What reck I death, to doe so _la tyrannie,_ many good? [268] If there be any in this assembly, any dear friend of Caesar’s, to him I say, that Brutus’ love to Caesar was no less than his. If then that friend demand why Brutus rose against Caesar, this is my answer:—Not that I loved Caesar less but that I loved Rome more. (III. ii. 19. )[269] If there be any in this assembly, any dear friend of Caesar’s, to him I say, that Brutus’ love to Caesar was no less than his. If then that friend demand why Brutus rose against Caesar, this is my answer:—Not that I loved Caesar less but that I loved Rome more. (III. ii. 19. ) _Ou l’ame de son corps il_ _In spite of Caesar_, _chassera bannie. _[270] _Cassius will be free. _[271] _Brute. _ Toute ame genereuse _Brutus. _ A generous or indocile a servir true enobled spirit Deteste les Tyrans. Detests to learne what tasts of seruitude. _Cassie. _ Je ne puis m’asservir, _Cassius. _ Brutus, I cannot serue nor see Rome yok’d: Ny voir que Rome serve, et plustost No, let me rather die a la mort dure thousand deaths. . . . M’enferre mille fois, que vivant je l’endure. . . . O chose trop indigne! O base indignitie! _Un homme effeminé_ . . . _A beardles youth_[272] . . . _Commande a l’Univers, la terre_ _Commaunds the world, and_ _tient en bride_,[273] _brideleth all the earth_,[274] Et maistre donne loy au And like a prince controls peuple Romulide, the Romulists; Aux enfants du dieu Mars. . . . Braue Roman Souldiers, sterne-borne sons of Mars. . . . O Brute, O Servilie, O Brutus, speake! Qu’ores vous nous laissez O say, Servilius! une race avilie! Why cry you aime,[275] and see us used thus? Brute est vivant, il sçait, But Brutus liues, and sees, il voit, il est present, and knowes, and feeles, Que sa chere patrie on va That there is one that curbs tyrannisant: their Countries weale. Et comme s’il n’estoit Yet (as he were the semblance, qu’une vaine semblance not the sonne, De Brut son ayeul, non Of noble Brutus, his sa vraye semence, great Grandfather); S’il n’avoit bras ny mains, As if he wanted hands, sens ny coeur, pour oser, sence, sight or hart, Simulacre inutile, aux Tyrans He doth, deuiseth, sees, s’opposer: nor dareth ought, Il ne fait rien de Brute, et That may extirpe or raze et d’heure en heure augmente these tyrannies: Par trop de lascheté la force Nor ought doth Brutus that to violente. (line 1201. ) Brute belongs, But still increaseth by his negligence His owne disgrace and Caesars violence. [270] Cassius from bondage will deliver Cassius . . . Life being weary of these worldly bars Never lacks power to dismiss itself. (I. iii. 90. )[271] Cassius from bondage will deliver Cassius . . . Life being weary of these worldly bars Never lacks power to dismiss itself. (I. iii. 90. )[272] Notice the inept rendering. [273] It doth amaze me, A man of such a feeble temper should So get the start of the majestic world, And bear the palm alone. (I. ii. 128. )[274] It doth amaze me, A man of such a feeble temper should So get the start of the majestic world, And bear the palm alone. (I. ii. 128. )[275] Approve or agree. APPENDIX BTHE VERBAL RELATIONS OF THE VARIOUS VERSIONS OF PLUTARCH ILLUSTRATED BYMEANS OF VOLUMNIA’S SPEECHThis passage, though it does not show the successive modifications ofthe text quite so fully and strikingly as some others, is the mostinteresting in so far as it is the longest in which Shakespeare closelyfollows the lead of the original. The Latin version of the Renaissance is placed first, both because indefinite form it is chronologically the earliest, and because for thereasons already given it cannot be held to have had much influence onAmyot, North and Shakespeare. It is of course impossible to reconstruct the Greek text that Amyotput together for himself. I have taken that of the edition of 1599,published half a dozen years after his death, as a fair approximation. The chief variations from the Latin are given in spaced type. In the extract from Amyot the chief variations from the Greek areprinted in Italics; the few phrases or words in which the influence ofthe Latin may be suspected are underlined. In the extract from North the chief variations from the French areprinted in Italics. In the extract from Shakespeare, it is, as we might expect, moreconvenient to reverse the process and italicise what he has taken over. THE VERSION[276] OF THE ELDER GUARINI, STYLED GUARINUS VERONENSIS, IN THE EDITION OF THE _Vitae Parallelae_ ISSUED BY UDALRICUS GALLUS IN 1470 (? )Tum pueros ac Vergiliam unacum reliquis secum mulieribus ducens castraVolscorum adiit. Earum miseranda facies hosti reverentiam injecitatque silentium. Hic Martius in suggesto inter Volscorum proceressedens, ubi eas adventare mulieres vidit, admiratione confectus est,imprimis venientem uxorem noscitans immoto et obstinato persistereanimo[277] voluit: verum consternatus affectu et ad ipsarum confususintuitum haud tulit ut se sedentem adirent,[278] ac pernici devotasgradu obviam prodiit. Et matre primo diutissimeque salutata, indeuxore ac filiis, nullo jam pacto frenare lacrimas poterat. Ut verodulces incepti sunt amplexus, virum parentis amore perinde ac secundofluminis cursu deferri cerneres. [279] Caeterum cum inchoantem jam verbamatrem intelligeret, acceptis Volscorum primoribus Volumniam taliaorantem audivit. “Etsi fili taceamus, ipse, tum veste, tum misericorporis apparatu, cernis qualem domesticae rei conditionem tuum nobisconfecerit exilium. Existima vero quam caeteris longe mulieribusinfeliciores accessimus, quibus dulcissimum aspectum fecit fortunaterribilem: te mihi filium, huic vero maritum, patriae muros obsidentemaspicimus. Et quod caeteris calamitatis et malorum solet esse solacium,deos orare, quam procul nobis ablatum est: non enim et patriaevictoriam et tibi salutem implorare fas est: quaeque atrociora quispiamnobis impraecaretur hostis, ea nostris insunt[280] praecibus. Uxoremenim ac liberos aut patria aut te orbari necesse est. Ego vero, dumhaec viventi mihi bellum dijudicet, haud morabor, teque nisi positisinimicitiis ad pacem atque concordiam conciliavero; ita ut utrique[281]potius beneficum quam alteri perniciosum te reddas. Hoc tibi persuadesicque conformatus et paratus accede, ut non ante hostiles patriaemanus conferas quam caesam calcaveris parentem. Nec enim ea mihiexpectanda dies est qua filium aut in triumpho tractum a civibus autde patria triumphantem aspiciam. Quod si pro conservanda patriaprofligari a te Volscos exorarem, grave fili iniquumque tibi fateorimminere consilium; namque necque cives perdere bonum est, necque tuoscommissos fidei perdere justum. Nunc malorum finem imploramus simulquepopulis utrisque salutem. Quae res maximam Volscis gloriam comparabit:quod cum ingentia nobis bona et victores quidem tribuerint, non minusjocundam ipsi pacem et amicitiam sint consecuturi: quae si effectafuerint, tu tantorum profecto dux eris et causa bonorum: sin ea infectapermanserint, utrique noxam in te solum crimenque rejicient. Cumqueincertus belli sit eventus, hoc certi secum affert: ut siquidem vincasimmanissimus patriae vastator appellandus sis, sin victus succumbas,ob tuam videberis iracundiam benefactoribus et amicis ingentium origomalorum extitisse. ” Haec dum oraret Volumnia, nullum respondensverbum Martius intentis excipiebat auribus. Ut vero desierat, cum isdiuturnum teneret silentium, rursus Volumnia; “Quid siles,” inquit. “Nate, num irae receptarumque injuriarum memoriae omnia concederesatius arbitraris an depraecanti talia matri largiri pulcherrimummunificentiae genus non est? Magnine interesse viri putas acceptorummeminisse malorum? Suscepta autem a parentibus beneficia eorum cultuiac venerationi reddere num excelso potius ac bono dignissimum viromunus censes? Caeterum gratiam habere tuerique magisquam tu debuitnemo, cum tamen per acerbissimam adeo ingratitudinem eas. Et cumpermagnas jam patriae paenas exegeris acceperisque, nullas adhuc matrigrates retulisti. Erat vero aequissimum atque sanctissimum ut abs tevel nulla ingruenti necessitate tam honesta tamque justa postulansimpetrarem. Quid cum in meam te verbis sententiam deflectere nequeam,extremae jam parco spei? ” Haec affata cum uxore simul ac liberispedibus advoluta procumbit. Tum conclamans Martius, “Qualia mihi” ait“factitasti mater”; et jacentem sustulit: et pressa dextera inquit;“Vicisti patriae quidem prosperam, nimis atque nimis perniciosamautem[282] mihi victoriam. Abs te tantum superatus abscedam. ”[276] I have modernised the punctuation, and extended the contractionsthroughout, but wherever there is any possibility of misinterpretationI have noted it. [277] aīo. [278] adiret. [279] cernēs. [280] Insinit. [281] uterque. [282] _aūt. _PLUTARCH’S GREEK IN THE EDITION OF 1599Ἐκ τούτου, τά τε παιδία καὶ τὴν Οὐεργιλίαν ἀναστήσασα μετὰ τῶν ἄλλωνγυναικῶν, ἐβάδιζεν εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον τῶν Οὐολούσκων. ἡ δ’ ὄψιςαὐτῶν τότε οἰκτρὰν καὶ τοῖς πολεμίοις ἐνεποίησεν αἰδὼ καὶ σιωπήν. ἔτυχε δ’ ὁ Μάρκιος ἐπὶ βήματος καθεζόμενος μετὰ τῶν ἡγεμονικῶν. ὡςοὖν εἶδε προσιούσας τὰς γυναῖκας, ἐθαύμασεν· ἐπιγνοὺς δὲ τὴν γυναῖκαπρώτην βαδίζουσαν, ἐβούλετο μὲν ἐμμένειν τοῖς ἀτρέπτοις ἐκείνοιςκαὶ ἀπαραιτήτοις λογισμοῖς· γενόμενος δὲ τοῦ πάθους ἐλάττων καὶσυνταραχθεὶς πρὸς τὴν ὄψιν, οὐκ ἔτλη καθεζομένῳ προσελθεῖν, ἀλλὰ=καταβὰς= θᾶττον ἢ βάδην, καὶ ἀπαντήσας, πρώτην μὲν ἠσπάσατο τὴνμητέρα, καὶ πλεῖστον χρόνον, ἔτι δὲ τὴν γυναῖκα καὶ τὰ τέκνα, μήτεδακρύων ἔτι, =μήτε τοῦ φιλοφρονεῖσθαι= φειδόμενος, ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ὑπὸῥεύματος φέρεσθαι τοῦ πάθους ἑαυτὸν ἐνδεδωκώς. =ἐπεὶ δὲ τούτων ἄδηνεἶχε=, καὶ τὴν μητέρα βουλομένην ἤδη λόγων ἄρχειν ἤσθετο, τοὺς τῶνΟὐολούσκων προβούλους παραστησάμενος, ἤκουσε τῆς Οὐολουμνίας τοιαῦταλεγούσης, “Ὁρᾶς μὲν, ὦ παῖ, κᾳν αὐταὶ μὴ λέγωμεν, ἐσθῆτι καὶ μορφῇτῶν ἀθλίων σωμάτων τεκμαιρόμενος, οἵαν οἰκουρίαν ἡμῖν ἡ σὴ φυγὴπεριποίησε. λόγισαι δὲ νῦν ὡς ἀτυχέσταται πασῶν ἀφίγμεθα γυναικῶν, αἷςτὸ ἥδιστον θέαμα, φοβερώτατον ἡ τύχη πεποίηκεν, ἐμοὶ μὲν υἱὸν, ταύτῃ δ’ἄνδρα τοῖς τῆς πατρίδος τείχεσιν ἰδεῖν ἀντικαθήμενον. ὃ δ’ ἔστι τοῖςἄλλοις ἀτυχίας πάσης καὶ κακοπραγίας παραμύθιον, εὔχεσθαι θεοῖς, ἡμῖνἀπορώτατον γέγονεν. |
οὐ γὰρ οἷόν τε καὶ τῇ πατρίδι νίκην ἅμα καὶ σοὶσωτηρίαν αἰτεῖσθαι παρὰ τῶν θεῶν, ἀλλ’ ἅ τις ἄν ἡμῖν καταράσαιτο τῶνἐχθρῶν, ταῦτα ταῖς ἡμετέραις ἔνεστιν εὐχαῖς. ἀνάγκη γὰρ ἢ τῆς πατρίδοςἢ σου στέρεσθαι γυναικὶ σῇ καὶ τέκνοις. ἐγὼ δ’ οὐ περιμένω ταύτην μοιδιαιτῆσαι τὴν τύχην ζώσῃ τὸν πόλεμον· ἀλλ’ εἰ μή σε πείσαιμι φιλίανκαὶ ὁμόνοιαν διαφορὰς καὶ κακῶν θέμενον, ἀμφοτέρων γενέσθαι εὐεργέτηνμᾶλλον, ἢ λυμεῶνα τῶν ἑτέρων, οὕτω διανοοῦ καὶ παρασκεύαζε σεαυτὸν, ὡςτῇ πατρίδι μὴ προσμίξαι δυνάμενος πρὶν ἢ νεκρὰν ὑπερβῆναι τὴν τεκούσαν. οὐ γὰρ ἐκείνην με δεῖ τὴν ἡμέραν ἀναμένειν ἐν ᾗ τὸν υἱὸν ἐπόψομαιθριαμβευόμενον ὑπὸ τῶν πολίτων, ἢ θριαμβεύοντα κατὰ τῆς πατρίδος. εἰ μὲν οὖν ἀξιῶ σε τὴν πατρίδα σῶσαι Οὐολούσκους ἀπολέσαντα, χαλεπήσοι καὶ δυσδιαίτητος, ὦ παῖ, πρόκειται σκέψις, οὔτε γὰρ διαφθεῖραιτοὺς πολίτας καλὸν, οὔτε τοὺς πεπιστευκότας προδοῦναι δίκαιον. νῦν δ’ἀπαλλαγὴν κακῶν αἰτιούμεθα, σωτήριον μὲν ἀμφοτέροις ὁμοίως, ἔνδοξονδὲ καὶ καλὴν μᾶλλον Οὐολούσκοις, ὅτι τῷ κρατεῖν δόξουσι διδόναι τὰμέγιστα τῶν ἀγαθῶν, =οὐχ ἧττον λαμβάνοντες=, εἰρήνην καὶ φιλίαν, ὧνμάλιστα μὲν αἴτιος ἔσῃ γινομένων, μὴ γινομένων δὲ, μόνος αἰτίαν ἕξειςπαρ’ ἀμφοτέροις. ἄδηλος δ’ ὠν ὁ πόλεμος τοῦτ’ ἔχει πρόδηλον, ὅτι σοὶνικῶντι μὲν, ἀλάστορι τῆς πατρίδος εἶναι περιέστιν· ἡττώμενος δὲ,δόξεις ὑπ’ ὀργῆς εὐεργέταις ἀνδράσι καὶ φίλοις τῶν μεγίστων συμφορῶναἴτιος γεγονέναι. ” ταῦτα τῆς Οὐολουμνίας λεγούσης ὁ Μάρκιος ἠκροάτομηδὲν ἀποκρινόμενος. ἐπεὶ δὲ καὶ παυσαμένης, εἱστήκει σιωπῶν πολὺνχρόνον, αὖθις ἡ Οὐολουμνία, “Τί σιγᾷς (εἶπεν) ὦ παῖ, πότερον ὀργῇ καὶμνησικακίᾳ πάντα συγχωρεῖν καλόν; οὐ καλὸν δὲ μητρὶ χαρίσασθαι δεομένῃπερὶ τηλικούτων; ἢ τὸ μεμνῆσθαι πεπονθότα κακῶς ἀνδρὶ μεγάλῳ προσήκει,τὸ δ’ εὐεργεσίας αἷς εὐεργετοῦνται παῖδες ὑπὸ τῶν τεκόντων σέβεσθαι καὶτιμᾷν, οὐκ ἀνδρὸς ἔργον ἐστὶ μεγάλου καὶ ἀγαθοῦ; καὶ μὴν οὐδενὶ μᾶλλονἔπρεπε τηρεῖν χάριν ὡς σοι, =πικρῶς οὕτως ἀχαριστίαν ἐπεξίοντι=. καίτοιπαρὰ τῆς πατρίδος ἤδη μεγάλας δίκας ἀπείληφας, τῇ μητρὶ δ’ οὐδεμίανχάριν ἀποδέδωκας. ἦν μὲν οὖν ὁσιώτατον ἄνευ τινος ἀνάγκης τυχεῖν μεπαρὰ σοῦ δεομένην οὕτω καλῶν καὶ δικαίων· μὴ πείθουσα δὲ τί φείδομαιτῆς ἐσχάτης ἐλπίδος;” καὶ ταῦτ’ εἰποῦσα προσπίπτει τοῖς ποσὶν αὐτοῦμετὰ τῆς γυναικὸς ἅμα καὶ τῶν τέκνων. ὁ δὲ Μάρκιος ἀναβοήσας, “Οἷαεἴργασαί με, ὦ μᾶτερ;” ἐξανίστησιν αὐτὴν, καὶ τὴν δεξιὰν πιέσας σφόδρα,“Νενίκηκας (εἶπεν) εὐτυχῆ μὲν τῇ πατρίδι νίκην, ἐμοὶ δ’ ὀλέθριον·ἄπειμι γὰρ ὑπὸ σοῦ μόνης ἡττώμενος. ”AMYOT’S VERSION. _Elle prit sa belle fille_ et ses enfans quand et[283] elle, et avectoutes les autres Dames Romaines s’en alla droit au camp des Volsques,lesquelz eurent eulx-mesmes une compassion meslee de reverence quandils la veirent _de maniere qu’il n’y eut personne d’eulx qui luyozast rien dire_. Or estoit lors Martius assis en son tribunal, _avecles marques de souverain Capitaine_,[284] et _de tout loing_ qu’ilapperceut venir des femmes, s’esmerveilla que ce pouvoit estre;mais peu apres recognoissant sa femme, qui marchoit la premiere, ilvoulut _du commencement_ perseverer en son obstinee et inflexible_rigueur_; mais à la fin, vaincu de l’affection naturelle, estanttout esmeu de les voir, il _ne peut_ avoir le _coeur si dur_ que deles attendre en son siege, ains[285] en descendant plus viste que lepas, leur alla au devant, et baisa sa mere la premiere, et la teintassez longuement embrassee, puis sa femme et ses petits enfants,ne se pouvant plus tenir que les _chauldes_ larmes ne luy vinssent_aux yeux_, ny se garder de leur faire caresses, ains se laissantaller à l’affection _du sang_ ne plus ne moins qu’à _la force_ d’unimpetueux torrent. Mais apres qu’il leur eut assez faict _d’aimablerecueil_, et qu’il apperceut que sa mere Volumnia vouloit commencera luy parler, il appella les principaux du conseil des Volsques pour_ouyr ce qu’elle proposeroit_, puis elle parla en ceste maniere: “Tupeux assez cognoistre de toy mesme, mon filz, encore que nous ne t’endissions rien, à voir noz accoustremens, et l’estat auquel sont nozpauvres corps, quelle a esté nostre vie en la maison depuis tu en esdehors; mais considere encore maintenant combien plus _mal heureuses_et plus infortunees nous sommes icy venues que toutes les femmes dumonde, attendu que ce qui est à toutes les autres le plus doulx avoir, la fortune nous l’a rendu le plus effroyable, faisant voir à moymon filz, et à celle-ci, son mary, assiegeant les murailles de sonpropre païs; tellement que ce qui est à toutes autres le _souverain_renconfort en leurs adversitez, de _prier_ et invoquer les Dieux àleur secours, c’est ce qui nous met en plus grande perplexité, pourceque nous ne leur sçaurions demander en noz prieres victoire a nostrepaïs et preservation de ta vie tout ensemble, ains toutes les plusgriefves maledictions que sçauroit imaginer contre nous un ennemy sont_necessairement_ encloses en noz oraisons, pource qu’il est force à tafemme et à tes enfans qu’ilz soyent privez de l’un de deux, ou de toy,ou de leurs païs: car quant a moy, je ne suis pas deliberee d’attendreque la fortune, moy vivante, decide _l’issue de ceste guerre_: car sije ne te puis persuader que tu vueilles plus tost bien faire à toutesles deux parties, que d’en _ruiner_ et destruire l’une, en preferantamitie et concorde aux miseres et calamitez de la guerre, je veux bienque tu saches et le tienes pour asseuré que tu n’iras jamais assaillirny combattre ton païs que premierement tu ne passes par dessus le corpsde celle qui t’a mis en ce monde, et ne doy point differer jusques àvoir le jour, ou que mon filz _prisonnier_ soit mené en triumphe parses citoyens, ou que luy mesme triumphe de son païs. Or si ainsi estoitque je te requisse de sauver ton païs en destruisant les Volsques, cete serait certainement une deliberation trop mal-aisee à resoudre;car comme il n’est point licite de ruiner son païs, aussi n’est-ilpoint juste de trahir ceulx qui se sont fiez en toy. Mais ce queje te demande est une delivrance de maulx, laquelle est egalement_profitable_ et salutaire à l’un et à l’autre peuple, mais plushonorable aux Volsques, pource qu’il semblera qu’ayans la victoire enmain, ils nous auront de grace donné deux souverains biens, la paix etl’amitié, encore qu’ilz n’en prennent pas moins pour eulx, duquel tuseras principal autheur, s’il se fait; et, s’il ne se fait, tu en aurasseul le _reproche et le blasme_[286] total envers l’une et l’autre desparties: ainsi _estant l’issue de la guerre_ incertaine,[287] celaneantmoins est bien tout certain que, si tu en demoures vaincueur,il t’en restera _ce profit_, que tu en seras estimé la _peste_ et laruine de ton païs: et si tu es vaincu, on dira que pour un _appetitde venger tes propres injures_ tu auras esté cause de tres griefvescalamitez à ceulx qui t’avoient humainement et amiablement recueilly. ”Martius escouta ces paroles de Volumnia sa mere sans l’interrompre,et apres qu’elle eut acheve de dire demoura longtemps tout _picqué_sans luy respondre. Parquoy elle reprit la parole et recommencea à luydire: “Que ne me respons-tu, mon filz? Estimes-tu qu’il soit licite deconceder tout à son ire et à son appetit de vengeance, et non honestede condescendre et _incliner_ aux prieres de sa mere en si grandeschoses? Et _cuides-tu_ qu’il soit convenable a un grand personnage, sesouvenir des torts qu’on luy a faits et _des injures passees_, et quece ne soit point acte d’homme de bien et de grand cueur, _recognoistre_les bienfaicts que reçoyvent les enfans de leurs peres et meres, enleur portant honneur et reverence? Si[288] n’y a il homme en ce mondequi deust mieux observer tous les poincts de gratitude que toy, veu quetu poursuis si asprement une ingratitude: et si[289] y a davantage,que tu as ja fait payer a ton païs de grandes amendes pour les tortsque l’on t’y a faits, et n’as encore fait aucune recognoissance ata mere; pourtant seroit-il plus honeste que sans autre contraintej’_impetrasse_[290] de toy une requeste si juste et si raisonnable. Mais puis que _par raison_ je ne le te puis persuader, à quel besoingespargne-je plus, et _differe-je_ la derniere esperance. ” En disantces paroles elle se jetta elle mesme, avec sa femme et ses enfans, ases pieds. Ce que Martius _ne pouvant supporter_, la releva tout aussitost en s’escriant: “O mere, que m’as tu faict? ” et un luy serrantestroittement la main droite: “Ha,” dit il, “Mere, tu as vaincu unevictoire heureuse pour ton païs mais bien _malheureuse_ et mortellepour ton filz, car je m’en revois[291] vaincu par toy seule. ”[283] _together with. _[284] A mistranslation of the Greek phrase, μετὰ τῶν ἡγεμονικῶν, fromwhich it must come. The Latin is correct and unmistakable. [285] But. [286] Greek αἰτίαν, Latin noxam crimenque. [287] Latin: cumque incertus belli sit eventus. [288] Yet. [289] Yet. [290] An unusual word in French. Compare the _impetrare_ of the Latin. [291] ἄπειμι, revais = retourne. NORTH’S VERSION. She tooke her daughter in lawe, and Martius children with her, andbeing accompanied with all the other Romaine ladies, they went _introupe_ together unto the Volsces camp: whome when they sawe, they ofthem selves did both pitie and reverence her, and there was not a manamonge them that once durst say a worde unto her. Nowe was Martiusset then in his chayer of state, with all the honours of a generall,and when he had spied the women coming a farre of, he marveled whatthe matter ment: but afterwardes knowing his wife which came formest,he determined at the first to persist in his obstinate and inflexiblerancker. But overcomen in the ende with naturall affection, and beingaltogether altered to see them; his harte _would not serve him_ totarie their comming to his chayer, but comming down in hast, he went tomeete them, and first he kissed his mother, and imbraced her a pretiewhile, then his wife and litle children. And _Nature so wrought withhim_, that the[292] teares fell from his eyes, and he coulde not keepehim selfe from making much of them, but yeelded to the affection of hisbloode as if he had bene _violently_ caried with the furie of a mostswift running streame. After he had thus lovingly received them, andperceiving that his mother Volumnia would beginne to speake to him, hecalled the chiefest of the counsell of the Volsces to heare what shewould say. Then she spake in this sorte: “If we held our peace, (mysonne) and _determined not to speake_, the state of our poor bodies,and _present_ sight of our rayment, would easely bewray to thee whatlife we have led at home, since thy exile and abode abroad. But thinkenowe with thy selfe, how much more unfortunatly,[293] then all thewomen livinge we are come hether, considering that the sight whichshould be most pleasaunt to all other to beholde, _spitefull_ fortunehath made most fearefull to us: making my selfe to see my sonne, andmy daughter here, her husband, besieging the walles of his nativecountrie. So as that which is thonly comforte to all other in theiradversitie and _miserie_, to pray unto the goddes and to call to themfor aide; is the _onely_ thinge which _plongeth_ us into most deepeperplexitie. For we can not (alas) together pray, both for victorie,for our countrie, and for safetie of thy life also: but a _worlde_ ofgrievous curses, _yea more then any mortall_ enemie can heape uppon us,are forcibly wrapt up in our prayers. For the _bitter soppe of mosthard choyce_ is offered thy wife and children, to forgoe the one of thetwo: either to lose the _persone_ of thy selfe, or the _nurse_ of[294]their native contrie. For my selfe (my sonne) I am determined not totarie, till fortune in my life time do make an ende of this warre. Forif I cannot persuade thee, rather to doe good unto both parties than tooverthrowe and destroye the one, preferring love and _nature_ beforethe _malice_ and calamitie of warres: _thou shalt_ see, my sonne, andtrust unto it,[295] thou shalt no soner marche forward to assaultthy countrie, but thy foote shall treade upon thy mothers _wombe_,that brought thee first into this world. And I maye not deferre tosee the daye, either that my sonne be led prisoner in triumphe by his_naturall_ country men, or that he him selfe doe triumphe _of them_,and of his _naturall_ countrie. For if it were so, that my requesttended to save thy countrie, in destroying the Volsces: _I mustconfesse_, thou wouldest hardly and _doubtfully_ resolve on that. Foras to destroye thy naturall countrie it is altogether _unmete_ andunlawfull; so were it not just, and _lesse honorable_, to betraye thosethat put their trust in thee. But my only demaunde consisteth to make a_gayle_[296] deliverie of all evills, which delivereth equall benefitand safety both to the one and the other, but most honorable for theVolsces. For it shall appeare, that having victorie in their hands,they have of speciall favour graunted us singular graces; peace, andamitie, albeit them selves have no lesse parte of both, then we. Ofwhich _good_, if so it came to passe, thy selfe is thonly authour, _andso hast thou thonly honour_. But if it faile, _and fall out contrarie_:thy selfe alone _deservedly_ shall carie the _shameful_ reproche andburden of either partie. So, though the ende of warre be uncertaine,yet this notwithstanding is most certaine: that if it be thy chaunceto conquer, this benefit shalt thou _reape_ of _thy goodly conquest_,to be chronicled the plague and destroyer of thy countrie. And iffortune also overthrowe thee, then the worlde will saye, that throughdesire to revenge thy private injuries, thou hast _for ever_ undonethy good friendes, who dyd most lovingly and curteously receyve thee. ”Martius gave good eare unto his mothers wordes, without interrupting_her speache at all_: and after she had sayed _what she would_, he heldhis peace a prety while,[297] and annswered not a worde. Hereupon shebeganne again to speake unto him, and sayed: “My sonne, why doest thounot aunswer me? Doest thou think it good altogether to geve place untothy choller and desire of revenge, and thinkest thou it not honestiefor thee to graunt[298] thy mothers request in so weighty a cause? doest thou take it honorable for a noble man, to remember the wrongsand injuries done him: and doest not in like case thinke it an honestnoble man’s parte, to be thankefull for the goodnes that parents doeshewe to their children, acknowledging the duety and reverence _theyought to beare unto them_? [299] No man living is more bounde to shewehim selfe thankefull in all partes and respects then thy selfe: whoso unnaturally sheweth all ingratitude. [300] Moreover (my sonne) thouhast sorely taken of thy countrie, exacting grievous payments aponthem, in revenge of the injuries offered thee: besides, thou hast nothitherto shewed thy poore mother any curtesie. [301] And therefore itis _not only_ honest, _but due unto me_, that without compulsion Ishould obtaine my so just and reasonable request of thee. But since byreason I cannot persuade thee to it, to what purpose do I deferre[302]my last hope? ” And with these wordes her selfe, his wife and childrenfell downe upon their knees before him. Martius seeing that couldrefraine no longer but _went straight_ and lifte her up, crying out:“Oh mother, what have you done to me? ” And holding her hard by theright hand, “Oh mother,” sayed he, “You have wonne a happy victorie foryour countrie, but mortall and unhappy for your sonne: for I see[303]myself vanquished by you alone. ”[292] No _chauldes_. [293] Adverb for adjective, omission of one duplicate. [294] _of_, appositional. [295] Not so clear as the French. [296] gaol. [297] picqué not translated. [298] One of Amyot’s duplicates wanting. [299] Important connective particle omitted. [300] Quite wrong. The French means: “Since you so bitterly pursueingratitude. ”[301] In this sentence North again misses the point of the argument. The meaning is “And there is this further point as well, that you havealready in a measure requited your wrongs, but never yet shown yourgratitude. ”[302] One of Amyot’s duplicate expressions omitted. [303] A pardonable mistranslation of the French; which, however, provesthat in this passage at least North consulted neither the Greek nor theLatin. SHAKESPEARE’S VERSION. The narrative which ushers in the speech is of course left to theactors. It is interesting, however, to observe that Shakespeare variesfrom his authorities in making Coriolanus embrace not his mother buthis wife in the first instance. He inserts too the conversation, that,at first merely personal, leads up to the grand question. Then Volumniaproceeds with her speech. It is impossible to note all the minutechanges that Shakespeare makes. The Italics in the following reprintrepresent most generously what he has borrowed, for even in the clausesand phrases indicated as loans there is abundant evidence of his ownirrepressible dramatic and poetic originality. _Vol. _ _Should we be silent and not speak, our raiment And state of bodies would bewray what life We have led since thy exile. Think with thyself How more unfortunate than all living women Are we come hither: since that thy sight_, which should Make our eyes flow with joy, hearts dance with comforts, Constrains them weep and shake with fear and sorrow; _Making the mother, wife_, and child to see _The son, the husband_, and the father tearing His country’s bowels out. _And to poor we Thine enmity’s most capital: thou barr’st us Our prayers to the gods, which is a comfort That all but we enjoy; for how can we, Alas, how can we for our country pray_, Whereto we are bound, _together with thy victory_, Whereto we are bound? _alack, or we must lose The country, our dear nurse, or else thy person_, Our comfort in the country. We must find An evident calamity, though we had Our wish, which side should win: for _either thou Must_, as a foreign recreant, _be led_ With manacles thorough our streets, or _else Triumphantly tread on thy country’s ruin_ And bear the palm for having bravely shed Thy wife and children’s blood. _For myself, son, I purpose not to wait on fortune till These wars determine: if I cannot persuade thee Rather to show a noble grace to both parts Than seek the end of one, thou shalt no sooner March to assault thy country than to tread_— _Trust to’t thou shalt not—on thy mother’s womb, That brought thee to this world. _ _Vir. _ Ay, and mine, That brought you forth this boy, to keep your name Living to time. _Young Mar. _ A’ shall not tread on me; I’ll run away till I am bigger, but then I’ll fight. _Cor. _ Not of a woman’s tenderness to be, Requires nor child nor woman’s face to see. I have sat too long. [_Rising. _ _Vol. _ Nay, go not from us thus, _If it were so that our request did tend To save the Romans, thereby to destroy The Volsces whom you serve, you might condemn us_, As poisonous of your honour: no; _our suit Is, that you reconcile them: while the Volsces May say “This mercy we have show’d”; the Romans, “This we received”; and each in either side Give the all-hail to thee; and cry “Be blest For making up this peace! _” Thou know’st, great son, _The end of war’s uncertain, but this certain That, if thou conquer Rome, the benefit Which thou shalt thereby reap is such a name_, Whose repetition will be dogg’d with curses; _Whose chronicle thus writ_: “The man was noble, But with his last attempt he wiped it out; _Destroy’d his country_, and his name remains To the ensuing age abhorr’d. ” Speak to me, son: Thou hast affected the fine strains of honour, To imitate the graces of the gods; To tear with thunder the wide cheeks o’ the air, And yet to charge thy sulphur with a bolt That should but rive an oak. Why dost not speak? _Think’st thou it honourable for a noble man Still to remember wrongs? _ Daughter, speak you: He cares not for your weeping. Speak thou, boy: Perhaps thy childishness will move him more Than can our reasons. _There’s no man in the world More bound to’s mother_; yet here he lets me prate Like one i’ the stocks. _Thou hast never in thy life Show’d thy dear mother any courtesy_, When she, poor hen, fond of no second brood, Has cluck’d thee to the wars and safely home, Loaden with honour. _Say my request’s unjust, And spurn me back: but if it be not so, Thou art not honest_; and the gods will plague thee, That thou restrain’st from me the duty which To a mother’s part belongs. He turns away: Down, ladies; let us shame him with our knees. To his surname Coriolanus ’longs more pride Than pity to our prayers. Down: an end; This is the last: so we will home to Rome, And die among our neighbours. Nay, behold’s: This boy, that cannot tell what he would have, But kneels and holds up hands for fellowship, Does reason our petition with more strength Than thou hast to deny’t. Come, let us go: This fellow had a Volscian to his mother; His wife is in Corioli and his child Like him by chance. Yet give us our dispatch: I am hush’d until our city be afire, And then I’ll speak a little. [_He holds her by the hand, silent. _ _Cor. _ _O mother, mother! What have you done? _ Behold, the heavens do ope, The gods look down, and this unnatural scene They laugh at. O my mother, mother! O! _You have won a happy victory to Rome; But, for your son_,—believe it, O, believe it, _Most dangerously you have with him prevail’d, If not most mortal to him. _ But, let it come. APPENDIX CSHAKESPEARE’S ALLEGED INDEBTEDNESS TO APPIAN IN _JULIUS CAESAR_Plutarch gives little more than the situation and the _motif_ forAntony’s oration. He has two accounts of the incident. (_a_) When Caesars body was brought into the Market Place, Antonius making his funeral oration in praise of the dead according to the ancient custom of Rome, and perceiving that his wordes moved the common people to compassion; he framed his eloquence to make their harts yerne the more, and taking Caesars gowne all bloudy in his hand, he layed it open to the sight of them all, shewing what a number of cuts and holes it had upon it. Therewithall the people fell presently into such a rage and mutinie, that there was no more order kept amongs the common people. (_Marcus Brutus. _) (_b_) When Caesars body was brought to the place where it should be buried, he made a funeral oration in commendacion of Caesar, according to the auncient custom of praising noble men at their funerals. When he saw that the people were very glad and desirous to heare Caesar spoken of, and his praises uttered: he mingled his oration with lamentable wordes, and by amplifying of matters did greatly move their harts and affections unto pitie and compassion. In fine to conclude his oration, he unfolded before the whole assembly the bloudy garments of the dead, thrust through in many places with their swords, and called the malefactors, cruell and cursed murtherers. With these words he put the people into . . . a fury. (_Marcus Antonius. _)Shakespeare certainly did not get much of the stuff for Antony’s speechfrom these notices. Appian, on the other hand, gives a much fuller report, which was quiteaccessible to ordinary readers, for Appian had been published in 1578by Henrie Bynniman. [304][304] Under the title: “An auncient Historie and exquisite Chronicleof the Romanes warres, both Ciuile and Foren. Written in Greeke by thenoble Orator and Historiographer Appian of Alexandria. ”The English version of the most important passages runs thus: Antony marking how they were affected, did not let it slippe, but toke upon him to make Caesars funeral sermon, as Consul, of a Consul, friend of a friend, and kinsman, of a kinsman (for Antony was partly his kinsman) and to use craft againe. And thus he said: “I do not thinke it meete (O citizens) that the buriall praise of suche a man, should rather be done by me, than by the whole country. For what you have altogither for the loue of hys vertue giuen him by decree, aswell the Senate as the people, I thinke your voice, and not Antonies, oughte to expresse it. ” This he uttered with sad and heauy cheare, and wyth a framed voice, declared euerything, chiefly upon the decree, whereby he was made a God, holy and inuiolate, father of the country, benefactor and gouernor, and suche a one, as neuer in al things they entituled other man to the like. At euery of these words Antonie directed his countenance and hands to Caesars body, and with vehemencie of words opened the fact. At euery title he gaue an addition, with briefe speach, mixte with pitie and indignation. And when the decree named him father of the country, then he saide: “This is the testimony of our duety. ” And at these wordes, _holy_, _inuiolate_ and _untouched_, and _the refuge of all other_, he said: “None other made refuge of hym. But he, this holy and untouched, is kylled, not takyng honoure by violences whiche he neuer desired, and then be we verye thrall that bestowe them on the unworthy, neuer suing for them. But you doe purge your selves (O Citizens) of this unkindnesse, in that you nowe do use suche honoure towarde hym being dead. ” Then rehearsing the othe, that all shoulde keepe Caesar and Caesars body, and if any one wente about to betraye hym, that they were accursed that would not defende him: at this he extolled hys voice, and helde up his handes to the Capitoll, saying: “O Jupiter, Countries defendour, and you other Gods, I am ready to reuenge, as I sware and made execration, and when it seemes good to my companions to allowe the decrees, I desire them to aide me. ” At these plaine speeches spoken agaynst the Senate, an uproare being made, Antony waxed colde, and recanted hys wordes. “It seemeth, (O Citizens),” saide hee, “that the things done haue not bin the worke of men but of Gods, and that we ought to haue more consideration of the present, than of the past, bycause the thyngs to come, maye bring us to greater danger than these we haue, if we shall returne to oure olde [dissentions], and waste the reste of the noble men that be in the Cittie. Therefore let us send thys holy one to the number of the blessed, and sing to him his due hymne and mourning verse. ” When he had saide thus, he pulled up his gowne lyke a man beside hymselfe, and gyrded it, that he might the better stirre his handes: he stoode ouer the Litter, as from a Tabernacle, looking into it and opening it, and firste sang his Himne, as to a God in heauen. And to confirme he was a God, he held up his hands, and with a swift voice he rehearsed the warres, the fights, the victories, the nations that he had subdued to his countrey, and the great booties that he had sent, making euery one to be a maruell. Then with a continuall crie, “This is the only unconquered of all that euer came to hands with hym. Thou (quoth he) alone diddest reuenge thy countrey being iniured, 300 years, and those fierce nations that only inuaded Rome, and only burned it, thou broughtest them on their knees. ” And when he had made these and many other inuocations, he tourned hys voice from triumphe to mourning matter, and began to lament and mone him as a friend that had bin uniustly used, and did desire that he might giue hys soule for Caesars. Then falling into moste vehement affections, uncouered Caesars body, holding up his vesture with a speare, cut with the woundes, and redde with the bloude of the chiefe Ruler, by the which the people lyke a Quire, did sing lamentation unto him, and with this passion were againe repleate with ire. And after these speeches, other lamentations wyth voice after the Country custome, were sung of the Quires, and they rehearsed again his acts and his hap. Then made he Caesar hymselfe to speake as it were in a lamentable sort, to howe many of his enimies he hadde done good by name, and of the killers themselves to say as in an admiration, “Did I saue them that haue killed me? ” This the people could not abide, calling to remembraunce, that all the kyllers (only Decimus except) were of Pompey’s faction, and subdued by hym, to whom, in stead of punishment, he had giuen promotion of offices, gouernments of prouinces and armies, and thought Decimus worthy to be made his heyre and son by adoption, and yet conspired his death. [305][305] In Schweighäuser’s Edition II. cxliii. to cxlvi. Now, this is not very like the oration in the play. It may be analysedand summarised as follows:Antony begins by praising the deceased as a consul a consul, a friend afriend, a kinsman a kinsman. He recites the public honours awarded toCaesar as a better testimony than his private opinion, and accompaniesthe enumeration with provocative comment. He touches on Caesar’ssacrosanct character and the unmerited honours bestowed on those whoslew him, but acquits the citizens of unkindness on the ground of theirpresence at the funeral. He avows his own readiness for revenge, andthus censures the policy of the Senate, but admits that that policy maybe for the public interest. He intones a hymn in honour of the deifiedCaesar; reviews his wars, battles, victories, the provinces annexedand the spoils transmitted to Rome, and glances at the subjugation ofthe Gauls as the payment of an ancient score. He uncovers the body ofCaesar and displays the pierced and blood-stained garment to the wrathof the populace. He puts words in the mouth of the dead, and makes himcite the names of those whom he had benefited and preserved that theyshould destroy him. And the people brook no more. Thus Appian’s Antony differs from Shakespeare’s Antony in hisattitude to his audience, in the arrangement of his material, and toa considerable extent in the material itself. Nevertheless, in someof the details the speeches correspond. It is quite possible thatShakespeare, while retaining Plutarch’s general scheme, may havefilled it in with suggestions from Appian. The evidence is not veryconvincing, but the conjecture is greatly strengthened by the apparentloans from the same quarter in _Antony and Cleopatra_, which would showthat he was acquainted with the English translation. See Appendix D. APPENDIX DSHAKESPEARE’S LOANS FROM APPIAN IN _ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA_I do not think there can be any serious doubt about Shakespeare’shaving consulted the 1578 translation of the _Bella Civilia_ for thisplay, at any rate for the parts dealing with Sextus Pompeius. The mostimportant passage is the one (_A. and C. _ III. v. 19) which recordsAntony’s indignation at Pompey’s death. Now of that death there is nomention at all in the _Marcus Antonius_ of Plutarch; and even in the_Octavius Caesar Augustus_ by Simon Goulard, which was included in the1583 edition of Amyot and in the 1603 edition of North, it is expresslyattributed to Antony. Here is Goulard’s statement:[306] Whilst Antonius made war with the Parthians, or rather infortunately they made war with him to his great confusion, his lieutenant Titius found the means to lay hands upon Sextus Pompeius; that was fled into the ile of Samos, and then forty years old: whom he put to death by Antonius’ commandment. [306] I quote from _Shakespeare’s Plutarch_ (Prof. Skeat), the 1603edition of North being at present inaccessible to me. Appian at least leaves it an open question whether Antony wasresponsible or not, and thus gives his apologist an opportunity: Titius commaunded hys (_i. e. _ Pompey’s) army to sweare to Antony, and put hym to death at Mileto, when he hadde lyved to the age of fortye yeares, eyther for that he remembered late displeasure and forgot olde good turnes, or for that he had such commaundemente of Antony. _There bee that saye that Plancus, and not Antony did commaunde hym to dye, whyche beeyng president of Syria had Antonyes signet, and in greate causes wrote letters in hys name. _ Some thynke it was done wyth Antonyes knowledge, he fearyng the name of Pompey, or for Cleopatra, who fauoured Pompey the Great. _Some thynke that Plancus dyd it of hymselfe_ for these causes, and also that Pompey shoulde gyve no cause of dissention between Caesar and Antony, or for that Cleopatra would turn hyr favour to Pompey. (V. cxiv. )I do not think indeed that there is any indication that Shakespearehad read, or at all events been in any way impressed by, Goulard’s_Augustus_: no wonder, for compared with the genuine _Lives_, it is adull performance. The only other passages with which a connection mightbe traced, do no more than give hints that are better given in Appian. Thus Sextus Pompeius’ vein of chivalry, of which there is hardly asuggestion in Plutarch’s brief notices, is illustrated in Goulard byhis behaviour to the fugitives from the proscription. Pompeius had sent certain ships to keep upon the coast of Italy, and pinnaces everywhere, to the end to receive all them that fled on that side; giving them double recompence that saved a proscript, and honourable offices to men that had been consuls and escaped, comforting and entertaining the others with a most singular courtesy. But Appian says all this too in greater detail, and adds thesignificant touch: So was he moste profitable to hys afflicted Countrey, and wanne greate glory to hymselfe, _not inferioure to that he hadde of hys father_. (IV. xxxvi. )Note particularly this reference to his father’s reputation, for whichthere is no parallel in Plutarch or Goulard; and compare Our slippery people . . . begin to throw Pompey the Great, and all his dignities Upon his son. (_A. and C. _ I. ii. 192. )and Rich in his father’s honour. (_Ib. _ I. iii. 50. )Again, Goulard, talking of the last struggle, says: After certain encounters, where Pompey ever had the better, insomuch as Lepidus was suspected to lean on that side, Caesar resolved to commit all to the hazard of a latter battle. The insinuation in regard to Lepidus might be taken as the foundationfor Shakespeare’s statement, which has no sanction in Plutarch, thatCaesar accuses him of letters he had formerly wrote to Pompey. (_A. and C. _ III. v. 10. )But it seems a closer echo of a remark of Appian’s about sometransactions shortly after Philippi: Lepidus was accused to favour Pompey’s part. (V. iii. )There are, moreover, several touches in Shakespeare’s sketch, that hecould no more get from Goulard than from Plutarch, but that are to befound in Appian. Thus there is Pompey’s association with the partyof the “good Brutus” and the enthusiasm he expresses for “beauteousfreedom” (_A. and C. _ II. vi. 13 and 17). Compare passages like thefollowing in Appian: Sextus Pompey, the seconde son of Pompey the Great being lefte of that faction, was sette up of Brutus friends. (V. i. ) Pompey’s friends hearing of this, did marvellously rejoyce, crying now to be time to restore their Countrey’s libertie. (III. lxxxii. )Thus, too, Shakespeare refers to Pompey’s command of “the empire of thesea” (_A. and C. _ I. ii. 191), which, if Plutarch were his authority,would be an unjustifiable exaggeration. Yet it exactly corresponds tothe facts of the case as Appian repeatedly states them, and perhaps oneof Binniman’s expressions suggested the very phrase. Pompey _being Lorde of the Sea_ . . . caused famine in the cittie all victuall beyng kepte away. (V. xv. ) The Citie in the meane time was in great penurie, their provision of corne beyng stopped by Pompey. (V. xviii. ) In the meane time the cytie was oppressed with famine, for neyther durst the Merchauntes bring any corn from the East bicause of Pompeis beeing in Sicelie, nor from the Weast of Corsica and Sardinia, where Pompeis ships also lay: nor from Africa, where the navies of the other conspiratours kepte their stations. Being in this distresse, they (_i. e. _ the people) alleaged that the discorde of the rulers was the cause, and therefore required that peace might be made with Pompey, unto the whiche when Caesar woulde not agree, Antonie thought warre was needefull for necessitie. (V. lxvii. )Then there are the frequent references of Antony (_A. and C. _ I. ii. 192, I. iii. 148), of the messenger (I. iv. 38, I. iv. 52), of Pompeyhimself (II. i. 9), to Pompey’s popularity and the rush of recruitsto his standard. Neither Goulard nor Plutarch makes mention of thesepoints, but Appian does often, and most emphatically in the followingpassage: Out of Italy all things were not quiet, for Pompey by resorte of condemned Citizens, and auntient possessioners was greatly increased, both in mighte, and estimation: for they that feared their life, or were spoyled of their goodes, or lyked not the present state, fledde all to hym. And this disagreemente of Lucius augmented his credite: beside a repayre of yong men, desirous of gayne and seruice, not caring under whome they went, because they were all Romanes, sought unto him. And among other, hys cause seemed most just. He was waxed rich by booties of the Sea, and he hadde good store of Shyppes, with their furniture. . . . Wherefore me thynke, that if he had then inuaded Italy, he might easily have gotte it, which being afflicted with famine and discord loked for him. But Pompey of ignorance had rather defend his owne, than inuade others, till so he was ouercome also. (V. xxv. )It should be noted too that Menas, to whom Appian always gives his fullformal name of Menodorus, not only as in Plutarch proposes to makeaway with the Triumvirs after the compact, but as in the play (II,vi. 84 and 109) and not as in Plutarch, disapproves the cessation ofhostilities. All other persuaded Pompey earnestly to peace, only Menodorus wrote from Sardinia that he should make open _warre, or dryve off_,[307] whyles the dearth continued, _that he might make peace with_ the better conditions. (V. lxxi. )[307] _i. e. _ put off. Greek, βραδύνειν. I have not noticed any other points of importance in which there isan apparent connection between the drama and the _Roman History_:unless indeed Antony’s passing compunction for Fulvia’s death may be soregarded. Newes came that Antonies wyfe was dead, who coulde not bear his unkyndenesse, leavyng her sicke, & not bidding hyr farewell. Hir death was thought very commodius for them both. For Fulvia was an unquiet woman, & for ielousie of Cleopatra, raysed suche a mortall warre. Yet the matter vexed Antony bicause he was compted the occasion of her death. (V. lix. )Here, however, the motive of Antony’s regret differs from that whichShakespeare attributes to him; and on the whole the references toFulvia in the play deviate even more from Appian’s account thanfrom Plutarch’s. So far as I am in a position to judge, Shakespearederived all his other historical data, as well as the general schemeinto which he fitted these trifling loans, from Plutarch’s _Life_,and can be considered a debtor to Appian only in the points that areillustrated in my previous extracts. But there are two qualifications I should like to make to thisstatement. In the first place, I have not seen the 1578 version of Appian, thepassages I have quoted being merely transcripts made by my direction. Ihave had only the original text to work upon, and it is possible thatthe Tudor Translation might offer verbal coincidences that of coursewould not suggest themselves to me. In the second place, the book is not merely a translation of Appian. The descriptive title runs: “An auncient historie and exquisitechronicle of the Romanes warres, both civile and foren . . . with acontinuation . . . from the death of Sextus Pompeius to the overthrow ofAntonie and Cleopatra. ”Appian’s History of the Civil Wars, as now extant, concludes at thedeath of Sextus Pompeius. The Tudor translator’s continuation tillthe deaths of Antony and Cleopatra may be responsible for some of thelater deviations from Plutarch, which I have described as independentmodifications of Shakespeare’s. The matter is worth looking into. Meanwhile, from my collation I draw two conclusions, the firstdefinitive, the second provisional: (1) That Shakespeare laid Appian under contribution to fill in the details of his picture. (2) That he borrowed from him, that is, from his English translator, only for the episode of Sextus Pompeius. APPENDIX ECLEOPATRA’S _ONE WORD_Professor Th. Zielinski of St. Petersburg suggests a peculiarinterpretation of this passage in his _Marginalien_ (_Philologus_,N. F. , Band xviii. 1905). He starts from the assertion that Shakespearehad in his mind Ovid’s _Epistle from Dido_ (_Heroid. _ vii. ) when hecomposed the parting scene between Antony and Cleopatra. This statementis neither self-evident nor initially probable. Shakespeare was nodoubt acquainted with portions of Ovid both in the original and intranslation, but there is not much indication that his knowledgeextended to the _Heroides_. Mr. Churton Collins, indeed, in his pleafor Shakespeare’s familiarity with Latin, calls attention to thewell-known pair of quotations from these poems, the one in _3 HenryVI. _, the other in the _Taming of the Shrew_. But though Mr. Collinsmakes good his general contention, he hardly strengthens it with theseexamples: for Shakespeare’s share in both plays is so uncertain thatno definite inference can be drawn from them. Apart from these morethan doubtful instances, there seems to be no reference in Shakespeareto the _Heroides_, either in the Latin of Ovid or in the English ofTurberville; and it would be strange to find one cropping up here. But Professor Zielinski gives his arguments, and one of them iscertainly plausible. He quotes: What says the married woman? You may go: Would she had never given you leave to come; (_A. and C. _ I. iii. 20. )and compares “Sed iubet ire deus. ” Vellem vetuisset adire. (_Her. _ VII. 37. )There is a coincidence, but it is not very close, and scarcely impliesimitation. Moreover, it becomes even less striking in the Englishversion; which, after all, Shakespeare is more likely to have known, ifhe knew the poem at all: But God doth force thee flee; would God had kept away Such guilefull guests, and Troians had in Carthage made no stay. [308][308] _The Heroycall Epistles of the learned poet Publius Ouidius Nasoin English verse: set out and translated by George Turberville, gent_,etc. Transcribed from a copy in the Bodleian, which Malone, who ownedit, conjecturally dated 1569. Professor Zielinski’s next argument is singularly unconvincing. Hesays: “The situation (_i. e. _ in the Epistle and in the Play) isparallel even in details, as everyone will tell himself: moreover thepoet himself confesses it: Where souls do couch on flowers, we’ll hand in hand, And with our sprightly port make the ghosts gaze: Dido and her Æneas shall want troops And all the haunt be ours. ” (IV. xiv. 51. )But in the first place this has reference not to the separation but tothe reunion: and in the second place, of the reunion there is no wordin the Epistle. I cannot therefore see how Shakespeare’s lines can betaken as a confession of indebtedness to Ovid. But these analogies,real or imaginary, lead up to Professor Zielinski’s main point. Hequotes as what he calls the “Motiv des Kindes” and considers thedistinctive feature of Ovid’s treatment, Dido’s reproach: Forsitan et gravidam Didon, scelerate, relinquas, Parsque tui lateat corpore clausa meo. (line 131. )He admits that it is not easy to find this “Motiv” in the play, butargues that Shakespeare was always very reticent in such regards. Then he proceeds: “Hier nun war Kleopatra tatsächlich schwanger, alsAntonius sie verliess: Plutarch setzt es c. 36 voraus, und Shakespearewird es gewusst haben, da er Act III. die Kinder erwähnt. Sollte er inder grossen Abschieds-scene das dankbare Motiv haben entgehen lassen? Sehn wir zu. Kleopatra spielt die nervöse, ihr ist bald gut, baldschlecht: ‘schnür mich auf . . . nein, lass es sein. ’ Ihre ungerechtenVorwürfe bringen den Antonius endlich auf; er will gehn. Sie hältihn zurück: _courteous lord, one word_. Wir erwarten eine wichtigeErklärung; was wird das ‘eine Wort’ sein? Sir, you and I must part—but that’s not it: Sir, you and I have loved—but there’s not it; That you know well: something it is I would— O, _my oblivion is a very Antony_, And I am all forgotten. Es ist für den klassischen Philologen erheiternd und tröstlich, dieCommentare zum hervorgehoben verse zu lesen: dieselben Torheiten, wiebei uns, wenn einer das erklären muss, was er selber nicht versteht. Man wollte sogar _oblivion_ hinausconjiciren: andere befehlen es= _memory_ zu nehmen. Was wird dadurch gewonnen? Ich verlange dasversprochene ‘eine wort. ’—‘Ja, das hat sie eben vergessen’—Ich danke. Nein, sie hat es ausgesprochen: ihr ‘Vergessen’ war in der Tat ‘einechter Antonius,’ wenn auch ein ganz kleiner. Und als der Freund dieAnspielung nicht versteht—_I should take you for idleness itself_—fährtsie bitter fort: ’Tis sweating labour _To bear such idleness so near the heart_, As Cleopatra _this_. (das _this_ mit discret hinweisender Geberde). . . . Es wäre Mangelan Zartgefühl, mehr zu verlangen. —Und wirklich, besser als dieErklärer hat ein Dichter den Dichter verstanden; ich meine Puschkin,der in einer Stelle seiner lieblichen ‘Nixe’ (Rusalka) die obenausgeschriebenen Worte der Kleopatra offenbar nachahmen wollte: _Fürst. _ Leb’ wohl. _Mädchen. _ Nein, wart . . . ich muss dir etwas sagen . . . Weiss nimmer was. _Fürst. _ So denke nach! _Mädchen. _ Für dich Wär ich bereit. . . . Nein das ist’s nicht. . . . So wart doch. Ich kann’s nicht glauben, dass du mich auf ewig Verlassen willst. . . . Nein, das ist’s immer nicht. . . . Jetzt hab’ ich’s: heut war’s, dass zum ersten Mal Dein kind sich unter’m Herzen mir bewegte. ”This is very ingenious, and the parallel from Puschkin is veryinteresting. What makes one doubtful is that from first to lastShakespeare slurs over the motherhood of Cleopatra, to which theother tragedians of the time give great prominence. On the whole heobliterates even those references that Plutarch makes to this aspectof his heroine, and it would therefore be odd if he went out of hisway to invent an allusion which does not fit in with the rest of thepicture, and which is without consequence and very obscure. If one wereforced to conjecture the “missing word,” it would be more plausible tosuppose that she both wishes and hesitates to suggest marriage withAntony. At the close, her exclamation: Husband, I come: Now to that name my courage prove my title! (V. ii. 290. )shows that she recognises the dignity of the sanction. At the outset,she feels the falsity of her position, as we see from her reference to“the married woman”; and in Plutarch Shakespeare had read the complaintof her partisans, that “Cleopatra, being borne a Queene of so manythousands of men, is onely named Antonius Leman. ” In Rome the marriageis assumed to be quite probable; and in this very scene Antony, afterannouncing the removal of the grand impediment by Fulvia’s death, hasjust professed his unalterable devotion to his Queen. Why should therenot be a marriage, unless he regards her merely as a mistress; and whyshould she not propose it, except that she fears to meet with thisrebuff? The “sweating labour” she bears would thus be her unsanctionedlove and its disgrace. This, however, is not put forward as a serious interpretation, butonly as a theory quite as possible as Professor Zielinski’s. The mostobvious and the most satisfactory way is to suppose, as probably almostevery reader does and has done, that she is merely making pretextsto postpone the separation. And there is surely no great difficultyabout the phrase: “My oblivion is a very Antony. ” Here too the obviousexplanation is the most convincing: “My forgetfulness is as great asAntony’s own. ”APPENDIX FTHE “INEXPLICABLE” PASSAGE IN _CORIOLANUS_Coleridge, in his _Notes on Shakespeare_ (1818, Section IV. ), callsattention to the difficulty of Aufidius’ speech to his lieutenant: All places yield to him ere he sits down; And the nobility of Rome are his: The senators and patricians love him too: The tribunes are no soldiers; and their people Will be as rash in the repeal, as hasty To expel him thence. I think he’ll be to Rome As is the osprey to the fish, who takes it By sovereignty of nature. First he was A noble servant to them; but he could not Carry his honours even: whether ’twas pride, Which out of daily fortune ever taints The happy man; whether defect of judgement, To fail in the disposing of those chances Which he was lord of; or whether nature, Not to be other than one thing, not moving From the casque to the cushion, but commanding peace Even with the same austerity and garb As he controll’d the war; but one of these— As he hath spices of them all, not all, For I dare so far free him—made him fear’d, So hated, and so banish’d, but he has a merit, To choke it in the utterance. So our virtues Lie in the interpretation of the time; And power, unto itself most commendable, Hath not a tomb so evident as a chair To extol what it hath done. One fire drives out one fire; one nail, one nail; Rights by rights falter, strengths by strengths do fail. Come, let’s away. When, Caius, Rome is thine, Thou art poor’st of all: then shortly art thou mine. (IV. vii. 28. )Here there are puzzling expressions in detail, but they have on thewhole been satisfactorily explained, and it is not to them thatColeridge refers. [309] He says: “I have always thought this in itselfso beautiful speech the least explicable from the mood and fullintention of the speaker of any in the whole works of Shakespeare. ”It strikes one indeed as a series of disconnected jottings that haveas little to do with each other as with the situation and attitude ofAufidius. First he gives reason for expecting the capture of Rome; thenhe enumerates defects in Coriolanus that have led to his banishmentwith a supplementary acknowledgment of his merits; next he makesgeneral reflections on the relation of virtue to the construction putupon it, and on the danger that lies in conspicuous power: thereafterhe points out that things are brought to nought by themselves or theirlikes; and finally he predicts that when Rome is taken, he will get thebetter of his rival. [309] Of these the most perplexing to me is the distinction Shakespearemakes between “the nobility” on the one hand, and “the senatorsand patricians” on the other. What was in his mind? I fail to findan explanation even on trying to render his thought in terms ofcontemporary arrangements in England. “Peers,” “parliament men,” and“gentry” would not do. Is there here a mere congeries of thoughts as one chance suggestionleads to another with which it happens to be casually associated; ordoes one thread of continuous meaning run through the whole? I wouldventure to maintain the latter opinion with more confidence than I do,if Coleridge had not been so emphatic. In the first place we have to remember what goes before. The reportof the Lieutenant confirms the jealousy of Aufidius, who is furtherembittered by the hint that he is losing credit, but reflects that hecan bring weighty charges against Coriolanus, and concludes: He hath left undone That which shall break his neck or hazard mine, Whene’er we come to our account. Thereupon the Lieutenant meaningly rejoins: Sir, I beseech you, think you he’ll carry Rome? It is a contingency to be reckoned with, for clearly if Rome falls,any previous mistakes or complaisances alleged against the conquerorwill find ready pardon. So Aufidius discusses the matter in the lightof these two main considerations: (1) that he must get rid of hisrival, and (2) that his rival may do the state a crowning service. He admits that Coriolanus, what with his own efficiency, what withthe friendliness of one class in Rome and the helplessness of theremainder, is likely to achieve the grand exploit. How then willAufidius’ chances stand? Formerly Marcius deserved as well of his owncountry when he had overthrown Corioli, yet that did not secure him. What qualities in himself discounted his services to Rome and mayagain discount his services to Antium? Pride of prosperity, disregardof his opportunities, his unaccommodating peremptory behaviour—allof these faults which in point of fact afterwards contributed to hisdeath—brought about his banishment, though truly he had merit enoughto make men overlook such trifles. This shows how worth depends on theway it is taken, and how ability, even when of the sterling kind thatwins its own approval, may find the throne of its public recognitionto be, more properly, its certain grave. Thus likes counteract likes;the greater the popularity, the greater the reaction; the greater thesuperiority, the more certainly it will balk itself. So, and this isthe conclusion of the whole matter, even when Marcius has won Rome by agreater conquest than when he won Corioli, the result will be the same. His proud, imprudent and overbearing conduct will obscure his highdeserts. These will be construed only by public opinion, and the veryprowess in which he delights will rouse an adulation, which, when he isno longer required, will swing round to its opposite. So his successwill correct itself. His very triumph over Rome will be guarantee forAufidius’ triumph over him. If this amplified paraphrase give the meaning, that meaning is coherentenough and is quite suitable to the mood and attitude of the speaker. INDEX Acciaiuoli, additional lives to Plutarch, _note_ 144. Agrippa (in _Antony and Cleopatra_), 346. Alexander (Sir William) [Earl of Stirling], _Julius Caesar_, 35; _Julius Caesar_ compared with Garnier, 39; _Julius Caesar_ and Shakespeare, 207. Alexas (Lord), (in _Antony and Cleopatra_), 348. Ammonius (the Philosopher), 95. Amyot (Jacques), 119-141; birth, etc. , 120; translation of Heliodorus, 121; of Diodorus Siculus, 123; and Longus, 124; tutor to Dukes of Orleans and Anjou, 124; Grand Almoner of France, 124; Bishop of Auxerre, 125; Commander of Order of Holy Ghost, 126; various disasters, 126; _Projet de l’Eloquence Royal_, 128; modifications of Plutarch, 138. ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA, 300-453; date of composition, 300; and Appian, 648-652. Antony and Cleopatra (the two characters), 439-453. _Apius and Virginia_, 2-10, 70. Appian and _Antony and Cleopatra_, 648-652; and _Julius Caesar_, 644-647. Appian’s Chronicle, translated by Bynniman, _note_ 644; _Sextus Pompeius_, 333. Aufidius (Tullus), [in _Coriolanus_], 501, 584. B. (R. ), 2, 9. Baker, _Development of Shakespeare as a Dramatist_, _note_ 267. Bernage (S. ), on _Julius Caesar_ and _Cornélie_, 60. Berners (Lord), part translation, Guevara (Antonio de), _Marco Aurelio con el Relox de Principes_, 148. Bidpai, Fables of, 150. Blignières (Auguste de), _Essai on Amyot_, 119. Blount (Edward), a printer, 300. Boas (F. S. ), _Shakespeare and his Predecessors_, 426. Boner (Hieronymus), version of Plutarch’s _Lives_, _note_ 132. Boswell (James), quotation from Plutarch, 116. Bower (Richard), ? author of a _New Tragicall Comedie of Apius and Virginia_, 2. Bradley (A. C. ), on the Roman Plays, 80; _Julius Caesar_, _note_ 267; Shakesperian atmosphere after _Othello_ and _Lear_, 305; _Antony and Cleopatra_, _note_ 312; _Coriolanus_, 462. Brandes (Dr. George), _Julius Caesar_, _note_ 217; on Tieck’s Dramas (in _Romantic School in Germany_), _note_ 280; _Antony and Cleopatra_, 307; _Coriolanus_, 464 and 466. Brandl (Professor Alois), _Coriolanus_, 464. Brandon (Samuel), _Vertuous Octavia_, 71. Brontë (Charlotte), on _Coriolanus_, 468, 472. Brooke (Lord), _Antony and Cleopatra_—destroyed tragedy on, 70. Buchanan (George), _Baptistes_ and _Jephthes_, 21. Butler (Professor), on _Appius and Virginia_, _note_ 9. Büttner, _Zu Coriolan und seiner Quelle_, 488. _Caesar’s Fall_, a play by Drayton, Webster and others, 170. Calvin (John), prose of, 135. Camden (William), _Remaines_, 455. Caractacus, Elizabethan Plays on, 1. Carlyle (Thomas), on the Historical Plays, 89. Casca (in _Julius Caesar_), 286. Cassius (in _Julius Caesar_), 275, 284. _César_, by Jacques Grévin, 31. _César_, by Grévin and Muretus, compared, 30-33. Chalmers (Alexander), on _Coriolanus_, 460. Chapman (George), French plays, 77; _Bussy d’Ambois_, 303; _The Conspiracie_ and _The Tragedie of Charles, Duke of Byron_, 464. Charmian (in _Antony and Cleopatra_), 347. Chaucer (Geoffrey), on Brutus and Cassius, 27; _Legend of Good Women_, 308. Chenier (Marie-Joseph), _Brutus et Cassius, Les Derniers Romains_, 27. Cicero (in _Julius Caesar_), 287. Cinthio (Giovanni Battista Giroldi), play on _Cleopatra_, _note_ 310. Cleopatra (in _Antony and Cleopatra_), 413-438; relations between Antony and Cleopatra, 439-453; “One Word,” 653-656. _Cleopatra_, by Samuel Daniel, 48. Coleridge (Samuel Taylor), Brutus (in _Julius Caesar_), 201, 202, 204, 205; _Julius Caesar_, 256; _Antony and Cleopatra_, 305, 317, 338; _Coriolanus_, 462, 473; on Aufidius (in _Coriolanus_), 486; “Inexplicable” passage in _Coriolanus_, 657-659. Collins (John Churton), _Studies in Shakespeare_, 180; Shakespeare’s Latinity, 653. Collischonn (G. A. O. ), Introduction to Grévin’s _Caesar_, _note_ 27; and Muretus’ _Julius Caesar_, _note_ 27; coincidences between Grévin and Shakespeare, 34. Cominius (in _Coriolanus_), 498, 556. _Complaint of Rosamond_, by Samuel Daniel, 48; parallelisms with _Romeo and Juliet_ and _Rape of Lucrece_, 56. Confrères de la Passion, 30. CORIOLANUS, 454-627; date of composition, 454; “Inexplicable” passage in, 657-659. _Cornelia_, by Thomas Kyd, 54. _Cornélie_, compared with Muretus, 37. Cory, translation of Leo, 333. Courier (P. L. ), on Plutarch, 106, 119. Cruserius, Latin version of Plutarch, 133. _Cymbeline_, 312. Daniel (Samuel), _Cleopatra_, 48, 338, 451. Dante, on Brutus and Cassius, 26. Decius (in _Julius Caesar_), 286. _Defence of Ryme_, by Samuel Daniel, 50. de l’Escluse (Charles), additional lives to Plutarch, 144. _Delia_, by Samuel Daniel, 48. Delius (Nicolaus), Shakespeare and Plutarch, 165; on Coriolanus, 456, 487; Coriolanus and Plutarch, 493. Demogeot, on Amyot, 139. De Quincey (Thomas), on Plutarch, _note_ 114. _Diall of Princes_, by Thomas North, 143. Digges (Leonard), on the Roman Plays, 85; on _Julius Caesar_, 255. Dodsley (Robert), Old English Plays, 4. Dolabella (in _Antony and Cleopatra_), 346. Doni (Antonio Francesco), _Morale Filosofia_ (same as Bidpai’s Fables), 144, 150. |
Dowden (Professor Edward), _Shakespeare’s Mind and Art_, 214. Drayton (Michael), _Mortimeriados_ or _The Barons’ War_, 169. Dryden (John), on Plutarch, 106; _Life of Plutarch_, 110; _All for Love_ or _The World Well Lost_, 256, 340. _Eccerinis_, by Mussato, 11. Eedes (Dr. ), lost Latin play, 180. English and Roman plays compared, 74. Enobarbus (in _Antony and Cleopatra_), 349-359. Eros (in _Antony and Cleopatra_), 366. _Fabula Praetexta_, 11. Faguet (Émile), on _Cornélie_, 37. _Famous Victories of Henry V. _, 2. Farmer (John S. ), reproduction of _Appius and Virginia_, 3. Favorinus (the Philosopher), 101. Fénelon (François de Salignac de la Mothe), on Amyot, 136. Ferrero (Professor Guglielmo), on _Antony and Cleopatra_, _note_ 335; on Cleopatra, _note_ 414 and 452. Filelfo, Latin version of Plutarch, 134. Florus (Mestrius) [friend of Plutarch], 97. French Senecans, 19-44. Fulvia (in _Antony and Cleopatra_), 396. Furness (Frances Howard), _Antony and Cleopatra_, _note_ 59; on Charmian, _note_ 347. Garnett (Dr. Richard), _Date and Occasion of The Tempest_, 466. Garnier (R. ), _Cornélie_, 35; Drama about Portia, 35; _Marc Antoine_, 41; _Antonius_, English translation by Countess of Pembroke, 46; _Antony and Cleopatra_, 338; parallels between _Cornélie_ and _Julius Caesar_, 628-630. Gassner (H. ), edition of Kyd’s _Cornelia_, _note_ 55. Geddes (Dr. ), a lost Latin play, 180. Gellius (Aulus), on Plutarch, 101. Genée (Rudolph), Shakespeare’s _Leben und Werke_, 198. Gervinus (Georg Gottfried), _Shakespeare Commentaries_, _Julius Caesar_, 224; _Antony and Cleopatra_, 305, 307, 340; Plutarch’s Antony, 336; Coriolanus, 471. Goethe, on “love,” 446. _Gorboduc_, 45, 70. Goulard (Simon), _Octavius Caesar Augustus_, 648. Greene (Robert), _James IV. _, _note_ 62. Grévin (Jacques), _César_, _note_ 27, 31. Grosart (Dr. Alexander), edition of Daniel’s _Cleopatra_ quoted from, 51. Guevara (Antoniode), _The Favored Courtier_, 148; _El Libro Aureo de Marco Aurelio, otherwise Emperador y eloquentissimo Orator_, called _Marco Aurelio con el Relox de Principes_ or _The Diall of Princes_, 147 and 148. Halliwell-Phillips (J. O. ), Weever’s _Mirror of Martyrs_, 170. Hamlet, 78, 173. Hardy (Alexandre), _Coriolan_, 475. Hazlitt (W. Carew), _notes_ 4 and 5. Heine (Heinrich), on Cleopatra, 441; on Rome, 547. _Henry V. _, 172. Heywood (Thomas), _Rape of Lucrece_, 68. Holden (Rev. Dr. H. A. ), on Plutarch, _note_ 114; on Amyot, _note_ 133. Holland (Philemon), translation of Pliny, 333, _note_ 456; Livy on Coriolanus, 626. Hudson (Dr. Henry Norman), _Shakespeare, his Life, Art and Characters_, 224. Hughes (Thomas), _Misfortunes of Arthur_, 45. Hugo (Victor), Historical Plays, 87. Ingram (Professor), on “endings” (of verses), 304. Iras (in _Antony and Cleopatra_), 347, 438. Jacobs (Joseph), _Fables of Bidpai_, _note_ 150. Jaggard (the Younger), a printer, 301. Jodelle (Étienne), _Cleopatra Captive_, 28, _note_ 322; _Antony and Cleopatra_, 338; _Cleopatra_, _note_ 435. Johnson (Dr. Samuel), _Julius Caesar_, 256; _Coriolanus_, 480, 482; Menenius Agrippa, 564. Jonson (Ben), _Catiline_, 54; _Sejanus_ and _Catiline_, 85; _Discoveries_ and _Staple of News_, on _Julius Caesar_, 174 and 175; _Epicoene_, note 303, 460. Jowett (Benjamin), _Plato_, Vol. I. , _note_ 237; _Plato_, Vol. II. , 446. JULIUS CAESAR, date of composition, 168; Plutarch, 180; the lives of Brutus, Caesar and Antony, 188; should it be named Marcus Brutus, 212; _Julius Caesar_ is himself analogous to the King in the English Historical Plays, 213. Julius Caesar, character in other plays, 177. Julius Caesar and Appian, 644-647. _Julius Caesar_ and Garnier’s _Cornélie_, 60; parallels between, 628-630. _Julius Caesar_, by Muretus, 11. Junius Brutus (in _Coriolanus_), 499. Kahnt (Paul), _Gedankenkreis . . . in Jodelle’s und Garnier’s Tragödien_, _note_ 19. Karsteg (Prof. von), in _Harry Richmond_, 393. _King John_, 82. _King Lear_, 78. Klein, on Cinthio’s _Cleopatra_ and _Antony and Cleopatra_, _note_ 310. Kreyssig (Friedrich Alexo Theodor), on Octavius, 378; on Volumnia, 553; on Virgilia, 570. Kyd (Thomas), translation of _Cornélie_ (under name _Cornelia_), 54; Boas’ edition, _note_ 55. Lamprias, brother of Plutarch, 98. Landman (Dr. Friedrich), on _Euphues_, 149. Lanson, on Amyot, 141. La Rochefoucauld (François, VI. Duc de), _notes_ 420, 424 and 451. Lartius (in _Coriolanus_), 513. Le Duc (Viollet), _Ancien Théatre François_, _note_ 28. Lee (Sidney), Shakespeare and Camden, 457. Lepidus (in _Julius Caesar_), 297. Lepidus (in _Antony and Cleopatra_), 368. Lessing (Gotthold Ephraim), _Hamburg Dramaturgy_ on the Roman Plays, 86. Ligarius (in _Julius Caesar_), 286. “light” endings, 304. Lily (John), _Euphues_ and _The Diall of Princes_, 149. Lloyd (Watkiss), on _Coriolanus_, 519. Lodge (Thomas), _The Wounds of Civill War_, 62; _A Looking Glass for London and England_, 62; translator of Josephus and Lucius Annaeus Seneca, 68. Lord Alexas, _see_ Alexas. Lotze, on Historical Plays, 89. “Love,” in three plays, 342. Luce (Alice), edition of Countess of Pembroke’s translation of R. Garnier’s _Antonius_, _note_ 46. Lucilius (in _Julius Caesar_), 285. Lucina, Elizabethan plays on, 1. Lucretia, Elizabethan plays on, 1. _Macbeth_, 78, and _Antony and Cleopatra_, 302. Malone (Edmund), date of _Antony and Cleopatra_, 303; date of _Coriolanus_, 454, 459, 460. “Mansions” (another name for “scenes”), 476. Marcius (in _Coriolanus_), 497, 549. Marcus Aurelius, 104. Mark Antony (in _Julius Caesar_), 289-298. (in _Antony and Cleopatra_), 390-412. Marlowe (Christopher), _Edward II. _, 2; _Tamburlaine_, _note_ 62, and Shakespeare, _Henry VI. _, 93. Massinissa, Elizabethan plays on, 1. Mecaenas (in _Antony and Cleopatra_), 346, 361. Menas (in _Antony and Cleopatra_), 348, 376. Menecrates (in _Antony and Cleopatra_), 376. Menenius Agrippa (in _Julius Caesar_), 558. Meres (Francis), list of plays, 171; _Palladis Tamia_, 172. Messala (in _Julius Caesar_), 285. Méziriac (Bachet de), on Amyot, 128. _Misfortunes of Arthur_, by Thomas Hughes, 45. “Mixed” plays, 18. Moeller, _Kleopatra in der Tragödien-Literatur_, _note_, 310. Montaigne (Michael, Lord of), on Muretus, 20; on Amyot, 129. Montreuil, _Cleopatre_, _note_ 310. Muretus, _Julius Caesar_, 11, 20. Mussato, _Eccerinis_, 11. Nashe (Thomas), use of word “lurched,” 460. Nicholson (S. ), _Acolastus his Afterwit_, 171. North (Sir Thomas), 141-167; birth and education, 142; _Diall of Princes_, 143; Lord Lieutenant of Cambridgeshire and Isle of Ely, 143; Doni’s _Morale Filosofia_, 144; command at Ely, 146; dignities and pensions, 146; his style in translating Plutarch, 154; ? as to the Greek text, _note_ 155. Nuce (Thomas), English version of _Octavia_, 12. _Octavia_, ? by Seneca, 10-19. Octavia (in _Antony and Cleopatra_), 362-366. Octavius (in _Julius Caesar_), 298. Octavius (in _Antony and Cleopatra_), 373, 378. _Othello_, 78. Ovid, _Epistle of Dido_, 653. Pais (Ettore), on story of Coriolanus, 474. Pembroke (Countess of), translation of Garnier’s _Antonius_, 2; Mornay’s _Discourse on Life and Death_, _note_ 46. _Philotas_, by Samuel Daniel, 49. Pindarus (in _Julius Caesar_), 284, 285. Plays named after _two_ persons, 341. Plutarch and Shakespeare, 92 etc. , 95-119; ancestry and education, 95; _Isis and Osiris_, 96; _Moralia_, 97; marriage, 98; priest of Apollo, 102; Archon of Chaeronea, 104; ? a consul, 104; ? governor of Greece, 104; and Plato, 108; Neo-Platonism, 108; his philosophy, 108; _Praecepta gerendae Reipublicae_, 113; Latin version of his _Lives_, published at Rome by Campani, 132; other translations, 132; editions of North’s version, 151; various versions and Volumnia’s speech, 631-643. Portia (in _Julius Caesar_), 271-274. Preston (Thomas), _King Cambyses_, 8. Proculeius (in _Antony and Cleopatra_), 346. Puschkin, parallel with Cleopatra’s “One Word,” 655. _Quarterly Review_ (1861), on Plutarch, 162. Rabelais (François), prose of, 135. Racine (Jean), on Amyot, 136. _Richard III. _, 177. Rigal (Eugène), on Alexandre Hardy, 476. Roman and English plays compared, 74. _Romeo and Juliet_, 177. Ronsard (Pierre de) Roman plays by the School of, 11; on Grévin’s _César_, 33. Rousseau (Jean Jacques), on Plutarch, 117. Ruhnken, edition of Muretus, _note_ 27. Ruskin (John), on Virgilia, 497. Rusticus (Arulenus), friend of Plutarch, 97. Sachs (Hans), play on Cleopatra, _note_ 310. St. Évremond, on Plutarch, 112. Scarus (in _Antony and Cleopatra_), 359. Schiller, historical plays of, 87. Schweighäuser (Johann), version of Appian quoted, 645. Scott (Sir Walter), on Dryden’s _All for Love_, 256. Seneca, ? author of _Octavia_, 10. Senecio (Sosius), friend of Plutarch, 97. Serapion, a poet, 101. Sextus of Chaeronea, 104. Sextus Pompeius (in _Antony and Cleopatra_), 346, 373. Shakespeare (William), Roman plays influenced by Senecan pieces, 56, and Thomas Kyd, 56; _Midsummer-Night’s Dream_ and _Merchant of Venice_ show traces of North’s Plutarch, 151; various editions of North’s Plutarch, _note_ 152, and North, 163. Sicinius Vellutus (in _Coriolanus_), 499. Sidgwick (Henry), on _Julius Caesar_, 176. Silius (in _Antony and Cleopatra_), 345. Skelton (John), _Garland of Laurel_, 309. Sonnets—Daniel’s _Delia_, 56; sorrows in the, 313. Stahr (A. ), on Cleopatra, 427. Stengel, _Théatre d’Alexandre Hardy_, 476. Stirling (Earl of), _see_ Alexander (Sir William). Stokes (Henry Paine), _Chronological Order of Shakespeare’s Plays_, _note_ 168. Stone (Boswell), _Shakespeare’s Holinshed_, _note_ 180. Strato (in _Julius Caesar_), 285. Swinburne (Algernon Charles), Trilogy on Mary Stuart, 89. Taylor (Sir Henry), _Philip van Artevelde_, 89. Ten Brink (Bernhard), on Cleopatra, 443. Tennyson, _Harold_, 89. Thyreus (in _Antony and Cleopatra_), 346. _Timaeus_, treatise on the, by Plutarch, 101. _Timon_, 82, 307. Timon, brother of Plutarch, 98. Titinius (in _Julius Caesar_), 284, 285. _Titus Andronicus_, 177. Titus Lartius (in _Coriolanus_), 498, 556. Trench (Richard Chenevix), Archbishop of Dublin, on Plutarch, 114; on Shakespeare and Plutarch, 164; on _Coriolanus_, 600. _Troilus and Cressida_, 84. Tullus Aufidius, _see_ Aufidius (Tullus). Turberville (George), translation of Ovid, 654. Vaugelas (Claude Favre de), on Amyot, 136. Ventidius (in _Antony and Cleopatra_), 345. Verity (A. W. ), edition of _Julius Caesar_, 175; edition of _Coriolanus_, _note_ 497. Viehoff, on _Shakespeare’s Coriolan_, 479. Virgilia (in _Coriolanus_), 497, 566. Voltaire (François Marie Arouet de), on Brutus, 239. Volumnia (in _Coriolanus_), 494, 549; her speech and various versions of Plutarch, 631-643. Warburton (William), a reading in _Antony and Cleopatra_, 411. Ward (Prof. A. W. ), on Countess of Pembroke’s version of Garnier’s _Antonius_, _note_ 46; on Lodge’s _The Wounds of Civill War_, _note_ 62. _Warning to Fair Women_, 171. “weak” endings, 304. Weever (John), _Mirror of Martyrs_, 170, 172. Whitelaw, date of _Coriolanus_, 466. Wordsworth (William), on Plutarch, _note_ 114. Wright (W. Aldis), edition of _Julius Caesar_, 172. Wyndham (the Right Honble. George), on Plutarch, 112; on Amyot’s Plutarch’s _Morals_, _note_ 144; on _Julius Caesar_, 239. Xylander, Latin version of Plutarch, 133. Zielinski (Professor Thaddäus), _Marginalia Philologus_ on _Antony and Cleopatra_, _note_ 347; on Cleopatra’s “One Word,” 653. GLASGOW: PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO. LTD. BY A. C. BRADLEY, LL. D. , LITT. D. _Formerly Professor of Poetry in the University of Oxford_ Shakespearean Tragedy LECTURES ON HAMLET, OTHELLO, KING LEAR, MACBETH 8_vo. _ 10_s. _ _net_. “Mr. Bradley’s book, as the Americans would say, is a ‘real live book,’ and ought to find a place side by side with the volumes of Coleridge, Lamb, Hazlitt, and Swinburne, among the best and most illuminative specimens of English dramatic criticism. ”—Mr. W. L. COURTNEY in the _Daily Telegraph_. “An admirable piece of work. To call it the most luminous piece of Shakespearean criticism that has ever been written would be to pretend to an impossible familiarity with the whole gigantic literature of the subject. Let me only say, then, that no such minutely searching and patiently convincing studies of Shakespeare are known to me. ”—Mr. WILLIAM ARCHER in the _Daily Chronicle_. “Professor Bradley realises to the full the depth and the delicacy and the darkness of his subject; and realising this, he contrives to say some very admirable things about it. ”—Mr. G. K. CHESTERTON in the _Daily News_. Oxford Lectures on Poetry 8_vo. _ 10_s. _ _net_. “A remarkable achievement. . . . It is probable that this volume will attain a permanence for which critical literature generally cannot hope. Very many of the things that are said here are finally said; they exhaust their subject. Of one thing we are certain—that there is no work in English devoted to the interpretation of poetic experience which can claim the delicacy and sureness of Mr. Bradley’s. ”—_Athenæum. _ “This is not a book to be written about in a hasty review of a thousand words. It is one to be perused and appreciated at leisure—to be returned to again and again, partly because of its supreme interest, partly because it provokes, as all good books should do, a certain antagonism, partly because it is itself the product of a careful, scholarly mind, basing conclusions on a scrupulous perusal of documents and authorities. . . . The whole book is so full of good things that it is impossible to make any adequate selection. In an age which is not supposed to be very much interested in literary criticism, a book like Mr. Bradley’s is of no little significance and importance. ”—_Daily Telegraph. _ LONDON: MACMILLAN AND CO. LTD. A History of English Poetry. By W. J. COURTHOPE, C. B. , M. A. , D. Litt. , LL. D. , formerly Professor of Poetry in the University of Oxford; Fellow of the British Academy; Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature; Hon. Fellow of New College, Oxford. 6 vols. 8vo. 10s. net each. Vol. I. The Middle Ages; Influence of the Roman Empire; The Encyclopædic Education of the Church; The Feudal System. Vol. II. The Renaissance and the Reformation; Influence of the Court and the Universities. Vol. III. The Intellectual Conflict of the Seventeenth Century; Decadent Influence of the Feudal Monarchy; Growth of the National Genius. Vol. IV. Development and Decline of the Poetical Drama; Influence of the Court and the People. Vol. V. The Constitutional Compromise of the Eighteenth Century; Effects of the Classical Renaissance; its Zenith and Decline; The Early Romantic Renaissance. Vol. VI. The Romantic Movement in English Poetry; Effects of the French Revolution. A History of English Prosody from the Twelfth Century to the Present Day. By GEORGE SAINTSBURY, M. A. Oxon. , Hon. LL. D. Aberd. , Hon. D. Litt. Dresd. , Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature in the University of Edinburgh. 3 vols. 8vo. Vol. I. From the Origins to Spenser. 10s. net. Vol. II. From Shakespeare to Crabbe. 15s. net. Vol. III. Conclusion. [_Spring, 1910. _ LONDON: MACMILLAN AND CO. LTD. *** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHAKESPEARE'S ROMAN PLAYS ANDTHEIR BACKGROUND ***Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions willbe renamed. Creating the works from print editions not protected by U. S. copyrightlaw means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works,so the Foundation (and you! ) can copy and distribute it in theUnited States without permission and without paying copyrightroyalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use partof this license, apply to copying and distributing ProjectGutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark,and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by followingthe terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for useof the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything forcopies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is veryeasy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creationof derivative works, reports, performances and research. ProjectGutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away--you maydo practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protectedby U. S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademarklicense, especially commercial redistribution. START: FULL LICENSETHE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSEPLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORKTo protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the freedistribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “ProjectGutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the FullProject Gutenberg™ License available with this file or online atwww. gutenberg. org/license. Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing ProjectGutenberg™ electronic works1. A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg™electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree toand accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by allthe terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return ordestroy all copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in yourpossession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to aProject Gutenberg™ electronic work and you do not agree to be boundby the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from theperson or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph1. E. 8. 1. B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only beused on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people whoagree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a fewthings that you can do with most Project Gutenberg™ electronic workseven without complying with the full terms of this agreement. Seeparagraph 1. C below. There are a lot of things you can do with ProjectGutenberg™ electronic works if you follow the terms of thisagreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg™electronic works. See paragraph 1. E below. 1. C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“theFoundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collectionof Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. Nearly all the individualworks in the collection are in the public domain in the UnitedStates. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in theUnited States and you are located in the United States, we do notclaim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing,displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long asall references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hopethat you will support the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promotingfree access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg™works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping theProject Gutenberg™ name associated with the work. You can easilycomply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in thesame format with its attached full Project Gutenberg™ License whenyou share it without charge with others. 1. D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also governwhat you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries arein a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States,check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of thisagreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing,distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or anyother Project Gutenberg™ work. The Foundation makes norepresentations concerning the copyright status of any work in anycountry other than the United States. 1. E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:1. E. 1. The following sentence, with active links to, or otherimmediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg™ License must appearprominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg™ work (any workon which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which thephrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed,performed, viewed, copied or distributed: This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www. gutenberg. org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook. 1. E. 2. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work isderived from texts not protected by U. S. copyright law (does notcontain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of thecopyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone inthe United States without paying any fees or charges. If you areredistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “ProjectGutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must complyeither with the requirements of paragraphs 1. E. 1 through 1. E. 7 orobtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg™trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1. E. 8 or 1. E. 9. 1. E. 3. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is postedwith the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distributionmust comply with both paragraphs 1. E. 1 through 1. E. 7 and anyadditional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional termswill be linked to the Project Gutenberg™ License for all worksposted with the permission of the copyright holder found at thebeginning of this work. 1. E. 4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg™License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of thiswork or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg™. 1. E. 5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute thiselectronic work, or any part of this electronic work, withoutprominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1. E. 1 withactive links or immediate access to the full terms of the ProjectGutenberg™ License. 1. E. 6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, includingany word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide accessto or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg™ work in a formatother than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the officialversion posted on the official Project Gutenberg™ website(www. gutenberg. org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expenseto the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a meansof obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “PlainVanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include thefull Project Gutenberg™ License as specified in paragraph 1. E. 1. 1. E. 7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg™ worksunless you comply with paragraph 1. E. 8 or 1. E. 9. 1. E. 8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providingaccess to or distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic worksprovided that:• You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from the use of Project Gutenberg™ works calculated using the method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, but he has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in Section 4, “Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. ”• You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™ License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™ works. • You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1. F. 3, a full refund of any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of receipt of the work. • You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works. 1. E. 9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a ProjectGutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different terms thanare set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writingfrom the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager ofthe Project Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as setforth in Section 3 below. 1. F. 1. F. 1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerableeffort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofreadworks not protected by U. S. copyright law in creating the ProjectGutenberg™ collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg™electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, maycontain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurateor corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or otherintellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk orother medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage orcannot be read by your equipment. 1. F. 2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Rightof Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1. F. 3, the ProjectGutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the ProjectGutenberg™ trademark, and any other party distributing a ProjectGutenberg™ electronic work under this agreement, disclaim allliability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legalfees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICTLIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSEPROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1. F. 3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THETRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BELIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE ORINCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCHDAMAGE. 1. F. 3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover adefect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you canreceive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending awritten explanation to the person you received the work from. If youreceived the work on a physical medium, you must return the mediumwith your written explanation. The person or entity that provided youwith the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy inlieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the personor entity providing it to you may choose to give you a secondopportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. Ifthe second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writingwithout further opportunities to fix the problem. 1. F. 4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forthin paragraph 1. F. 3, this work is provided to you “AS-IS”, WITH NOOTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOTLIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. 1. F. 5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain impliedwarranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types ofdamages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreementviolates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, theagreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer orlimitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity orunenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void theremaining provisions. 1. F. 6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, thetrademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyoneproviding copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works inaccordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with theproduction, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses,including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any ofthe following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of thisor any Project Gutenberg™ work, (b) alteration, modification, oradditions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg™ work, and (c) anyDefect you cause. Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg™Project Gutenberg™ is synonymous with the free distribution ofelectronic works in formats readable by the widest variety ofcomputers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. Itexists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donationsfrom people in all walks of life. Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with theassistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg™'sgoals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg™ collection willremain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the ProjectGutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secureand permanent future for Project Gutenberg™ and futuregenerations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg LiteraryArchive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, seeSections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page atwww. gutenberg. orgSection 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg LiteraryArchive FoundationThe Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of thestate of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the InternalRevenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identificationnumber is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg LiteraryArchive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted byU. S. federal laws and your state's laws. The Foundation's business office is located at 809 North 1500 West,Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and upto date contact information can be found at the Foundation's websiteand official page at www. gutenberg. org/contactSection 4. Information about Donations to the Project GutenbergLiterary Archive FoundationProject Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive withoutwidespread public support and donations to carry out its mission ofincreasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can befreely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widestarray of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exemptstatus with the IRS. The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulatingcharities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the UnitedStates. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes aconsiderable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep upwith these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locationswhere we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SENDDONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particularstate visit www. gutenberg. org/donateWhile we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where wehave not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibitionagainst accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states whoapproach us with offers to donate. International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot makeany statements concerning tax treatment of donations received fromoutside the United States. U. S. laws alone swamp our small staff. Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donationmethods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of otherways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. Todonate, please visit: www. gutenberg. org/donateSection 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg™ electronic worksProfessor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the ProjectGutenberg™ concept of a library of electronic works that could befreely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced anddistributed Project Gutenberg™ eBooks with only a loose network ofvolunteer support. Project Gutenberg™ eBooks are often created from several printededitions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright inthe U. S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do notnecessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paperedition. Most people start at our website which has the main PG searchfacility: www. gutenberg. orgThis website includes information about Project Gutenberg™,including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg LiteraryArchive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how tosubscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. |
The Project Gutenberg EBook of Shakespearean Tragedy, by A. C. BradleyThis eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and withalmost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away orre-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License includedwith this eBook or online at www. gutenberg. orgTitle: Shakespearean Tragedy Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, MacbethAuthor: A. C. BradleyRelease Date: October 30, 2005 [EBook #16966]Language: English*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY ***Produced by Suzanne Shell, Lisa Reigel and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www. pgdp. netSHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDYMACMILLAN AND CO. , LIMITEDLONDON·BOMBAY·CALCUTTA·MADRAS·MELBOURNETHE MACMILLAN COMPANYNEW YORK·BOSTON·CHICAGO·DALLAS·SAN FRANCISCOTHE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. TORONTOSHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDYLECTURES ONHAMLET, OTHELLO, KING LEARMACBETHBYA. C. BRADLEYLL. D. LITT. D. , FORMERLY PROFESSOR OF POETRY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD_SECOND EDITION_ (_THIRTEENTH IMPRESSION_)MACMILLAN AND CO. , LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON1919_COPYRIGHT. _First Edition 1904. Second Edition March 1905. Reprinted August 1905, 1906, 1908, 1910, 1911, 1912, 1914, 1915, 1916,1918, 1919. GLASGOW: PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO. LTD. TO MY STUDENTSPREFACEThese lectures are based on a selection from materials used in teachingat Liverpool, Glasgow, and Oxford; and I have for the most partpreserved the lecture form. The point of view taken in them is explainedin the Introduction. I should, of course, wish them to be read in theirorder, and a knowledge of the first two is assumed in the remainder; butreaders who may prefer to enter at once on the discussion of the severalplays can do so by beginning at page 89. Any one who writes on Shakespeare must owe much to his predecessors. Where I was conscious of a particular obligation, I have acknowledgedit; but most of my reading of Shakespearean criticism was done manyyears ago, and I can only hope that I have not often reproduced as myown what belongs to another. Many of the Notes will be of interest only to scholars, who may find, Ihope, something new in them. I have quoted, as a rule, from the Globe edition, and have referredalways to its numeration of acts, scenes, and lines. _November, 1904. _ * * * * *NOTE TO SECOND AND SUBSEQUENT IMPRESSIONSIn these impressions I have confined myself to making some formalimprovements, correcting indubitable mistakes, and indicating here andthere my desire to modify or develop at some future time statementswhich seem to me doubtful or open to misunderstanding. The changes,where it seemed desirable, are shown by the inclusion of sentences insquare brackets. CONTENTS PAGEINTRODUCTION 1LECTURE I. THE SUBSTANCE OF SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY 5LECTURE II. CONSTRUCTION IN SHAKESPEARE'S TRAGEDIES 40LECTURE III. SHAKESPEARE'S TRAGIC PERIOD--HAMLET 79LECTURE IV. HAMLET 129LECTURE V. OTHELLO 175LECTURE VI. OTHELLO 207LECTURE VII. KING LEAR 243LECTURE VIII. KING LEAR 280LECTURE IX. MACBETH 331LECTURE X. MACBETH 366NOTE A. Events before the opening of the action in _Hamlet_ 401NOTE B. Where was Hamlet at the time of his father's death? 403NOTE C. Hamlet's age 407NOTE D. 'My tables--meet it is I set it down' 409NOTE E. The Ghost in the cellarage 412NOTE F. The Player's speech in _Hamlet_ 413NOTE G. Hamlet's apology to Laertes 420NOTE H. The exchange of rapiers 422NOTE I. The duration of the action in _Othello_ 423NOTE J. The 'additions' in the Folio text of _Othello_. The Pontic sea 429NOTE K. Othello's courtship 432NOTE L. Othello in the Temptation scene 434NOTE M. Questions as to _Othello_, IV. i. 435NOTE N. Two passages in the last scene of _Othello_ 437NOTE O. Othello on Desdemona's last words 438NOTE P. Did Emilia suspect Iago? 439NOTE Q. Iago's suspicion regarding Cassio and Emilia 441NOTE R. Reminiscences of _Othello_ in _King Lear_ 441NOTE S. _King Lear_ and _Timon of Athens_ 443NOTE T. Did Shakespeare shorten _King Lear_? 445NOTE U. Movements of the _dramatis personæ_ in _King Lear_, II 448NOTE V. Suspected interpolations in _King Lear_ 450NOTE W. The staging of the scene of Lear's reunion with Cordelia 453NOTE X. The Battle in _King Lear_ 456NOTE Y. Some difficult passages in _King Lear_ 458NOTE Z. Suspected interpolations in _Macbeth_ 466NOTE AA. Has _Macbeth_ been abridged? 467NOTE BB. The date of _Macbeth_. Metrical Tests 470NOTE CC. When was the murder of Duncan first plotted? 480NOTE DD. Did Lady Macbeth really faint? 484NOTE EE. Duration of the action in _Macbeth_. Macbeth's age. 'He has no children' 486NOTE FF. The Ghost of Banquo 492INDEX 494INTRODUCTIONIn these lectures I propose to consider the four principal tragedies ofShakespeare from a single point of view. Nothing will be said ofShakespeare's place in the history either of English literature or ofthe drama in general. No attempt will be made to compare him with otherwriters. I shall leave untouched, or merely glanced at, questionsregarding his life and character, the development of his genius and art,the genuineness, sources, texts, inter-relations of his various works. Even what may be called, in a restricted sense, the 'poetry' of the fourtragedies--the beauties of style, diction, versification--I shall passby in silence. Our one object will be what, again in a restricted sense,may be called dramatic appreciation; to increase our understanding andenjoyment of these works as dramas; to learn to apprehend the action andsome of the personages of each with a somewhat greater truth andintensity, so that they may assume in our imaginations a shape a littleless unlike the shape they wore in the imagination of their creator. Forthis end all those studies that were mentioned just now, of literaryhistory and the like, are useful and even in various degrees necessary. But an overt pursuit of them is not necessary here, nor is any one ofthem so indispensable to our object as that close familiarity with theplays, that native strength and justice of perception, and that habit ofreading with an eager mind, which make many an unscholarly lover ofShakespeare a far better critic than many a Shakespeare scholar. Such lovers read a play more or less as if they were actors who had tostudy all the parts. They do not need, of course, to imagine whereaboutsthe persons are to stand, or what gestures they ought to use; but theywant to realise fully and exactly the inner movements which producedthese words and no other, these deeds and no other, at each particularmoment. This, carried through a drama, is the right way to read thedramatist Shakespeare; and the prime requisite here is therefore a vividand intent imagination. But this alone will hardly suffice. It isnecessary also, especially to a true conception of the whole, tocompare, to analyse, to dissect. And such readers often shrink from thistask, which seems to them prosaic or even a desecration. Theymisunderstand, I believe. They would not shrink if they remembered twothings. In the first place, in this process of comparison and analysis,it is not requisite, it is on the contrary ruinous, to set imaginationaside and to substitute some supposed 'cold reason'; and it is only wantof practice that makes the concurrent use of analysis and of poeticperception difficult or irksome. And, in the second place, thesedissecting processes, though they are also imaginative, are still, andare meant to be, nothing but means to an end. When they have finishedtheir work (it can only be finished for the time) they give place to theend, which is that same imaginative reading or re-creation of the dramafrom which they set out, but a reading now enriched by the products ofanalysis, and therefore far more adequate and enjoyable. This, at any rate, is the faith in the strength of which I venture, withmerely personal misgivings, on the path of analytic interpretation. Andso, before coming to the first of the four tragedies, I propose todiscuss some preliminary matters which concern them all. Though each isindividual through and through, they have, in a sense, one and the samesubstance; for in all of them Shakespeare represents the tragic aspectof life, the tragic fact. They have, again, up to a certain point, acommon form or structure. This substance and this structure, which wouldbe found to distinguish them, for example, from Greek tragedies, may, todiminish repetition, be considered once for all; and in considering themwe shall also be able to observe characteristic differences among thefour plays. And to this may be added the little that it seems necessaryto premise on the position of these dramas in Shakespeare's literarycareer. Much that is said on our main preliminary subjects will naturally holdgood, within certain limits, of other dramas of Shakespeare beside_Hamlet_, _Othello_, _King Lear_, and _Macbeth_. But it will often applyto these other works only in part, and to some of them more fully thanto others. _Romeo and Juliet_, for instance, is a pure tragedy, but itis an early work, and in some respects an immature one. _Richard III. _and _Richard II. _, _Julius Caesar_, _Antony and Cleopatra_, and_Coriolanus_ are tragic histories or historical tragedies, in whichShakespeare acknowledged in practice a certain obligation to follow hisauthority, even when that authority offered him an undramatic material. Probably he himself would have met some criticisms to which these playsare open by appealing to their historical character, and by denying thatsuch works are to be judged by the standard of pure tragedy. In anycase, most of these plays, perhaps all, do show, as a matter of fact,considerable deviations from that standard; and, therefore, what is saidof the pure tragedies must be applied to them with qualifications whichI shall often take for granted without mention. There remain _TitusAndronicus_ and _Timon of Athens_. The former I shall leave out ofaccount, because, even if Shakespeare wrote the whole of it, he did sobefore he had either a style of his own or any characteristic tragicconception. _Timon_ stands on a different footing. Parts of it areunquestionably Shakespeare's, and they will be referred to in one of thelater lectures. But much of the writing is evidently not his, and as itseems probable that the conception and construction of the whole tragedyshould also be attributed to some other writer, I shall omit this worktoo from our preliminary discussions. LECTURE ITHE SUBSTANCE OF SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDYThe question we are to consider in this lecture may be stated in avariety of ways. We may put it thus: What is the substance of aShakespearean tragedy, taken in abstraction both from its form and fromthe differences in point of substance between one tragedy and another? Or thus: What is the nature of the tragic aspect of life as representedby Shakespeare? What is the general fact shown now in this tragedy andnow in that? And we are putting the same question when we ask: What isShakespeare's tragic conception, or conception of tragedy? These expressions, it should be observed, do not imply that Shakespearehimself ever asked or answered such a question; that he set himself toreflect on the tragic aspects of life, that he framed a tragicconception, and still less that, like Aristotle or Corneille, he had atheory of the kind of poetry called tragedy. These things are allpossible; how far any one of them is probable we need not discuss; butnone of them is presupposed by the question we are going to consider. This question implies only that, as a matter of fact, Shakespeare inwriting tragedy did represent a certain aspect of life in a certain way,and that through examination of his writings we ought to be able, tosome extent, to describe this aspect and way in terms addressed to theunderstanding. Such a description, so far as it is true and adequate,may, after these explanations, be called indifferently an account of thesubstance of Shakespearean tragedy, or an account of Shakespeare'sconception of tragedy or view of the tragic fact. Two further warnings may be required. In the first place, we mustremember that the tragic aspect of life is only one aspect. We cannotarrive at Shakespeare's whole dramatic way of looking at the world fromhis tragedies alone, as we can arrive at Milton's way of regardingthings, or at Wordsworth's or at Shelley's, by examining almost any oneof their important works. Speaking very broadly, one may say that thesepoets at their best always look at things in one light; but _Hamlet_ and_Henry IV. _ and _Cymbeline_ reflect things from quite distinctpositions, and Shakespeare's whole dramatic view is not to be identifiedwith any one of these reflections. And, in the second place, I mayrepeat that in these lectures, at any rate for the most part, we are tobe content with his _dramatic_ view, and are not to ask whether itcorresponded exactly with his opinions or creed outside his poetry--theopinions or creed of the being whom we sometimes oddly call 'Shakespearethe man. ' It does not seem likely that outside his poetry he was a verysimple-minded Catholic or Protestant or Atheist, as some havemaintained; but we cannot be sure, as with those other poets we can,that in his works he expressed his deepest and most cherishedconvictions on ultimate questions, or even that he had any. And in hisdramatic conceptions there is enough to occupy us. 1In approaching our subject it will be best, without attempting toshorten the path by referring to famous theories of the drama, to startdirectly from the facts, and to collect from them gradually an idea ofShakespearean Tragedy. And first, to begin from the outside, such atragedy brings before us a considerable number of persons (many morethan the persons in a Greek play, unless the members of the Chorus arereckoned among them); but it is pre-eminently the story of one person,the 'hero,'[1] or at most of two, the 'hero' and 'heroine. ' Moreover, itis only in the love-tragedies, _Romeo and Juliet_ and _Antony andCleopatra_, that the heroine is as much the centre of the action as thehero. The rest, including _Macbeth_, are single stars. So that, havingnoticed the peculiarity of these two dramas, we may henceforth, for thesake of brevity, ignore it, and may speak of the tragic story as beingconcerned primarily with one person. The story, next, leads up to, and includes, the _death_ of the hero. Onthe one hand (whatever may be true of tragedy elsewhere), no play at theend of which the hero remains alive is, in the full Shakespearean sense,a tragedy; and we no longer class _Troilus and Cressida_ or _Cymbeline_as such, as did the editors of the Folio. On the other hand, the storydepicts also the troubled part of the hero's life which precedes andleads up to his death; and an instantaneous death occurring by'accident' in the midst of prosperity would not suffice for it. It is,in fact, essentially a tale of suffering and calamity conducting todeath. The suffering and calamity are, moreover, exceptional. They befall aconspicuous person. They are themselves of some striking kind. They arealso, as a rule, unexpected, and contrasted with previous happiness orglory. A tale, for example, of a man slowly worn to death by disease,poverty, little cares, sordid vices, petty persecutions, however piteousor dreadful it might be, would not be tragic in the Shakespearean sense. Such exceptional suffering and calamity, then, affecting the hero,and--we must now add--generally extending far and wide beyond him, so asto make the whole scene a scene of woe, are an essential ingredient intragedy and a chief source of the tragic emotions, and especially ofpity. But the proportions of this ingredient, and the direction taken bytragic pity, will naturally vary greatly. Pity, for example, has a muchlarger part in _King Lear_ than in _Macbeth_, and is directed in the onecase chiefly to the hero, in the other chiefly to minor characters. Let us now pause for a moment on the ideas we have so far reached. Theywould more than suffice to describe the whole tragic fact as itpresented itself to the mediaeval mind. To the mediaeval mind a tragedymeant a narrative rather than a play, and its notion of the matter ofthis narrative may readily be gathered from Dante or, still better, fromChaucer. Chaucer's _Monk's Tale_ is a series of what he calls'tragedies'; and this means in fact a series of tales _de CasibusIllustrium Virorum_,--stories of the Falls of Illustrious Men, such asLucifer, Adam, Hercules and Nebuchadnezzar. And the Monk ends the taleof Croesus thus: Anhanged was Cresus, the proudè kyng; His roial tronè myghte hym nat availle. Tragédie is noon oother maner thyng, Ne kan in syngyng criè ne biwaille But for that Fortune alwey wole assaile With unwar strook the regnès that been proude; For whan men trusteth hire, thanne wol she faille, And covere hire brighte facè with a clowde. A total reverse of fortune, coming unawares upon a man who 'stood inhigh degree,' happy and apparently secure,--such was the tragic fact tothe mediaeval mind. It appealed strongly to common human sympathy andpity; it startled also another feeling, that of fear. It frightened menand awed them. It made them feel that man is blind and helpless, theplaything of an inscrutable power, called by the name of Fortune or someother name,--a power which appears to smile on him for a little, andthen on a sudden strikes him down in his pride. Shakespeare's idea of the tragic fact is larger than this idea and goesbeyond it; but it includes it, and it is worth while to observe theidentity of the two in a certain point which is often ignored. Tragedywith Shakespeare is concerned always with persons of 'high degree';often with kings or princes; if not, with leaders in the state likeCoriolanus, Brutus, Antony; at the least, as in _Romeo and Juliet_, withmembers of great houses, whose quarrels are of public moment. There is adecided difference here between _Othello_ and our three other tragedies,but it is not a difference of kind. Othello himself is no mere privateperson; he is the General of the Republic. At the beginning we see himin the Council-Chamber of the Senate. The consciousness of his highposition never leaves him. At the end, when he is determined to live nolonger, he is as anxious as Hamlet not to be misjudged by the greatworld, and his last speech begins, Soft you; a word or two before you go. I have done the state some service, and they know it. [2]And this characteristic of Shakespeare's tragedies, though not the mostvital, is neither external nor unimportant. The saying that everydeath-bed is the scene of the fifth act of a tragedy has its meaning,but it would not be true if the word 'tragedy' bore its dramatic sense. The pangs of despised love and the anguish of remorse, we say, are thesame in a peasant and a prince; but, not to insist that they cannot beso when the prince is really a prince, the story of the prince, thetriumvir, or the general, has a greatness and dignity of its own. Hisfate affects the welfare of a whole nation or empire; and when he fallssuddenly from the height of earthly greatness to the dust, his fallproduces a sense of contrast, of the powerlessness of man, and of theomnipotence--perhaps the caprice--of Fortune or Fate, which no tale ofprivate life can possibly rival. Such feelings are constantly evoked by Shakespeare's tragedies,--againin varying degrees. Perhaps they are the very strongest of the emotionsawakened by the early tragedy of _Richard II. _, where they receive aconcentrated expression in Richard's famous speech about the anticDeath, who sits in the hollow crown That rounds the mortal temples of a king,grinning at his pomp, watching till his vanity and his fancied securityhave wholly encased him round, and then coming and boring with a littlepin through his castle wall. And these feelings, though theirpredominance is subdued in the mightiest tragedies, remain powerfulthere. In the figure of the maddened Lear we see A sight most pitiful in the meanest wretch, Past speaking of in a king;and if we would realise the truth in this matter we cannot do betterthan compare with the effect of _King Lear_ the effect of Tourgénief'sparallel and remarkable tale of peasant life, _A King Lear of theSteppes_. 2A Shakespearean tragedy as so far considered may be called a story ofexceptional calamity leading to the death of a man in high estate. Butit is clearly much more than this, and we have now to regard it fromanother side. No amount of calamity which merely befell a man,descending from the clouds like lightning, or stealing from the darknesslike pestilence, could alone provide the substance of its story. Job wasthe greatest of all the children of the east, and his afflictions werewell-nigh more than he could bear; but even if we imagined them wearinghim to death, that would not make his story tragic. Nor yet would itbecome so, in the Shakespearean sense, if the fire, and the great windfrom the wilderness, and the torments of his flesh were conceived assent by a supernatural power, whether just or malignant. The calamitiesof tragedy do not simply happen, nor are they sent; they proceed mainlyfrom actions, and those the actions of men. We see a number of human beings placed in certain circumstances; and wesee, arising from the co-operation of their characters in thesecircumstances, certain actions. These actions beget others, and theseothers beget others again, until this series of inter-connected deedsleads by an apparently inevitable sequence to a catastrophe. The effectof such a series on imagination is to make us regard the sufferingswhich accompany it, and the catastrophe in which it ends, not only orchiefly as something which happens to the persons concerned, but equallyas something which is caused by them. This at least may be said of theprincipal persons, and, among them, of the hero, who always contributesin some measure to the disaster in which he perishes. This second aspect of tragedy evidently differs greatly from the first. Men, from this point of view, appear to us primarily as agents,'themselves the authors of their proper woe'; and our fear and pity,though they will not cease or diminish, will be modified accordingly. Weare now to consider this second aspect, remembering that it too is onlyone aspect, and additional to the first, not a substitute for it. The 'story' or 'action' of a Shakespearean tragedy does not consist, ofcourse, solely of human actions or deeds; but the deeds are thepredominant factor. And these deeds are, for the most part, actions inthe full sense of the word; not things done ''tween asleep and wake,'but acts or omissions thoroughly expressive of the doer,--characteristicdeeds. The centre of the tragedy, therefore, may be said with equaltruth to lie in action issuing from character, or in character issuingin action. Shakespeare's main interest lay here. To say that it lay in _mere_character, or was a psychological interest, would be a great mistake,for he was dramatic to the tips of his fingers. It is possible to findplaces where he has given a certain indulgence to his love of poetry,and even to his turn for general reflections; but it would be verydifficult, and in his later tragedies perhaps impossible, to detectpassages where he has allowed such freedom to the interest in characterapart from action. But for the opposite extreme, for the abstraction ofmere 'plot' (which is a very different thing from the tragic 'action'),for the kind of interest which predominates in a novel like _The Womanin White_, it is clear that he cared even less. I do not mean that thisinterest is absent from his dramas; but it is subordinate to others, andis so interwoven with them that we are rarely conscious of it apart, andrarely feel in any great strength the half-intellectual, half-nervousexcitement of following an ingenious complication. What we do feelstrongly, as a tragedy advances to its close, is that the calamities andcatastrophe follow inevitably from the deeds of men, and that the mainsource of these deeds is character. The dictum that, with Shakespeare,'character is destiny' is no doubt an exaggeration, and one that maymislead (for many of his tragic personages, if they had not met withpeculiar circumstances, would have escaped a tragic end, and might evenhave lived fairly untroubled lives); but it is the exaggeration of avital truth. This truth, with some of its qualifications, will appear more clearly ifwe now go on to ask what elements are to be found in the 'story' or'action,' occasionally or frequently, beside the characteristic deeds,and the sufferings and circumstances, of the persons. I will refer tothree of these additional factors. (_a_) Shakespeare, occasionally and for reasons which need not bediscussed here, represents abnormal conditions of mind; insanity, forexample, somnambulism, hallucinations. And deeds issuing from these arecertainly not what we called deeds in the fullest sense, deedsexpressive of character. No; but these abnormal conditions are neverintroduced as the origin of deeds of any dramatic moment. Lady Macbeth'ssleep-walking has no influence whatever on the events that follow it. Macbeth did not murder Duncan because he saw a dagger in the air: he sawthe dagger because he was about to murder Duncan. Lear's insanity is notthe cause of a tragic conflict any more than Ophelia's; it is, likeOphelia's, the result of a conflict; and in both cases the effect ismainly pathetic. If Lear were really mad when he divided his kingdom, ifHamlet were really mad at any time in the story, they would cease to betragic characters. (_b_) Shakespeare also introduces the supernatural into some of histragedies; he introduces ghosts, and witches who have supernaturalknowledge. This supernatural element certainly cannot in most cases, ifin any, be explained away as an illusion in the mind of one of thecharacters. And further, it does contribute to the action, and is inmore than one instance an indispensable part of it: so that to describehuman character, with circumstances, as always the _sole_ motive forcein this action would be a serious error. But the supernatural is alwaysplaced in the closest relation with character. It gives a confirmationand a distinct form to inward movements already present and exerting aninfluence; to the sense of failure in Brutus, to the stifled workings ofconscience in Richard, to the half-formed thought or the horrifiedmemory of guilt in Macbeth, to suspicion in Hamlet. Moreover, itsinfluence is never of a compulsive kind. It forms no more than anelement, however important, in the problem which the hero has to face;and we are never allowed to feel that it has removed his capacity orresponsibility for dealing with this problem. So far indeed are we fromfeeling this, that many readers run to the opposite extreme, and openlyor privately regard the supernatural as having nothing to do with thereal interest of the play. (_c_) Shakespeare, lastly, in most of his tragedies allows to 'chance'or 'accident' an appreciable influence at some point in the action. Chance or accident here will be found, I think, to mean any occurrence(not supernatural, of course) which enters the dramatic sequence neitherfrom the agency of a character, nor from the obvious surroundingcircumstances. [3] It may be called an accident, in this sense, thatRomeo never got the Friar's message about the potion, and that Julietdid not awake from her long sleep a minute sooner; an accident thatEdgar arrived at the prison just too late to save Cordelia's life; anaccident that Desdemona dropped her handkerchief at the most fatal ofmoments; an accident that the pirate ship attacked Hamlet's ship, sothat he was able to return forthwith to Denmark. Now this operation ofaccident is a fact, and a prominent fact, of human life. To exclude it_wholly_ from tragedy, therefore, would be, we may say, to fail intruth. And, besides, it is not merely a fact. That men may start acourse of events but can neither calculate nor control it, is a _tragic_fact. The dramatist may use accident so as to make us feel this; andthere are also other dramatic uses to which it may be put. Shakespeareaccordingly admits it. On the other hand, any _large_ admission ofchance into the tragic sequence[4] would certainly weaken, and mightdestroy, the sense of the causal connection of character, deed, andcatastrophe. And Shakespeare really uses it very sparingly. We seldomfind ourselves exclaiming, 'What an unlucky accident! ' I believe mostreaders would have to search painfully for instances. It is, further,frequently easy to see the dramatic intention of an accident; and somethings which look like accidents have really a connection withcharacter, and are therefore not in the full sense accidents. Finally, Ibelieve it will be found that almost all the prominent accidents occurwhen the action is well advanced and the impression of the causalsequence is too firmly fixed to be impaired. Thus it appears that these three elements in the 'action' aresubordinate, while the dominant factor consists in deeds which issuefrom character. So that, by way of summary, we may now alter our firststatement, 'A tragedy is a story of exceptional calamity leading to thedeath of a man in high estate,' and we may say instead (what in its turnis one-sided, though less so), that the story is one of human actionsproducing exceptional calamity and ending in the death of such a man. [5] * * * * *Before we leave the 'action,' however, there is another question thatmay usefully be asked. Can we define this 'action' further by describingit as a conflict? The frequent use of this idea in discussions on tragedy is ultimatelydue, I suppose, to the influence of Hegel's theory on the subject,certainly the most important theory since Aristotle's. But Hegel's viewof the tragic conflict is not only unfamiliar to English readers anddifficult to expound shortly, but it had its origin in reflections onGreek tragedy and, as Hegel was well aware, applies only imperfectly tothe works of Shakespeare. [6] I shall, therefore, confine myself to theidea of conflict in its more general form. In this form it is obviouslysuitable to Shakespearean tragedy; but it is vague, and I will try tomake it more precise by putting the question, Who are the combatants inthis conflict? Not seldom the conflict may quite naturally be conceived as lyingbetween two persons, of whom the hero is one; or, more fully, as lyingbetween two parties or groups, in one of which the hero is the leadingfigure. Or if we prefer to speak (as we may quite well do if we knowwhat we are about) of the passions, tendencies, ideas, principles,forces, which animate these persons or groups, we may say that two ofsuch passions or ideas, regarded as animating two persons or groups, arethe combatants. The love of Romeo and Juliet is in conflict with thehatred of their houses, represented by various other characters. Thecause of Brutus and Cassius struggles with that of Julius, Octavius andAntony. In _Richard II. _ the King stands on one side, Bolingbroke andhis party on the other. In _Macbeth_ the hero and heroine are opposed tothe representatives of Duncan. In all these cases the great majority ofthe _dramatis personae_ fall without difficulty into antagonisticgroups, and the conflict between these groups ends with the defeat ofthe hero. Yet one cannot help feeling that in at least one of these cases,_Macbeth_, there is something a little external in this way of lookingat the action. And when we come to some other plays this feelingincreases. No doubt most of the characters in _Hamlet_, _King Lear_,_Othello_, or _Antony and Cleopatra_ can be arranged in opposedgroups;[7] and no doubt there is a conflict; and yet it seems misleadingto describe this conflict as one _between these groups_. It cannot besimply this. For though Hamlet and the King are mortal foes, yet thatwhich engrosses our interest and dwells in our memory at least as muchas the conflict between them, is the conflict _within_ one of them. Andso it is, though not in the same degree, with _Antony and Cleopatra_ andeven with _Othello_; and, in fact, in a certain measure, it is so withnearly all the tragedies. There is an outward conflict of persons andgroups, there is also a conflict of forces in the hero's soul; and evenin _Julius Caesar_ and _Macbeth_ the interest of the former can hardlybe said to exceed that of the latter. The truth is, that the type of tragedy in which the hero opposes to ahostile force an undivided soul, is not the Shakespearean type. Thesouls of those who contend with the hero may be thus undivided; theygenerally are; but, as a rule, the hero, though he pursues his fatedway, is, at least at some point in the action, and sometimes at many,torn by an inward struggle; and it is frequently at such points thatShakespeare shows his most extraordinary power. If further we comparethe earlier tragedies with the later, we find that it is in the latter,the maturest works, that this inward struggle is most emphasised. In thelast of them, _Coriolanus_, its interest completely eclipses towards theclose of the play that of the outward conflict. _Romeo and Juliet_,_Richard III. _, _Richard II. _, where the hero contends with an outwardforce, but comparatively little with himself, are all early plays. If we are to include the outer and the inner struggle in a conceptionmore definite than that of conflict in general, we must employ some suchphrase as 'spiritual force. ' This will mean whatever forces act in thehuman spirit, whether good or evil, whether personal passion orimpersonal principle; doubts, desires, scruples, ideas--whatever cananimate, shake, possess, and drive a man's soul. In a Shakespeareantragedy some such forces are shown in conflict. They are shown acting inmen and generating strife between them. They are also shown, lessuniversally, but quite as characteristically, generating disturbance andeven conflict in the soul of the hero. Treasonous ambition in Macbethcollides with loyalty and patriotism in Macduff and Malcolm: here is theoutward conflict. But these powers or principles equally collide in thesoul of Macbeth himself: here is the inner. And neither by itself couldmake the tragedy. [8]We shall see later the importance of this idea. Here we need onlyobserve that the notion of tragedy as a conflict emphasises the factthat action is the centre of the story, while the concentration ofinterest, in the greater plays, on the inward struggle emphasises thefact that this action is essentially the expression of character. 3Let us turn now from the 'action' to the central figure in it; and,ignoring the characteristics which distinguish the heroes from oneanother, let us ask whether they have any common qualities which appearto be essential to the tragic effect. One they certainly have. They are exceptional beings. We have seenalready that the hero, with Shakespeare, is a person of high degree orof public importance, and that his actions or sufferings are of anunusual kind. But this is not all. His nature also is exceptional, andgenerally raises him in some respect much above the average level ofhumanity. This does not mean that he is an eccentric or a paragon. Shakespeare never drew monstrosities of virtue; some of his heroes arefar from being 'good'; and if he drew eccentrics he gave them asubordinate position in the plot. His tragic characters are made of thestuff we find within ourselves and within the persons who surround them. But, by an intensification of the life which they share with others,they are raised above them; and the greatest are raised so far that, ifwe fully realise all that is implied in their words and actions, webecome conscious that in real life we have known scarcely any oneresembling them. Some, like Hamlet and Cleopatra, have genius. Others,like Othello, Lear, Macbeth, Coriolanus, are built on the grand scale;and desire, passion, or will attains in them a terrible force. In almostall we observe a marked one-sidedness, a predisposition in someparticular direction; a total incapacity, in certain circumstances, ofresisting the force which draws in this direction; a fatal tendency toidentify the whole being with one interest, object, passion, or habit ofmind. This, it would seem, is, for Shakespeare, the fundamental tragictrait. It is present in his early heroes, Romeo and Richard II. ,infatuated men, who otherwise rise comparatively little above theordinary level. It is a fatal gift, but it carries with it a touch ofgreatness; and when there is joined to it nobility of mind, or genius,or immense force, we realise the full power and reach of the soul, andthe conflict in which it engages acquires that magnitude which stirs notonly sympathy and pity, but admiration, terror, and awe. The easiest way to bring home to oneself the nature of the tragiccharacter is to compare it with a character of another kind. Dramas like_Cymbeline_ and the _Winter's Tale_, which might seem destined to endtragically, but actually end otherwise, owe their happy ending largelyto the fact that the principal characters fail to reach tragicdimensions. And, conversely, if these persons were put in the place ofthe tragic heroes, the dramas in which they appeared would cease to betragedies. Posthumus would never have acted as Othello did; Othello, onhis side, would have met Iachimo's challenge with something more thanwords. If, like Posthumus, he had remained convinced of his wife'sinfidelity, he would not have repented her execution; if, like Leontes,he had come to believe that by an unjust accusation he had caused herdeath, he would never have lived on, like Leontes. In the same way thevillain Iachimo has no touch of tragic greatness. But Iago comes nearerto it, and if Iago had slandered Imogen and had supposed his slanders tohave led to her death, he certainly would not have turned melancholy andwished to die. One reason why the end of the _Merchant of Venice_ failsto satisfy us is that Shylock is a tragic character, and that we cannotbelieve in his accepting his defeat and the conditions imposed on him. This was a case where Shakespeare's imagination ran away with him, sothat he drew a figure with which the destined pleasant ending would notharmonise. In the circumstances where we see the hero placed, his tragic trait,which is also his greatness, is fatal to him. To meet thesecircumstances something is required which a smaller man might havegiven, but which the hero cannot give. He errs, by action or omission;and his error, joining with other causes, brings on him ruin. This isalways so with Shakespeare. As we have seen, the idea of the tragic heroas a being destroyed simply and solely by external forces is quite aliento him; and not less so is the idea of the hero as contributing to hisdestruction only by acts in which we see no flaw. But the fatalimperfection or error, which is never absent, is of different kinds anddegrees. At one extreme stands the excess and precipitancy of Romeo,which scarcely, if at all, diminish our regard for him; at the other themurderous ambition of Richard III. In most cases the tragic errorinvolves no conscious breach of right; in some (_e. g. _ that of Brutus orOthello) it is accompanied by a full conviction of right. In Hamletthere is a painful consciousness that duty is being neglected; in Antonya clear knowledge that the worse of two courses is being pursued; butRichard and Macbeth are the only heroes who do what they themselvesrecognise to be villainous. It is important to observe that Shakespearedoes admit such heroes,[9] and also that he appears to feel, and exertshimself to meet, the difficulty that arises from their admission. Thedifficulty is that the spectator must desire their defeat and even theirdestruction; and yet this desire, and the satisfaction of it, are nottragic feelings. Shakespeare gives to Richard therefore a power whichexcites astonishment, and a courage which extorts admiration. He givesto Macbeth a similar, though less extraordinary, greatness, and adds toit a conscience so terrifying in its warnings and so maddening in itsreproaches that the spectacle of inward torment compels a horrifiedsympathy and awe which balance, at the least, the desire for the hero'sruin. The tragic hero with Shakespeare, then, need not be 'good,' thoughgenerally he is 'good' and therefore at once wins sympathy in his error. But it is necessary that he should have so much of greatness that in hiserror and fall we may be vividly conscious of the possibilities of humannature. [10] Hence, in the first place, a Shakespearean tragedy is never,like some miscalled tragedies, depressing. No one ever closes the bookwith the feeling that man is a poor mean creature. He may be wretchedand he may be awful, but he is not small. His lot may be heart-rendingand mysterious, but it is not contemptible. The most confirmed of cynicsceases to be a cynic while he reads these plays. And with this greatnessof the tragic hero (which is not always confined to him) is connected,secondly, what I venture to describe as the centre of the tragicimpression. This central feeling is the impression of waste. WithShakespeare, at any rate, the pity and fear which are stirred by thetragic story seem to unite with, and even to merge in, a profound senseof sadness and mystery, which is due to this impression of waste. 'Whata piece of work is man,' we cry; 'so much more beautiful and so muchmore terrible than we knew! Why should he be so if this beauty andgreatness only tortures itself and throws itself away? ' We seem to havebefore us a type of the mystery of the whole world, the tragic factwhich extends far beyond the limits of tragedy. Everywhere, from thecrushed rocks beneath our feet to the soul of man, we see power,intelligence, life and glory, which astound us and seem to call for ourworship. And everywhere we see them perishing, devouring one another anddestroying themselves, often with dreadful pain, as though they cameinto being for no other end. Tragedy is the typical form of thismystery, because that greatness of soul which it exhibits oppressed,conflicting and destroyed, is the highest existence in our view. Itforces the mystery upon us, and it makes us realise so vividly the worthof that which is wasted that we cannot possibly seek comfort in thereflection that all is vanity. 4In this tragic world, then, where individuals, however great they may beand however decisive their actions may appear, are so evidently not theultimate power, what is this power? What account can we give of it whichwill correspond with the imaginative impressions we receive? This willbe our final question. The variety of the answers given to this question shows how difficult itis. And the difficulty has many sources. Most people, even among thosewho know Shakespeare well and come into real contact with his mind, areinclined to isolate and exaggerate some one aspect of the tragic fact. Some are so much influenced by their own habitual beliefs that theyimport them more or less into their interpretation of every author whois 'sympathetic' to them. And even where neither of these causes oferror appears to operate, another is present from which it is probablyimpossible wholly to escape. What I mean is this. Any answer we give tothe question proposed ought to correspond with, or to represent in termsof the understanding, our imaginative and emotional experience inreading the tragedies. We have, of course, to do our best by study andeffort to make this experience true to Shakespeare; but, that done tothe best of our ability, the experience is the matter to be interpreted,and the test by which the interpretation must be tried. But it isextremely hard to make out exactly what this experience is, because, inthe very effort to make it out, our reflecting mind, full of everydayideas, is always tending to transform it by the application of theseideas, and so to elicit a result which, instead of representing thefact, conventionalises it. And the consequence is not only mistakentheories; it is that many a man will declare that he feels in reading atragedy what he never really felt, while he fails to recognise what heactually did feel. It is not likely that we shall escape all thesedangers in our effort to find an answer to the question regarding thetragic world and the ultimate power in it. It will be agreed, however, first, that this question must not beanswered in 'religious' language. For although this or that _dramatispersona_ may speak of gods or of God, of evil spirits or of Satan, ofheaven and of hell, and although the poet may show us ghosts fromanother world, these ideas do not materially influence hisrepresentation of life, nor are they used to throw light on the mysteryof its tragedy. The Elizabethan drama was almost wholly secular; andwhile Shakespeare was writing he practically confined his view to theworld of non-theological observation and thought, so that he representsit substantially in one and the same way whether the period of the storyis pre-Christian or Christian. [11] He looked at this 'secular' worldmost intently and seriously; and he painted it, we cannot but conclude,with entire fidelity, without the wish to enforce an opinion of his own,and, in essentials, without regard to anyone's hopes, fears, or beliefs. His greatness is largely due to this fidelity in a mind of extraordinarypower; and if, as a private person, he had a religious faith, his tragicview can hardly have been in contradiction with this faith, but musthave been included in it, and supplemented, not abolished, by additionalideas. Two statements, next, may at once be made regarding the tragic fact ashe represents it: one, that it is and remains to us something piteous,fearful and mysterious; the other, that the representation of it doesnot leave us crushed, rebellious or desperate. These statements will beaccepted, I believe, by any reader who is in touch with Shakespeare'smind and can observe his own. Indeed such a reader is rather likely tocomplain that they are painfully obvious. But if they are true as wellas obvious, something follows from them in regard to our presentquestion. From the first it follows that the ultimate power in the tragic world isnot adequately described as a law or order which we can see to be justand benevolent,--as, in that sense, a 'moral order': for in that casethe spectacle of suffering and waste could not seem to us so fearful andmysterious as it does. And from the second it follows that this ultimatepower is not adequately described as a fate, whether malicious andcruel, or blind and indifferent to human happiness and goodness: for inthat case the spectacle would leave us desperate or rebellious. Yet oneor other of these two ideas will be found to govern most accounts ofShakespeare's tragic view or world. These accounts isolate andexaggerate single aspects, either the aspect of action or that ofsuffering; either the close and unbroken connection of character, will,deed and catastrophe, which, taken alone, shows the individual simply assinning against, or failing to conform to, the moral order and drawinghis just doom on his own head; or else that pressure of outward forces,that sway of accident, and those blind and agonised struggles, which,taken alone, show him as the mere victim of some power which caresneither for his sins nor for his pain. Such views contradict oneanother, and no third view can unite them; but the several aspects fromwhose isolation and exaggeration they spring are both present in thefact, and a view which would be true to the fact and to the whole of ourimaginative experience must in some way combine these aspects. Let us begin, then, with the idea of fatality and glance at some of theimpressions which give rise to it, without asking at present whetherthis idea is their natural or fitting expression. There can be no doubtthat they do arise and that they ought to arise. If we do not feel attimes that the hero is, in some sense, a doomed man; that he and othersdrift struggling to destruction like helpless creatures borne on anirresistible flood towards a cataract; that, faulty as they may be,their fault is far from being the sole or sufficient cause of all theysuffer; and that the power from which they cannot escape is relentlessand immovable, we have failed to receive an essential part of the fulltragic effect. The sources of these impressions are various, and I will refer only to afew. One of them is put into words by Shakespeare himself when he makesthe player-king in _Hamlet_ say: Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own;'their ends' are the issues or outcomes of our thoughts, and these, saysthe speaker, are not our own. The tragic world is a world of action, andaction is the translation of thought into reality. We see men and womenconfidently attempting it. They strike into the existing order of thingsin pursuance of their ideas. But what they achieve is not what theyintended; it is terribly unlike it. They understand nothing, we say toourselves, of the world on which they operate. They fight blindly in thedark, and the power that works through them makes them the instrument ofa design which is not theirs. They act freely, and yet their actionbinds them hand and foot. And it makes no difference whether they meantwell or ill. No one could mean better than Brutus, but he contrivesmisery for his country and death for himself. No one could mean worsethan Iago, and he too is caught in the web he spins for others. Hamlet,recoiling from the rough duty of revenge, is pushed intoblood-guiltiness he never dreamed of, and forced at last on the revengehe could not will. His adversary's murders, and no less his adversary'sremorse, bring about the opposite of what they sought. Lear follows anold man's whim, half generous, half selfish; and in a moment it loosesall the powers of darkness upon him. Othello agonises over an emptyfiction, and, meaning to execute solemn justice, butchers innocence andstrangles love. They understand themselves no better than the worldabout them. Coriolanus thinks that his heart is iron, and it melts likesnow before a fire. Lady Macbeth, who thought she could dash out her ownchild's brains, finds herself hounded to death by the smell of astranger's blood. Her husband thinks that to gain a crown he would jumpthe life to come, and finds that the crown has brought him all thehorrors of that life. Everywhere, in this tragic world, man's thought,translated into act, is transformed into the opposite of itself. Hisact, the movement of a few ounces of matter in a moment of time, becomesa monstrous flood which spreads over a kingdom. And whatsoever he dreamsof doing, he achieves that which he least dreamed of, his owndestruction. All this makes us feel the blindness and helplessness of man. Yet byitself it would hardly suggest the idea of fate, because it shows man asin some degree, however slight, the cause of his own undoing. But otherimpressions come to aid it. It is aided by everything which makes usfeel that a man is, as we say, terribly unlucky; and of this there is,even in Shakespeare, not a little. Here come in some of the accidentsalready considered, Juliet's waking from her trance a minute too late,Desdemona's loss of her handkerchief at the only moment when the losswould have mattered, that insignificant delay which cost Cordelia'slife. Again, men act, no doubt, in accordance with their characters; butwhat is it that brings them just the one problem which is fatal to themand would be easy to another, and sometimes brings it to them just whenthey are least fitted to face it? How is it that Othello comes to be thecompanion of the one man in the world who is at once able enough, braveenough, and vile enough to ensnare him? By what strange fatality does ithappen that Lear has such daughters and Cordelia such sisters? Evencharacter itself contributes to these feelings of fatality. How couldmen escape, we cry, such vehement propensities as drive Romeo, Antony,Coriolanus, to their doom? And why is it that a man's virtues help todestroy him, and that his weakness or defect is so intertwined witheverything that is admirable in him that we can hardly separate themeven in imagination? If we find in Shakespeare's tragedies the source of impressions likethese, it is important, on the other hand, to notice what we do _not_find there. We find practically no trace of fatalism in its moreprimitive, crude and obvious forms. Nothing, again, makes us think ofthe actions and sufferings of the persons as somehow arbitrarily fixedbeforehand without regard to their feelings, thoughts and resolutions. Nor, I believe, are the facts ever so presented that it seems to us asif the supreme power, whatever it may be, had a special spite against afamily or an individual. Neither, lastly, do we receive the impression(which, it must be observed, is not purely fatalistic) that a family,owing to some hideous crime or impiety in early days, is doomed in laterdays to continue a career of portentous calamities and sins. Shakespeare, indeed, does not appear to have taken much interest inheredity, or to have attached much importance to it. (See, however,'heredity' in the Index. )What, then, is this 'fate' which the impressions already considered leadus to describe as the ultimate power in the tragic world? It appears tobe a mythological expression for the whole system or order, of which theindividual characters form an inconsiderable and feeble part; whichseems to determine, far more than they, their native dispositions andtheir circumstances, and, through these, their action; which is so vastand complex that they can scarcely at all understand it or control itsworkings; and which has a nature so definite and fixed that whateverchanges take place in it produce other changes inevitably and withoutregard to men's desires and regrets. And whether this system or order isbest called by the name of fate or no,[12] it can hardly be denied thatit does appear as the ultimate power in the tragic world, and that ithas such characteristics as these. But the name 'fate' may be intendedto imply something more--to imply that this order is a blank necessity,totally regardless alike of human weal and of the difference betweengood and evil or right and wrong. And such an implication many readerswould at once reject. They would maintain, on the contrary, that thisorder shows characteristics of quite another kind from those which madeus give it the name of fate, characteristics which certainly should notinduce us to forget those others, but which would lead us to describe itas a moral order and its necessity as a moral necessity. 5Let us turn, then, to this idea. It brings into the light those aspectsof the tragic fact which the idea of fate throws into the shade. And theargument which leads to it in its simplest form may be stated brieflythus: 'Whatever may be said of accidents, circumstances and the like,human action is, after all, presented to us as the central fact intragedy, and also as the main cause of the catastrophe. That necessitywhich so much impresses us is, after all, chiefly the necessaryconnection of actions and consequences. For these actions we, withouteven raising a question on the subject, hold the agents responsible; andthe tragedy would disappear for us if we did not. The critical actionis, in greater or less degree, wrong or bad. The catastrophe is, in themain, the return of this action on the head of the agent. It is anexample of justice; and that order which, present alike within theagents and outside them, infallibly brings it about, is therefore just. The rigour of its justice is terrible, no doubt, for a tragedy is aterrible story; but, in spite of fear and pity, we acquiesce, becauseour sense of justice is satisfied. 'Now, if this view is to hold good, the 'justice' of which it speaks mustbe at once distinguished from what is called 'poetic justice. ' 'Poeticjustice' means that prosperity and adversity are distributed inproportion to the merits of the agents. Such 'poetic justice' is inflagrant contradiction with the facts of life, and it is absent fromShakespeare's tragic picture of life; indeed, this very absence is aground of constant complaint on the part of Dr. Johnson. [Greek:Drasanti pathein], 'the doer must suffer'--this we find in Shakespeare. We also find that villainy never remains victorious and prosperous atthe last. But an assignment of amounts of happiness and misery, anassignment even of life and death, in proportion to merit, we do notfind. No one who thinks of Desdemona and Cordelia; or who remembers thatone end awaits Richard III. and Brutus, Macbeth and Hamlet; or who askshimself which suffered most, Othello or Iago; will ever accuseShakespeare of representing the ultimate power as 'poetically' just. And we must go further. I venture to say that it is a mistake to use atall these terms of justice and merit or desert. And this for tworeasons. In the first place, essential as it is to recognise theconnection between act and consequence, and natural as it may seem insome cases (_e. g. _ Macbeth's) to say that the doer only gets what hedeserves, yet in very many cases to say this would be quite unnatural. We might not object to the statement that Lear deserved to suffer forhis folly, selfishness and tyranny; but to assert that he deserved tosuffer what he did suffer is to do violence not merely to language butto any healthy moral sense. It is, moreover, to obscure the tragic factthat the consequences of action cannot be limited to that which wouldappear to us to follow 'justly' from them. And, this being so, when wecall the order of the tragic world just, we are either using the word insome vague and unexplained sense, or we are going beyond what is shownus of this order, and are appealing to faith. But, in the second place, the ideas of justice and desert are, it seemsto me, in _all_ cases--even those of Richard III. and of Macbeth andLady Macbeth--untrue to our imaginative experience. When we are immersedin a tragedy, we feel towards dispositions, actions, and persons suchemotions as attraction and repulsion, pity, wonder, fear, horror,perhaps hatred; but we do not _judge_. This is a point of view whichemerges only when, in reading a play, we slip, by our own fault or thedramatist's, from the tragic position, or when, in thinking about theplay afterwards, we fall back on our everyday legal and moral notions. But tragedy does not belong, any more than religion belongs, to thesphere of these notions; neither does the imaginative attitude inpresence of it. While we are in its world we watch what is, seeing thatso it happened and must have happened, feeling that it is piteous,dreadful, awful, mysterious, but neither passing sentence on the agents,nor asking whether the behaviour of the ultimate power towards them isjust. And, therefore, the use of such language in attempts to render ourimaginative experience in terms of the understanding is, to say theleast, full of danger. [13]Let us attempt then to re-state the idea that the ultimate power in thetragic world is a moral order. Let us put aside the ideas of justice andmerit, and speak simply of good and evil. Let us understand by thesewords, primarily, moral good and evil, but also everything else in humanbeings which we take to be excellent or the reverse. Let us understandthe statement that the ultimate power or order is 'moral' to mean thatit does not show itself indifferent to good and evil, or equallyfavourable or unfavourable to both, but shows itself akin to good andalien from evil. And, understanding the statement thus, let us ask whatgrounds it has in the tragic fact as presented by Shakespeare. Here, as in dealing with the grounds on which the idea of fate rests, Ichoose only two or three out of many. And the most important is this. InShakespearean tragedy the main source of the convulsion which producessuffering and death is never good: good contributes to this convulsiononly from its tragic implication with its opposite in one and the samecharacter. The main source, on the contrary, is in every case evil; and,what is more (though this seems to have been little noticed), it is inalmost every case evil in the fullest sense, not mere imperfection butplain moral evil. The love of Romeo and Juliet conducts them to deathonly because of the senseless hatred of their houses. Guilty ambition,seconded by diabolic malice and issuing in murder, opens the action in_Macbeth_. Iago is the main source of the convulsion in _Othello_;Goneril, Regan and Edmund in _King Lear_. Even when this plain moralevil is not the obviously prime source within the play, it lies behindit: the situation with which Hamlet has to deal has been formed byadultery and murder. _Julius Caesar_ is the only tragedy in which one iseven tempted to find an exception to this rule. And the inference isobvious. If it is chiefly evil that violently disturbs the order of theworld, this order cannot be friendly to evil or indifferent between eviland good, any more than a body which is convulsed by poison is friendlyto it or indifferent to the distinction between poison and food. |
Again, if we confine our attention to the hero, and to those cases wherethe gross and palpable evil is not in him but elsewhere, we find thatthe comparatively innocent hero still shows some marked imperfection ordefect,--irresolution, precipitancy, pride, credulousness, excessivesimplicity, excessive susceptibility to sexual emotions, and the like. These defects or imperfections are certainly, in the wide sense of theword, evil, and they contribute decisively to the conflict andcatastrophe. And the inference is again obvious. The ultimate powerwhich shows itself disturbed by this evil and reacts against it, musthave a nature alien to it. Indeed its reaction is so vehement and'relentless' that it would seem to be bent on nothing short of good inperfection, and to be ruthless in its demand for it. To this must be added another fact, or another aspect of the same fact. Evil exhibits itself everywhere as something negative, barren,weakening, destructive, a principle of death. It isolates, disunites,and tends to annihilate not only its opposite but itself. That whichkeeps the evil man[14] prosperous, makes him succeed, even permits himto exist, is the good in him (I do not mean only the obviously 'moral'good). When the evil in him masters the good and has its way, itdestroys other people through him, but it also destroys _him_. At theclose of the struggle he has vanished, and has left behind him nothingthat can stand. What remains is a family, a city, a country, exhausted,pale and feeble, but alive through the principle of good which animatesit; and, within it, individuals who, if they have not the brilliance orgreatness of the tragic character, still have won our respect andconfidence. And the inference would seem clear. If existence in an orderdepends on good, and if the presence of evil is hostile to suchexistence, the inner being or soul of this order must be akin to good. These are aspects of the tragic world at least as clearly marked asthose which, taken alone, suggest the idea of fate. And the idea whichthey in their turn, when taken alone, may suggest, is that of an orderwhich does not indeed award 'poetic justice,' but which reacts throughthe necessity of its own 'moral' nature both against attacks made uponit and against failure to conform to it. Tragedy, on this view, is theexhibition of that convulsive reaction; and the fact that the spectacledoes not leave us rebellious or desperate is due to a more or lessdistinct perception that the tragic suffering and death arise fromcollision, not with a fate or blank power, but with a moral power, apower akin to all that we admire and revere in the charactersthemselves. This perception produces something like a feeling ofacquiescence in the catastrophe, though it neither leads us to passjudgment on the characters nor diminishes the pity, the fear, and thesense of waste, which their struggle, suffering and fall evoke. And,finally, this view seems quite able to do justice to those aspects ofthe tragic fact which give rise to the idea of fate. They would appearas various expressions of the fact that the moral order acts notcapriciously or like a human being, but from the necessity of itsnature, or, if we prefer the phrase, by general laws,--a necessity orlaw which of course knows no exception and is as 'ruthless' as fate. It is impossible to deny to this view a large measure of truth. And yetwithout some amendment it can hardly satisfy. For it does not includethe whole of the facts, and therefore does not wholly correspond withthe impressions they produce. Let it be granted that the system or orderwhich shows itself omnipotent against individuals is, in the senseexplained, moral. Still--at any rate for the eye of sight--the evilagainst which it asserts itself, and the persons whom this evilinhabits, are not really something outside the order, so that they canattack it or fail to conform to it; they are within it and a part of it. It itself produces them,--produces Iago as well as Desdemona, Iago'scruelty as well as Iago's courage. It is not poisoned, it poisonsitself. Doubtless it shows by its violent reaction that the poison _is_poison, and that its health lies in good. But one significant factcannot remove another, and the spectacle we witness scarcely warrantsthe assertion that the order is responsible for the good in Desdemona,but Iago for the evil in Iago. If we make this assertion we make it ongrounds other than the facts as presented in Shakespeare's tragedies. Nor does the idea of a moral order asserting itself against attack orwant of conformity answer in full to our feelings regarding the tragiccharacter. We do not think of Hamlet merely as failing to meet itsdemand, of Antony as merely sinning against it, or even of Macbeth assimply attacking it. What we feel corresponds quite as much to the ideathat they are _its_ parts, expressions, products; that in their defector evil _it_ is untrue to its soul of goodness, and falls into conflictand collision with itself; that, in making them suffer and wastethemselves, _it_ suffers and wastes itself; and that when, to save itslife and regain peace from this intestinal struggle, it casts them out,it has lost a part of its own substance,--a part more dangerous andunquiet, but far more valuable and nearer to its heart, than that whichremains,--a Fortinbras, a Malcolm, an Octavius. There is no tragedy inits expulsion of evil: the tragedy is that this involves the waste ofgood. Thus we are left at last with an idea showing two sides or aspects whichwe can neither separate nor reconcile. The whole or order against whichthe individual part shows itself powerless seems to be animated by apassion for perfection: we cannot otherwise explain its behaviourtowards evil. Yet it appears to engender this evil within itself, and inits effort to overcome and expel it it is agonised with pain, and drivento mutilate its own substance and to lose not only evil but pricelessgood. That this idea, though very different from the idea of a blankfate, is no solution of the riddle of life is obvious; but why should weexpect it to be such a solution? Shakespeare was not attempting tojustify the ways of God to men, or to show the universe as a DivineComedy. He was writing tragedy, and tragedy would not be tragedy if itwere not a painful mystery. Nor can he be said even to point distinctly,like some writers of tragedy, in any direction where a solution mightlie. We find a few references to gods or God, to the influence of thestars, to another life: some of them certainly, all of them perhaps,merely dramatic--appropriate to the person from whose lips they fall. Aghost comes from Purgatory to impart a secret out of the reach of itshearer--who presently meditates on the question whether the sleep ofdeath is dreamless. Accidents once or twice remind us strangely of thewords, 'There's a divinity that shapes our ends. ' More important areother impressions. Sometimes from the very furnace of affliction aconviction seems borne to us that somehow, if we could see it, thisagony counts as nothing against the heroism and love which appear in itand thrill our hearts. Sometimes we are driven to cry out that thesemighty or heavenly spirits who perish are too great for the little spacein which they move, and that they vanish not into nothingness but intofreedom. Sometimes from these sources and from others comes apresentiment, formless but haunting and even profound, that all the furyof conflict, with its waste and woe, is less than half the truth, evenan illusion, 'such stuff as dreams are made on. ' But these faint andscattered intimations that the tragic world, being but a fragment of awhole beyond our vision, must needs be a contradiction and no ultimatetruth, avail nothing to interpret the mystery. We remain confronted withthe inexplicable fact, or the no less inexplicable appearance, of aworld travailing for perfection, but bringing to birth, together withglorious good, an evil which it is able to overcome only by self-tortureand self-waste. And this fact or appearance is tragedy. [15]FOOTNOTES:[Footnote 1: _Julius Caesar_ is not an exception to this rule. Caesar,whose murder comes in the Third Act, is in a sense the dominating figurein the story, but Brutus is the 'hero. '][Footnote 2: _Timon of Athens_, we have seen, was probably not designedby Shakespeare, but even _Timon_ is no exception to the rule. Thesub-plot is concerned with Alcibiades and his army, and Timon himself istreated by the Senate as a man of great importance. _Arden of Feversham_and _A Yorkshire Tragedy_ would certainly be exceptions to the rule; butI assume that neither of them is Shakespeare's; and if either is, itbelongs to a different species from his admitted tragedies. See, on thisspecies, Symonds, _Shakspere's Predecessors_, ch. xi. ][Footnote 3: Even a deed would, I think, be counted an 'accident,' if itwere the deed of a very minor person whose character had not beenindicated; because such a deed would not issue from the little world towhich the dramatist had confined our attention. ][Footnote 4: Comedy stands in a different position. The tricks played bychance often form a principal part of the comic action. ][Footnote 5: It may be observed that the influence of the three elementsjust considered is to strengthen the tendency, produced by thesufferings considered first, to regard the tragic persons as passiverather than as agents. ][Footnote 6: An account of Hegel's view may be found in _Oxford Lectureson Poetry_. ][Footnote 7: The reader, however, will find considerable difficulty inplacing some very important characters in these and other plays. I willgive only two or three illustrations. Edgar is clearly not on the sameside as Edmund, and yet it seems awkward to range him on Gloster's sidewhen Gloster wishes to put him to death. Ophelia is in love with Hamlet,but how can she be said to be of Hamlet's party against the King andPolonius, or of their party against Hamlet? Desdemona worships Othello,yet it sounds odd to say that Othello is on the same side with a personwhom he insults, strikes and murders. ][Footnote 8: I have given names to the 'spiritual forces' in _Macbeth_merely to illustrate the idea, and without any pretension to adequacy. Perhaps, in view of some interpretations of Shakespeare's plays, it willbe as well to add that I do not dream of suggesting that in any of hisdramas Shakespeare imagined two abstract principles or passionsconflicting, and incorporated them in persons; or that there is anynecessity for a reader to define for himself the particular forces whichconflict in a given case. ][Footnote 9: Aristotle apparently would exclude them. ][Footnote 10: Richard II. is perhaps an exception, and I must confessthat to me he is scarcely a tragic character, and that, if he isnevertheless a tragic figure, he is so only because his fall fromprosperity to adversity is so great. ][Footnote 11: I say substantially; but the concluding remarks on_Hamlet_ will modify a little the statements above. ][Footnote 12: I have raised no objection to the use of the idea of fate,because it occurs so often both in conversation and in books aboutShakespeare's tragedies that I must suppose it to be natural to manyreaders. Yet I doubt whether it would be so if Greek tragedy had neverbeen written; and I must in candour confess that to me it does not oftenoccur while I am reading, or when I have just read, a tragedy ofShakespeare. Wordsworth's lines, for example, about poor humanity's afflicted will Struggling in vain with ruthless destinydo not represent the impression I receive; much less do images whichcompare man to a puny creature helpless in the claws of a bird of prey. The reader should examine himself closely on this matter. ][Footnote 13: It is dangerous, I think, in reference to all really goodtragedies, but I am dealing here only with Shakespeare's. In not a fewGreek tragedies it is almost inevitable that we should think of justiceand retribution, not only because the _dramatis personae_ often speak ofthem, but also because there is something casuistical about the tragicproblem itself. The poet treats the story in such a way that thequestion, Is the hero doing right or wrong? is almost forced upon us. But this is not so with Shakespeare. _Julius Caesar_ is probably theonly one of his tragedies in which the question suggests itself to us,and this is one of the reasons why that play has something of a classicair. Even here, if we ask the question, we have no doubt at all aboutthe answer. ][Footnote 14: It is most essential to remember that an evil man is muchmore than the evil in him. I may add that in this paragraph I have, forthe sake of clearness, considered evil in its most pronounced form; butwhat is said would apply, _mutatis mutandis_, to evil as imperfection,etc. ][Footnote 15: Partly in order not to anticipate later passages, Iabstained from treating fully here the question why we feel, at thedeath of the tragic hero, not only pain but also reconciliation andsometimes even exultation. As I cannot at present make good this defect,I would ask the reader to refer to the word _Reconciliation_ in theIndex. See also, in _Oxford Lectures on Poetry_, _Hegel's Theory ofTragedy_, especially pp. 90, 91. ]LECTURE IICONSTRUCTION IN SHAKESPEARE'S TRAGEDIESHaving discussed the substance of a Shakespearean tragedy, we shouldnaturally go on to examine the form. And under this head many thingsmight be included; for example, Shakespeare's methods ofcharacterisation, his language, his versification, the construction ofhis plots. I intend, however, to speak only of the last of thesesubjects, which has been somewhat neglected;[16] and, as construction isa more or less technical matter, I shall add some general remarks onShakespeare as an artist. 1As a Shakespearean tragedy represents a conflict which terminates in acatastrophe, any such tragedy may roughly be divided into three parts. The first of these sets forth or expounds the situation,[17] or state ofaffairs, out of which the conflict arises; and it may, therefore, becalled the Exposition. The second deals with the definite beginning, thegrowth and the vicissitudes of the conflict. It forms accordingly thebulk of the play, comprising the Second, Third and Fourth Acts, andusually a part of the First and a part of the Fifth. The final sectionof the tragedy shows the issue of the conflict in a catastrophe. [18]The application of this scheme of division is naturally more or lessarbitrary. The first part glides into the second, and the second intothe third, and there may often be difficulty in drawing the linesbetween them. But it is still harder to divide spring from summer, andsummer from autumn; and yet spring is spring, and summer summer. The main business of the Exposition, which we will consider first, is tointroduce us into a little world of persons; to show us their positionsin life, their circumstances, their relations to one another, andperhaps something of their characters; and to leave us keenly interestedin the question what will come out of this condition of things. We areleft thus expectant, not merely because some of the persons interest usat once, but also because their situation in regard to one anotherpoints to difficulties in the future. This situation is not one ofconflict,[19] but it threatens conflict. For example, we see first thehatred of the Montagues and Capulets; and then we see Romeo ready tofall violently in love; and then we hear talk of a marriage betweenJuliet and Paris; but the exposition is not complete, and the conflicthas not definitely begun to arise, till, in the last scene of the FirstAct, Romeo the Montague sees Juliet the Capulet and becomes her slave. The dramatist's chief difficulty in the exposition is obvious, and it isillustrated clearly enough in the plays of unpractised writers; forexample, in _Remorse_, and even in _The Cenci_. He has to impart to theaudience a quantity of information about matters of which they generallyknow nothing and never know all that is necessary for his purpose. [20]But the process of merely acquiring information is unpleasant, and thedirect imparting of it is undramatic. Unless he uses a prologue,therefore, he must conceal from his auditors the fact that they arebeing informed, and must tell them what he wants them to know by meanswhich are interesting on their own account. These means, withShakespeare, are not only speeches but actions and events. From the verybeginning of the play, though the conflict has not arisen, things arehappening and being done which in some degree arrest, startle, andexcite; and in a few scenes we have mastered the situation of affairswithout perceiving the dramatist's designs upon us. Not that this isalways so with Shakespeare. In the opening scene of his early _Comedy ofErrors_, and in the opening speech of _Richard III. _, we feel that thespeakers are addressing us; and in the second scene of the _Tempest_(for Shakespeare grew at last rather negligent of technique) the purposeof Prospero's long explanation to Miranda is palpable. But in generalShakespeare's expositions are masterpieces. [21]His usual plan in tragedy is to begin with a short scene, or part of ascene, either full of life and stir, or in some other way arresting. Then, having secured a hearing, he proceeds to conversations at a lowerpitch, accompanied by little action but conveying much information. Forexample, _Romeo and Juliet_ opens with a street-fight, _Julius Caesar_and _Coriolanus_ with a crowd in commotion; and when this excitement hashad its effect on the audience, there follow quiet speeches, in whichthe cause of the excitement, and so a great part of the situation, aredisclosed. In _Hamlet_ and _Macbeth_ this scheme is employed with greatboldness. In _Hamlet_ the first appearance of the Ghost occurs at thefortieth line, and with such effect that Shakespeare can afford tointroduce at once a conversation which explains part of the state ofaffairs at Elsinore; and the second appearance, having again increasedthe tension, is followed by a long scene, which contains no action butintroduces almost all the _dramatis personae_ and adds the informationleft wanting. The opening of _Macbeth_ is even more remarkable, forthere is probably no parallel to its first scene, where the senses andimagination are assaulted by a storm of thunder and supernatural alarm. This scene is only eleven lines long, but its influence is so great thatthe next can safely be occupied with a mere report of Macbeth'sbattles,--a narrative which would have won much less attention if it hadopened the play. When Shakespeare begins his exposition thus he generally at first makespeople talk about the hero, but keeps the hero himself for some time outof sight, so that we await his entrance with curiosity, and sometimeswith anxiety. On the other hand, if the play opens with a quietconversation, this is usually brief, and then at once the hero entersand takes action of some decided kind. Nothing, for example, can be lesslike the beginning of _Macbeth_ than that of _King Lear_. The tone ispitched so low that the conversation between Kent, Gloster, and Edmundis written in prose. But at the thirty-fourth line it is broken off bythe entrance of Lear and his court, and without delay the King proceedsto his fatal division of the kingdom. This tragedy illustrates another practice of Shakespeare's. _King Lear_has a secondary plot, that which concerns Gloster and his two sons. Tomake the beginning of this plot quite clear, and to mark it off from themain action, Shakespeare gives it a separate exposition. The great sceneof the division of Britain and the rejection of Cordelia and Kent isfollowed by the second scene, in which Gloster and his two sons appearalone, and the beginning of Edmund's design is disclosed. In _Hamlet_,though the plot is single, there is a little group of characterspossessing a certain independent interest,--Polonius, his son, and hisdaughter; and so the third scene is devoted wholly to them. And again,in _Othello_, since Roderigo is to occupy a peculiar position almostthroughout the action, he is introduced at once, alone with Iago, andhis position is explained before the other characters are allowed toappear. But why should Iago open the play? Or, if this seems too presumptuous aquestion, let us put it in the form, What is the effect of his openingthe play? It is that we receive at the very outset a strong impressionof the force which is to prove fatal to the hero's happiness, so that,when we see the hero himself, the shadow of fate already rests upon him. And an effect of this kind is to be noticed in other tragedies. We aremade conscious at once of some power which is to influence the wholeaction to the hero's undoing. In _Macbeth_ we see and hear the Witches,in _Hamlet_ the Ghost. In the first scene of _Julius Caesar_ and of_Coriolanus_ those qualities of the crowd are vividly shown which renderhopeless the enterprise of the one hero and wreck the ambition of theother. It is the same with the hatred between the rival houses in _Romeoand Juliet_, and with Antony's infatuated passion. We realise them atthe end of the first page, and are almost ready to regard the hero asdoomed. Often, again, at one or more points during the exposition thisfeeling is reinforced by some expression that has an ominous effect. Thefirst words we hear from Macbeth, 'So foul and fair a day I have notseen,' echo, though he knows it not, the last words we heard from theWitches, 'Fair is foul, and foul is fair. ' Romeo, on his way with hisfriends to the banquet, where he is to see Juliet for the first time,tells Mercutio that he has had a dream. What the dream was we neverlearn, for Mercutio does not care to know, and breaks into his speechabout Queen Mab; but we can guess its nature from Romeo's last speech inthe scene: My mind misgives Some consequence yet hanging in the stars Shall bitterly begin his fearful date With this night's revels. When Brabantio, forced to acquiesce in his daughter's stolen marriage,turns, as he leaves the council-chamber, to Othello, with the warning, Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see; She has deceived her father, and may thee,this warning, and no less Othello's answer, 'My life upon her faith,'make our hearts sink. The whole of the coming story seems to beprefigured in Antony's muttered words (I. ii. 120): These strong Egyptian fetters I must break, Or lose myself in dotage;and, again, in Hamlet's weary sigh, following so soon on the passionateresolution stirred by the message of the Ghost: The time is out of joint. Oh cursed spite, That ever I was born to set it right. These words occur at a point (the end of the First Act) which may beheld to fall either within the exposition or beyond it. I should takethe former view, though such questions, as we saw at starting, canhardly be decided with certainty. The dimensions of this first sectionof a tragedy depend on a variety of causes, of which the chief seems tobe the comparative simplicity or complexity of the situation from whichthe conflict arises. Where this is simple the exposition is short, as in_Julius Caesar_ and _Macbeth_. Where it is complicated the expositionrequires more space, as in _Romeo and Juliet_, _Hamlet_, and _KingLear_. Its completion is generally marked in the mind of the reader by afeeling that the action it contains is for the moment complete but hasleft a problem. The lovers have met, but their families are at deadlyenmity; the hero seems at the height of success, but has admitted thethought of murdering his sovereign; the old king has divided his kingdombetween two hypocritical daughters, and has rejected his true child; thehero has acknowledged a sacred duty of revenge, but is weary of life:and we ask, What will come of this? Sometimes, I may add, a certain timeis supposed to elapse before the events which answer our question maketheir appearance and the conflict begins; in _King Lear_, for instance,about a fortnight; in _Hamlet_ about two months. 2We come now to the conflict itself. And here one or two preliminaryremarks are necessary. In the first place, it must be remembered thatour point of view in examining the construction of a play will notalways coincide with that which we occupy in thinking of its wholedramatic effect. For example, that struggle in the hero's soul whichsometimes accompanies the outward struggle is of the highest importancefor the total effect of a tragedy; but it is not always necessary ordesirable to consider it when the question is merely one ofconstruction. And this is natural. The play is meant primarily for thetheatre; and theatrically the outward conflict, with its influence onthe fortunes of the hero, is the aspect which first catches, if it doesnot engross, attention. For the average play-goer of every period themain interest of _Hamlet_ has probably lain in the vicissitudes of hislong duel with the King; and the question, one may almost say, has beenwhich will first kill the other. And so, from the point of view ofconstruction, the fact that Hamlet spares the King when he finds himpraying, is, from its effect on the hero's fortunes, of great moment;but the cause of the fact, which lies within Hamlet's character, is notso. In the second place we must be prepared to find that, as the plays varyso much, no single way of regarding the conflict will answer preciselyto the construction of all; that it sometimes appears possible to lookat the construction of a tragedy in two quite different ways, and thatit is material to find the best of the two; and that thus, in any giveninstance, it is necessary first to define the opposing sides in theconflict. I will give one or two examples. In some tragedies, as we sawin our first lecture, the opposing forces can, for practical purposes,be identified with opposing persons or groups. So it is in _Romeo andJuliet_ and _Macbeth_. But it is not always so. The love of Othello maybe said to contend with another force, as the love of Romeo does; butOthello cannot be said to contend with Iago as Romeo contends with therepresentatives of the hatred of the houses, or as Macbeth contends withMalcolm and Macduff. Again, in _Macbeth_ the hero, however muchinfluenced by others, supplies the main driving power of the action; butin _King Lear_ he does not. Possibly, therefore, the conflict, and withit the construction, may best be regarded from different points of viewin these two plays, in spite of the fact that the hero is the centralfigure in each. But if we do not observe this we shall attempt to findthe same scheme in both, and shall either be driven to some unnaturalview or to a sceptical despair of perceiving any principle ofconstruction at all. With these warnings, I turn to the question whether we can trace anydistinct method or methods by which Shakespeare represents the rise anddevelopment of the conflict. (1) One at least is obvious, and indeed it is followed not merely duringthe conflict but from beginning to end of the play. There are, ofcourse, in the action certain places where the tension in the minds ofthe audience becomes extreme. We shall consider these presently. But, inaddition, there is, all through the tragedy, a constant alternation ofrises and falls in this tension or in the emotional pitch of the work, aregular sequence of more exciting and less exciting sections. Some kindof variation of pitch is to be found, of course, in all drama, for itrests on the elementary facts that relief must be given after emotionalstrain, and that contrast is required to bring out the full force of aneffect. But a good drama of our own time shows nothing approaching tothe _regularity_ with which in the plays of Shakespeare and of hiscontemporaries the principle is applied. And the main cause of thisdifference lies simply in a change of theatrical arrangements. InShakespeare's theatre, as there was no scenery, scene followed scenewith scarcely any pause; and so the readiest, though not the only, wayto vary the emotional pitch was to interpose a whole scene where thetension was low between scenes where it was high. In our theatres thereis a great deal of scenery, which takes a long time to set and change;and therefore the number of scenes is small, and the variations oftension have to be provided within the scenes, and still more by thepauses between them. With Shakespeare there are, of course, in any longscene variations of tension, but the scenes are numerous and, comparedwith ours, usually short, and variety is given principally by theirdifference in pitch. It may further be observed that, in a portion of the play which isrelatively unexciting, the scenes of lower tension may be as long asthose of higher; while in a portion of the play which is speciallyexciting the scenes of low tension are shorter, often much shorter, thanthe others. The reader may verify this statement by comparing the Firstor the Fourth Act in most of the tragedies with the Third; for, speakingvery roughly, we may say that the First and Fourth are relatively quietacts, the Third highly critical. A good example is the Third Act of_King Lear_, where the scenes of high tension (ii. , iv. , vi. ) arerespectively 95, 186 and 122 lines in length, while those of low tension(i. , iii. , v. ) are respectively 55, 26 and 26 lines long. Scene vii. ,the last of the Act, is, I may add, a very exciting scene, though itfollows scene vi. , and therefore the tone of scene vi. is greatlylowered during its final thirty lines. (2) If we turn now from the differences of tension to the sequence ofevents within the conflict, we shall find the principle of alternationat work again in another and a quite independent way. Let us for thesake of brevity call the two sides in the conflict A and B. Now,usually, as we shall see presently, through a considerable part of theplay, perhaps the first half, the cause of A is, on the whole,advancing; and through the remaining part it is retiring, while that ofB advances in turn. But, underlying this broad movement, all through theconflict we shall find a regular alternation of smaller advances andretirals; first A seeming to win some ground, and then thecounter-action of B being shown. And since we always more or lessdecidedly prefer A to B or B to A, the result of this oscillatingmovement is a constant alternation of hope and fear, or rather of amixed state predominantly hopeful and a mixed state predominantlyapprehensive. An example will make the point clear. In _Hamlet_ theconflict begins with the hero's feigning to be insane fromdisappointment in love, and we are shown his immediate success inconvincing Polonius. Let us call this an advance of A. The next sceneshows the King's great uneasiness about Hamlet's melancholy, and hisscepticism as to Polonius's explanation of its cause: advance of B. Hamlet completely baffles Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who have beensent to discover his secret, and he arranges for the test of theplay-scene: advance of A. But immediately before the play-scene hissoliloquy on suicide fills us with misgiving; and his words to Ophelia,overheard, so convince the King that love is _not_ the cause of hisnephew's strange behaviour, that he determines to get rid of him bysending him to England: advance of B. The play-scene proves a completesuccess: decided advance of A. Directly after it Hamlet spares the Kingat prayer, and in an interview with his mother unwittingly killsPolonius, and so gives his enemy a perfect excuse for sending him away(to be executed): decided advance of B. I need not pursue theillustration further. This oscillating movement can be traced withoutdifficulty in any of the tragedies, though less distinctly in one or twoof the earliest. (3) Though this movement continues right up to the catastrophe, itseffect does not disguise that much broader effect to which I havealready alluded, and which we have now to study. In all the tragedies,though more clearly in some than in others, one side is distinctly feltto be on the whole advancing up to a certain point in the conflict, andthen to be on the whole declining before the reaction of the other. There is therefore felt to be a critical point in the action, whichproves also to be a turning point. It is critical sometimes in the sensethat, until it is reached, the conflict is not, so to speak, clenched;one of the two sets of forces might subside, or a reconciliation mightsomehow be effected; while, as soon as it is reached, we feel this canno longer be. It is critical also because the advancing force hasapparently asserted itself victoriously, gaining, if not all it couldwish, still a very substantial advantage; whereas really it is on thepoint of turning downward towards its fall. This Crisis, as a rule,comes somewhere near the middle of the play; and where it is well markedit has the effect, as to construction, of dividing the play into fiveparts instead of three; these parts showing (1) a situation not yet oneof conflict, (2) the rise and development of the conflict, in which A orB advances on the whole till it reaches (3) the Crisis, on which follows(4) the decline of A or B towards (5) the Catastrophe. And it will beseen that the fourth and fifth parts repeat, though with a reversal ofdirection as regards A or B, the movement of the second and third,working towards the catastrophe as the second and third worked towardsthe crisis. In developing, illustrating and qualifying this statement, it will bebest to begin with the tragedies in which the movement is most clear andsimple. These are _Julius Caesar_ and _Macbeth_. In the former thefortunes of the conspiracy rise with vicissitudes up to the crisis ofthe assassination (III. i. ); they then sink with vicissitudes to thecatastrophe, where Brutus and Cassius perish. In the latter, Macbeth,hurrying, in spite of much inward resistance, to the murder of Duncan,attains the crown, the upward movement being extraordinarily rapid, andthe crisis arriving early: his cause then turns slowly downward, andsoon hastens to ruin. In both these tragedies the simplicity of theconstructional effect, it should be noticed, depends in part on the factthat the contending forces may quite naturally be identified withcertain persons, and partly again on the fact that the defeat of oneside is the victory of the other. Octavius and Antony, Malcolm andMacduff, are left standing over the bodies of their foes. This is not so in _Romeo and Juliet_ and _Hamlet_, because here,although the hero perishes, the side opposed to him, being the morefaulty or evil, cannot be allowed to triumph when he falls. Otherwisethe type of construction is the same. The fortunes of Romeo and Julietrise and culminate in their marriage (II. vi. ), and then begin todecline before the opposition of their houses, which, aided byaccidents, produces a catastrophe, but is thereupon converted into aremorseful reconciliation. Hamlet's cause reaches its zenith in thesuccess of the play-scene (III. ii. ). Thereafter the reaction makes way,and he perishes through the plot of the King and Laertes. But they arenot allowed to survive their success. The construction in the remaining Roman plays follows the same plan, butin both plays (as in _Richard II. _ and _Richard III. _) it suffers fromthe intractable nature of the historical material, and is alsoinfluenced by other causes. In _Coriolanus_ the hero reaches the topmostpoint of success when he is named consul (II. iii. ), and the rest of theplay shows his decline and fall; but in this decline he attains againfor a time extraordinary power, and triumphs, in a sense, over hisoriginal adversary, though he succumbs to another. In _Antony andCleopatra_ the advance of the hero's cause depends on his freeinghimself from the heroine, and he appears to have succeeded when hebecomes reconciled to Octavius and marries Octavia (III. ii. ); but hereturns to Egypt and is gradually driven to his death, which involvesthat of the heroine. There remain two of the greatest of the tragedies, and in both of them acertain difficulty will be felt. _King Lear_ alone among these plays hasa distinct double action. Besides this, it is impossible, I think, fromthe point of view of construction, to regard the hero as the leadingfigure. If we attempt to do so, we must either find the crisis in theFirst Act (for after it Lear's course is downward), and this is absurd;or else we must say that the usual movement is present but its directionis reversed, the hero's cause first sinking to the lowest point (in theStorm-scenes) and then rising again. But this also will not do; forthough his fortunes may be said to rise again for a time, they rise onlyto fall once more to a catastrophe. The truth is, that after the FirstAct, which is really filled by the exposition, Lear suffers but hardlyinitiates action at all; and the right way to look at the matter, _fromthe point of view of construction_, is to regard Goneril, Regan andEdmund as the leading characters. It is they who, in the conflict,initiate action. Their fortune mounts to the crisis, where the old Kingis driven out into the storm and loses his reason, and where Gloster isblinded and expelled from his home (III. vi. and vii. ). Then thecounter-action begins to gather force, and their cause to decline; and,although they win the battle, they are involved in the catastrophe whichthey bring on Cordelia and Lear. Thus we may still find in _King Lear_the usual scheme of an ascending and a descending movement of one sidein the conflict. The case of _Othello_ is more peculiar. In its whole constructionaleffect _Othello_ differs from the other tragedies, and the cause of thisdifference is not hard to find, and will be mentioned presently. Buthow, after it is found, are we to define the principle of theconstruction? On the one hand the usual method seems to show itself. Othello's fortune certainly advances in the early part of the play, andit may be considered to reach its topmost point in the exquisite joy ofhis reunion with Desdemona in Cyprus; while soon afterwards it begins toturn, and then falls to the catastrophe. But the topmost point thuscomes very early (II. i. ), and, moreover, is but faintly marked; indeed,it is scarcely felt as a crisis at all. And, what is still moresignificant, though reached by conflict, it is not reached by conflictwith the force which afterwards destroys it. Iago, in the early scenes,is indeed shown to cherish a design against Othello, but it is not Iagoagainst whom he has at first to assert himself, but Brabantio; and Iagodoes not even begin to poison his mind until the third scene of theThird Act. Can we then, on the other hand, following the precedent of _King Lear_,and remembering the probable chronological juxtaposition of the twoplays, regard Iago as the leading figure from the point of view ofconstruction? This might at first seem the right view; for it is thecase that _Othello_ resembles _King Lear_ in having a hero more actedupon than acting, or rather a hero driven to act by being acted upon. But then, if Iago is taken as the leading figure, the usual mode ofconstruction is plainly abandoned, for there will nowhere be a crisisfollowed by a descending movement. Iago's cause advances, at firstslowly and quietly, then rapidly, but it does nothing but advance untilthe catastrophe swallows his dupe and him together. And this way ofregarding the action does positive violence, I think, to our naturalimpressions of the earlier part of the play. I think, therefore, that the usual scheme is so far followed that thedrama represents first the rise of the hero, and then his fall. But,however this question may be decided, one striking peculiarity remains,and is the cause of the unique effect of _Othello_. In the first half ofthe play the main conflict is merely incubating; then it bursts intolife, and goes storming, without intermission or change of direction, toits close. Now, in this peculiarity _Othello_ is quite unlike the othertragedies; and in the consequent effect, which is that the second halfof the drama is immeasurably more exciting than the first, it isapproached only by _Antony and Cleopatra_. I shall therefore reserve itfor separate consideration, though in proceeding to speak further ofShakespeare's treatment of the tragic conflict I shall have to mentionsome devices which are used in _Othello_ as well as in the othertragedies. 3Shakespeare's general plan, we have seen, is to show one set of forcesadvancing, in secret or open opposition to the other, to some decisivesuccess, and then driven downward to defeat by the reaction it provokes. And the advantages of this plan, as seen in such a typical instance as_Julius Caesar_, are manifest. It conveys the movement of the conflictto the mind with great clearness and force. It helps to produce theimpression that in his decline and fall the doer's act is returning onhis own head. And, finally, as used by Shakespeare, it makes the firsthalf of the play intensely interesting and dramatic. Action whicheffects a striking change in an existing situation is naturally watchedwith keen interest; and this we find in some of these tragedies. And thespectacle, which others exhibit, of a purpose forming itself and, inspite of outward obstacles and often of inward resistance, forcing itsway onward to a happy consummation or a terrible deed, not only givesscope to that psychological subtlety in which Shakespeare is scarcelyrivalled, but is also dramatic in the highest degree. But when the crisis has been reached there come difficulties anddangers, which, if we put Shakespeare for the moment out of mind, areeasily seen. An immediate and crushing counter-action would, no doubt,sustain the interest, but it would precipitate the catastrophe, andleave a feeling that there has been too long a preparation for a finaleffect so brief. What seems necessary is a momentary pause, followed bya counter-action which mounts at first slowly, and afterwards, as itgathers force, with quickening speed. And yet the result of thisarrangement, it would seem, must be, for a time, a decided slackening oftension. Nor is this the only difficulty. The persons who represent thecounter-action and now take the lead, are likely to be comparativelyunfamiliar, and therefore unwelcome, to the audience; and, even iffamiliar, they are almost sure to be at first, if not permanently, lessinteresting than those who figured in the ascending movement, and onwhom attention has been fixed. Possibly, too, their necessary prominencemay crowd the hero into the back-ground. Hence the point of danger inthis method of construction seems to lie in that section of the playwhich follows the crisis and has not yet approached the catastrophe. Andthis section will usually comprise the Fourth Act, together, in somecases, with a part of the Third and a part of the Fifth. Shakespeare was so masterly a playwright, and had so wonderful a powerof giving life to unpromising subjects, that to a large extent he wasable to surmount this difficulty. But illustrations of it are easily tobe found in his tragedies, and it is not always surmounted. In almostall of them we are conscious of that momentary pause in the action,though, as we shall see, it does not generally occur _immediately_ afterthe crisis. Sometimes he allows himself to be driven to keep the herooff the stage for a long time while the counter-action is rising;Macbeth, Hamlet and Coriolanus during about 450 lines, Lear for nearly500, Romeo for about 550 (it matters less here, because Juliet is quiteas important as Romeo). How can a drama in which this happens compete,in its latter part, with _Othello_? And again, how can deliberationsbetween Octavius, Antony and Lepidus, between Malcolm and Macduff,between the Capulets, between Laertes and the King, keep us at thepitch, I do not say of the crisis, but even of the action which led upto it? Good critics--writers who have criticised Shakespeare's dramasfrom within, instead of applying to them some standard ready-made bythemselves or derived from dramas and a theatre of quite other kindsthan his--have held that some of his greatest tragedies fall off in theFourth Act, and that one or two never wholly recover themselves. And Ibelieve most readers would find, if they examined their impressions,that to their minds _Julius Caesar_, _Hamlet_, _King Lear_ and _Macbeth_have all a tendency to 'drag' in this section of the play, and that thefirst and perhaps also the last of these four fail even in thecatastrophe to reach the height of the greatest scenes that havepreceded the Fourth Act. I will not ask how far these impressions arejustified. The difficulties in question will become clearer and willgain in interest if we look rather at the means which have been employedto meet them, and which certainly have in part, at least, overcome them. (_a_) The first of these is always strikingly effective, sometimesmarvellously so. The crisis in which the ascending force reaches itszenith is followed quickly, or even without the slightest pause, by areverse or counter-blow not less emphatic and in some cases even moreexciting. And the effect is to make us feel a sudden and tragic changein the direction of the movement, which, after ascending more or lessgradually, now turns sharply downward. To the assassination of Caesar(III. i. ) succeeds the scene in the Forum (III. ii. ), where Antonycarries the people away in a storm of sympathy with the dead man and offury against the conspirators. We have hardly realised their victorybefore we are forced to anticipate their ultimate defeat and to take theliveliest interest in their chief antagonist. In _Hamlet_ the thrillingsuccess of the play-scene (III. ii. ) is met and undone at once by thecounter-stroke of Hamlet's failure to take vengeance (III. iii. ) and hismisfortune in killing Polonius (III. iv. ). Coriolanus has no soonergained the consulship than he is excited to frenzy by the tribunes anddriven into exile. On the marriage of Romeo follows immediately thebrawl which leads to Mercutio's death and the banishment of the hero(II. vi. and III. i. ). In all of these instances excepting that of_Hamlet_ the scene of the counter-stroke is at least as exciting as thatof the crisis, perhaps more so. Most people, if asked to mention thescene that occupies the _centre_ of the action in _Julius Caesar_ and in_Coriolanus_, would mention the scenes of Antony's speech andCoriolanus' banishment. Thus that apparently necessary pause in theaction does not, in any of these dramas, come directly after the crisis. It is deferred; and in several cases it is by various devices deferredfor some little time; _e. g. _ in _Romeo and Juliet_ till the hero hasleft Verona, and Juliet is told that her marriage with Paris is to takeplace 'next Thursday morn' (end of Act III. ); in _Macbeth_ till themurder of Duncan has been followed by that of Banquo, and this by thebanquet-scene. Hence the point where this pause occurs is very rarelyreached before the end of the Third Act. (_b_) Either at this point, or in the scene of the counter-stroke whichprecedes it, we sometimes find a peculiar effect. We are reminded of thestate of affairs in which the conflict began. The opening of _JuliusCaesar_ warned us that, among a people so unstable and so easily ledthis way or that, the enterprise of Brutus is hopeless; the days of theRepublic are done. In the scene of Antony's speech we see this samepeople again. At the beginning of _Antony and Cleopatra_ the hero isabout to leave Cleopatra for Rome. Where the play takes, as it were, afresh start after the crisis, he leaves Octavia for Egypt. In _Hamlet_,when the counter-stroke succeeds to the crisis, the Ghost, who hadappeared in the opening scenes, reappears. Macbeth's action in the firstpart of the tragedy followed on the prediction of the Witches whopromised him the throne. When the action moves forward again after thebanquet-scene the Witches appear once more, and make those freshpromises which again drive him forward. This repetition of a firsteffect produces a fateful feeling. It generally also stimulatesexpectation as to the new movement about to begin. In _Macbeth_ thescene is, in addition, of the greatest consequence from the purelytheatrical point of view. (_c_) It has yet another function. It shows, in Macbeth's furiousirritability and purposeless savagery, the internal reaction whichaccompanies the outward decline of his fortunes. And in other plays alsothe exhibition of such inner changes forms a means by which interest issustained in this difficult section of a tragedy. There is no point in_Hamlet_ where we feel more hopeless than that where the hero, havingmissed his chance, moralises over his irresolution and determines tocherish now only thoughts of blood, and then departs without an effortfor England. One purpose, again, of the quarrel-scene between Brutus andCassius (IV. iii), as also of the appearance of Caesar's ghost justafterwards, is to indicate the inward changes. Otherwise theintroduction of this famous and wonderful scene can hardly be defendedon strictly dramatic grounds. No one would consent to part with it, andit is invaluable in sustaining interest during the progress of thereaction, but it is an episode, the removal of which would not affectthe actual sequence of events (unless we may hold that, but for theemotion caused by the quarrel and reconciliation, Cassius would not haveallowed Brutus to overcome his objection to the fatal policy of offeringbattle at Philippi). (_d_) The quarrel-scene illustrates yet another favourite expedient. Inthis section of a tragedy Shakespeare often appeals to an emotiondifferent from any of those excited in the first half of the play, andso provides novelty and generally also relief. As a rule this newemotion is pathetic; and the pathos is not terrible or lacerating, but,even if painful, is accompanied by the sense of beauty and by an outflowof admiration or affection, which come with an inexpressible sweetnessafter the tension of the crisis and the first counter-stroke. So it iswith the reconciliation of Brutus and Cassius, and the arrival of thenews of Portia's death. The most famous instance of this effect is thescene (IV. vii. ) where Lear wakes from sleep and finds Cordelia bendingover him, perhaps the most tear-compelling passage in literature. Another is the short scene (IV. ii. ) in which the talk of Lady Macduffand her little boy is interrupted by the entrance of the murderers, apassage of touching beauty and heroism. Another is the introduction ofOphelia in her madness (twice in different parts of IV. v. ), where theeffect, though intensely pathetic, is beautiful and moving rather thanharrowing; and this effect is repeated in a softer tone in thedescription of Ophelia's death (end of Act IV. ). And in _Othello_ thepassage where pathos of _this_ kind reaches its height is certainly thatwhere Desdemona and Emilia converse, and the willow-song is sung, on theeve of the catastrophe (IV. iii. ). (_e_) Sometimes, again, in this section of a tragedy we find humorous orsemi-humorous passages. On the whole such passages occur most frequentlyin the early or middle part of the play, which naturally grows moresombre as it nears the close; but their occasional introduction in theFourth Act, and even later, affords variety and relief, and alsoheightens by contrast the tragic feelings. For example, there is a touchof comedy in the conversation of Lady Macduff with her little boy. Purely and delightfully humorous are the talk and behaviour of theservants in that admirable scene where Coriolanus comes disguised inmean apparel to the house of Aufidius (IV. v. ); of a more mingled kindis the effect of the discussion between Menenius and the sentinels in V. ii. ; and in the very middle of the supreme scene between the hero,Volumnia and Virgilia, little Marcius makes us burst out laughing (V. iii. ) A little before the catastrophe in _Hamlet_ comes the grave-diggerpassage, a passage ever welcome, but of a length which could hardly bedefended on purely dramatic grounds; and still later, occupying somehundred and twenty lines of the very last scene, we have the chatter ofOsric with Hamlet's mockery of it. But the acme of audacity is reachedin _Antony and Cleopatra_, where, quite close to the end, the oldcountryman who brings the asps to Cleopatra discourses on the virtuesand vices of the worm, and where his last words, 'Yes, forsooth: I wishyou joy o' the worm,' are followed, without the intervention of a line,by the glorious speech, Give me my robe; put on my crown; I have Immortal longings in me. . . . In some of the instances of pathos or humour just mentioned we have beenbrought to that part of the play which immediately precedes, or evencontains, the catastrophe. And I will add at once three remarks whichrefer specially to this final section of a tragedy. (_f_) In several plays Shakespeare makes here an appeal which in his owntime was evidently powerful: he introduces scenes of battle. This is thecase in _Richard III. _, _Julius Caesar_, _King Lear_, _Macbeth_ and_Antony and Cleopatra_. Richard, Brutus and Cassius, and Macbeth die onthe battlefield. Even if his use of this expedient were not enough toshow that battle-scenes were extremely popular in the Elizabethantheatre, we know it from other sources. It is a curious comment on thefutility of our spectacular effects that in our theatre these scenes, inwhich we strive after an 'illusion' of which the Elizabethans neverdreamt, produce comparatively little excitement, and to many spectatorsare even somewhat distasteful. [22] And although some of them thrill theimagination of the reader, they rarely, I think, quite satisfy the_dramatic_ sense. Perhaps this is partly because a battle is not themost favourable place for the exhibition of tragic character; and it isworth notice that Brutus, Cassius and Antony do not die fighting, butcommit suicide after defeat. The actual battle, however, does make usfeel the greatness of Antony, and still more does it help us to regardRichard and Macbeth in their day of doom as heroes, and to minglesympathy and enthusiastic admiration with desire for their defeat. (_g_) In some of the tragedies, again, an expedient is used, whichFreytag has pointed out (though he sometimes finds it, I think, where itis not really employed). Shakespeare very rarely makes the least attemptto surprise by his catastrophes. They are felt to be inevitable, thoughthe precise way in which they will be brought about is not, of course,foreseen. Occasionally, however, where we dread the catastrophe becausewe love the hero, a moment occurs, just before it, in which a gleam offalse hope lights up the darkening scene; and, though we know it isfalse, it affects us. Far the most remarkable example is to be found inthe final Act of _King Lear_. Here the victory of Edgar and the deathsof Edmund and the two sisters have almost made us forget the design onthe lives of Lear and Cordelia. Even when we are reminded of it there isstill room for hope that Edgar, who rushes away to the prison, will bein time to save them; and, however familiar we are with the play, thesudden entrance of Lear, with Cordelia dead in his arms, comes on uswith a shock. Much slighter, but quite perceptible, is the effect ofAntony's victory on land, and of the last outburst of pride and joy ashe and Cleopatra meet (IV. viii. ). The frank apology of Hamlet toLaertes, their reconciliation, and a delusive appearance of quiet andeven confident firmness in the tone of the hero's conversation withHoratio, almost blind us to our better knowledge, and give to thecatastrophe an added pain. Those in the audience who are ignorant of_Macbeth_, and who take more simply than most readers now can do themysterious prophecies concerning Birnam Wood and the man not born ofwoman, feel, I imagine, just before the catastrophe, a false fear thatthe hero may yet escape. (_h_) I will mention only one point more. In some cases Shakespearespreads the catastrophe out, so to speak, over a considerable space, andthus shortens that difficult section which has to show the developmentof the counter-action. This is possible only where there is, besides thehero, some character who engages our interest in the highest degree, andwith whose fate his own is bound up. Thus the murder of Desdemona isseparated by some distance from the death of Othello. The mostimpressive scene in _Macbeth_, after that of Duncan's murder, is thesleep-walking scene; and it may truly, if not literally, be said to showthe catastrophe of Lady Macbeth. Yet it is the opening scene of theFifth Act, and a number of scenes in which Macbeth's fate is stillapproaching intervene before the close. Finally, in _Antony andCleopatra_ the heroine equals the hero in importance, and here the deathof Antony actually occurs in the Fourth Act, and the whole of the Fifthis devoted to Cleopatra. * * * * *Let us now turn to _Othello_ and consider briefly its exceptional schemeof construction. The advantage of this scheme is obvious. In the secondhalf of the tragedy there is no danger of 'dragging,' of any awkwardpause, any undue lowering of pitch, any need of scenes which, howeverfine, are more or less episodic. The tension is extreme, and it isrelaxed only for brief intervals to permit of some slight relief. Fromthe moment when Iago begins to poison Othello's mind we hold our breath. _Othello_ from this point onwards is certainly the most exciting ofShakespeare's plays, unless possibly _Macbeth_ in its first part may beheld to rival it. And _Othello_ is such a masterpiece that we arescarcely conscious of any disadvantage attending its method ofconstruction, and may even wonder why Shakespeare employed thismethod--at any rate in its purity--in this tragedy alone. Nor is it anyanswer to say that it would not elsewhere have suited his material. Evenif this be granted, how was it that he only once chose a story to whichthis method was appropriate? To his eyes, or for his instinct, theremust have been some disadvantage in it. And dangers in it are in factnot hard to see. In the first place, where the conflict develops very slowly, or, as in_Othello_, remains in a state of incubation during the first part of atragedy, that part cannot produce the tension proper to thecorresponding part of a tragedy like _Macbeth_, and may even run therisk of being somewhat flat. This seems obvious, and it is none the lesstrue because in _Othello_ the difficulty is overcome. We may even seethat in _Othello_ a difficulty was felt. The First Act is full of stir,but it is so because Shakespeare has filled it with a kind ofpreliminary conflict between the hero and Brabantio,--a personage whothen vanishes from the stage. The long first scene of the Second Act islargely occupied with mere conversations, artfully drawn out todimensions which can scarcely be considered essential to the plot. Theseexpedients are fully justified by their success, and nothing moreconsummate in their way is to be found in Shakespeare than Othello'sspeech to the Senate and Iago's two talks with Roderigo. But the factthat Shakespeare can make a plan succeed does not show that the plan is,abstractedly considered, a good plan; and if the scheme of constructionin _Othello_ were placed, in the shape of a mere outline, before aplay-wright ignorant of the actual drama, he would certainly, I believe,feel grave misgivings about the first half of the play. There is a second difficulty in the scheme. When the middle of thetragedy is reached, the audience is not what it was at the beginning. Ithas been attending for some time, and has been through a certain amountof agitation. The extreme tension which now arises may therefore easilytire and displease it, all the more if the matter which produces thetension is very painful, if the catastrophe is not less so, and if thelimits of the remainder of the play (not to speak of any otherconsideration) permit of very little relief. It is one thing to watchthe scene of Duncan's assassination at the beginning of the Second Act,and another thing to watch the murder of Desdemona at the beginning ofthe Fifth. If Shakespeare has wholly avoided this difficulty in_Othello_, it is by treating the first part of the play in such a mannerthat the sympathies excited are predominantly pleasant and therefore notexhausting. The scene in the Council Chamber, and the scene of thereunion at Cyprus, give almost unmixed happiness to the audience;however repulsive Iago may be, the humour of his gulling of Roderigo isagreeable; even the scene of Cassio's intoxication is not, on the whole,painful. Hence we come to the great temptation-scene, where the conflictemerges into life (III. iii. ), with nerves unshaken and feelings muchfresher than those with which we greet the banquet-scene in _Macbeth_(III. iv. ), or the first of the storm-scenes in _King Lear_ (III. i. ). The same skill may be observed in _Antony and Cleopatra_, where, as wesaw, the second half of the tragedy is the more exciting. But, again,the success due to Shakespeare's skill does not show that the scheme ofconstruction is free from a characteristic danger; and on the whole itwould appear to be best fitted for a plot which, though it may causepainful agitation as it nears the end, actually ends with a solutioninstead of a catastrophe. But for Shakespeare's scanty use of this method there may have been adeeper, though probably an unconscious, reason. The method suits a plotbased on intrigue. It may produce intense suspense. It may stir mostpowerfully the tragic feelings of pity and fear. And it throws intorelief that aspect of tragedy in which great or beautiful lives seemcaught in the net of fate. But it is apt to be less favourable to theexhibition of character, to show less clearly how an act returns uponthe agent, and to produce less strongly the impression of an inexorableorder working in the passions and actions of men, and labouring throughtheir agony and waste towards good. Now, it seems clear from histragedies that what appealed most to Shakespeare was this latter classof effects. I do not ask here whether _Othello_ fails to produce, in thesame degree as the other tragedies, these impressions; but Shakespeare'spreference for them may have been one reason why he habitually chose ascheme of construction which produces in the final Acts but little ofstrained suspense, and presents the catastrophe as a thing foreseen andfollowing with a psychological and moral necessity on the actionexhibited in the first part of the tragedy. 4The more minute details of construction cannot well be examined here,and I will not pursue the subject further. But its discussion suggests aquestion which will have occurred to some of my hearers. They may haveasked themselves whether I have not used the words 'art' and 'device'and 'expedient' and 'method' too boldly, as though Shakespeare were aconscious artist, and not rather a writer who constructed in obedienceto an extraordinary dramatic instinct, as he composed mainly byinspiration. And a brief explanation on this head will enable me toallude to a few more points, chiefly of construction, which are not tootechnical for a lecture. In speaking, for convenience, of devices and expedients, I did notintend to imply that Shakespeare always deliberately aimed at theeffects which he produced. But _no_ artist always does this, and I seeno reason to doubt that Shakespeare often did it, or to suppose that hismethod of constructing and composing differed, except in degree, fromthat of the most 'conscious' of artists. The antithesis of art andinspiration, though not meaningless, is often most misleading. Inspiration is surely not incompatible with considerate workmanship. |
Thetwo may be severed, but they need not be so, and where a genuinelypoetic result is being produced they cannot be so. The glow of a firstconception must in some measure survive or rekindle itself in the workof planning and executing; and what is called a technical expedient may'come' to a man with as sudden a glory as a splendid image. Verse may beeasy and unpremeditated, as Milton says his was, and yet many a word init may be changed many a time, and the last change be more 'inspired'than the original. The difference between poets in these matters is nodoubt considerable, and sometimes important, but it can only be adifference of less and more. It is probable that Shakespeare often wrotefluently, for Jonson (a better authority than Heminge and Condell) saysso; and for anything we can tell he may also have constructed withunusual readiness. But we know that he revised and re-wrote (forinstance in _Love's Labour's Lost_ and _Romeo and Juliet_ and _Hamlet_);it is almost impossible that he can have worked out the plots of hisbest plays without much reflection and many experiments; and it appearsto me scarcely more possible to mistake the signs of deliberate care insome of his famous speeches. If a 'conscious artist' means one who holdshis work away from him, scrutinises and judges it, and, if need be,alters it and alters it till it comes as near satisfying him as he canmake it, I am sure that Shakespeare frequently employed such consciousart. If it means, again, an artist who consciously aims at the effectshe produces, what ground have we for doubting that he frequentlyemployed such art, though probably less frequently than a good manyother poets? But perhaps the notion of a 'conscious artist' in drama is that of onewho studies the theory of the art, and even writes with an eye to its'rules. ' And we know it was long a favourite idea that Shakespeare wastotally ignorant of the 'rules. ' Yet this is quite incredible. Therules referred to, such as they were, were not buried in Aristotle'sGreek nor even hidden away in Italian treatises. He could find prettywell all of them in a book so current and famous as Sidney's _Defenceof Poetry_. Even if we suppose that he refused to open this book(which is most unlikely), how could he possibly remain ignorant of therules in a society of actors and dramatists and amateurs who must havebeen incessantly talking about plays and play-writing, and some ofwhom were ardent champions of the rules and full of contempt for thelawlessness of the popular drama? Who can doubt that at the MermaidShakespeare heard from Jonson's lips much more censure of his offencesagainst 'art' than Jonson ever confided to Drummond or to paper? Andis it not most probable that those battles between the two whichFuller imagines, were waged often on the field of dramatic criticism? If Shakespeare, then, broke some of the 'rules,' it was not fromignorance. Probably he refused, on grounds of art itself, to troublehimself with rules derived from forms of drama long extinct. And it isnot unlikely that he was little interested in theory as such, and morethan likely that he was impatient of pedantic distinctions between'pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical,tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable or poemunlimited. ' But that would not prove that he never reflected on hisart, or could not explain, if he cared to, what _he_ thought would begood general rules for the drama of his own time. He could give adviceabout play-acting. Why should we suppose that he could not give adviceabout play-making? Still Shakespeare, though in some considerable degree a 'conscious'artist, frequently sins against art; and if his sins were not due toignorance or inspiration, they must be accounted for otherwise. Neithercan there be much doubt about their causes (for they have more than onecause), as we shall see if we take some illustrations of the defectsthemselves. Among these are not to be reckoned certain things which in dramaswritten at the present time would rightly be counted defects. There are,for example, in most Elizabethan plays peculiarities of constructionwhich would injure a play written for our stage but were perfectlywell-fitted for that very different stage,--a stage on which again someof the best-constructed plays of our time would appear absurdly faulty. Or take the charge of improbability. Shakespeare certainly hasimprobabilities which are defects. They are most frequent in the windingup of his comedies (and how many comedies are there in the world whichend satisfactorily? ). But his improbabilities are rarely psychological,and in some of his plays there occurs one kind of improbability which isno defect, but simply a characteristic which has lost in our day much ofits former attraction. I mean that the story, in most of the comediesand many of the tragedies of the Elizabethans, was _intended_ to bestrange and wonderful. These plays were tales of romance dramatised, andthey were meant in part to satisfy the same love of wonder to which theromances appealed. It is no defect in the Arthurian legends, or the oldFrench romances, or many of the stories in the _Decameron_, that theyare improbable: it is a virtue. To criticise them as though they were ofthe same species as a realistic novel, is, we should all say, merelystupid. Is it anything else to criticise in the same way _Twelfth Night_or _As You Like It_? And so, even when the difference between comedy andtragedy is allowed for, the improbability of the opening of _King Lear_,so often censured, is no defect. It is not out of character, it is onlyextremely unusual and strange. But it was meant to be so; like themarriage of the black Othello with Desdemona, the Venetian senator'sdaughter. To come then to real defects, (_a_) one may be found in places whereShakespeare strings together a number of scenes, some very short, inwhich the _dramatis personae_ are frequently changed; as though anovelist were to tell his story in a succession of short chapters, inwhich he flitted from one group of his characters to another. Thismethod shows itself here and there in the pure tragedies (_e. g. _ in thelast Act of _Macbeth_), but it appears most decidedly where thehistorical material was undramatic, as in the middle part of _Antony andCleopatra_. It was made possible by the absence of scenery, anddoubtless Shakespeare used it because it was the easiest way out of adifficulty. But, considered abstractedly, it is a defective method, and,even as used by Shakespeare, it sometimes reminds us of the merelynarrative arrangement common in plays before his time. (_b_) We may take next the introduction or excessive development ofmatter neither required by the plot nor essential to the exhibition ofcharacter: _e. g. _ the references in _Hamlet_ to theatre-quarrels of theday, and the length of the player's speech and also of Hamlet'sdirections to him respecting the delivery of the lines to be inserted inthe 'Murder of Gonzago. ' All this was probably of great interest at thetime when _Hamlet_ was first presented; most of it we should be verysorry to miss; some of it seems to bring us close to Shakespearehimself; but who can defend it from the point of view of constructiveart? (_c_) Again, we may look at Shakespeare's soliloquies. It will be agreedthat in listening to a soliloquy we ought never to feel that we arebeing addressed. And in this respect, as in others, many of thesoliloquies are master-pieces. But certainly in some the purpose ofgiving information lies bare, and in one or two the actor openly speaksto the audience. Such faults are found chiefly in the early plays,though there is a glaring instance at the end of Belarius's speech in_Cymbeline_ (III. iii. 99 ff. ), and even in the mature tragediessomething of this kind may be traced. Let anyone compare, for example,Edmund's soliloquy in _King Lear_, I. ii. , 'This is the excellentfoppery of the world,' with Edgar's in II. iii. , and he will beconscious that in the latter the purpose of giving information isimperfectly disguised. [23](_d_) It cannot be denied, further, that in many of Shakespeare's plays,if not in all, there are inconsistencies and contradictions, and alsothat questions are suggested to the reader which it is impossible forhim to answer with certainty. For instance, some of the indications ofthe lapse of time between Othello's marriage and the events of the laterActs flatly contradict one another; and it is impossible to make outwhether Hamlet was at Court or at the University when his father wasmurdered. But it should be noticed that often what seems a defect ofthis latter kind is not really a defect. For instance, the difficultyabout Hamlet's age (even if it cannot be resolved by the text alone) didnot exist for Shakespeare's audience. The moment Burbage entered it musthave been clear whether the hero was twenty or thirty. And in likemanner many questions of dramatic interpretation which trouble us couldnever have arisen when the plays were first produced, for the actorwould be instructed by the author how to render any critical andpossibly ambiguous passage. (I have heard it remarked, and the remark Ibelieve is just, that Shakespeare seems to have relied on suchinstructions less than most of his contemporaries; one fact out ofseveral which might be adduced to prove that he did not regard his playsas mere stage-dramas of the moment. )(_e_) To turn to another field, the early critics were no doubt oftenprovokingly wrong when they censured the language of particular passagesin Shakespeare as obscure, inflated, tasteless, or 'pestered withmetaphors'; but they were surely right in the general statement that hislanguage often shows these faults. And this is a subject which latercriticism has never fairly faced and examined. (_f_) Once more, to say that Shakespeare makes all his seriouscharacters talk alike,[24] and that he constantly speaks through themouths of his _dramatis personae_ without regard to their individualnatures, would be to exaggerate absurdly; but it is true that in hisearlier plays these faults are traceable in some degree, and even in_Hamlet_ there are striking passages where dramatic appropriateness issacrificed to some other object. When Laertes speaks the linesbeginning, For nature, crescent, does not grow alone In thews and bulk,who can help feeling that Shakespeare is speaking rather than Laertes? Or when the player-king discourses for more than twenty lines on theinstability of human purpose, and when King Claudius afterwards insiststo Laertes on the same subject at almost equal length, who does not seethat Shakespeare, thinking but little of dramatic fitness, wishes inpart simply to write poetry, and partly to impress on the audiencethoughts which will help them to understand, not the player-king nor yetKing Claudius, but Hamlet himself, who, on his side,--and here quite incharacter--has already enlarged on the same topic in the most famous ofhis soliloquies? (_g_) Lastly, like nearly all the dramatists of his day and of timesmuch earlier, Shakespeare was fond of 'gnomic' passages, and introducesthem probably not more freely than his readers like, but more freelythan, I suppose, a good play-wright now would care to do. Thesepassages, it may be observed, are frequently rhymed (_e. g. _ _Othello_,I. iii. 201 ff. , II. i. 149 ff. ). Sometimes they were printed in earlyeditions with inverted commas round them, as are in the First QuartoPolonius's 'few precepts' to Laertes. If now we ask whence defects like these arose, we shall observe thatsome of them are shared by the majority of Shakespeare's contemporaries,and abound in the dramas immediately preceding his time. They arecharacteristics of an art still undeveloped, and, no doubt, were notperceived to be defects. But though it is quite probable that in regardto one or two kinds of imperfection (such as the superabundance of'gnomic' passages) Shakespeare himself erred thus ignorantly, it is veryunlikely that in most cases he did so, unless in the first years of hiscareer of authorship. And certainly he never can have thought itartistic to leave inconsistencies, obscurities, or passages of bombastin his work. Most of the defects in his writings must be due toindifference or want of care. I do not say that all were so. In regard, for example, to his occasionalbombast and other errors of diction, it seems hardly doubtful that hisperception was sometimes at fault, and that, though he used the Englishlanguage like no one else, he had not that _sureness_ of taste in wordswhich has been shown by some much smaller writers. And it seems notunlikely that here he suffered from his comparative want of'learning,'--that is, of familiarity with the great writers ofantiquity. But nine-tenths of his defects are not, I believe, the errorsof an inspired genius, ignorant of art, but the sins of a great butnegligent artist. He was often, no doubt, over-worked and pressed fortime. He knew that the immense majority of his audience were incapableof distinguishing between rough and finished work. He often felt thedegradation of having to live by pleasing them. Probably in hours ofdepression he was quite indifferent to fame, and perhaps in another moodthe whole business of play-writing seemed to him a little thing. None ofthese thoughts and feelings influenced him when his subject had caughthold of him. To imagine that _then_ he 'winged his roving flight' for'gain' or 'glory,' or wrote from any cause on earth but the necessity ofexpression, with all its pains and raptures, is mere folly. He waspossessed: his mind must have been in a white heat: he worked, no doubt,with the _furia_ of Michael Angelo. And if he did not succeed atonce--and how can even he have always done so? --he returned to thematter again and again. Such things as the scenes of Duncan's murder orOthello's temptation, such speeches as those of the Duke to Claudio andof Claudio to his sister about death, were not composed in an hour andtossed aside; and if they have defects, they have not what Shakespearethought defects. Nor is it possible that his astonishingly individualconceptions of character can have been struck out at a heat: prolongedand repeated thought must have gone to them. But of smallinconsistencies in the plot he was often quite careless. He seems tohave finished off some of his comedies with a hasty and evencontemptuous indifference, as if it mattered nothing how the people gotmarried, or even who married whom, so long as enough were marriedsomehow. And often, when he came to parts of his scheme that werenecessary but not interesting to him, he wrote with a slack hand, like acraftsman of genius who knows that his natural gift and acquired skillwill turn out something more than good enough for his audience: wroteprobably fluently but certainly negligently, sometimes only half sayingwhat he meant, and sometimes saying the opposite, and now and then, whenpassion was required, lapsing into bombast because he knew he mustheighten his style but would not take the trouble to inflame hisimagination. It may truly be said that what injures such passages is notinspiration, but the want of it. But, as they are mostly passages whereno poet could expect to be inspired, it is even more true to say thathere Shakespeare lacked the conscience of the artist who is determinedto make everything as good as he can. Such poets as Milton, Pope,Tennyson, habitually show this conscience. They left probably scarcelyanything that they felt they could improve. No one could dream of sayingthat of Shakespeare. Hence comes what is perhaps the chief difficulty in interpreting hisworks. Where his power or art is fully exerted it really does resemblethat of nature. It organises and vitalises its product from the centreoutward to the minutest markings on the surface, so that when you turnupon it the most searching light you can command, when you dissect itand apply to it the test of a microscope, still you find in it nothingformless, general or vague, but everywhere structure, character,individuality. In this his great things, which seem to come wheneverthey are wanted, have no companions in literature except the fewgreatest things in Dante; and it is a fatal error to allow hiscarelessness elsewhere to make one doubt whether here one is not seekingmore than can be found. It is very possible to look for subtlety in thewrong places in Shakespeare, but in the right places it is not possibleto find too much. But then this characteristic, which is one source ofhis endless attraction, is also a source of perplexity. For in thoseparts of his plays which show him neither in his most intense nor in hismost negligent mood, we are often unable to decide whether somethingthat seems inconsistent, indistinct, feeble, exaggerated, is really so,or whether it was definitely meant to be as it is, and has an intentionwhich we ought to be able to divine; whether, for example, we havebefore us some unusual trait in character, some abnormal movement ofmind, only surprising to us because we understand so very much less ofhuman nature than Shakespeare did, or whether he wanted to get his workdone and made a slip, or in using an old play adopted hastily somethingthat would not square with his own conception, or even refused totrouble himself with minutiae which we notice only because we study him,but which nobody ever notices in a stage performance. We know wellenough what Shakespeare is doing when at the end of _Measure forMeasure_ he marries Isabella to the Duke--and a scandalous proceeding itis; but who can ever feel sure that the doubts which vex him as to somenot unimportant points in _Hamlet_ are due to his own want of eyesightor to Shakespeare's want of care? FOOTNOTES:[Footnote 16: The famous critics of the Romantic Revival seem to havepaid very little attention to this subject. Mr. R. G. Moulton has writtenan interesting book on _Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist_ (1885). Inparts of my analysis I am much indebted to Gustav Freytag's _Technik desDramas_, a book which deserves to be much better known than it appearsto be to Englishmen interested in the drama. I may add, for the benefitof classical scholars, that Freytag has a chapter on Sophocles. Thereader of his book will easily distinguish, if he cares to, the placeswhere I follow Freytag, those where I differ from him, and those where Iwrite in independence of him. I may add that in speaking of constructionI have thought it best to assume in my hearers no previous knowledge ofthe subject; that I have not attempted to discuss how much of what issaid of Shakespeare would apply also to other dramatists; and that Ihave illustrated from the tragedies generally, not only from the chosenfour. ][Footnote 17: This word throughout the lecture bears the sense it hashere, which, of course, is not its usual dramatic sense. ][Footnote 18: In the same way a comedy will consist of three parts,showing the 'situation,' the 'complication' or 'entanglement,' and the_dénouement_ or 'solution. '][Footnote 19: It is possible, of course, to open the tragedy with theconflict already begun, but Shakespeare never does so. ][Footnote 20: When the subject comes from English history, andespecially when the play forms one of a series, some knowledge may beassumed. So in _Richard III. _ Even in _Richard II. _ not a littleknowledge seems to be assumed, and this fact points to the existence ofa popular play on the earlier part of Richard's reign. Such a playexists, though it is not clear that it is a genuine Elizabethan work. See the _Jahrbuch d. deutschen Sh. -gesellschaft_ for 1899. ][Footnote 21: This is one of several reasons why many people enjoyreading him, who, on the whole, dislike reading plays. A main cause ofthis very general dislike is that the reader has not a lively enoughimagination to carry him with pleasure through the exposition, though inthe theatre, where his imagination is helped, he would experience littledifficulty. ][Footnote 22: The end of _Richard III. _ is perhaps an exception. ][Footnote 23: I do not discuss the general question of the justificationof soliloquy, for it concerns not Shakespeare only, but practically alldramatists down to quite recent times. I will only remark that neithersoliloquy nor the use of verse can be condemned on the mere ground thatthey are 'unnatural. ' No dramatic language is 'natural'; _all_ dramaticlanguage is idealised. So that the question as to soliloquy must be oneas to the degree of idealisation and the balance of advantages anddisadvantages. (Since this lecture was written I have read some remarkson Shakespeare's soliloquies to much the same effect by E. Kilian in the_Jahrbuch d. deutschen Shakespeare-Gesellschaft_ for 1903. )][Footnote 24: If by this we mean that these characters all speak what isrecognisably Shakespeare's style, of course it is true; but it is noaccusation. Nor does it follow that they all speak alike; and in factthey are far from doing so. ]LECTURE IIISHAKESPEARE'S TRAGIC PERIOD--HAMLET1Before we come to-day to _Hamlet_, the first of our four tragedies, afew remarks must be made on their probable place in Shakespeare'sliterary career. But I shall say no more than seems necessary for ourrestricted purpose, and, therefore, for the most part shall merely bestating widely accepted results of investigation, without going into theevidence on which they rest. [25]Shakespeare's tragedies fall into two distinct groups, and these groupsare separated by a considerable interval. He wrote tragedy--pure, like_Romeo and Juliet_; historical, like _Richard III. _--in the early yearsof his career of authorship, when he was also writing such comedies as_Love's Labour's Lost_ and the _Midsummer-Night's Dream_. Then came atime, lasting some half-dozen years, during which he composed the mostmature and humorous of his English History plays (the plays withFalstaff in them), and the best of his romantic comedies (the plays withBeatrice and Jaques and Viola in them). There are no tragedies belongingto these half-dozen years, nor any dramas approaching tragedy. But now,from about 1601 to about 1608, comes tragedy after tragedy--_JuliusCaesar_, _Hamlet_, _Othello_, _King Lear_, _Timon of Athens_, _Macbeth_,_Antony and Cleopatra_ and _Coriolanus_; and their companions are playswhich cannot indeed be called tragedies, but certainly are not comediesin the same sense as _As You Like It_ or the _Tempest_. These sevenyears, accordingly, might, without much risk of misunderstanding, becalled Shakespeare's tragic period. [26] And after it he wrote no moretragedies, but chiefly romances more serious and less sunny than _As YouLike It_, but not much less serene. The existence of this distinct tragic period, of a time when thedramatist seems to have been occupied almost exclusively with deep andpainful problems, has naturally helped to suggest the idea that the'man' also, in these years of middle age, from thirty-seven toforty-four, was heavily burdened in spirit; that Shakespeare turned totragedy not merely for change, or because he felt it to be the greatestform of drama and felt himself equal to it, but also because the worldhad come to look dark and terrible to him; and even that the railings ofThersites and the maledictions of Timon express his own contempt andhatred for mankind. Discussion of this large and difficult subject,however, is not necessary to the dramatic appreciation of any of hisworks, and I shall say nothing of it here, but shall pass on at once todraw attention to certain stages and changes which may be observedwithin the tragic period. For this purpose too it is needless to raiseany question as to the respective chronological positions of _Othello_,_King Lear_ and _Macbeth_. What is important is also generally admitted:that _Julius Caesar_ and _Hamlet_ precede these plays, and that _Antonyand Cleopatra_ and _Coriolanus_ follow them. [27]If we consider the tragedies first on the side of their substance, wefind at once an obvious difference between the first two and theremainder. Both Brutus and Hamlet are highly intellectual by nature andreflective by habit. Both may even be called, in a popular sense,philosophic; Brutus may be called so in a stricter sense. Each, beingalso a 'good' man, shows accordingly, when placed in criticalcircumstances, a sensitive and almost painful anxiety to do right. Andthough they fail--of course in quite different ways--to dealsuccessfully with these circumstances, the failure in each case isconnected rather with their intellectual nature and reflective habitthan with any yielding to passion. Hence the name 'tragedy of thought,'which Schlegel gave to _Hamlet_, may be given also, as in effect it hasbeen by Professor Dowden, to _Julius Caesar_. The later heroes, on theother hand, Othello, Lear, Timon, Macbeth, Antony, Coriolanus, have, oneand all, passionate natures, and, speaking roughly, we may attribute thetragic failure in each of these cases to passion. Partly for thisreason, the later plays are wilder and stormier than the first two. Wesee a greater mass of human nature in commotion, and we seeShakespeare's own powers exhibited on a larger scale. Finally,examination would show that, in all these respects, the first tragedy,_Julius Caesar_, is further removed from the later type than is thesecond, _Hamlet_. These two earlier works are both distinguished from most of thesucceeding tragedies in another though a kindred respect. Moral evil isnot so intently scrutinised or so fully displayed in them. In _JuliusCaesar_, we may almost say, everybody means well. In _Hamlet_, though wehave a villain, he is a small one. The murder which gives rise to theaction lies outside the play, and the centre of attention within theplay lies in the hero's efforts to do his duty. It seems clear thatShakespeare's interest, since the early days when under Marlowe'sinfluence he wrote _Richard III. _, has not been directed to the moreextreme or terrible forms of evil. But in the tragedies that follow_Hamlet_ the presence of this interest is equally clear. In Iago, in the'bad' people of _King Lear_, even in Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, humannature assumes shapes which inspire not mere sadness or repulsion buthorror and dismay. If in _Timon_ no monstrous cruelty is done, we stillwatch ingratitude and selfishness so blank that they provoke a loathingwe never felt for Claudius; and in this play and _King Lear_ we canfancy that we hear at times the _saeva indignatio_, if not the despair,of Swift. This prevalence of abnormal or appalling forms of evil, sideby side with vehement passion, is another reason why the convulsiondepicted in these tragedies seems to come from a deeper source, and tobe vaster in extent, than the conflict in the two earlier plays. Andhere again _Julius Caesar_ is further removed than _Hamlet_ from_Othello_, _King Lear_, and _Macbeth_. But in regard to this second point of difference a reservation must bemade, on which I will speak a little more fully, because, unlike thematter hitherto touched on, its necessity seems hardly to have beenrecognised. _All_ of the later tragedies may be called tragedies ofpassion, but not all of them display these extreme forms of evil. Neither of the last two does so. Antony and Coriolanus are, from onepoint of view, victims of passion; but the passion that ruins Antonyalso exalts him, he touches the infinite in it; and the pride andself-will of Coriolanus, though terrible in bulk, are scarcely so inquality; there is nothing base in them, and the huge creature whom theydestroy is a noble, even a lovable, being. Nor does either of thesedramas, though the earlier depicts a corrupt civilisation, include evenamong the minor characters anyone who can be called villainous orhorrible. Consider, finally, the impression left on us at the close ofeach. It is remarkable that this impression, though very strong, canscarcely be called purely tragic; or, if we call it so, at least thefeeling of reconciliation which mingles with the obviously tragicemotions is here exceptionally well-marked. The death of Antony, it willbe remembered, comes before the opening of the Fifth Act. The death ofCleopatra, which closes the play, is greeted by the reader with sympathyand admiration, even with exultation at the thought that she has foiledOctavius; and these feelings are heightened by the deaths of Charmianand Iras, heroically faithful to their mistress, as Emilia was to hers. In _Coriolanus_ the feeling of reconciliation is even stronger. Thewhole interest towards the close has been concentrated on the questionwhether the hero will persist in his revengeful design of storming andburning his native city, or whether better feelings will at lastoverpower his resentment and pride. He stands on the edge of a crimebeside which, at least in outward dreadfulness, the slaughter of anindividual looks insignificant. And when, at the sound of his mother'svoice and the sight of his wife and child, nature asserts itself and hegives way, although we know he will lose his life, we care little forthat: he has saved his soul. Our relief, and our exultation in the powerof goodness, are so great that the actual catastrophe which follows andmingles sadness with these feelings leaves them but little diminished,and as we close the book we feel, it seems to me, more as we do at theclose of _Cymbeline_ than as we do at the close of _Othello_. In sayingthis I do not in the least mean to criticise _Coriolanus_. It is a muchnobler play as it stands than it would have been if Shakespeare had madethe hero persist, and we had seen him amid the flaming ruins of Rome,awaking suddenly to the enormity of his deed and taking vengeance onhimself; but that would surely have been an ending more strictly tragicthan the close of Shakespeare's play. Whether this close was simply dueto his unwillingness to contradict his historical authority on a pointof such magnitude we need not ask. In any case _Coriolanus_ is, in morethan an outward sense, the end of his tragic period. It marks thetransition to his latest works, in which the powers of repentance andforgiveness charm to rest the tempest raised by error and guilt. If we turn now from the substance of the tragedies to their style andversification, we find on the whole a corresponding difference betweenthe earlier and the later. The usual assignment of _Julius Caesar_, andeven of _Hamlet_, to the end of Shakespeare's Second Period--the periodof _Henry V. _--is based mainly, we saw, on considerations of form. Thegeneral style of the serious parts of the last plays from Englishhistory is one of full, noble and comparatively equable eloquence. The'honey-tongued' sweetness and beauty of Shakespeare's early writing, asseen in _Romeo and Juliet_ or the _Midsummer-Night's Dream_, remain; theease and lucidity remain; but there is an accession of force and weight. We find no great change from this style when we come to _JuliusCaesar_,[28] which may be taken to mark its culmination. At this pointin Shakespeare's literary development he reaches, if the phrase may bepardoned, a limited perfection. Neither thought on the one side, norexpression on the other, seems to have any tendency to outrun or contendwith its fellow. We receive an impression of easy mastery and completeharmony, but not so strong an impression of inner power bursting intoouter life. Shakespeare's style is perhaps nowhere else so free fromdefects, and yet almost every one of his subsequent plays containswriting which is greater. To speak familiarly, we feel in _JuliusCaesar_ that, although not even Shakespeare could better the style hehas chosen, he has not let himself go. In reading _Hamlet_ we have no such feeling, and in many parts (forthere is in the writing of _Hamlet_ an unusual variety[29]) we areconscious of a decided change. The style in these parts is more rapidand vehement, less equable and less simple; and there is a change of thesame kind in the versification. But on the whole the _type_ is the sameas in _Julius Caesar_, and the resemblance of the two plays is decidedlymore marked than the difference. If Hamlet's soliloquies, consideredsimply as compositions, show a great change from Jaques's speech, 'Allthe world's a stage,' and even from the soliloquies of Brutus, yet_Hamlet_ (for instance in the hero's interview with his mother) is like_Julius Caesar_, and unlike the later tragedies, in the fulness of itseloquence, and passages like the following belong quite definitely tothe style of the Second Period: _Mar. _ It faded on the crowing of the cock. Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated, The bird of dawning singeth all night long; And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad; The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike, No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm, So hallow'd and so gracious is the time. _Hor. _ So have I heard and do in part believe it. But, look, the morn, in russet mantle clad, Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastward hill. This bewitching music is heard again in Hamlet's farewell to Horatio: If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart, Absent thee from felicity awhile, And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain, To tell my story. But after _Hamlet_ this music is heard no more. It is followed by amusic vaster and deeper, but not the same. The changes observable in _Hamlet_ are afterwards, and gradually, sogreatly developed that Shakespeare's style and versification at lastbecome almost new things. It is extremely difficult to illustrate thisbriefly in a manner to which no just exception can be taken, for it isalmost impossible to find in two plays passages bearing a sufficientlyclose resemblance to one another in occasion and sentiment. But I willventure to put by the first of those quotations from _Hamlet_ this from_Macbeth_: _Dun. _ This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself Unto our gentle senses. _Ban. _ This guest of summer, The temple-haunting martlet, does approve, By his loved mansionry, that the heaven's breath Smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze, Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle; Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed, The air is delicate;and by the second quotation from _Hamlet_ this from _Antony andCleopatra_: The miserable change now at my end Lament nor sorrow at; but please your thoughts In feeding them with those my former fortunes Wherein I lived, the greatest prince o' the world, The noblest; and do now not basely die, Not cowardly put off my helmet to My countryman,--a Roman by a Roman Valiantly vanquish'd. Now my spirit is going; I can no more. It would be almost an impertinence to point out in detail how greatlythese two passages, and especially the second, differ in effect fromthose in _Hamlet_, written perhaps five or six years earlier. Theversification, by the time we reach _Antony and Cleopatra_, has assumeda new type; and although this change would appear comparatively slightin a typical passage from _Othello_ or even from _King Lear_, itsapproach through these plays to _Timon_ and _Macbeth_ can easily betraced. It is accompanied by a similar change in diction andconstruction. After _Hamlet_ the style, in the more emotional passages,is heightened. It becomes grander, sometimes wilder, sometimes moreswelling, even tumid. It is also more concentrated, rapid, varied, and,in construction, less regular, not seldom twisted or elliptical. It is,therefore, not so easy and lucid, and in the more ordinary dialogue itis sometimes involved and obscure, and from these and other causesdeficient in charm. [30] On the other hand, it is always full of life andmovement, and in great passages produces sudden, strange, electrifyingeffects which are rarely found in earlier plays, and not so often evenin _Hamlet_. The more pervading effect of beauty gives place to what mayalmost be called explosions of sublimity or pathos. There is room for differences of taste and preference as regards thestyle and versification of the end of Shakespeare's Second Period, andthose of the later tragedies and last romances. But readers who miss inthe latter the peculiar enchantment of the earlier will not deny thatthe changes in form are in entire harmony with the inward changes. Ifthey object to passages where, to exaggerate a little, the sense hasrather to be discerned beyond the words than found in them, and if theydo not wholly enjoy the movement of so typical a speech as this, Yes, like enough, high-battled Caesar will Unstate his happiness, and be staged to the show, Against a sworder! I see men's judgements are A parcel of their fortunes; and things outward Do draw the inward quality after them, To suffer all alike. That he should dream, Knowing all measures, the full Caesar will Answer his emptiness! Caesar, thou hast subdued His judgement too,they will admit that, in traversing the impatient throng of thoughts notalways completely embodied, their minds move through an astonishingvariety of ideas and experiences, and that a style less generally poeticthan that of _Hamlet_ is also a style more invariably dramatic. It maybe that, for the purposes of tragedy, the highest point was reachedduring the progress of these changes, in the most critical passages of_Othello_, _King Lear_ and _Macbeth_. [31]2Suppose you were to describe the plot of _Hamlet_ to a person quiteignorant of the play, and suppose you were careful to tell your hearernothing about Hamlet's character, what impression would your sketch makeon him? Would he not exclaim: 'What a sensational story! Why, here aresome eight violent deaths, not to speak of adultery, a ghost, a madwoman, and a fight in a grave! If I did not know that the play wasShakespeare's, I should have thought it must have been one of thoseearly tragedies of blood and horror from which he is said to haveredeemed the stage'? And would he not then go on to ask: 'But why in theworld did not Hamlet obey the Ghost at once, and so save seven of thoseeight lives? 'This exclamation and this question both show the same thing, that thewhole story turns upon the peculiar character of the hero. For withoutthis character the story would appear sensational and horrible; and yetthe actual _Hamlet_ is very far from being so, and even has a lessterrible effect than _Othello_, _King Lear_ or _Macbeth_. And again, ifwe had no knowledge of this character, the story would hardly beintelligible; it would at any rate at once suggest that wonderingquestion about the conduct of the hero; while the story of any of theother three tragedies would sound plain enough and would raise no suchquestion. It is further very probable that the main change made byShakespeare in the story as already represented on the stage, lay in anew conception of Hamlet's character and so of the cause of his delay. And, lastly, when we examine the tragedy, we observe two things whichillustrate the same point. First, we find by the side of the hero noother figure of tragic proportions, no one like Lady Macbeth or Iago, noone even like Cordelia or Desdemona; so that, in Hamlet's absence, theremaining characters could not yield a Shakespearean tragedy at all. And, secondly, we find among them two, Laertes and Fortinbras, who areevidently designed to throw the character of the hero into relief. Evenin the situations there is a curious parallelism; for Fortinbras, likeHamlet, is the son of a king, lately dead, and succeeded by his brother;and Laertes, like Hamlet, has a father slain, and feels bound to avengehim. And with this parallelism in situation there is a strong contrastin character; for both Fortinbras and Laertes possess in abundance thevery quality which the hero seems to lack, so that, as we read, we aretempted to exclaim that either of them would have accomplished Hamlet'stask in a day. Naturally, then, the tragedy of _Hamlet_ with Hamlet leftout has become the symbol of extreme absurdity; while the characteritself has probably exerted a greater fascination, and certainly hasbeen the subject of more discussion, than any other in the wholeliterature of the world. Before, however, we approach the task of examining it, it is as well toremind ourselves that the virtue of the play by no means wholly dependson this most subtle creation. We are all aware of this, and if we werenot so the history of _Hamlet_, as a stage-play, might bring the facthome to us. It is to-day the most popular of Shakespeare's tragedies onour stage; and yet a large number, perhaps even the majority of thespectators, though they may feel some mysterious attraction in the hero,certainly do not question themselves about his character or the cause ofhis delay, and would still find the play exceptionally effective, evenif he were an ordinary brave young man and the obstacles in his pathwere purely external. And this has probably always been the case. _Hamlet_ seems from the first to have been a favourite play; but untillate in the eighteenth century, I believe, scarcely a critic showed thathe perceived anything specially interesting in the character. Hanmer, in1730, to be sure, remarks that 'there appears no reason at all in naturewhy this young prince did not put the usurper to death as soon aspossible'; but it does not even cross his mind that this apparent'absurdity' is odd and might possibly be due to some design on the partof the poet. He simply explains the absurdity by observing that, ifShakespeare had made the young man go 'naturally to work,' the playwould have come to an end at once! Johnson, in like manner, notices that'Hamlet is, through the whole piece, rather an instrument than anagent,' but it does not occur to him that this peculiar circumstance canbe anything but a defect in Shakespeare's management of the plot. Seeing, they saw not. Henry Mackenzie, the author of _The Man ofFeeling_, was, it would seem, the first of our critics to feel the'indescribable charm' of Hamlet, and to divine something ofShakespeare's intention. 'We see a man,' he writes, 'who in othercircumstances would have exercised all the moral and social virtues,placed in a situation in which even the amiable qualities of his mindserve but to aggravate his distress and to perplex his conduct. '[32] Howsignificant is the fact (if it be the fact) that it was only when theslowly rising sun of Romance began to flush the sky that the wonder,beauty and pathos of this most marvellous of Shakespeare's creationsbegan to be visible! We do not know that they were perceived even in hisown day, and perhaps those are not wholly wrong who declare that thiscreation, so far from being a characteristic product of the time, was avision of the prophetic soul Of the wide world dreaming on things to come. But the dramatic splendour of the whole tragedy is another matter, andmust have been manifest not only in Shakespeare's day but even inHanmer's. It is indeed so obvious that I pass it by, and proceed at once to thecentral question of Hamlet's character. And I believe time will besaved, and a good deal of positive interpretation may be introduced, if,without examining in detail any one theory, we first distinguish classesor types of theory which appear to be in various ways and degreesinsufficient or mistaken. And we will confine our attention to sanetheories;--for on this subject, as on all questions relating toShakespeare, there are plenty of merely lunatic views: the view, forexample, that Hamlet, being a disguised woman in love with Horatio,could hardly help seeming unkind to Ophelia; or the view that, being avery clever and wicked young man who wanted to oust his innocent unclefrom the throne, he 'faked' the Ghost with this intent. But, before we come to our types of theory, it is necessary to touch onan idea, not unfrequently met with, which would make it vain labour todiscuss or propose any theory at all. It is sometimes said that Hamlet'scharacter is not only intricate but unintelligible. Now this statementmight mean something quite unobjectionable and even perhaps true andimportant. It might mean that the character cannot be _wholly_understood. As we saw, there may be questions which we cannot answerwith certainty now, because we have nothing but the text to guide us,but which never arose for the spectators who saw _Hamlet_ acted inShakespeare's day; and we shall have to refer to such questions in theselectures. Again, it may be held without any improbability that, fromcarelessness or because he was engaged on this play for several years,Shakespeare left inconsistencies in his exhibition of the characterwhich must prevent us from being certain of his ultimate meaning. Or,possibly, we may be baffled because he has illustrated in it certainstrange facts of human nature, which he had noticed but of which we areignorant. But then all this would apply in some measure to othercharacters in Shakespeare, and it is not this that is meant by thestatement that Hamlet is unintelligible. What is meant is thatShakespeare _intended_ him to be so, because he himself was feelingstrongly, and wished his audience to feel strongly, what a mystery lifeis, and how impossible it is for us to understand it. Now here, surely,we have mere confusion of mind. The mysteriousness of life is one thing,the psychological unintelligibility of a dramatic character is quiteanother; and the second does not show the first, it shows only theincapacity or folly of the dramatist. If it did show the first, it wouldbe very easy to surpass Shakespeare in producing a sense of mystery: weshould simply have to portray an absolutely nonsensical character. Ofcourse _Hamlet_ appeals powerfully to our sense of the mystery of life,but so does _every_ good tragedy; and it does so not because the hero isan enigma to us, but because, having a fair understanding of him, wefeel how strange it is that strength and weakness should be so mingledin one soul, and that this soul should be doomed to such misery andapparent failure. (1) To come, then, to our typical views, we may lay it down, first, thatno theory will hold water which finds the cause of Hamlet's delaymerely, or mainly, or even to any considerable extent, in externaldifficulties. Nothing is easier than to spin a plausible theory of thiskind. What, it may be asked,[33] was Hamlet to do when the Ghost hadleft him with its commission of vengeance? The King was surrounded notmerely by courtiers but by a Swiss body-guard: how was Hamlet to get athim? Was he then to accuse him publicly of the murder? If he did, whatwould happen? How would he prove the charge? All that he had to offer inproof was--a ghost-story! Others, to be sure, had seen the Ghost, but noone else had heard its revelations. Obviously, then, even if the courthad been honest, instead of subservient and corrupt, it would have votedHamlet mad, or worse, and would have shut him up out of harm's way. Hecould not see what to do, therefore, and so he waited. Then came theactors, and at once with admirable promptness he arranged for theplay-scene, hoping that the King would betray his guilt to the wholecourt. Unfortunately the King did not. It is true that immediatelyafterwards Hamlet got his chance; for he found the King defenceless onhis knees. But what Hamlet wanted was not a private revenge, to befollowed by his own imprisonment or execution; it was public justice. Sohe spared the King; and, as he unluckily killed Polonius justafterwards, he had to consent to be despatched to England. But, on thevoyage there, he discovered the King's commission, ordering the King ofEngland to put him immediately to death; and, with this in his pocket,he made his way back to Denmark. For now, he saw, the proof of theKing's attempt to murder him would procure belief also for the story ofthe murder of his father. His enemy, however, was too quick for him, andhis public arraignment of that enemy was prevented by his own death. A theory like this sounds very plausible--so long as you do not rememberthe text. But no unsophisticated mind, fresh from the reading of_Hamlet_, will accept it; and, as soon as we begin to probe it, fatalobjections arise in such numbers that I choose but a few, and indeed Ithink the first of them is enough. (_a_) From beginning to end of the play, Hamlet never makes theslightest reference to any external difficulty. How is it possible toexplain this fact in conformity with the theory? For what conceivablereason should Shakespeare conceal from us so carefully the key to theproblem? (_b_) Not only does Hamlet fail to allude to such difficulties, but healways assumes that he _can_ obey the Ghost,[34] and he once assertsthis in so many words ('Sith I have cause and will and strength andmeans To do't,' IV. iv. 45). (_c_) Again, why does Shakespeare exhibit Laertes quite easily raisingthe people against the King? Why but to show how much more easilyHamlet, whom the people loved, could have done the same thing, if thatwas the plan he preferred? (_d_) Again, Hamlet did _not_ plan the play-scene in the hope that theKing would betray his guilt to the court. He planned it, according tohis own account, in order to convince _himself_ by the King's agitationthat the Ghost had spoken the truth. This is perfectly clear from II. ii. 625 ff. and from III. ii. 80 ff. Some readers are misled by thewords in the latter passage: if his occulted guilt Do not itself unkennel in one speech, It is a damned ghost that we have seen. The meaning obviously is, as the context shows, 'if his hidden guilt donot betray itself _on occasion of_ one speech,' viz. , the 'dozen orsixteen lines' with which Hamlet has furnished the player, and of whichonly six are delivered, because the King does not merely show his guiltin his face (which was all Hamlet had hoped, III. ii. 90) butrushes from the room. It may be as well to add that, although Hamlet's own account of hisreason for arranging the play-scene may be questioned, it is impossibleto suppose that, if his real design had been to provoke an openconfession of guilt, he could have been unconscious of this design. (_e_) Again, Hamlet never once talks, or shows a sign of thinking, ofthe plan of bringing the King to public justice; he always talks ofusing his 'sword' or his 'arm. ' And this is so just as much after he hasreturned to Denmark with the commission in his pocket as it was beforethis event. When he has told Horatio the story of the voyage, he doesnot say, 'Now I can convict him': he says, 'Now am I not justified inusing this arm? 'This class of theory, then, we must simply reject. But it suggests tworemarks. It is of course quite probable that, when Hamlet was 'thinkingtoo precisely on the event,' he was considering, among other things, thequestion how he could avenge his father without sacrificing his own lifeor freedom. And assuredly, also, he was anxious that his act ofvengeance should not be misconstrued, and would never have been contentto leave a 'wounded name' behind him. His dying words prove that. (2) Assuming, now, that Hamlet's main difficulty--almost the whole ofhis difficulty--was internal, I pass to views which, acknowledging this,are still unsatisfactory because they isolate one element in hischaracter and situation and treat it as the whole. According to the first of these typical views, Hamlet was restrained byconscience or a moral scruple; he could not satisfy himself that it wasright to avenge his father. This idea, like the first, can easily be made to look very plausible ifwe vaguely imagine the circumstances without attending to the text. Butattention to the text is fatal to it. For, on the one hand, scarcelyanything can be produced in support of it, and, on the other hand, agreat deal can be produced in its disproof. To take the latter pointfirst, Hamlet, it is impossible to deny, habitually assumes, without anyquestioning, that he _ought_ to avenge his father. Even when he doubts,or thinks that he doubts, the honesty of the Ghost, he expresses nodoubt as to what his duty will be if the Ghost turns out honest: 'If hebut blench I know my course. ' In the two soliloquies where he reviewshis position (II. ii. , 'O what a rogue and peasant slave am I,'and IV. iv. , 'How all occasions do inform against me') hereproaches himself bitterly for the neglect of his duty. When hereflects on the possible causes of this neglect he never mentions amongthem a moral scruple. When the Ghost appears in the Queen's chamber heconfesses, conscience-stricken, that, lapsed in time and passion, he haslet go by the acting of its command; but he does not plead that hisconscience stood in his way. The Ghost itself says that it comes to whethis 'almost blunted purpose'; and conscience may unsettle a purpose butdoes not blunt it. What natural explanation of all this can be given onthe conscience theory? And now what can be set against this evidence? One solitary passage. [35]Quite late, after Hamlet has narrated to Horatio the events of hisvoyage, he asks him (V. ii. 63): Does it not, thinks't thee, stand me now upon-- He that hath kill'd my king and whored my mother, Popp'd in between the election and my hopes, Thrown out his angle for my proper life, And with such cozenage--is't not perfect conscience To quit him with this arm? and is't not to be damn'd To let this canker of our nature come In further evil? Here, certainly, is a question of conscience in the usual present senseof the word; and, it may be said, does not this show that all alongHamlet really has been deterred by moral scruples? But I ask first how,in that case, the facts just adduced are to be explained: for they mustbe explained, not ignored. Next, let the reader observe that even ifthis passage did show that _one_ hindrance to Hamlet's action was hisconscience, it by no means follows that this was the sole or the chiefhindrance. And, thirdly, let him observe, and let him ask himselfwhether the coincidence is a mere accident, that Hamlet is here almostrepeating the words he used in vain self-reproach some time before(IV. iv. 56): How stand I then, That have a father kill'd, a mother stain'd, Excitements of my reason and my blood, And let all sleep? Is it not clear that he is speculating just as vainly now, and that thisquestion of conscience is but one of his many unconscious excuses fordelay? And, lastly, is it not so that Horatio takes it? He declines todiscuss that unreal question, and answers simply, It must be shortly known to him from England What is the issue of the business there. In other words, 'Enough of this endless procrastination. What is wantedis not reasons for the deed, but the deed itself. ' What can be moresignificant? Perhaps, however, it may be answered: 'Your explanation of this passagemay be correct, and the facts you have mentioned do seem to be fatal tothe theory of conscience in its usual form. But there is another andsubtler theory of conscience. According to it, Hamlet, so far as hisexplicit consciousness went, was sure that he ought to obey the Ghost;but in the depths of his nature, and unknown to himself, there was amoral repulsion to the deed. The conventional moral ideas of his time,which he shared with the Ghost, told him plainly that he ought to avengehis father; but a deeper conscience in him, which was in advance of histime, contended with these explicit conventional ideas. It is becausethis deeper conscience remains below the surface that he fails torecognise it, and fancies he is hindered by cowardice or sloth orpassion or what not; but it emerges into light in that speech toHoratio. And it is just because he has this nobler moral nature in himthat we admire and love him. 'Now I at once admit not only that this view is much more attractive andmore truly tragic than the ordinary conscience theory, but that it hasmore verisimilitude. But I feel no doubt that it does not answer toShakespeare's meaning, and I will simply mention, out of many objectionsto it, three which seem to be fatal. (_a_) If it answers toShakespeare's meaning, why in the world did he conceal that meaninguntil the last Act? The facts adduced above seem to show beyond questionthat, on the hypothesis, he did so. That he did so is surely next doorto incredible. In any case, it certainly requires an explanation, andcertainly has not received one. (_b_) Let us test the theory byreference to a single important passage, that where Hamlet finds theKing at prayer and spares him. The reason Hamlet gives himself forsparing the King is that, if he kills him now, he will send him toheaven, whereas he desires to send him to hell. Now, this reason may bean unconscious excuse, but is it believable that, if the real reason hadbeen the stirrings of his deeper conscience, _that_ could have maskeditself in the form of a desire to send his enemy's soul to hell? Is notthe idea quite ludicrous? (_c_) The theory requires us to suppose that,when the Ghost enjoins Hamlet to avenge the murder of his father, it islaying on him a duty which _we_ are to understand to be no duty but thevery reverse. And is not that supposition wholly contrary to the naturalimpression which we all receive in reading the play? Surely it is clearthat, whatever we in the twentieth century may think about Hamlet'sduty, we are meant in the play to assume that he _ought_ to have obeyedthe Ghost. The conscience theory, then, in either of its forms we must reject. Butit may remind us of points worth noting. In the first place, it iscertainly true that Hamlet, in spite of some appearances to thecontrary, was, as Goethe said, of a most moral nature, and had a greatanxiety to do right. In this anxiety he resembles Brutus, and it isstronger in him than in any of the later heroes. And, secondly, it ishighly probable that in his interminable broodings the kind of paralysiswith which he was stricken masked itself in the shape of conscientiousscruples as well as in many other shapes. And, finally, in his shrinkingfrom the deed there was probably, together with much else, somethingwhich may be called a moral, though not a conscientious, repulsion: Imean a repugnance to the idea of falling suddenly on a man who could notdefend himself. This, so far as we can see, was the only plan thatHamlet ever contemplated. There is no positive evidence in the play thathe regarded it with the aversion that any brave and honourable man, onemust suppose, would feel for it; but, as Hamlet certainly was brave andhonourable, we may presume that he did so. (3) We come next to what may be called the sentimental view of Hamlet, aview common both among his worshippers and among his defamers. Its germmay perhaps be found in an unfortunate phrase of Goethe's (who of courseis not responsible for the whole view): 'a lovely, pure and most moralnature, _without the strength of nerve which forms a hero_, sinksbeneath a burden which it cannot bear and must not cast away. ' When thisidea is isolated, developed and popularised, we get the picture of agraceful youth, sweet and sensitive, full of delicate sympathies andyearning aspirations, shrinking from the touch of everything gross andearthly; but frail and weak, a kind of Werther, with a face likeShelley's and a voice like Mr. Tree's. And then we ask in tender pity,how could such a man perform the terrible duty laid on him? How, indeed! And what a foolish Ghost even to suggest such a duty! Butthis conception, though not without its basis in certain beautifultraits of Hamlet's nature, is utterly untrue. It is too kind to Hamleton one side, and it is quite unjust to him on another. The 'conscience'theory at any rate leaves Hamlet a great nature which you can admire andeven revere. But for the 'sentimental' Hamlet you can feel only pity notunmingled with contempt. Whatever else he is, he is no _hero_. But consider the text. This shrinking, flower-like youth--how could hepossibly have done what we _see_ Hamlet do? What likeness to him isthere in the Hamlet who, summoned by the Ghost, bursts from histerrified friends with the cry: Unhand me, gentlemen! By heaven, I'll make a ghost of him that lets me;the Hamlet who scarcely once speaks to the King without an insult, or toPolonius without a gibe; the Hamlet who storms at Ophelia and speaksdaggers to his mother; the Hamlet who, hearing a cry behind the arras,whips out his sword in an instant and runs the eavesdropper through; theHamlet who sends his 'school-fellows' to their death and never troubleshis head about them more; the Hamlet who is the first man to board apirate ship, and who fights with Laertes in the grave; the Hamlet of thecatastrophe, an omnipotent fate, before whom all the court standshelpless, who, as the truth breaks upon him, rushes on the King, driveshis foil right through his body,[36] then seizes the poisoned cup andforces it violently between the wretched man's lips, and in the throesof death has force and fire enough to wrest the cup from Horatio's hand('By heaven, I'll have it! ') lest he should drink and die? This man, theHamlet of the play, is a heroic, terrible figure. He would have beenformidable to Othello or Macbeth. If the sentimental Hamlet had crossedhim, he would have hurled him from his path with one sweep of his arm. This view, then, or any view that approaches it, is grossly unjust toHamlet, and turns tragedy into mere pathos. But, on the other side, itis too kind to him. It ignores the hardness and cynicism which wereindeed no part of his nature, but yet, in this crisis of his life, areindubitably present and painfully marked. His sternness, itself left outof sight by this theory, is no defect; but he is much more than stern. Polonius possibly deserved nothing better than the words addressed tohis corpse: Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell! I took thee for thy better: take thy fortune: Thou find'st to be too busy is some danger;yet this was Ophelia's father, and, whatever he deserved, it pains us,for Hamlet's own sake, to hear the words: This man shall set me packing: I'll lug the guts into the neighbour room. There is the same insensibility in Hamlet's language about the fate ofRosencrantz and Guildenstern; and, observe, their deaths were not in theleast required by his purpose. Grant, again, that his cruelty to Opheliawas partly due to misunderstanding, partly forced on him, partlyfeigned; still one surely cannot altogether so account for it, and stillless can one so account for the disgusting and insulting grossness ofhis language to her in the play-scene. I know this is said to be merelyan example of the custom of Shakespeare's time. But it is not so. It issuch language as you will find addressed to a woman by no other hero ofShakespeare's, not even in that dreadful scene where Othello accusesDesdemona. It is a great mistake to ignore these things, or to try tosoften the impression which they naturally make on one. That thisembitterment, callousness, grossness, brutality, should be induced on asoul so pure and noble is profoundly tragic; and Shakespeare's businesswas to show this tragedy, not to paint an ideally beautiful soulunstained and undisturbed by the evil of the world and the anguish ofconscious failure. [37](4) There remains, finally, that class of view which may be named afterSchlegel and Coleridge. According to this, _Hamlet_ is the tragedy ofreflection. The cause of the hero's delay is irresolution; and the causeof this irresolution is excess of the reflective or speculative habit ofmind. He has a general intention to obey the Ghost, but 'the native hueof resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought. ' He is'thought-sick. ' 'The whole,' says Schlegel, 'is intended to show how acalculating consideration which aims at exhausting, so far as humanforesight can, all the relations and possible consequences of a deed,cripples[38] the power of acting. . . . Hamlet is a hypocrite towardshimself; his far-fetched scruples are often mere pretexts to cover hiswant of determination. . . . He has no firm belief in himself or inanything else. . . . He loses himself in labyrinths of thought. ' SoColeridge finds in Hamlet 'an almost enormous intellectual activity anda proportionate aversion to real action consequent upon it' (theaversion, that is to say, is consequent on the activity). ProfessorDowden objects to this view, very justly, that it neglects the emotionalside of Hamlet's character, 'which is quite as important as theintellectual'; but, with this supplement, he appears on the whole toadopt it. Hamlet, he says, 'loses a sense of fact because with him eachobject and event transforms and expands itself into an idea. . . . Hecannot steadily keep alive within himself a sense of the importance ofany positive, limited thing,--a deed, for example. |
' And Professor Dowdenexplains this condition by reference to Hamlet's life. 'When the playopens he has reached the age of thirty years . . . and he has receivedculture of every kind except the culture of active life. During thereign of the strong-willed elder Hamlet there was no call to action forhis meditative son. He has slipped on into years of full manhood still ahaunter of the university, a student of philosophies, an amateur in art,a ponderer on the things of life and death, who has never formed aresolution or executed a deed' (_Shakspere, his Mind and Art_, 4th ed. ,pp. 132, 133). On the whole, the Schlegel-Coleridge theory (with or without ProfessorDowden's modification and amplification) is the most widely receivedview of Hamlet's character. And with it we come at last into closecontact with the text of the play. It not only answers, in somefundamental respects, to the general impression produced by the drama,but it can be supported by Hamlet's own words in his soliloquies--suchwords, for example, as those about the native hue of resolution, orthose about the craven scruple of thinking too precisely on the event. It is confirmed, also, by the contrast between Hamlet on the one sideand Laertes and Fortinbras on the other; and, further, by the occurrenceof those words of the King to Laertes (IV. vii. 119 f. ), which,if they are not in character, are all the more important as showing whatwas in Shakespeare's mind at the time: that we would do We should do when we would; for this 'would' changes, And hath abatements and delays as many As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents; And then this 'should' is like a spendthrift sigh That hurts by easing. And, lastly, even if the view itself does not suffice, the _description_given by its adherents of Hamlet's state of mind, as we see him in thelast four Acts, is, on the whole and so far as it goes, a truedescription. The energy of resolve is dissipated in an endless broodingon the deed required. When he acts, his action does not proceed fromthis deliberation and analysis, but is sudden and impulsive, evoked byan emergency in which he has no time to think. And most of the reasonshe assigns for his procrastination are evidently not the true reasons,but unconscious excuses. Nevertheless this theory fails to satisfy. And it fails not merely inthis or that detail, but as a whole. We feel that its Hamlet does notfully answer to our imaginative impression. He is not nearly soinadequate to this impression as the sentimental Hamlet, but still wefeel he is inferior to Shakespeare's man and does him wrong. And when wecome to examine the theory we find that it is partial and leaves muchunexplained. I pass that by for the present, for we shall see, Ibelieve, that the theory is also positively misleading, and that in amost important way. And of this I proceed to speak. Hamlet's irresolution, or his aversion to real action, is, according tothe theory, the _direct_ result of 'an almost enormous intellectualactivity' in the way of 'a calculating consideration which attempts toexhaust all the relations and possible consequences of a deed. ' And thisagain proceeds from an original one-sidedness of nature, strengthened byhabit, and, perhaps, by years of speculative inaction. The theorydescribes, therefore, a man in certain respects like Coleridge himself,on one side a man of genius, on the other side, the side of will,deplorably weak, always procrastinating and avoiding unpleasant duties,and often reproaching himself in vain; a man, observe, who at _any_ timeand in _any_ circumstances would be unequal to the task assigned toHamlet. And thus, I must maintain, it degrades Hamlet and travesties theplay. For Hamlet, according to all the indications in the text, was notnaturally or normally such a man, but rather, I venture to affirm, a manwho at any _other_ time and in any _other_ circumstances than thosepresented would have been perfectly equal to his task; and it is, infact, the very cruelty of his fate that the crisis of his life comes onhim at the one moment when he cannot meet it, and when his highestgifts, instead of helping him, conspire to paralyse him. This aspect ofthe tragedy the theory quite misses; and it does so because itmisconceives the cause of that irresolution which, on the whole, ittruly describes. For the cause was not directly or mainly an habitualexcess of reflectiveness. The direct cause was a state of mind quiteabnormal and induced by special circumstances,--a state of profoundmelancholy. Now, Hamlet's reflectiveness doubtless played a certain partin the _production_ of that melancholy, and was thus one indirectcontributory cause of his irresolution. And, again, the melancholy, onceestablished, displayed, as one of its _symptoms_, an excessivereflection on the required deed. But excess of reflection was not, asthe theory makes it, the _direct_ cause of the irresolution at all; norwas it the _only_ indirect cause; and in the Hamlet of the last fourActs it is to be considered rather a symptom of his state than a causeof it. These assertions may be too brief to be at once clear, but I hope theywill presently become so. 3Let us first ask ourselves what we can gather from the play, immediatelyor by inference, concerning Hamlet as he was just before his father'sdeath. And I begin by observing that the text does not bear out the ideathat he was one-sidedly reflective and indisposed to action. Nobody whoknew him seems to have noticed this weakness. Nobody regards him as amere scholar who has 'never formed a resolution or executed a deed. ' Ina court which certainly would not much admire such a person he is theobserved of all observers. Though he has been disappointed of the throneeveryone shows him respect; and he is the favourite of the people, whoare not given to worship philosophers. Fortinbras, a sufficientlypractical man, considered that he was likely, had he been put on, tohave proved most royally. He has Hamlet borne by four captains 'like asoldier' to his grave; and Ophelia says that Hamlet _was_ a soldier. Ifhe was fond of acting, an aesthetic pursuit, he was equally fond offencing, an athletic one: he practised it assiduously even in his worstdays. [39] So far as we can conjecture from what we see of him in thosebad days, he must normally have been charmingly frank, courteous andkindly to everyone, of whatever rank, whom he liked or respected, but byno means timid or deferential to others; indeed, one would gather thathe was rather the reverse, and also that he was apt to be decided andeven imperious if thwarted or interfered with. He must always have beenfearless,--in the play he appears insensible to fear of any ordinarykind. And, finally, he must have been quick and impetuous in action; forit is downright impossible that the man we see rushing after the Ghost,killing Polonius, dealing with the King's commission on the ship,boarding the pirate, leaping into the grave, executing his finalvengeance, could _ever_ have been shrinking or slow in an emergency. Imagine Coleridge doing any of these things! If we consider all this, how can we accept the notion that Hamlet's wasa weak and one-sided character? 'Oh, but he spent ten or twelve years ata University! ' Well, even if he did, it is possible to do that withoutbecoming the victim of excessive thought. But the statement that he didrests upon a most insecure foundation. [40]Where then are we to look for the seeds of danger? (1) Trying to reconstruct from the Hamlet of the play, one would notjudge that his temperament was melancholy in the present sense of theword; there seems nothing to show that; but one would judge that bytemperament he was inclined to nervous instability, to rapid andperhaps extreme changes of feeling and mood, and that he was disposed tobe, for the time, absorbed in the feeling or mood that possessed him,whether it were joyous or depressed. This temperament the Elizabethanswould have called melancholic; and Hamlet seems to be an example of it,as Lear is of a temperament mixedly choleric and sanguine. And thedoctrine of temperaments was so familiar in Shakespeare's time--asBurton, and earlier prose-writers, and many of the dramatists show--thatShakespeare may quite well have given this temperament to Hamletconsciously and deliberately. Of melancholy in its developed form, ahabit, not a mere temperament, he often speaks. He more than once laughsat the passing and half-fictitious melancholy of youth and love; in DonJohn in _Much Ado_ he had sketched the sour and surly melancholy ofdiscontent; in Jaques a whimsical self-pleasing melancholy; in Antonioin the _Merchant of Venice_ a quiet but deep melancholy, for whichneither the victim nor his friends can assign any cause. [41] He gives toHamlet a temperament which would not develop into melancholy unlessunder some exceptional strain, but which still involved a danger. In theplay we see the danger realised, and find a melancholy quite unlike anythat Shakespeare had as yet depicted, because the temperament of Hamletis quite different. (2) Next, we cannot be mistaken in attributing to the Hamlet of earlierdays an exquisite sensibility, to which we may give the name 'moral,' ifthat word is taken in the wide meaning it ought to bear. This, thoughit suffers cruelly in later days, as we saw in criticising thesentimental view of Hamlet, never deserts him; it makes all hiscynicism, grossness and hardness appear to us morbidities, and has aninexpressibly attractive and pathetic effect. He had the soul of theyouthful poet as Shelley and Tennyson have described it, an unboundeddelight and faith in everything good and beautiful. We know this fromhimself. The world for him was _herrlich wie am ersten Tag_--'thisgoodly frame the earth, this most excellent canopy the air, this braveo'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire. 'And not nature only: 'What a piece of work is a man! how noble inreason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express andadmirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! 'This is no commonplace to Hamlet; it is the language of a heart thrilledwith wonder and swelling into ecstasy. Doubtless it was with the same eager enthusiasm he turned to thosearound him. Where else in Shakespeare is there anything like Hamlet'sadoration of his father? The words melt into music whenever he speaks ofhim. And, if there are no signs of any such feeling towards his mother,though many signs of love, it is characteristic that he evidently neverentertained a suspicion of anything unworthy in her,--characteristic,and significant of his tendency to see only what is good unless he isforced to see the reverse. For we find this tendency elsewhere, and findit going so far that we must call it a disposition to idealise, to seesomething better than what is there, or at least to ignore deficiencies. He says to Laertes, 'I loved you ever,' and he describes Laertes as a'very noble youth,' which he was far from being. In his first greetingof Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, where his old self revives, we tracethe same affectionateness and readiness to take men at their best. Hislove for Ophelia, too, which seems strange to some, is surely the mostnatural thing in the world. He saw her innocence, simplicity andsweetness, and it was like him to ask no more; and it is noticeable thatHoratio, though entirely worthy of his friendship, is, like Ophelia,intellectually not remarkable. To the very end, however clouded, thisgenerous disposition, this 'free and open nature,' this unsuspiciousnesssurvive. They cost him his life; for the King knew them, and was surethat he was too 'generous and free from all contriving' to 'peruse thefoils. ' To the very end, his soul, however sick and tortured it may be,answers instantaneously when good and evil are presented to it, lovingthe one and hating the other. He is called a sceptic who has no firmbelief in anything, but he is never sceptical about _them_. And the negative side of his idealism, the aversion to evil, is perhapseven more developed in the hero of the tragedy than in the Hamlet ofearlier days. It is intensely characteristic. Nothing, I believe, is tobe found elsewhere in Shakespeare (unless in the rage of thedisillusioned idealist Timon) of quite the same kind as Hamlet's disgustat his uncle's drunkenness, his loathing of his mother's sensuality, hisastonishment and horror at her shallowness, his contempt for everythingpretentious or false, his indifference to everything merely external. This last characteristic appears in his choice of the friend of hisheart, and in a certain impatience of distinctions of rank or wealth. When Horatio calls his father 'a goodly king,' he answers, surely withan emphasis on 'man,' He was a man, take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again. He will not listen to talk of Horatio being his 'servant. ' When theothers speak of their 'duty' to him, he answers, 'Your love, as mine toyou. ' He speaks to the actor precisely as he does to an honest courtier. He is not in the least a revolutionary, but still, in effect, a king anda beggar are all one to him. He cares for nothing but human worth, andhis pitilessness towards Polonius and Osric and his 'school-fellows' isnot wholly due to morbidity, but belongs in part to his originalcharacter. Now, in Hamlet's moral sensibility there undoubtedly lay a danger. Anygreat shock that life might inflict on it would be felt with extremeintensity. Such a shock might even produce tragic results. And, in fact,_Hamlet_ deserves the title 'tragedy of moral idealism' quite as much asthe title 'tragedy of reflection. '(3) With this temperament and this sensibility we find, lastly, in theHamlet of earlier days, as of later, intellectual genius. It is chieflythis that makes him so different from all those about him, good and badalike, and hardly less different from most of Shakespeare's otherheroes. And this, though on the whole the most important trait in hisnature, is also so obvious and so famous that I need not dwell on it atlength. But against one prevalent misconception I must say a word ofwarning. Hamlet's intellectual power is not a specific gift, like agenius for music or mathematics or philosophy. It shows itself,fitfully, in the affairs of life as unusual quickness of perception,great agility in shifting the mental attitude, a striking rapidity andfertility in resource; so that, when his natural belief in others doesnot make him unwary, Hamlet easily sees through them and masters them,and no one can be much less like the typical helpless dreamer. It showsitself in conversation chiefly in the form of wit or humour; and, alikein conversation and in soliloquy, it shows itself in the form ofimagination quite as much as in that of thought in the stricter sense. Further, where it takes the latter shape, as it very often does, it isnot philosophic in the technical meaning of the word. There is reallynothing in the play to show that Hamlet ever was 'a student ofphilosophies,' unless it be the famous lines which, comically enough,exhibit this supposed victim of philosophy as its critic: There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. [42]His philosophy, if the word is to be used, was, like Shakespeare's own,the immediate product of the wondering and meditating mind; and suchthoughts as that celebrated one, 'There is nothing either good or badbut thinking makes it so,' surely needed no special training to producethem. Or does Portia's remark, 'Nothing is good without respect,'_i. e. _, out of relation, prove that she had studied metaphysics? Still Hamlet had speculative genius without being a philosopher, just ashe had imaginative genius without being a poet. Doubtless in happierdays he was a close and constant observer of men and manners, noting hisresults in those tables which he afterwards snatched from his breast tomake in wild irony his last note of all, that one may smile and smileand be a villain. Again and again we remark that passion forgeneralisation which so occupied him, for instance, in reflectionssuggested by the King's drunkenness that he quite forgot what it was hewas waiting to meet upon the battlements. Doubtless, too, he was alwaysconsidering things, as Horatio thought, too curiously. There was anecessity in his soul driving him to penetrate below the surface and toquestion what others took for granted. That fixed habitual look whichthe world wears for most men did not exist for him. He was for everunmaking his world and rebuilding it in thought, dissolving what toothers were solid facts, and discovering what to others were old truths. There were no old truths for Hamlet. It is for Horatio a thing of coursethat there's a divinity that shapes our ends, but for Hamlet it is adiscovery hardly won. And throughout this kingdom of the mind, where hefelt that man, who in action is only like an angel, is in apprehensionlike a god, he moved (we must imagine) more than content, so that evenin his dark days he declares he could be bounded in a nutshell and yetcount himself a king of infinite space, were it not that he had baddreams. If now we ask whether any special danger lurked _here_, how shall weanswer? We must answer, it seems to me, 'Some danger, no doubt, but,granted the ordinary chances of life, not much. ' For, in the firstplace, that idea which so many critics quietly take for granted--theidea that the gift and the habit of meditative and speculative thoughttend to produce irresolution in the affairs of life--would be found byno means easy to verify. Can you verify it, for example, in the lives ofthe philosophers, or again in the lives of men whom you have personallyknown to be addicted to such speculation? I cannot. Of course,individual peculiarities being set apart, absorption in _any_intellectual interest, together with withdrawal from affairs, may make aman slow and unskilful in affairs; and doubtless, individualpeculiarities being again set apart, a mere student is likely to be moreat a loss in a sudden and great practical emergency than a soldier or alawyer. But in all this there is no difference between a physicist, ahistorian, and a philosopher; and again, slowness, want of skill, andeven helplessness are something totally different from the peculiar kindof irresolution that Hamlet shows. The notion that speculative thinkingspecially tends to produce _this_ is really a mere illusion. In the second place, even if this notion were true, it has appeared thatHamlet did _not_ live the life of a mere student, much less of a meredreamer, and that his nature was by no means simply or even one-sidedlyintellectual, but was healthily active. Hence, granted the ordinarychances of life, there would seem to be no great danger in hisintellectual tendency and his habit of speculation; and I would gofurther and say that there was nothing in them, taken alone, to unfithim even for the extraordinary call that was made upon him. In fact, ifthe message of the Ghost had come to him within a week of his father'sdeath, I see no reason to doubt that he would have acted on it asdecisively as Othello himself, though probably after a longer and moreanxious deliberation. And therefore the Schlegel-Coleridge view (apartfrom its descriptive value) seems to me fatally untrue, for it impliesthat Hamlet's procrastination was the normal response of anover-speculative nature confronted with a difficult practical problem. On the other hand, under conditions of a peculiar kind, Hamlet'sreflectiveness certainly might prove dangerous to him, and his geniusmight even (to exaggerate a little) become his doom. Suppose thatviolent shock to his moral being of which I spoke; and suppose thatunder this shock, any possible action being denied to him, he began tosink into melancholy; then, no doubt, his imaginative and generalisinghabit of mind might extend the effects of this shock through his wholebeing and mental world. And if, the state of melancholy being thusdeepened and fixed, a sudden demand for difficult and decisive action ina matter connected with the melancholy arose, this state might well havefor one of its symptoms an endless and futile mental dissection of therequired deed. And, finally, the futility of this process, and the shameof his delay, would further weaken him and enslave him to his melancholystill more. Thus the speculative habit would be _one_ indirect cause ofthe morbid state which hindered action; and it would also reappear in adegenerate form as one of the _symptoms_ of this morbid state. * * * * *Now this is what actually happens in the play. Turn to the first wordsHamlet utters when he is alone; turn, that is to say, to the place wherethe author is likely to indicate his meaning most plainly. What do youhear? O, that this too too solid flesh would melt, Thaw and resolve itself into a dew! Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God! How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable, Seem to me all the uses of this world! Fie on't! ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden, That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature Possess it merely. Here are a sickness of life, and even a longing for death, so intensethat nothing stands between Hamlet and suicide except religious awe. Andwhat has caused them? The rest of the soliloquy so thrusts the answerupon us that it might seem impossible to miss it. It was not hisfather's death; that doubtless brought deep grief, but mere grief forsome one loved and lost does not make a noble spirit loathe the world asa place full only of things rank and gross. It was not the vaguesuspicion that we know Hamlet felt. Still less was it the loss of thecrown; for though the subserviency of the electors might well disgusthim, there is not a reference to the subject in the soliloquy, nor anysign elsewhere that it greatly occupied his mind. It was the moral shockof the sudden ghastly disclosure of his mother's true nature, falling onhim when his heart was aching with love, and his body doubtless wasweakened by sorrow. And it is essential, however disagreeable, torealise the nature of this shock. It matters little here whetherHamlet's age was twenty or thirty: in either case his mother was amatron of mature years. All his life he had believed in her, we may besure, as such a son would. He had seen her not merely devoted to hisfather, but hanging on him like a newly-wedded bride, hanging on him As if increase of appetite had grown By what it fed on. He had seen her following his body 'like Niobe, all tears. ' And thenwithin a month--'O God! a beast would have mourned longer'--she marriedagain, and married Hamlet's uncle, a man utterly contemptible andloathsome in his eyes; married him in what to Hamlet was incestuouswedlock;[43] married him not for any reason of state, nor even out ofold family affection, but in such a way that her son was forced to seein her action not only an astounding shallowness of feeling but aneruption of coarse sensuality, 'rank and gross,'[44] speeding post-hasteto its horrible delight. Is it possible to conceive an experience moredesolating to a man such as we have seen Hamlet to be; and is its resultanything but perfectly natural? It brings bewildered horror, thenloathing, then despair of human nature. His whole mind is poisoned. Hecan never see Ophelia in the same light again: she is a woman, and hismother is a woman: if she mentions the word 'brief' to him, the answerdrops from his lips like venom, 'as woman's love. ' The last words of thesoliloquy, which is _wholly_ concerned with this subject, are, But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue! He can do nothing. He must lock in his heart, not any suspicion of hisuncle that moves obscurely there, but that horror and loathing; and ifhis heart ever found relief, it was when those feelings, mingled withthe love that never died out in him, poured themselves forth in a floodas he stood in his mother's chamber beside his father'smarriage-bed. [45]If we still wonder, and ask why the effect of this shock should be sotremendous, let us observe that _now_ the conditions have arisen underwhich Hamlet's highest endowments, his moral sensibility and his genius,become his enemies. A nature morally blunter would have felt even sodreadful a revelation less keenly. A slower and more limited andpositive mind might not have extended so widely through its world thedisgust and disbelief that have entered it. But Hamlet has theimagination which, for evil as well as good, feels and sees all thingsin one. Thought is the element of his life, and his thought isinfected. He cannot prevent himself from probing and lacerating thewound in his soul. One idea, full of peril, holds him fast, and he criesout in agony at it, but is impotent to free himself ('Must I remember? ''Let me not think on't'). And when, with the fading of his passion, thevividness of this idea abates, it does so only to leave behind aboundless weariness and a sick longing for death. And this is the time which his fate chooses. In this hour of uttermostweakness, this sinking of his whole being towards annihilation, therecomes on him, bursting the bounds of the natural world with a shock ofastonishment and terror, the revelation of his mother's adultery and hisfather's murder, and, with this, the demand on him, in the name ofeverything dearest and most sacred, to arise and act. And for a moment,though his brain reels and totters,[46] his soul leaps up in passion toanswer this demand. But it comes too late. It does but strike home thelast rivet in the melancholy which holds him bound. The time is out of joint! O cursed spite That ever I was born to set it right,--so he mutters within an hour of the moment when he vowed to give hislife to the duty of revenge; and the rest of the story exhibits his vainefforts to fulfil this duty, his unconscious self-excuses and unavailingself-reproaches, and the tragic results of his delay. 4'Melancholy,' I said, not dejection, nor yet insanity. That Hamlet wasnot far from insanity is very probable. His adoption of the pretence ofmadness may well have been due in part to fear of the reality; to aninstinct of self-preservation, a fore-feeling that the pretence wouldenable him to give some utterance to the load that pressed on his heartand brain, and a fear that he would be unable altogether to repress suchutterance. And if the pathologist calls his state melancholia, and evenproceeds to determine its species, I see nothing to object to in that; Iam grateful to him for emphasising the fact that Hamlet's melancholy wasno mere common depression of spirits; and I have no doubt that manyreaders of the play would understand it better if they read an accountof melancholia in a work on mental diseases. If we like to use the word'disease' loosely, Hamlet's condition may truly be called diseased. Noexertion of will could have dispelled it. Even if he had been able atonce to do the bidding of the Ghost he would doubtless have stillremained for some time under the cloud. It would be absurdly unjust tocall _Hamlet_ a study of melancholy, but it contains such a study. But this melancholy is something very different from insanity, inanything like the usual meaning of that word. No doubt it might developinto insanity. The longing for death might become an irresistibleimpulse to self-destruction; the disorder of feeling and will mightextend to sense and intellect; delusions might arise; and the man mightbecome, as we say, incapable and irresponsible. But Hamlet's melancholyis some way from this condition. It is a totally different thing fromthe madness which he feigns; and he never, when alone or in company withHoratio alone, exhibits the signs of that madness. Nor is the dramaticuse of this melancholy, again, open to the objections which would justlybe made to the portrayal of an insanity which brought the hero to atragic end. The man who suffers as Hamlet suffers--and thousands goabout their business suffering thus in greater or less degree--isconsidered irresponsible neither by other people nor by himself: he isonly too keenly conscious of his responsibility. He is therefore, sofar, quite capable of being a tragic agent, which an insane person, atany rate according to Shakespeare's practice, is not. [47] And, finally,Hamlet's state is not one which a healthy mind is unable sufficiently toimagine. It is probably not further from average experience, nor moredifficult to realise, than the great tragic passions of Othello, Antonyor Macbeth. Let me try to show now, briefly, how much this melancholy accounts for. It accounts for the main fact, Hamlet's inaction. For the _immediate_cause of that is simply that his habitual feeling is one of disgust atlife and everything in it, himself included,--a disgust which varies inintensity, rising at times into a longing for death, sinking often intoweary apathy, but is never dispelled for more than brief intervals. Sucha state of feeling is inevitably adverse to _any_ kind of decidedaction; the body is inert, the mind indifferent or worse; its responseis, 'it does not matter,' 'it is not worth while,' 'it is no good. ' Andthe action required of Hamlet is very exceptional. It is violent,dangerous, difficult to accomplish perfectly, on one side repulsive to aman of honour and sensitive feeling, on another side involved in acertain mystery (here come in thus, in their subordinate place, variouscauses of inaction assigned by various theories). These obstacles wouldnot suffice to prevent Hamlet from acting, if his state were normal; andagainst them there operate, even in his morbid state, healthy andpositive feelings, love of his father, loathing of his uncle, desire ofrevenge, desire to do duty. But the retarding motives acquire anunnatural strength because they have an ally in something far strongerthan themselves, the melancholic disgust and apathy; while the healthymotives, emerging with difficulty from the central mass of diseasedfeeling, rapidly sink back into it and 'lose the name of action. ' We_see_ them doing so; and sometimes the process is quite simple, noanalytical reflection on the deed intervening between the outburst ofpassion and the relapse into melancholy. [48] But this melancholy isperfectly consistent also with that incessant dissection of the taskassigned, of which the Schlegel-Coleridge theory makes so much. Forthose endless questions (as we may imagine them), 'Was I deceived by theGhost? How am I to do the deed? When? Where? What will be theconsequence of attempting it--success, my death, utter misunderstanding,mere mischief to the State? Can it be right to do it, or noble to kill adefenceless man? What is the good of doing it in such a world asthis? '--all this, and whatever else passed in a sickening round throughHamlet's mind, was not the healthy and right deliberation of a man withsuch a task, but otiose thinking hardly deserving the name of thought,an unconscious weaving of pretexts for inaction, aimless tossings on asick bed, symptoms of melancholy which only increased it by deepeningself-contempt. Again, (_a_) this state accounts for Hamlet's energy as well as for hislassitude, those quick decided actions of his being the outcome of anature normally far from passive, now suddenly stimulated, and producinghealthy impulses which work themselves out before they have time tosubside. (_b_) It accounts for the evidently keen satisfaction whichsome of these actions give to him. He arranges the play-scene withlively interest, and exults in its success, not really because it bringshim nearer to his goal, but partly because it has hurt his enemy andpartly because it has demonstrated his own skill (III. ii. 286-304). He looks forward almost with glee to countermining the King'sdesigns in sending him away (III. iv. 209), and looks back withobvious satisfaction, even with pride, to the address and vigour hedisplayed on the voyage (V. ii. 1-55). These were not _the_action on which his morbid self-feeling had centred; he feels in themhis old force, and escapes in them from his disgust. (_c_) It accountsfor the pleasure with which he meets old acquaintances, like his'school-fellows' or the actors. The former observed (and we can observe)in him a 'kind of joy' at first, though it is followed by 'much forcingof his disposition' as he attempts to keep this joy and his courtesyalive in spite of the misery which so soon returns upon him and thesuspicion he is forced to feel. (_d_) It accounts no less for thepainful features of his character as seen in the play, his almost savageirritability on the one hand, and on the other his self-absorption, hiscallousness, his insensibility to the fates of those whom he despises,and to the feelings even of those whom he loves. These are frequentsymptoms of such melancholy, and (_e_) they sometimes alternate, as theydo in Hamlet, with bursts of transitory, almost hysterical, and quitefruitless emotion. It is to these last (of which a part of thesoliloquy, 'O what a rogue,' gives a good example) that Hamlet alludeswhen, to the Ghost, he speaks of himself as 'lapsed in _passion_,' andit is doubtless partly his conscious weakness in regard to them thatinspires his praise of Horatio as a man who is not 'passion'sslave. '[49]Finally, Hamlet's melancholy accounts for two things which seem to beexplained by nothing else. The first of these is his apathy or'lethargy. ' We are bound to consider the evidence which the textsupplies of this, though it is usual to ignore it. When Hamlet mentions,as one possible cause of his inaction, his 'thinking too precisely onthe event,' he mentions another, 'bestial oblivion'; and the thingagainst which he inveighs in the greater part of that soliloquy(IV. iv. ) is not the excess or the misuse of reason (which forhim here and always is god-like), but this _bestial_ oblivion or'_dullness_,' this 'letting all _sleep_,' this allowing of heaven-sentreason to 'fust unused': What is a man, If his chief good and market of his time Be but to _sleep_ and feed? a _beast_, no more. [50]So, in the soliloquy in II. ii. he accuses himself of being 'a_dull_ and muddy-mettled rascal,' who 'peaks [mopes] like John-a-dreams,unpregnant of his cause,' dully indifferent to his cause. [51] So, whenthe Ghost appears to him the second time, he accuses himself of beingtardy and lapsed in _time_; and the Ghost speaks of his purpose beingalmost _blunted_, and bids him not to _forget_ (cf. 'oblivion'). And so,what is emphasised in those undramatic but significant speeches of theplayer-king and of Claudius is the mere dying away of purpose or oflove. [52] Surely what all this points to is not a condition of excessivebut useless mental activity (indeed there is, in reality, curiouslylittle about that in the text), but rather one of dull, apathetic,brooding gloom, in which Hamlet, so far from analysing his duty, is notthinking of it at all, but for the time literally _forgets_ it. It seemsto me we are driven to think of Hamlet _chiefly_ thus during the longtime which elapsed between the appearance of the Ghost and the eventspresented in the Second Act. The Ghost, in fact, had more reason than wesuppose at first for leaving with Hamlet as his parting injunction thecommand, 'Remember me,' and for greeting him, on re-appearing, with thecommand, 'Do not forget. '[53] These little things in Shakespeare are notaccidents. The second trait which is fully explained only by Hamlet's melancholy ishis own inability to understand why he delays. This emerges in a markeddegree when an occasion like the player's emotion or the sight ofFortinbras's army stings Hamlet into shame at his inaction. '_Why_,' heasks himself in genuine bewilderment, 'do I linger? Can the cause becowardice? Can it be sloth? Can it be thinking too precisely of theevent? And does _that_ again mean cowardice? What is it that makes mesit idle when I feel it is shameful to do so, and when I have _cause,and will, and strength, and means_, to act? ' A man irresolute merelybecause he was considering a proposed action too minutely would not feelthis bewilderment. A man might feel it whose conscience secretlycondemned the act which his explicit consciousness approved; but we haveseen that there is no sufficient evidence to justify us in conceivingHamlet thus. These are the questions of a man stimulated for the momentto shake off the weight of his melancholy, and, because for the momenthe is free from it, unable to understand the paralysing pressure whichit exerts at other times. I have dwelt thus at length on Hamlet's melancholy because, from thepsychological point of view, it is the centre of the tragedy, and toomit it from consideration or to underrate its intensity is to makeShakespeare's story unintelligible. But the psychological point of viewis not equivalent to the tragic; and, having once given its due weightto the fact of Hamlet's melancholy, we may freely admit, or rather maybe anxious to insist, that this pathological condition would excite butlittle, if any, tragic interest if it were not the condition of a naturedistinguished by that speculative genius on which the Schlegel-Coleridgetype of theory lays stress. Such theories misinterpret the connectionbetween that genius and Hamlet's failure, but still it is thisconnection which gives to his story its peculiar fascination and makesit appear (if the phrase may be allowed) as the symbol of a tragicmystery inherent in human nature. Wherever this mystery touches us,wherever we are forced to feel the wonder and awe of man's godlike'apprehension' and his 'thoughts that wander through eternity,' and atthe same time are forced to see him powerless in his petty sphere ofaction, and powerless (it would appear) from the very divinity of histhought, we remember Hamlet. And this is the reason why, in the greatideal movement which began towards the close of the eighteenth century,this tragedy acquired a position unique among Shakespeare's dramas, andshared only by Goethe's _Faust_. It was not that _Hamlet_ isShakespeare's greatest tragedy or most perfect work of art; it was that_Hamlet_ most brings home to us at once the sense of the soul'sinfinity, and the sense of the doom which not only circumscribes thatinfinity but appears to be its offspring. FOOTNOTES:[Footnote 25: It may be convenient to some readers for the purposes ofthis book to have by them a list of Shakespeare's plays, arranged inperiods. No such list, of course, can command general assent, but thefollowing (which does not throughout represent my own views) wouldperhaps meet with as little objection from scholars as any other. Forsome purposes the Third and Fourth Periods are better considered to beone. Within each period the so-called Comedies, Histories, and Tragediesare respectively grouped together; and for this reason, as well as forothers, the order within each period does not profess to bechronological (_e. g. _ it is not implied that the _Comedy of Errors_preceded _1 Henry VI. _ or _Titus Andronicus_). Where Shakespeare'sauthorship of any considerable part of a play is questioned, widely orby specially good authority, the name of the play is printed in italics. _First Period_ (to 1595? ). --Comedy of Errors, Love's Labour's Lost, TwoGentlemen of Verona, Midsummer-Night's Dream; _1 Henry VI. _, _2 HenryVI. _, _3 Henry VI. _, Richard III. , Richard II. ; _Titus Andronicus_,Romeo and Juliet. _Second Period_ (to 1602? ). --Merchant of Venice, All's Well (better inThird Period? ), _Taming of the Shrew_, Much Ado, As You Like it, MerryWives, Twelfth Night; King John, 1 Henry IV. , 2 Henry IV. , Henry V. ;Julius Caesar, Hamlet. _Third Period_ (to 1608? ). --Troilus and Cressida, Measure for Measure;Othello, King Lear, _Timon of Athens_, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra,Coriolanus. _Fourth Period. _--_Pericles_, Cymbeline, Winter's Tale, Tempest, _TwoNoble Kinsmen_, _Henry VIII. _][Footnote 26: The reader will observe that this 'tragic period' wouldnot exactly coincide with the 'Third Period' of the division given inthe last note. For _Julius Caesar_ and _Hamlet_ fall in the SecondPeriod, not the Third; and I may add that, as _Pericles_ was entered atStationers' Hall in 1608 and published in 1609, it ought strictly to beput in the Third Period--not the Fourth. The truth is that _JuliusCaesar_ and _Hamlet_ are given to the Second Period mainly on the groundof style; while a Fourth Period is admitted, not mainly on that ground(for there is no great difference here between _Antony_ and _Coriolanus_on the one side and _Cymbeline_ and the _Tempest_ on the other), butbecause of a difference in substance and spirit. If a Fourth Period wereadmitted on grounds of form, it ought to begin with _Antony andCleopatra_. ][Footnote 27: I should go perhaps too far if I said that it is generallyadmitted that _Timon of Athens_ also precedes the two Roman tragedies;but its precedence seems to me so nearly certain that I assume it inwhat follows. ][Footnote 28: That play, however, is distinguished, I think, by adeliberate endeavour after a dignified and unadorned simplicity,--aRoman simplicity perhaps. ][Footnote 29: It is quite probable that this may arise in part from thefact, which seems hardly doubtful, that the tragedy was revised, and inplaces re-written, some little time after its first composition. ][Footnote 30: This, if we confine ourselves to the tragedies, is, Ithink, especially the case in _King Lear_ and _Timon_. ][Footnote 31: The first, at any rate, of these three plays is, ofcourse, much nearer to _Hamlet_, especially in versification, than to_Antony and Cleopatra_, in which Shakespeare's final style first showsitself practically complete. It has been impossible, in the brieftreatment of this subject, to say what is required of the individualplays. ][Footnote 32: _The Mirror_, 18th April, 1780, quoted by Furness,_Variorum Hamlet_, ii. 148. In the above remarks I have relied mainly onFurness's collection of extracts from early critics. ][Footnote 33: I do not profess to reproduce any one theory, and, stillless, to do justice to the ablest exponent of this kind of view, Werder(_Vorlesungen über Hamlet_, 1875), who by no means regards Hamlet'sdifficulties as _merely_ external. ][Footnote 34: I give one instance. When he spares the King, he speaks ofkilling him when he is drunk asleep, when he is in his rage, when he isawake in bed, when he is gaming, as if there were in none of these casesthe least obstacle (III. iii. 89 ff. ). ][Footnote 35: It is surprising to find quoted, in support of theconscience view, the line 'Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,'and to observe the total misinterpretation of the soliloquy _To be ornot to be_, from which the line comes. In this soliloquy Hamlet is notthinking of the duty laid upon him at all. He is debating the questionof suicide. No one oppressed by the ills of life, he says, wouldcontinue to bear them if it were not for speculation about his possiblefortune in another life. And then, generalising, he says (what appliesto himself, no doubt, though he shows no consciousness of the fact) thatsuch speculation or reflection makes men hesitate and shrink likecowards from great actions and enterprises. 'Conscience' does not meanmoral sense or scrupulosity, but this reflection on the _consequences_of action. It is the same thing as the 'craven scruple of thinking tooprecisely on the event' of the speech in IV. iv. As to this useof 'conscience,' see Schmidt, _s. v. _ and the parallels there given. The_Oxford Dictionary_ also gives many examples of similar uses of'conscience,' though it unfortunately lends its authority to themisinterpretation criticised. ][Footnote 36: The King does not die of the _poison_ on the foil, likeLaertes and Hamlet. They were wounded before he was, but they die afterhim. ][Footnote 37: I may add here a word on one small matter. It isconstantly asserted that Hamlet wept over the body of Polonius. Now, ifhe did, it would make no difference to my point in the paragraph above;but there is no warrant in the text for the assertion. It is based onsome words of the Queen (IV. i. 24), in answer to the King'squestion, 'Where is he gone? ': To draw apart the body he hath killed: O'er whom his very madness, like some ore Among a mineral of metals base, Shows itself pure; he weeps for what is done. But the Queen, as was pointed out by Doering, is trying to screen herson. She has already made the false statement that when Hamlet, crying,'A rat! a rat! ', ran his rapier through the arras, it was because heheard _something stir_ there, whereas we know that what he heard was aman's voice crying, 'What ho! help, help, help! ' And in this scene shehas come straight from the interview with her son, terribly agitated,shaken with 'sighs' and 'profound heaves,' in the night (line 30). Nowwe know what Hamlet said to the body, and of the body, in thatinterview; and there is assuredly no sound of tears in the voice thatsaid those things and others. The only sign of relenting is in the words(III. iv. 171): For this same lord, I do repent: but heaven hath pleased it so, To punish me with this and this with me, That I must be their scourge and minister. His mother's statement, therefore, is almost certainly untrue, though itmay be to her credit. (It is just conceivable that Hamlet wept atIII. iv. 130, and that the Queen supposed he was weeping forPolonius. )Perhaps, however, he may have wept over Polonius's body afterwards? Well, in the _next_ scene (IV. ii. ) we see him _alone_ with thebody, and are therefore likely to witness his genuine feelings. And hisfirst words are, 'Safely stowed'! ][Footnote 38: Not 'must cripple,' as the English translation has it. ][Footnote 39: He says so to Horatio, whom he has no motive for deceiving(V. ii. 218). His contrary statement (II. ii. 308) is made toRosencrantz and Guildenstern. ][Footnote 40: See Note B. ][Footnote 41: The critics have laboured to find a cause, but it seems tome Shakespeare simply meant to portray a pathological condition; and avery touching picture he draws. Antonio's sadness, which he describes inthe opening lines of the play, would never drive him to suicide, but itmakes him indifferent to the issue of the trial, as all his speeches inthe trial-scene show. ][Footnote 42: Of course 'your' does not mean Horatio's philosophy inparticular. 'Your' is used as the Gravedigger uses it when he says that'your water is a sore decayer of your . . . dead body. '][Footnote 43: This aspect of the matter leaves _us_ comparativelyunaffected, but Shakespeare evidently means it to be of importance. TheGhost speaks of it twice, and Hamlet thrice (once in his last furiouswords to the King). If, as we must suppose, the marriage was universallyadmitted to be incestuous, the corrupt acquiescence of the court and theelectors to the crown would naturally have a strong effect on Hamlet'smind. ][Footnote 44: It is most significant that the metaphor of this soliloquyreappears in Hamlet's adjuration to his mother (III. iv. 150): Repent what's past; avoid what is to come; And do not spread the compost on the weeds To make them ranker. ][Footnote 45: If the reader will now look at the only speech of Hamlet'sthat precedes the soliloquy, and is more than one line in length--thespeech beginning 'Seems, madam! nay, it _is_'--he will understand what,surely, when first we come to it, sounds very strange and almostboastful. It is not, in effect, about Hamlet himself at all; it is abouthis mother (I do not mean that it is intentionally and consciously so;and still less that she understood it so). ][Footnote 46: See Note D. ][Footnote 47: See p. 13. ][Footnote 48: _E. g. _ in the transition, referred to above, fromdesire for vengeance into the wish never to have been born; inthe soliloquy, 'O what a rogue'; in the scene at Ophelia's grave. The Schlegel-Coleridge theory does not account for the psychologicalmovement in these passages. ][Footnote 49: Hamlet's violence at Ophelia's grave, though probablyintentionally exaggerated, is another example of this want ofself-control. The Queen's description of him (V. i. 307), This is mere madness; And thus awhile the fit will work on him; Anon, as patient as the female dove, When that her golden couplets are disclosed, His silence will sit drooping. may be true to life, though it is evidently prompted by anxiety toexcuse his violence on the ground of his insanity. On this passage seefurther Note G. ][Footnote 50: Throughout, I italicise to show the connection of ideas. ][Footnote 51: Cf. _Measure for Measure_, IV. iv. 23, 'This deed . . . makes me unpregnant and dull to all proceedings. '][Footnote 52: III. ii. 196 ff. , IV. vii. 111 ff. :_e. g. _, Purpose is but the slave to _memory_, Of violent birth but poor validity. ][Footnote 53: So, before, he had said to him: And duller should'st thou be than the fat weed That roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf, Would'st thou not stir in this. On Hamlet's soliloquy after the Ghost's disappearance see Note D. ]LECTURE IVHAMLETThe only way, if there is any way, in which a conception of Hamlet'scharacter could be proved true, would be to show that it, and it alone,explains all the relevant facts presented by the text of the drama. Toattempt such a demonstration here would obviously be impossible, even ifI felt certain of the interpretation of all the facts. But I propose nowto follow rapidly the course of the action in so far as it speciallyillustrates the character, reserving for separate consideration oneimportant but particularly doubtful point. 1We left Hamlet, at the close of the First Act, when he had just receivedhis charge from the spirit of his father; and his condition was vividlydepicted in the fact that, within an hour of receiving this charge, hehad relapsed into that weariness of life or longing for death which isthe immediate cause of his later inaction. When next we meet him, at theopening of the Second Act, a considerable time has elapsed, apparentlyas much as two months. [54] The ambassadors sent to the King of Norway(I. ii. 27) are just returning. Laertes, whom we saw leaving Elsinore(I. iii. ), has been in Paris long enough to be in want of freshsupplies. Ophelia has obeyed her father's command (given in I. iii. ),and has refused to receive Hamlet's visits or letters. What has Hamletdone? He has put on an 'antic disposition' and established a reputationfor lunacy, with the result that his mother has become deeply anxiousabout him, and with the further result that the King, who was formerlyso entirely at ease regarding him that he wished him to stay on atCourt, is now extremely uneasy and very desirous to discover the causeof his 'transformation. ' Hence Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have beensent for, to cheer him by their company and to worm his secret out ofhim; and they are just about to arrive. Beyond exciting thus theapprehensions of his enemy Hamlet has done absolutely nothing; and, aswe have seen, we must imagine him during this long period sunk for themost part in 'bestial oblivion' or fruitless broodings, and fallingdeeper and deeper into the slough of despond. Now he takes a further step. He suddenly appears unannounced inOphelia's chamber; and his appearance and behaviour are such as tosuggest both to Ophelia and to her father that his brain is turned bydisappointment in love. How far this step was due to the design ofcreating a false impression as to the origin of his lunacy, how far toother causes, is a difficult question; but such a design seems certainlypresent. It succeeds, however, only in part; for, although Polonius isfully convinced, the King is not so, and it is therefore arranged thatthe two shall secretly witness a meeting between Ophelia and Hamlet. Meanwhile Rosencrantz and Guildenstern arrive, and at the King's requestbegin their attempts, easily foiled by Hamlet, to pluck out the heart ofhis mystery. Then the players come to Court, and for a little while oneof Hamlet's old interests revives, and he is almost happy. But only fora little while. The emotion shown by the player in reciting the speechwhich tells of Hecuba's grief for her slaughtered husband awakes intoburning life the slumbering sense of duty and shame. He must act. Withthe extreme rapidity which always distinguishes him in his healthiermoments, he conceives and arranges the plan of having the 'Murder ofGonzago' played before the King and Queen, with the addition of a speechwritten by himself for the occasion. Then, longing to be alone, heabruptly dismisses his guests, and pours out a passion of self-reproachfor his delay, asks himself in bewilderment what can be its cause,lashes himself into a fury of hatred against his foe, checks himself indisgust at his futile emotion, and quiets his conscience for the momentby trying to convince himself that he has doubts about the Ghost, and byassuring himself that, if the King's behaviour at the play-scene showsbut a sign of guilt, he 'knows his course. 'Nothing, surely, can be clearer than the meaning of this famoussoliloquy. The doubt which appears at its close, instead of being thenatural conclusion of the preceding thoughts, is totally inconsistentwith them. For Hamlet's self-reproaches, his curses on his enemy, andhis perplexity about his own inaction, one and all imply his faith inthe identity and truthfulness of the Ghost. Evidently this sudden doubt,of which there has not been the slightest trace before, is no genuinedoubt; it is an unconscious fiction, an excuse for his delay--and forits continuance. A night passes, and the day that follows it brings the crisis. Firsttakes place that interview from which the King is to learn whetherdisappointed love is really the cause of his nephew's lunacy. Hamlet issent for; poor Ophelia is told to walk up and down, reading herprayer-book; Polonius and the King conceal themselves behind the arras. And Hamlet enters, so deeply absorbed in thought that for some time hesupposes himself to be alone. What is he thinking of? 'The Murder ofGonzago,' which is to be played in a few hours, and on which everythingdepends? Not at all. He is meditating on suicide; and he finds that whatstands in the way of it, and counterbalances its infinite attraction, isnot any thought of a sacred unaccomplished duty, but the doubt, quiteirrelevant to that issue, whether it is not ignoble in the mind to endits misery, and, still more, whether death _would_ end it. Hamlet, thatis to say, is here, in effect, precisely where he was at the time of hisfirst soliloquy ('O that this too too solid flesh would melt') twomonths ago, before ever he heard of his father's murder. [55] Hisreflections have no reference to this particular moment; they representthat habitual weariness of life with which his passing outbursts ofemotion or energy are contrasted. What can be more significant than thefact that he is sunk in these reflections on the very day which is todetermine for him the truthfulness of the Ghost? And how is it possiblefor us to hope that, if that truthfulness should be established, Hamletwill be any nearer to his revenge? [56]His interview with Ophelia follows; and its result shows that his delayis becoming most dangerous to himself. The King is satisfied that,whatever else may be the hidden cause of Hamlet's madness, it is notlove. He is by no means certain even that Hamlet is mad at all. He hasheard that infuriated threat, 'I say, we will have no more marriages;those that are married, all but one, shall live; the rest shall keep asthey are. ' He is thoroughly alarmed. |
He at any rate will not delay. Onthe spot he determines to send Hamlet to England. But, as Polonius ispresent, we do not learn at once the meaning of this purpose. Evening comes. The approach of the play-scene raises Hamlet's spirits. He is in his element. He feels that he is doing _something_ towards hisend, striking a stroke, but a stroke of intellect. In his instructionsto the actor on the delivery of the inserted speech, and again in hisconversation with Horatio just before the entry of the Court, we see thetrue Hamlet, the Hamlet of the days before his father's death. But howcharacteristic it is that he appears quite as anxious that his speechshould not be ranted as that Horatio should observe its effect upon theKing! This trait appears again even at that thrilling moment when theactor is just going to deliver the speech. Hamlet sees him beginning tofrown and glare like the conventional stage-murderer, and calls to himimpatiently, 'Leave thy damnable faces and begin! '[57]Hamlet's device proves a triumph far more complete than he had dared toexpect. He had thought the King might 'blench,' but he does much more. When only six of the 'dozen or sixteen lines' have been spoken he startsto his feet and rushes from the hall, followed by the whole dismayedCourt. In the elation of success--an elation at first almosthysterical--Hamlet treats Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who are sent tohim, with undisguised contempt. Left to himself, he declares that now hecould drink hot blood, And do such bitter business as the day Would quake to look on. He has been sent for by his mother, and is going to her chamber; and sovehement and revengeful is his mood that he actually fancies himself indanger of using daggers to her as well as speaking them. [58]In this mood, on his way to his mother's chamber, he comes upon theKing, alone, kneeling, conscience-stricken and attempting to pray. Hisenemy is delivered into his hands. Now might I do it pat, now he is praying: And now I'll do it: and so he goes to heaven: And so am I revenged. [59] That would be scanned. He scans it; and the sword that he drew at the words, 'And now I'll doit,' is thrust back into its sheath. If he killed the villain now hewould send his soul to heaven; and he would fain kill soul as well asbody. That this again is an unconscious excuse for delay is now prettygenerally agreed, and it is needless to describe again the state of mindwhich, on the view explained in our last lecture, is the real cause ofHamlet's failure here. The first five words he utters, 'Now might I doit,' show that he has no effective _desire_ to 'do it'; and in thelittle sentences that follow, and the long pauses between them, theendeavour at a resolution, and the sickening return of melancholicparalysis, however difficult a task they set to the actor, are plainenough to a reader. And any reader who may retain a doubt should observethe fact that, when the Ghost reappears, Hamlet does not think ofjustifying his delay by the plea that he was waiting for a more perfectvengeance. But in one point the great majority of critics, I think, goastray. The feeling of intense hatred which Hamlet expresses is not thecause of his sparing the King, and in his heart he knows this; but itdoes not at all follow that this feeling is unreal. All the evidenceafforded by the play goes to show that it is perfectly genuine, and Isee no reason whatever to doubt that Hamlet would have been very sorryto send his father's murderer to heaven, nor much to doubt that he wouldhave been glad to send him to perdition. The reason for refusing toaccept his own version of his motive in sparing Claudius is not that hissentiments are horrible, but that elsewhere, and also in the opening ofhis speech here, we can see that his reluctance to act is due to othercauses. The incident of the sparing of the King is contrived with extraordinarydramatic insight. On the one side we feel that the opportunity wasperfect. Hamlet could not possibly any longer tell himself that he hadno certainty as to his uncle's guilt. And the external conditions weremost favourable; for the King's remarkable behaviour at the play-scenewould have supplied a damning confirmation of the story Hamlet had totell about the Ghost. Even now, probably, in a Court so corrupt as thatof Elsinore, he could not with perfect security have begun by chargingthe King with the murder; but he could quite safely have killed himfirst and given his justification afterwards, especially as he wouldcertainly have had on his side the people, who loved him and despisedClaudius. On the other hand, Shakespeare has taken care to give thisperfect opportunity so repulsive a character that we can hardly bringourselves to wish that the hero should accept it. One of his minordifficulties, we have seen, probably was that he seemed to be requiredto attack a defenceless man; and here this difficulty is at its maximum. This incident is, again, the turning-point of the tragedy. So far,Hamlet's delay, though it is endangering his freedom and his life, hasdone no irreparable harm; but his failure here is the cause of all thedisasters that follow. In sparing the King, he sacrifices Polonius,Ophelia, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Laertes, the Queen and himself. This central significance of the passage is dramatically indicated inthe following scene by the reappearance of the Ghost and the repetitionof its charge. Polonius is the first to fall. The old courtier, whose vanity would notallow him to confess that his diagnosis of Hamlet's lunacy was mistaken,had suggested that, after the theatricals, the Queen should endeavour ina private interview with her son to penetrate the mystery, while hehimself would repeat his favourite part of eaves-dropper (III. i. 184ff. ). It has now become quite imperative that the Prince should bebrought to disclose his secret; for his choice of the 'Murder ofGonzago,' and perhaps his conduct during the performance, have shown aspirit of exaggerated hostility against the King which has excitedgeneral alarm. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern discourse to Claudius on theextreme importance of his preserving his invaluable life, as thoughHamlet's insanity had now clearly shown itself to be homicidal. [60]When, then, at the opening of the interview between Hamlet and hismother, the son, instead of listening to her remonstrances, roughlyassumes the offensive, she becomes alarmed; and when, on her attemptingto leave the room, he takes her by the arm and forces her to sit down,she is terrified, cries out, 'Thou wilt not murder me? ' and screams forhelp. Polonius, behind the arras, echoes her call; and in a momentHamlet, hoping the concealed person is the King, runs the old manthrough the body. Evidently this act is intended to stand in sharp contrast with Hamlet'ssparing of his enemy. The King would have been just as defencelessbehind the arras as he had been on his knees; but here Hamlet is alreadyexcited and in action, and the chance comes to him so suddenly that hehas no time to 'scan' it. It is a minor consideration, but still for thedramatist not unimportant, that the audience would wholly sympathisewith Hamlet's attempt here, as directed against an enemy who is lurkingto entrap him, instead of being engaged in a business which perhaps tothe bulk of the audience then, as now, seemed to have a 'relish ofsalvation in't. 'We notice in Hamlet, at the opening of this interview, something of theexcited levity which followed the _dénouement_ of the play-scene. Thedeath of Polonius sobers him; and in the remainder of the interview heshows, together with some traces of his morbid state, the peculiarbeauty and nobility of his nature. His chief desire is not by any meansto ensure his mother's silent acquiescence in his design of revenge; itis to save her soul. And while the rough work of vengeance is repugnantto him, he is at home in this higher work. Here that fatal feeling, 'itis no matter,' never shows itself. No father-confessor could be moreselflessly set upon his end of redeeming a fellow-creature fromdegradation, more stern or pitiless in denouncing the sin, or more eagerto welcome the first token of repentance. There is something infinitelybeautiful in that sudden sunshine of faith and love which breaks outwhen, at the Queen's surrender, O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain,he answers, O throw away the worser part of it, And live the purer with the other half. The truth is that, though Hamlet hates his uncle and acknowledges theduty of vengeance, his whole heart is never in this feeling or thistask; but his whole heart is in his horror at his mother's fall and inhis longing to raise her. The former of these feelings was theinspiration of his first soliloquy; it combines with the second to formthe inspiration of his eloquence here. And Shakespeare never wrote moreeloquently than here. I have already alluded to the significance of the reappearance of theGhost in this scene; but why does Shakespeare choose for the particularmoment of its reappearance the middle of a speech in which Hamlet israving against his uncle? There seems to be more than one reason. In thefirst place, Hamlet has already attained his object of stirring shameand contrition in his mother's breast, and is now yielding to the oldtemptation of unpacking his heart with words, and exhausting in uselessemotion the force which should be stored up in his will. And, next, indoing this he is agonising his mother to no purpose, and in despite ofher piteous and repeated appeals for mercy. But the Ghost, when it gavehim his charge, had expressly warned him to spare her; and here againthe dead husband shows the same tender regard for his weak unfaithfulwife. The object of his return is to repeat his charge: Do not forget: this visitation Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose;but, having uttered this reminder, he immediately bids the son to helpthe mother and 'step between her and her fighting soul. 'And, whether intentionally or not, another purpose is served byShakespeare's choice of this particular moment. It is a moment when thestate of Hamlet's mind is such that we cannot suppose the Ghost to bemeant for an hallucination; and it is of great importance here that thespectator or reader should not suppose any such thing. He is furtherguarded by the fact that the Ghost proves, so to speak, his identity byshowing the same traits as were visible on his first appearance--thesame insistence on the duty of remembering, and the same concern for theQueen. And the result is that we construe the Ghost's interpretation ofHamlet's delay ('almost blunted purpose') as the truth, the dramatist'sown interpretation. Let me add that probably no one in Shakespeare'saudience had any doubt of his meaning here. The idea of later criticsand readers that the Ghost is an hallucination is due partly to failureto follow the indications just noticed, but partly also to two mistakes,the substitution of our present intellectual atmosphere for theElizabethan, and the notion that, because the Queen does not see andhear the Ghost, it is meant to be unreal. But a ghost, in Shakespeare'sday, was able for any sufficient reason to confine its manifestation toa single person in a company; and here the sufficient reason, that ofsparing the Queen, is obvious. [61]At the close of this scene it appears that Hamlet has somehow learned ofthe King's design of sending him to England in charge of his two'school-fellows. ' He has no doubt that this design covers somevillainous plot against himself, but neither does he doubt that he willsucceed in defeating it; and, as we saw, he looks forward with pleasureto this conflict of wits. The idea of refusing to go appears not tooccur to him. Perhaps (for here we are left to conjecture) he feels thathe could not refuse unless at the same time he openly accused the Kingof his father's murder (a course which he seems at no time tocontemplate); for by the slaughter of Polonius he has supplied his enemywith the best possible excuse for getting him out of the country. Besides, he has so effectually warned this enemy that, after the deathof Polonius is discovered, he is kept under guard (IV. iii. 14). Heconsents, then, to go. But on his way to the shore he meets the army ofFortinbras on its march to Poland; and the sight of these men goingcheerfully to risk death 'for an egg-shell,' and 'making mouths at theinvisible event,' strikes him with shame as he remembers how he, with somuch greater cause for action, 'lets all sleep;' and he breaks out intothe soliloquy, 'How all occasions do inform against me! 'This great speech, in itself not inferior to the famous 'To be or not tobe,' is absent not only from the First Quarto but from the Folio. It istherefore probable that, at any rate by the time when the Folio appeared(1623), it had become customary to omit it in theatrical representation;and this is still the custom. But, while no doubt it is dramatically theleast indispensable of the soliloquies, it has a direct dramatic value,and a great value for the interpretation of Hamlet's character. It showsthat Hamlet, though he is leaving Denmark, has not relinquished the ideaof obeying the Ghost. It exhibits very strikingly his inability tounderstand why he has delayed so long. It contains that assertion whichso many critics forget, that he has 'cause and will and strength andmeans to do it. ' On the other hand--and this was perhaps the principalpurpose of the speech--it convinces us that he has learnt little ornothing from his delay, or from his failure to seize the opportunitypresented to him after the play-scene. For, we find, both the motive andthe gist of the speech are precisely the same as those of the soliloquyat the end of the Second Act ('O what a rogue'). There too he wasstirred to shame when he saw a passionate emotion awakened by a causewhich, compared with his, was a mere egg-shell. There too he stoodbewildered at the sight of his own dulness, and was almost ready tobelieve--what was justly incredible to him--that it was the mask of merecowardice. There too he determined to delay no longer: if the Kingshould but blench, he knew his course. Yet this determination led tonothing then; and why, we ask ourselves in despair, should the bloodythoughts he now resolves to cherish ever pass beyond the realm ofthought? Between this scene (IV. iv. ) and the remainder of the play we must againsuppose an interval, though not a very long one. When the actionrecommences, the death of Polonius has led to the insanity of Opheliaand the secret return of Laertes from France. The young man comes backbreathing slaughter. For the King, afraid to put Hamlet on his trial (acourse likely to raise the question of his own behaviour at the play,and perhaps to provoke an open accusation),[62] has attempted to hush upthe circumstances of Polonius's death, and has given him a hurried andinglorious burial. The fury of Laertes, therefore, is directed in thefirst instance against the King: and the ease with which he raises thepeople, like the King's fear of a judicial enquiry, shows us how purelyinternal were the obstacles which the hero had to overcome. Thisimpression is intensified by the broad contrast between Hamlet andLaertes, who rushes headlong to his revenge, and is determined to haveit though allegiance, conscience, grace and damnation stand in his way(IV. v. 130). But the King, though he has been hard put to it, is now inhis element and feels safe. Knowing that he will very soon hear ofHamlet's execution in England, he tells Laertes that his father died byHamlet's hand, and expresses his willingness to let the friends ofLaertes judge whether he himself has any responsibility for the deed. And when, to his astonishment and dismay, news comes that Hamlet hasreturned to Denmark, he acts with admirable promptitude and address,turns Laertes round his finger, and arranges with him for the murder oftheir common enemy. If there were any risk of the young man's resolutionfaltering, it is removed by the death of Ophelia. And now the King hasbut one anxiety,--to prevent the young men from meeting before thefencing-match. For who can tell what Hamlet might say in his defence, orhow enchanting his tongue might prove? [63]Hamlet's return to Denmark is due partly to his own action, partly toaccident. On the voyage he secretly possesses himself of the royalcommission, and substitutes for it another, which he himself writes andseals, and in which the King of England is ordered to put to death, notHamlet, but Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Then the ship is attacked by apirate, which, apparently, finds its intended prize too strong for it,and makes off. But as Hamlet 'in the grapple,' eager for fighting, hasboarded the assailant, he is carried off in it, and by promises inducesthe pirates to put him ashore in Denmark. In what spirit does he return? Unquestionably, I think, we can observe acertain change, though it is not great. First, we notice here and therewhat seems to be a consciousness of power, due probably to his successin counter-mining Claudius and blowing the courtiers to the moon, and tohis vigorous action in the sea-fight. But I doubt if this sense of poweris more marked than it was in the scenes following the success of the'Murder of Gonzago. ' Secondly, we nowhere find any direct expression ofthat weariness of life and that longing for death which were so markedin the first soliloquy and in the speech 'To be or not to be. ' This maybe a mere accident, and it must be remembered that in the Fifth Act wehave no soliloquy. But in the earlier Acts the feelings referred to donot appear _merely_ in soliloquy, and I incline to think thatShakespeare means to show in the Hamlet of the Fifth Act a slightthinning of the dark cloud of melancholy, and means us to feel it tragicthat this change comes too late. And, in the third place, there is atrait about which doubt is impossible,--a sense in Hamlet that he is inthe hands of Providence. This had, indeed, already shown itself at thedeath of Polonius,[64] and perhaps at Hamlet's farewell to the King,[65]but the idea seems now to be constantly present in his mind. 'There's adivinity that shapes our ends,' he declares to Horatio in speaking ofthe fighting in his heart that would not let him sleep, and of hisrashness in groping his way to the courtiers to find their commission. How was he able, Horatio asks, to seal the substituted commission? Why, even in that was heaven ordinant,Hamlet answers; he had his father's signet in his purse. And though hehas a presentiment of evil about the fencing-match he refuses to yieldto it: 'we defy augury: there is special providence in the fall of asparrow . . . the readiness is all. 'Though these passages strike us more when put together thus than whenthey come upon us at intervals in reading the play, they have a markedeffect on our feeling about Hamlet's character and still more about theevents of the action. But I find it impossible to believe, with somecritics, that they indicate any material change in his generalcondition, or the formation of any effective resolution to fulfil theappointed duty. On the contrary, they seem to express that kind ofreligious resignation which, however beautiful in one aspect, reallydeserves the name of fatalism rather than that of faith in Providence,because it is not united to any determination to do what is believed tobe the will of Providence. In place of this determination, the Hamlet ofthe Fifth Act shows a kind of sad or indifferent self-abandonment, as ifhe secretly despaired of forcing himself to action, and were ready toleave his duty to some other power than his own. _This_ is really themain change which appears in him after his return to Denmark, and whichhad begun to show itself before he went,--this, and not a determinationto act, nor even an anxiety to do so. For when he returns he stands in a most perilous position. On one sideof him is the King, whose safety depends on his death, and who has donehis best to murder him; on the other, Laertes, whose father and sisterhe has sent to their graves, and of whose behaviour and probableattitude he must surely be informed by Horatio. What is required of him,therefore, if he is not to perish with his duty undone, is the utmostwariness and the swiftest resolution. Yet it is not too much to saythat, except when Horatio forces the matter on his attention, he showsno consciousness of this position. He muses in the graveyard on thenothingness of life and fame, and the base uses to which our dustreturns, whether it be a court-jester's or a world-conqueror's. Helearns that the open grave over which he muses has been dug for thewoman he loved; and he suffers one terrible pang, from which he gainsrelief in frenzied words and frenzied action,--action which must needsintensify, if that were possible, the fury of the man whom he has,however unwittingly, so cruelly injured. Yet he appears absolutelyunconscious that he has injured Laertes at all, and asks him: What is the reason that you use me thus? And as the sharpness of the first pang passes, the old weary miseryreturns, and he might almost say to Ophelia, as he does to her brother: I loved you ever: but it is no matter. 'It is no matter': _nothing_ matters. The last scene opens. He narrates to Horatio the events of the voyageand his uncle's attempt to murder him. But the conclusion of the storyis no plan of action, but the old fatal question, 'Ought I not toact? '[66] And, while he asks it, his enemies have acted. Osric enterswith an invitation to him to take part in a fencing-match with Laertes. This match--he is expressly told so--has been arranged by his deadlyenemy the King; and his antagonist is a man whose hands but a few hoursago were at his throat, and whose voice he had heard shouting 'The deviltake thy soul! ' But he does not think of that. To fence is to show acourtesy, and to himself it is a relief,--action, and not the onehateful action. There is something noble in his carelessness, and alsoin his refusal to attend to the presentiment which he suddenly feels(and of which he says, not only 'the readiness is all,' but also 'it isno matter'). Something noble; and yet, when a sacred duty is stillundone, ought one to be so ready to die? With the same carelessness, andwith that trustfulness which makes us love him, but which is here sofatally misplaced, he picks up the first foil that comes to his hand,asks indifferently, 'These foils have all a length? ' and begins. AndFate descends upon his enemies, and his mother, and himself. But he is not left in utter defeat. Not only is his task at lastaccomplished, but Shakespeare seems to have determined that his heroshould exhibit in his latest hour all the glorious power and all thenobility and sweetness of his nature. Of the first, the power, I spokebefore,[67] but there is a wonderful beauty in the revelation of thesecond. His body already labouring in the pangs of death, his mind soarsabove them. He forgives Laertes; he remembers his wretched mother andbids her adieu, ignorant that she has preceded him. We hear now no wordof lamentation or self-reproach. He has will, and just time, to think,not of the past or of what might have been, but of the future; to forbidhis friend's death in words more pathetic in their sadness than even hisagony of spirit had been; and to take care, so far as in him lies, forthe welfare of the State which he himself should have guided. Then inspite of shipwreck he reaches the haven of silence where he would be. What else could his world-wearied flesh desire? But _we_ desire more; and we receive it. As those mysterious words, 'Therest is silence,' die upon Hamlet's lips, Horatio answers: Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince, And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest. Why did Shakespeare here, so much against his custom, introduce thisreference to another life? Did he remember that Hamlet is the only oneof his tragic heroes whom he has not allowed us to see in the days whenthis life smiled on him? Did he feel that, while for the others we mightbe content to imagine after life's fitful fever nothing more thanrelease and silence, we must ask more for one whose 'godlike reason' andpassionate love of goodness have only gleamed upon us through the heavyclouds of melancholy, and yet have left us murmuring, as we bow ourheads, 'This was the noblest spirit of them all'? 2How many things still remain to say of Hamlet! Before I touch on hisrelation to Ophelia, I will choose but two. Neither of them, comparedwith the matters so far considered, is of great consequence, but bothare interesting, and the first seems to have quite escaped observation. (1) Most people have, beside their more essential traits of character,little peculiarities which, for their intimates, form an indissolublepart of their personality. In comedy, and in other humorous works offiction, such peculiarities often figure prominently, but they rarely doso, I think, in tragedy. Shakespeare, however, seems to have given onesuch idiosyncrasy to Hamlet. It is a trick of speech, a habit of repetition. And these are simpleexamples of it from the first soliloquy: O _God! God! _ How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses of this world! _Fie_ on't! ah _fie! _Now I ask your patience. You will say: 'There is nothing individualhere. Everybody repeats words thus. And the tendency, in particular, touse such repetitions in moments of great emotion is well-known, andfrequently illustrated in literature--for example, in David's cry oflament for Absalom. 'This is perfectly true, and plenty of examples could be drawn fromShakespeare himself. But what we find in Hamlet's case is, I believe,_not_ common. In the first place, this repetition is a _habit_ with him. Here are some more instances: 'Thrift, thrift, Horatio'; 'Indeed,indeed, sirs, but this troubles me'; 'Come, deal justly with me: come,come'; 'Wormwood, wormwood! ' I do not profess to have made an exhaustivesearch, but I am much mistaken if this _habit_ is to be found in anyother serious character of Shakespeare. [68]And, in the second place--and here I appeal with confidence to lovers ofHamlet--some of these repetitions strike us as intensely characteristic. Some even of those already quoted strike one thus, and still more do thefollowing: (_a_) _Horatio. _ It would have much amazed you. _Hamlet. _ Very like, very like. Stay'd it long? (_b_) _Polonius. _ What do you read, my lord? _Hamlet. _ Words, words, words. (_c_) _Polonius. _ My honourable lord, I will most humbly take my leave of you. _Hamlet. _ You cannot, sir, take from me anything that I will more willingly part withal: except my life, except my life, except my life. (_d_) _Ophelia. _ Good my lord, How does your honour for this many a day? _Hamlet. _ I humbly thank you, well, well, well. Is there anything that Hamlet says or does in the whole play moreunmistakably individual than these replies? [69](2) Hamlet, everyone has noticed, is fond of quibbles and word-play, andof 'conceits' and turns of thought such as are common in the poets whomJohnson called Metaphysical. Sometimes, no doubt, he plays with wordsand ideas chiefly in order to mystify, thwart and annoy. To some extent,again, as we may see from the conversation where Rosencrantz andGuildenstern first present themselves (II. ii. 227), he is merelyfollowing the fashion of the young courtiers about him, just as in hislove-letter to Ophelia[70] he uses for the most part the fantasticlanguage of Court Euphuism. Nevertheless in this trait there issomething very characteristic. We should be greatly surprised to find itmarked in Othello or Lear or Timon, in Macbeth or Antony or Coriolanus;and, in fact, we find it in them hardly at all. One reason of this mayperhaps be that these characters are all later creations than Hamlet,and that Shakespeare's own fondness for this kind of play, like thefondness of the theatrical audience for it, diminished with time. Butthe main reason is surely that this tendency, as we see it in Hamlet,betokens a nimbleness and flexibility of mind which is characteristic ofhim and not of the later less many-sided heroes. Macbeth, for instance,has an imagination quite as sensitive as Hamlet's to certainimpressions, but he has none of Hamlet's delight in freaks and twists ofthought, or of his tendency to perceive and play with resemblances inthe most diverse objects and ideas. Though Romeo shows this tendency,the only tragic hero who approaches Hamlet here is Richard II. , whoindeed in several ways recalls the emasculated Hamlet of some critics,and may, like the real Hamlet, have owed his existence in part toShakespeare's personal familiarity with the weaknesses and dangers of animaginative temperament. That Shakespeare meant this trait to be characteristic of Hamlet isbeyond question. The very first line the hero speaks contains a play onwords: A little more than kin and less than kind. The fact is significant, though the pun itself is not speciallycharacteristic. Much more so, and indeed absolutely individual, are theuses of word-play in moments of extreme excitement. Remember the awe andterror of the scene where the Ghost beckons Hamlet to leave his friendsand follow him into the darkness, and then consider this dialogue: _Hamlet. _ It waves me still. Go on; I'll follow thee. _Marcellus. _ You shall not go, my lord. _Hamlet. _ Hold off your hands. _Horatio. _ Be ruled; you shall not go. _Hamlet. _ My fate cries out, And makes each petty artery in this body As hardy as the Nemean lion's nerve. Still am I called. Unhand me, gentlemen. _By heaven I'll make a ghost of him that lets me. _Would any other character in Shakespeare have used those words? And,again, where is Hamlet more Hamlet than when he accompanies with a punthe furious action by which he compels his enemy to drink the 'poisontempered by himself'? Here, thou incestuous, murderous, damn'd Dane, Drink off this potion. Is thy union here? Follow my mother. The 'union' was the pearl which Claudius professed to throw into thecup, and in place of which (as Hamlet supposes) he dropped poison in. But the 'union' is also that incestuous marriage which must not bebroken by his remaining alive now that his partner is dead. What ragethere is in the words, and what a strange lightning of the mind! Much of Hamlet's play with words and ideas is imaginatively humorous. That of Richard II. is fanciful, but rarely, if ever, humorous. Antonyhas touches of humour, and Richard III. has more; but Hamlet, we maysafely assert, is the only one of the tragic heroes who can be called ahumorist, his humour being first cousin to that speculative tendencywhich keeps his mental world in perpetual movement. Some of his quipsare, of course, poor enough, and many are not distinctive. Those of hisretorts which strike one as perfectly individual do so, I think, chieflybecause they suddenly reveal the misery and bitterness below thesurface; as when, to Rosencrantz's message from his mother, 'She desiresto speak with you in her closet, ere you go to bed,' he answers, 'Weshall obey, were she ten times our mother'; or as when he replies toPolonius's invitation, 'Will you walk out of the air, my lord? ' withwords that suddenly turn one cold, 'Into my grave. ' Otherwise, what wejustly call Hamlet's characteristic humour is not his exclusiveproperty, but appears in passages spoken by persons as different asMercutio, Falstaff and Rosalind. The truth probably is that it was thekind of humour most natural to Shakespeare himself, and that here, as insome other traits of the poet's greatest creation, we come into closecontact with Shakespeare the man. 3The actor who plays the part of Hamlet must make up his mind as to theinterpretation of every word and deed of the character. Even if at somepoint he feels no certainty as to which of two interpretations is right,he must still choose one or the other. The mere critic is not obliged todo this. Where he remains in doubt he may say so, and, if the matter isof importance, he ought to say so. This is the position in which I find myself in regard to Hamlet's lovefor Ophelia. I am unable to arrive at a conviction as to the meaning ofsome of his words and deeds, and I question whether from the mere textof the play a sure interpretation of them can be drawn. For this reasonI have reserved the subject for separate treatment, and have, so far aspossible, kept it out of the general discussion of Hamlet's character. On two points no reasonable doubt can, I think, be felt. (1) Hamlet wasat one time sincerely and ardently in love with Ophelia. For she herselfsays that he had importuned her with love in honourable fashion, and hadgiven countenance to his speech with almost all the holy vows of heaven(I. iii. 110 f. ). (2) When, at Ophelia's grave, he declared, I loved Ophelia; forty thousand brothers Could not, with all their quantity of love, Make up my sum,he must have spoken sincerely; and, further, we may take it for grantedthat he used the past tense, 'loved,' merely because Ophelia was dead,and not to imply that he had once loved her but no longer did so. So much being assumed, we come to what is doubtful, and I will begin bystating what is probably the most popular view. According to this view,Hamlet's love for Ophelia never changed. On the revelation made by theGhost, however, he felt that he must put aside all thoughts of it; andit also seemed to him necessary to convince Ophelia, as well as others,that he was insane, and so to destroy her hopes of any happy issue totheir love. This was the purpose of his appearance in her chamber,though he was probably influenced also by a longing to see her and bidher a silent farewell, and possibly by a faint hope that he might safelyentrust his secret to her. If he entertained any such hope his study ofher face dispelled it; and thereafter, as in the Nunnery-scene (III. i. )and again at the play-scene, he not only feigned madness, but, toconvince her that he had quite lost his love for her, he also addressedher in bitter and insulting language. In all this he was acting a partintensely painful to himself; the very violence of his language in theNunnery-scene arose from this pain; and so the actor should make himshow, in that scene, occasional signs of a tenderness which with all hisefforts he cannot wholly conceal. Finally, over her grave the truthbursts from him in the declaration quoted just now, though it is stillimpossible for him to explain to others why he who loved her soprofoundly was forced to wring her heart. Now this theory, if the view of Hamlet's character which I have taken isanywhere near the truth, is certainly wrong at one point, viz. , in sofar as it supposes that Hamlet's bitterness to Ophelia was a _mere_pretence forced on him by his design of feigning to be insane; and Iproceed to call attention to certain facts and considerations, of whichthe theory seems to take no account. 1. How is it that in his first soliloquy Hamlet makes no referencewhatever to Ophelia? 2. How is it that in his second soliloquy, on the departure of theGhost, he again says nothing about her? When the lover is feeling thathe must make a complete break with his past, why does it not occur tohim at once that he must give up his hopes of happiness in love? 3. Hamlet does not, as the popular theory supposes, break with Opheliadirectly after the Ghost appears to him; on the contrary, he tries tosee her and sends letters to her (II. i. 109). What really happens isthat Ophelia suddenly repels his visits and letters. Now, _we_ know thatshe is simply obeying her father's order; but how would her actionappear to Hamlet, already sick at heart because of his mother'sfrailty,[71] and now finding that, the moment fortune has turned againsthim, the woman who had welcomed his love turns against him too? Even ifhe divined (as his insults to Polonius suggest) that her father wasconcerned in this change, would he not still, in that morbid conditionof mind, certainly suspect her of being less simple than she hadappeared to him? [72] Even if he remained free from _this_ suspicion, andmerely thought her deplorably weak, would he not probably feel angeragainst _her_, an anger like that of the hero of _Locksley Hall_ againsthis Amy? 4. When Hamlet made his way into Ophelia's room, why did he go in thegarb, the conventionally recognised garb, of the distracted _lover_? Ifit was necessary to convince Ophelia of his insanity, how was itnecessary to convince her that disappointment in _love_ was the cause ofhis insanity? His _main_ object in the visit appears to have been toconvince _others_, through her, that his insanity was not due to anymysterious unknown cause, but to this disappointment, and so to allaythe suspicions of the King. But if his feeling for her had been simplythat of love, however unhappy, and had not been in any degree that ofsuspicion or resentment, would he have adopted a plan which must involveher in so much suffering? [73]5. In what way are Hamlet's insults to Ophelia at the play-scenenecessary either to his purpose of convincing her of his insanity or tohis purpose of revenge? And, even if he did regard them as somehow meansto these ends, is it conceivable that he would have uttered them, if hisfeeling for her were one of hopeless but unmingled love? 6. How is it that neither when he kills Polonius, nor afterwards, doeshe appear to reflect that he has killed Ophelia's father, or what theeffect on Ophelia is likely to be? 7. We have seen that there is no reference to Ophelia in the soliloquiesof the First Act. Neither is there the faintest allusion to her in anyone of the soliloquies of the subsequent Acts, unless possibly in thewords (III. i. 72) 'the pangs of despised love. '[74] If the populartheory is true, is not this an astounding fact? 8. Considering this fact, is there no significance in the further fact(which, by itself, would present no difficulty) that in speaking toHoratio Hamlet never alludes to Ophelia, and that at his death he saysnothing of her? 9. If the popular theory is true, how is it that neither in theNunnery-scene nor at the play-scene does Shakespeare insert anything tomake the truth plain? Four words like Othello's 'O hardness todissemble' would have sufficed. These considerations, coupled with others as to Hamlet's state of mind,seem to point to two conclusions. They suggest, first, that Hamlet'slove, though never lost, was, after Ophelia's apparent rejection of him,mingled with suspicion and resentment, and that his treatment of her wasdue in part to this cause. And I find it impossible to resist thisconclusion. But the question how much of his harshness is meant to bereal, and how much assumed, seems to me impossible in some places toanswer. For example, his behaviour at the play-scene seems to me to showan intention to hurt and insult; but in the Nunnery-scene (which cannotbe discussed briefly) he is evidently acting a part and sufferingacutely, while at the same time his invective, however exaggerated,seems to spring from real feelings; and what is pretence, and whatsincerity, appears to me an insoluble problem. Something depends here onthe further question whether or no Hamlet suspects or detects thepresence of listeners; but, in the absence of an authentic stagetradition, this question too seems to be unanswerable. But something further seems to follow from the considerations adduced. Hamlet's love, they seem to show, was not only mingled with bitterness,it was also, like all his healthy feelings, weakened and deadened by hismelancholy. [75] It was far from being extinguished; probably it was_one_ of the causes which drove him to force his way to Ophelia;whenever he saw Ophelia, it awoke and, the circumstances being what theywere, tormented him. But it was not an absorbing passion; it did nothabitually occupy his thoughts; and when he declared that it was such alove as forty thousand brothers could not equal, he spoke sincerelyindeed but not truly. What he said was true, if I may put it thus, ofthe inner healthy self which doubtless in time would have fullyreasserted itself; but it was only partly true of the Hamlet whom we seein the play. And the morbid influence of his melancholy on his love isthe cause of those strange facts, that he never alludes to her in hissoliloquies, and that he appears not to realise how the death of herfather must affect her. The facts seem almost to force this idea on us. That it is less'romantic' than the popular view is no argument against it. Andpsychologically it is quite sound, for a frequent symptom of suchmelancholy as Hamlet's is a more or less complete paralysis, or evenperversion, of the emotion of love. And yet, while feeling no doubt thatup to a certain point it is true, I confess I am not satisfied that theexplanation of Hamlet's silence regarding Ophelia lies in it. And thereason of this uncertainty is that scarcely any spectators or readers of_Hamlet_ notice this silence at all; that I never noticed it myself tillI began to try to solve the problem of Hamlet's relation to Ophelia; andthat even now, when I read the play through without pausing to considerparticular questions, it scarcely strikes me. Now Shakespeare wroteprimarily for the theatre and not for students, and therefore greatweight should be attached to the immediate impressions made by hisworks. And so it seems at least possible that the explanation ofHamlet's silence may be that Shakespeare, having already a verydifficult task to perform in the soliloquies--that of showing the stateof mind which caused Hamlet to delay his vengeance--did not choose tomake his task more difficult by introducing matter which would not onlyadd to the complexity of the subject but might, from its 'sentimental'interest, distract attention from the main point; while, from histheatrical experience, he knew that the audience would not observe howunnatural it was that a man deeply in love, and forced not only torenounce but to wound the woman he loved, should not think of her whenhe was alone. But, as this explanation is no more completely convincingto me than the other, I am driven to suspend judgment, and also tosuspect that the text admits of no sure interpretation. [This paragraphstates my view imperfectly. ]This result may seem to imply a serious accusation against Shakespeare. But it must be remembered that if we could see a contemporaryrepresentation of _Hamlet_, our doubts would probably disappear. Theactor, instructed by the author, would make it clear to us by looks,tones, gestures, and by-play how far Hamlet's feigned harshness toOphelia was mingled with real bitterness, and again how far hismelancholy had deadened his love. 4As we have seen, all the persons in _Hamlet_ except the hero are minorcharacters, who fail to rise to the tragic level. They are not lessinteresting on that account, but the hero has occupied us so long that Ishall refer only to those in regard to whom Shakespeare's intentionappears to be not seldom misunderstood or overlooked. It may seem strange that Ophelia should be one of these; and yetShakespearean literature and the experience of teachers show that thereis much difference of opinion regarding her, and in particular that alarge number of readers feel a kind of personal irritation against her. They seem unable to forgive her for not having been a heroine, and theyfancy her much weaker than she was. They think she ought to have beenable to help Hamlet to fulfil his task. And they betray, it appears tome, the strangest misconceptions as to what she actually did. Now it was essential to Shakespeare's purpose that too great an interestshould not be aroused in the love-story; essential, therefore, thatOphelia should be merely one of the subordinate characters; andnecessary, accordingly, that she should not be the equal, in spirit,power or intelligence, of his famous heroines. If she had been anImogen, a Cordelia, even a Portia or a Juliet, the story must have takenanother shape. Hamlet would either have been stimulated to do his duty,or (which is more likely) he would have gone mad, or (which islikeliest) he would have killed himself in despair. Ophelia, therefore,was made a character who could not help Hamlet, and for whom on theother hand he would not naturally feel a passion so vehement or profoundas to interfere with the main motive of the play. [76] And in the loveand the fate of Ophelia herself there was introduced an element, not ofdeep tragedy but of pathetic beauty, which makes the analysis of hercharacter seem almost a desecration. Ophelia is plainly quite young and inexperienced. She has lost hermother, and has only a father and a brother, affectionate but worldly,to take care of her. Everyone in the drama who has any heart is drawn toher. To the persons in the play, as to the readers of it, she brings thethought of flowers. 'Rose of May' Laertes names her. Lay her in the earth, And from her fair and unpolluted flesh May violets spring! --so he prays at her burial. 'Sweets to the sweet' the Queen murmurs, asshe scatters flowers on the grave; and the flowers which Ophelia herselfgathered--those which she gave to others, and those which floated abouther in the brook--glimmer in the picture of the mind. Her affection forher brother is shown in two or three delicate strokes. Her love for herfather is deep, though mingled with fear. For Hamlet she has, some say,no deep love--and perhaps she is so near childhood that old affectionshave still the strongest hold; but certainly she has given to Hamlet allthe love of which her nature is as yet capable. Beyond these threebeloved ones she seems to have eyes and ears for no one. The Queen isfond of her, but there is no sign of her returning the Queen'saffection. Her existence is wrapped up in these three. On this childlike nature and on Ophelia's inexperience everythingdepends. The knowledge that 'there's tricks in the world' has reachedher only as a vague report. Her father and brother are jealously anxiousfor her because of her ignorance and innocence; and we resent theiranxiety chiefly because we know Hamlet better than they. Her wholecharacter is that of simple unselfish affection. Naturally she isincapable of understanding Hamlet's mind, though she can feel itsbeauty. Naturally, too, she obeys her father when she is forbidden toreceive Hamlet's visits and letters. If we remember not what _we_ knowbut what _she_ knows of her lover and her father; if we remember thatshe had not, like Juliet, confessed her love; and if we remember thatshe was much below her suitor in station, her compliance surely mustseem perfectly natural, apart from the fact that the standard ofobedience to a father was in Shakespeare's day higher than in ours. 'But she does more than obey,' we are told; 'she runs off frightened toreport to her father Hamlet's strange visit and behaviour; she shows toher father one of Hamlet's letters, and tells him[77] the whole story ofthe courtship; and she joins in a plot to win Hamlet's secret from him. 'One must remember, however, that she had never read the tragedy. Consider for a moment how matters looked to _her_. She knows nothingabout the Ghost and its disclosures. She has undergone for some time thepain of repelling her lover and appearing to have turned against him. She sees him, or hears of him, sinking daily into deeper gloom, and sotransformed from what he was that he is considered to be out of hismind. She hears the question constantly discussed what the cause of thissad change can be; and her heart tells her--how can it fail to tellher? --that her unkindness is the chief cause. Suddenly Hamlet forces hisway into her chamber; and his appearance and his behaviour are those ofa man crazed with love. She is frightened--why not? She is not LadyMacbeth. Rosalind would have been frightened. Which of her censors wouldbe wholly unmoved if his room were invaded by a lunatic? She isfrightened, then; frightened, if you will, like a child. Yes, but,observe, her one idea is to help Hamlet. She goes, therefore, at once toher father. To whom else should she go? Her brother is away. Her father,whom she saw with her own eyes and not with Shakespeare's, is kind, andthe wisest of men, and concerned about Hamlet's state. Her father finds,in her report, the solution of the mystery: Hamlet is mad because shehas repulsed him. Why should she not tell her father the whole story andgive him an old letter which may help to convince the King and theQueen? Nay, why should she not allow herself to be used as a 'decoy' tosettle the question why Hamlet is mad? It is all-important that itshould be settled, in order that he may be cured; all her seniors aresimply and solely anxious for his welfare; and, if her unkindness _is_the cause of his sad state, they will permit her to restore him bykindness (III. i. 40). Was she to refuse to play a part just because itwould be painful to her to do so? I find in her joining the 'plot' (asit is absurdly called) a sign not of weakness, but of unselfishness andstrength. 'But she practised deception; she even told a lie. Hamlet asked herwhere her father was, and she said he was at home, when he was reallylistening behind a curtain. ' Poor Ophelia! It is considered angelic inDesdemona to say untruly that she killed herself, but most immoral orpusillanimous in Ophelia to tell _her_ lie. I will not discuss thesecasuistical problems; but, if ever an angry lunatic asks me a questionwhich I cannot answer truly without great danger to him and to one of myrelations, I hope that grace may be given me to imitate Ophelia. Seriously, at such a terrible moment was it weak, was it not ratherheroic, in a simple girl not to lose her presence of mind and not toflinch, but to go through her task for Hamlet's sake and her father's? And, finally, is it really a thing to be taken as matter of course, andno matter for admiration, in this girl that, from beginning to end, andafter a storm of utterly unjust reproach, not a thought of resentmentshould even cross her mind? Still, we are told, it was ridiculously weak in her to lose her reason. And here again her critics seem hardly to realise the situation, hardlyto put themselves in the place of a girl whose lover, estranged fromher, goes mad and kills her father. They seem to forget also thatOphelia must have believed that these frightful calamities were not merecalamities, but followed from _her_ action in repelling her lover. Nordo they realise the utter loneliness that must have fallen on her. Ofthe three persons who were all the world to her, her father has beenkilled, Hamlet has been sent out of the country insane, and her brotheris abroad. Horatio, when her mind gives way, tries to befriend her, butthere is no sign of any previous relation between them, or of Hamlet'shaving commended her to his friend's care. What support she can gainfrom the Queen we can guess from the Queen's character, and from thefact that, when Ophelia is most helpless, the Queen shrinks from thevery sight of her (IV. v. 1). She was left, thus, absolutely alone, andif she looked for her brother's return (as she did, IV. v. 70), shemight reflect that it would mean danger to Hamlet. Whether this idea occurred to her we cannot tell. In any case it waswell for her that her mind gave way before Laertes reached Elsinore; andpathetic as Ophelia's madness is, it is also, we feel, the kindeststroke that now could fall on her. It is evident, I think, that this wasthe effect Shakespeare intended to produce. In her madness Opheliacontinues sweet and lovable. Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself, She turns to favour and to prettiness. In her wanderings we hear from time to time an undertone of the deepestsorrow, but never the agonised cry of fear or horror which makes madnessdreadful or shocking. [78] And the picture of her death, if our eyes growdim in watching it, is still purely beautiful. Coleridge was true toShakespeare when he wrote of 'the affecting death of Ophelia,--who inthe beginning lay like a little projection of land into a lake orstream, covered with spray-flowers quietly reflected in the quietwaters, but at length is undermined or loosened, and becomes a fairyisle, and after a brief vagrancy sinks almost without an eddy. '[79]5I reluctantly pass by Polonius, Laertes and the beautiful character ofHoratio, to say something in conclusion of the Queen and the King. The answers to two questions asked about the Queen are, it seems to me,practically certain, (1) She did not merely marry a second time withindecent haste; she was false to her husband while he lived. This issurely the most natural interpretation of the words of the Ghost (I. v. 41 f. ), coming, as they do, before his account of the murder. Andagainst this testimony what force has the objection that the queen inthe 'Murder of Gonzago' is not represented as an adulteress? Hamlet'smark in arranging the play-scene was not his mother, whom besides he hadbeen expressly ordered to spare (I. v. 84 f. ). (2) On the other hand, she was _not_ privy to the murder of her husband,either before the deed or after it. There is no sign of her being so,and there are clear signs that she was not. The representation of themurder in the play-scene does not move her; and when her husband startsfrom his throne, she innocently asks him, 'How fares my lord? ' In theinterview with Hamlet, when her son says of his slaughter of Polonius, 'A bloody deed! ' Almost as bad, good mother, As kill a king and marry with his brother,the astonishment of her repetition 'As kill a king! ' is evidentlygenuine; and, if it had not been so, she would never have had thehardihood to exclaim: What have I done, that thou darest wag thy tongue In noise so rude against me? Further, it is most significant that when she and the King speaktogether alone, nothing that is said by her or to her implies herknowledge of the secret. The Queen was not a bad-hearted woman, not at all the woman to thinklittle of murder. But she had a soft animal nature, and was very dulland very shallow. She loved to be happy, like a sheep in the sun; and,to do her justice, it pleased her to see others happy, like more sheepin the sun. She never saw that drunkenness is disgusting till Hamlettold her so; and, though she knew that he considered her marriage'o'er-hasty' (II. ii. 57), she was untroubled by any shame at thefeelings which had led to it. It was pleasant to sit upon her throne andsee smiling faces round her, and foolish and unkind in Hamlet to persistin grieving for his father instead of marrying Ophelia and makingeverything comfortable. She was fond of Ophelia and genuinely attachedto her son (though willing to see her lover exclude him from thethrone); and, no doubt, she considered equality of rank a mere triflecompared with the claims of love. The belief at the bottom of her heartwas that the world is a place constructed simply that people may behappy in it in a good-humoured sensual fashion. Her only chance was to be made unhappy. When affliction comes to her,the good in her nature struggles to the surface through the heavy massof sloth. Like other faulty characters in Shakespeare's tragedies, shedies a better woman than she had lived. When Hamlet shows her what shehas done she feels genuine remorse. It is true, Hamlet fears it will notlast, and so at the end of the interview (III. iv. 180 ff. ) he adds awarning that, if she betrays him, she will ruin herself as well. [80] Itis true too that there is no sign of her obeying Hamlet in breaking offher most intimate connection with the King. Still she does feel remorse;and she loves her son, and does not betray him. |
She gives her husband afalse account of Polonius's death, and is silent about the appearance ofthe Ghost. She becomes miserable; To her sick soul, as sin's true nature is, Each toy seems prologue to some great amiss. She shows spirit when Laertes raises the mob, and one respects her forstanding up for her husband when she can do nothing to help her son. Ifshe had sense to realise Hamlet's purpose, or the probability of theKing's taking some desperate step to foil it, she must have sufferedtorture in those days. But perhaps she was too dull. The last we see of her, at the fencing-match, is most characteristic. She is perfectly serene. Things have slipped back into their groove, andshe has no apprehensions. She is, however, disturbed and full ofsympathy for her son, who is out of condition and pants and perspires. These are afflictions she can thoroughly feel for, though they are evenmore common than the death of a father. But then she meets her deathbecause she cannot resist the wish to please her son by drinking to hissuccess. And more: when she falls dying, and the King tries to make outthat she is merely swooning at the sight of blood, she collects herenergies to deny it and to warn Hamlet: No, no, the drink, the drink,--O my dear Hamlet,-- The drink, the drink! I am poison'd. [_Dies. _Was ever any other writer at once so pitiless and so just asShakespeare? Did ever any other mingle the grotesque and the patheticwith a realism so daring and yet so true to 'the modesty of nature'? * * * * *King Claudius rarely gets from the reader the attention he deserves. Buthe is very interesting, both psychologically and dramatically. On theone hand, he is not without respectable qualities. As a king he iscourteous and never undignified; he performs his ceremonial dutiesefficiently; and he takes good care of the national interests. Henowhere shows cowardice, and when Laertes and the mob force their wayinto the palace, he confronts a dangerous situation with coolness andaddress. His love for his ill-gotten wife seems to be quite genuine, andthere is no ground for suspecting him of having used her as a mere meansto the crown. [81] His conscience, though ineffective, is far from beingdead. In spite of its reproaches he plots new crimes to ensure the prizeof the old one; but still it makes him unhappy (III. i. 49 f. , III. iii. 35 f. ). Nor is he cruel or malevolent. On the other hand, he is no tragic character. He had a small nature. IfHamlet may be trusted, he was a man of mean appearance--a mildewed ear,a toad, a bat; and he was also bloated by excess in drinking. Peoplemade mouths at him in contempt while his brother lived; and though, whenhe came to the throne, they spent large sums in buying his portrait, heevidently put little reliance on their loyalty. He was no villain offorce, who thought of winning his brother's crown by a bold and openstroke, but a cut-purse who stole the diadem from a shelf and put it inhis pocket. He had the inclination of natures physically weak andmorally small towards intrigue and crooked dealing. His instinctivepredilection was for poison: this was the means he used in his firstmurder, and he at once recurred to it when he had failed to get Hamletexecuted by deputy. Though in danger he showed no cowardice, his firstthought was always for himself. I like him not, nor stands it safe with _us_ To let his madness range,--these are the first words we hear him speak after the play-scene. Hisfirst comment on the death of Polonius is, It had been so with _us_ had we been there;and his second is, Alas, how shall this bloody deed be answered? It will be laid to _us_. He was not, however, stupid, but rather quick-witted and adroit. He wonthe Queen partly indeed by presents (how pitifully characteristic ofher! ), but also by 'witch-craft of his wit' or intellect. He seems tohave been soft-spoken, ingratiating in manner, and given to smiling onthe person he addressed ('that one may smile, and smile, and be avillain'). We see this in his speech to Laertes about the young man'sdesire to return to Paris (I. ii. 42 f. ). Hamlet scarcely ever speaks tohim without an insult, but he never shows resentment, hardly evenannoyance. He makes use of Laertes with great dexterity. He hadevidently found that a clear head, a general complaisance, a willingnessto bend and oblige where he could not overawe, would lead him to hisobjects,--that he could trick men and manage them. Unfortunately heimagined he could trick something more than men. This error, together with a decided trait of temperament, leads him tohis ruin. He has a sanguine disposition. When first we see him, all hasfallen out to his wishes, and he confidently looks forward to a happylife. He believes his secret to be absolutely safe, and he is quiteready to be kind to Hamlet, in whose melancholy he sees only excess ofgrief. He has no desire to see him leave the court; he promises him hisvoice for the succession (I. ii. 108, III. ii. 355); he will be a fatherto him. Before long, indeed, he becomes very uneasy, and then more andmore alarmed; but when, much later, he has contrived Hamlet's death inEngland, he has still no suspicion that he need not hope for happiness: till I know 'tis done, Howe'er my haps, my _joys_ were ne'er begun. Nay, his very last words show that he goes to death unchanged: Oh yet defend me, friends, I am but hurt [=wounded],he cries, although in half a minute he is dead. That his crime hasfailed, and that it could do nothing else, never once comes home to him. He thinks he can over-reach Heaven. When he is praying for pardon, he isall the while perfectly determined to keep his crown; and he knows it. More--it is one of the grimmest things in Shakespeare, but he puts suchthings so quietly that we are apt to miss them--when the King is prayingfor pardon for his first murder he has just made his final arrangementsfor a second, the murder of Hamlet. But he does not allude to that factin his prayer. If Hamlet had really wished to kill him at a moment thathad no relish of salvation in it, he had no need to wait. [82] So we areinclined to say; and yet it was not so. For this was the crisis forClaudius as well as Hamlet. He had better have died at once, before hehad added to his guilt a share in the responsibility for all the woe anddeath that followed. And so, we may allow ourselves to say, here alsoHamlet's indiscretion served him well. The power that shaped his endshaped the King's no less. For--to return in conclusion to the action of the play--in all thathappens or is done we seem to apprehend some vaster power. We do notdefine it, or even name it, or perhaps even say to ourselves that it isthere; but our imagination is haunted by the sense of it, as it worksits way through the deeds or the delays of men to its inevitable end. And most of all do we feel this in regard to Hamlet and the King. Forthese two, the one by his shrinking from his appointed task, and theother by efforts growing ever more feverish to rid himself of his enemy,seem to be bent on avoiding each other. But they cannot. Through deviouspaths, the very paths they take in order to escape, something is pushingthem silently step by step towards one another, until they meet and itputs the sword into Hamlet's hand. He himself must die, for he neededthis compulsion before he could fulfil the demand of destiny; but he_must_ fulfil it. And the King too, turn and twist as he may, must reachthe appointed goal, and is only hastening to it by the windings whichseem to lead elsewhere. Concentration on the character of the hero isapt to withdraw our attention from this aspect of the drama; but in noother tragedy of Shakespeare's, not even in _Macbeth_, is this aspect soimpressive. [83]I mention _Macbeth_ for a further reason. In _Macbeth_ and _Hamlet_ notonly is the feeling of a supreme power or destiny peculiarly marked, butit has also at times a peculiar tone, which may be called, in a sense,religious. I cannot make my meaning clear without using language toodefinite to describe truly the imaginative impression produced; but itis roughly true that, while we do not imagine the supreme power as adivine being who avenges crime, or as a providence which supernaturallyinterferes, our sense of it is influenced by the fact that Shakespeareuses current religious ideas here much more decidedly than in _Othello_or _King Lear_. The horror in Macbeth's soul is more than oncerepresented as desperation at the thought that he is eternally 'lost';the same idea appears in the attempt of Claudius at repentance; and as_Hamlet_ nears its close the 'religious' tone of the tragedy is deepenedin two ways. In the first place, 'accident' is introduced into the plotin its barest and least dramatic form, when Hamlet is brought back toDenmark by the chance of the meeting with the pirate ship. This incidenthas been therefore severely criticised as a lame expedient,[84] but itappears probable that the 'accident' is meant to impress the imaginationas the very reverse of accidental, and with many readers it certainlydoes so. And that this was the intention is made the more likely by asecond fact, the fact that in connection with the events of the voyageShakespeare introduces that feeling, on Hamlet's part, of his being inthe hands of Providence. The repeated expressions of this feeling arenot, I have maintained, a sign that Hamlet has now formed a fixedresolution to do his duty forthwith; but their effect is to strengthenin the spectator the feeling that, whatever may become of Hamlet, andwhether he wills it or not, his task will surely be accomplished,because it is the purpose of a power against which both he and his enemyare impotent, and which makes of them the instruments of its own will. Observing this, we may remember another significant point of resemblancebetween _Hamlet_ and _Macbeth_, the appearance in each play of aGhost,--a figure which seems quite in place in either, whereas it wouldseem utterly out of place in _Othello_ or _King Lear_. Much might besaid of the Ghost in _Hamlet_, but I confine myself to the matter whichwe are now considering. What is the effect of the appearance of theGhost? And, in particular, why does Shakespeare make this Ghost so_majestical_ a phantom, giving it that measured and solemn utterance,and that air of impersonal abstraction which forbids, for example, allexpression of affection for Hamlet and checks in Hamlet the outburst ofpity for his father? Whatever the intention may have been, the result isthat the Ghost affects imagination not simply as the apparition of adead king who desires the accomplishment of _his_ purposes, but also asthe representative of that hidden ultimate power, the messenger ofdivine justice set upon the expiation of offences which it appearedimpossible for man to discover and avenge, a reminder or a symbol of theconnexion of the limited world of ordinary experience with the vasterlife of which it is but a partial appearance. And as, at the beginningof the play, we have this intimation, conveyed through the medium of thereceived religious idea of a soul come from purgatory, so at the end,conveyed through the similar idea of a soul carried by angels to itsrest, we have an intimation of the same character, and a reminder thatthe apparent failure of Hamlet's life is not the ultimate truthconcerning him. If these various peculiarities of the tragedy are considered, it will beagreed that, while _Hamlet_ certainly cannot be called in the specificsense a 'religious drama,' there is in it nevertheless both a freer useof popular religious ideas, and a more decided, though alwaysimaginative, intimation of a supreme power concerned in human evil andgood, than can be found in any other of Shakespeare's tragedies. Andthis is probably one of the causes of the special popularity of thisplay, just as _Macbeth_, the tragedy which in these respects most nearlyapproaches it, has also the place next to it in general esteem. FOOTNOTES:[Footnote 54: In the First Act (I. ii. 138) Hamlet says that his fatherhas been dead not quite two months. In the Third Act (III. ii. 135)Ophelia says King Hamlet has been dead 'twice two months. ' The events ofthe Third Act are separated from those of the Second by one night (II. ii. 565). ][Footnote 55: The only difference is that in the 'To be or not to be'soliloquy there is no reference to the idea that suicide is forbidden by'the Everlasting. ' Even this, however, seems to have been present in theoriginal form of the speech, for the version in the First Quarto has aline about our being 'borne before an everlasting Judge. '][Footnote 56: The present position of the 'To be or not to be'soliloquy, and of the interview with Ophelia, appears to have been dueto an after-thought of Shakespeare's; for in the First Quarto theyprecede, instead of following, the arrival of the players, andconsequently the arrangement for the play-scene. This is a notableinstance of the truth that 'inspiration' is by no means confined to apoet's first conceptions. ][Footnote 57: Cf. again the scene at Ophelia's grave, where a strongstrain of aesthetic disgust is traceable in Hamlet's 'towering passion'with Laertes: 'Nay, an thou'lt mouth, I'll rant as well as thou' (V. i. 306). ][Footnote 58: O heart, lose not thy nature; let not ever The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom:Nero, who put to death his mother who had poisoned her husband. Thispassage is surely remarkable. And so are the later words (III. iv. 28): A bloody deed! almost as bad, good mother, As kill a king, and marry with his brother. Are we to understand that at this time he really suspected her ofcomplicity in the murder? We must remember that the Ghost had not toldhim she was innocent of that. ][Footnote 59: I am inclined to think that the note of interrogation putafter 'revenged' in a late Quarto is right. ][Footnote 60: III. iii. 1-26. The state of affairs at Court at thistime, though I have not seen it noticed by critics, seems to mepuzzling. It is quite clear from III. ii. 310 ff. , from the passage justcited, and from IV. vii. 1-5 and 30 ff. , that everyone sees in theplay-scene a gross and menacing insult to the King. Yet no one shows anysign of perceiving in it also an accusation of murder. Surely that isstrange. Are we perhaps meant to understand that they do perceive this,but out of subservience choose to ignore the fact? If that wereShakespeare's meaning, the actors could easily indicate it by theirlooks. And if it were so, any sympathy we may feel for Rosencrantz andGuildenstern in their fate would be much diminished. But the mere textdoes not suffice to decide either this question or the question whetherthe two courtiers were aware of the contents of the commission they boreto England. ][Footnote 61: This passage in _Hamlet_ seems to have been in Heywood'smind when, in _The Second Part of the Iron Age_ (Pearson's reprint, vol. iii. , p. 423), he makes the Ghost of Agamemnon appear in order tosatisfy the doubts of Orestes as to his mother's guilt. No reader couldpossibly think that this Ghost was meant to be an hallucination; yetClytemnestra cannot see it. The Ghost of King Hamlet, I may add, goesfurther than that of Agamemnon, for he is audible, as well as visible,to the privileged person. ][Footnote 62: I think it is clear that it is this fear which stands inthe way of the obvious plan of bringing Hamlet to trial and getting himshut up or executed. It is much safer to hurry him off to his doom inEngland before he can say anything about the murder which he has somehowdiscovered. Perhaps the Queen's resistance, and probably Hamlet's greatpopularity with the people, are additional reasons. (It should beobserved that as early as III. i. 194 we hear of the idea of 'confining'Hamlet as an alternative to sending him to England. )][Footnote 63: I am inferring from IV. vii. , 129, 130, and the last wordsof the scene. ][Footnote 64: III. iv. 172: For this same lord, I do repent: but heaven hath pleased it so, To punish me with this and this with me, That I must be their scourge and minister:_i. e. _ the scourge and minister of 'heaven,' which has a plural senseelsewhere also in Shakespeare. ][Footnote 65: IV. iii. 48: _Ham. _ For England! _King. _ Ay, Hamlet. _Ham. _ Good. _King. _ So is it, if thou knew'st our purposes. _Ham. _ I see a cherub that sees them. ][Footnote 66: On this passage see p. 98. Hamlet's reply to Horatio'swarning sounds, no doubt, determined; but so did 'I know my course. ' Andis it not significant that, having given it, he abruptly changes thesubject? ][Footnote 67: P. 102. ][Footnote 68: It should be observed also that many of Hamlet'srepetitions can hardly be said to occur at moments of great emotion,like Cordelia's 'And so I am, I am,' and 'No cause, no cause. 'Of course, a habit of repetition quite as marked as Hamlet's may befound in comic persons, _e. g. _ Justice Shallow in _2 Henry IV. _][Footnote 69: Perhaps it is from noticing this trait that I findsomething characteristic too in this coincidence of phrase: 'Alas, poorghost! ' (I. v. 4), 'Alas, poor Yorick! ' (V. i. 202). ][Footnote 70: This letter, of course, was written before the time whenthe action of the drama begins, for we know that Ophelia, after herfather's commands in I. iii. , received no more letters (II. i. 109). ][Footnote 71: 'Frailty, thy name is woman! ' he had exclaimed in thefirst soliloquy. Cf. what he says of his mother's act (III. iv. 40): Such an act That blurs the grace and blush of modesty, Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose From the fair forehead of an innocent love And sets a blister there. ][Footnote 72: There are signs that Hamlet was haunted by the horribleidea that he had been deceived in Ophelia as he had been in his mother;that she was shallow and artificial, and even that what had seemedsimple and affectionate love might really have been something verydifferent. The grossness of his language at the play-scene, and somelines in the Nunnery-scene, suggest this; and, considering the state ofhis mind, there is nothing unnatural in his suffering from such asuspicion. I do not suggest that he _believed_ in it, and in theNunnery-scene it is clear that his healthy perception of her innocenceis in conflict with it. He seems to have divined that Polonius suspected him of dishonourableintentions towards Ophelia; and there are also traces of the idea thatPolonius had been quite ready to let his daughter run the risk as longas Hamlet was prosperous. But it is dangerous, of course, to lay stresson inferences drawn from his conversations with Polonius. ][Footnote 73: Many readers and critics imagine that Hamlet went straightto Ophelia's room after his interview with the Ghost. But we have justseen that on the contrary he tried to visit her and was repelled, and itis absolutely certain that a long interval separates the events of I. v. and II. i. They think also, of course, that Hamlet's visit to Opheliawas the first announcement of his madness. But the text flatlycontradicts that idea also. Hamlet has for some time appeared totallychanged (II. ii. 1-10); the King is very uneasy at his 'transformation,'and has sent for his school-fellows in order to discover its cause. Polonius now, after Ophelia has told him of the interview, comes toannounce his discovery, not of Hamlet's madness, but of its cause (II. ii. 49). That, it would seem, was the effect Hamlet aimed at in hisinterview. I may add that Ophelia's description of his intentexamination of her face suggests doubt rather as to her 'honesty' orsincerity than as to her strength of mind. I cannot believe that he everdreamed of confiding his secret to her. ][Footnote 74: If this _is_ an allusion to his own love, the adjective'despised' is significant. But I doubt the allusion. The othercalamities mentioned by Hamlet, 'the oppressor's wrong, the proud man'scontumely, the law's delay, the insolence of office, and the spurns thatpatient merit of the unworthy takes,' are not at all specially his own. ][Footnote 75: It should be noticed that it was not apparently of longstanding. See the words 'of late' in I. iii. 91, 99. ][Footnote 76: This, I think, may be said on almost any sane view ofHamlet's love. ][Footnote 77: Polonius says so, and it _may_ be true. ][Footnote 78: I have heard an actress in this part utter such a cry asis described above, but there is absolutely nothing in the text tojustify her rendering. Even the exclamation 'O, ho! ' found in theQuartos at IV. v. 33, but omitted in the Folios and by almost all moderneditors, coming as it does after the stanza, 'He is dead and gone,lady,' evidently expresses grief, not terror. ][Footnote 79: In the remarks above I have not attempted, of course, acomplete view of the character, which has often been well described; butI cannot forbear a reference to one point which I do not remember tohave seen noticed. In the Nunnery-scene Ophelia's first wordspathetically betray her own feeling: Good my lord, How does your honour _for this many a day_? She then offers to return Hamlet's presents. This has not been suggestedto her by her father: it is her own thought. And the next lines, inwhich she refers to the sweet words which accompanied those gifts, andto the unkindness which has succeeded that kindness, imply a reproach. So again do those most touching little speeches: _Hamlet. _ . . . I did love you once. _Ophelia. _ Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so. _Hamlet. _ You should not have believed me . . . I loved you not. _Ophelia. _ I was the more deceived. Now the obvious surface fact was not that Hamlet had forsaken her, butthat _she_ had repulsed _him_; and here, with his usual unobtrusivesubtlety, Shakespeare shows how Ophelia, even though she may haveaccepted from her elders the theory that her unkindness has drivenHamlet mad, knows within herself that she is forsaken, and cannotrepress the timid attempt to win her lover back by showing that her ownheart is unchanged. I will add one note. There are critics who, after all the help giventhem in different ways by Goethe and Coleridge and Mrs. Jameson, stillshake their heads over Ophelia's song, 'To-morrow is Saint Valentine'sday. ' Probably they are incurable, but they may be asked to considerthat Shakespeare makes Desdemona, 'as chaste as ice, as pure as snow,'sing an old song containing the line, If I court moe women, you'll couch with moe men. ][Footnote 80: _I. e. _ the King will kill _her_ to make all sure. ][Footnote 81: I do not rely so much on his own statement to Laertes (IV. vii. 12 f. ) as on the absence of contrary indications, on his tone inspeaking to her, and on such signs as his mention of her in soliloquy(III. iii. 55). ][Footnote 82: This also is quietly indicated. Hamlet spares the King, hesays, because if the King is killed praying he will _go to heaven_. OnHamlet's departure, the King rises from his knees, and mutters: My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: Words without thoughts _never to heaven go_. ][Footnote 83: I am indebted to Werder in this paragraph. ][Footnote 84: The attempt to explain this meeting as pre-arranged byHamlet is scarcely worth mention. ]LECTURE VOTHELLOThere is practically no doubt that _Othello_ was the tragedy writtennext after _Hamlet_. Such external evidence as we possess points to thisconclusion, and it is confirmed by similarities of style, diction andversification, and also by the fact that ideas and phrases of theearlier play are echoed in the later. [85] There is, further (not tospeak of one curious point, to be considered when we come to Iago), acertain resemblance in the subjects. The heroes of the two plays aredoubtless extremely unlike, so unlike that each could have dealt withoutmuch difficulty with the situation which proved fatal to the other; butstill each is a man exceptionally noble and trustful, and each enduresthe shock of a terrible disillusionment. This theme is treated byShakespeare for the first time in _Hamlet_, for the second in _Othello_. It recurs with modifications in _King Lear_, and it probably formed theattraction which drew Shakespeare to refashion in part another writer'stragedy of _Timon_. These four dramas may so far be grouped together indistinction from the remaining tragedies. But in point of substance, and, in certain respects, in point of style,the unlikeness of _Othello_ to _Hamlet_ is much greater than thelikeness, and the later play belongs decidedly to one group with itssuccessors. We have seen that, like them, it is a tragedy of passion, adescription inapplicable to _Julius Caesar_ or _Hamlet_. And with thischange goes another, an enlargement in the stature of the hero. There isin most of the later heroes something colossal, something which remindsus of Michael Angelo's figures. They are not merely exceptional men,they are huge men; as it were, survivors of the heroic age living in alater and smaller world. We do not receive this impression from Romeo orBrutus or Hamlet, nor did it lie in Shakespeare's design to allow morethan touches of this trait to Julius Caesar himself; but it is stronglymarked in Lear and Coriolanus, and quite distinct in Macbeth and even inAntony. Othello is the first of these men, a being essentially large andgrand, towering above his fellows, holding a volume of force which inrepose ensures preeminence without an effort, and in commotion remindsus rather of the fury of the elements than of the tumult of common humanpassion. 1What is the peculiarity of _Othello_? What is the distinctive impressionthat it leaves? Of all Shakespeare's tragedies, I would answer, not evenexcepting _King Lear_, _Othello_ is the most painfully exciting and themost terrible. From the moment when the temptation of the hero begins,the reader's heart and mind are held in a vice, experiencing theextremes of pity and fear, sympathy and repulsion, sickening hope anddreadful expectation. Evil is displayed before him, not indeed with theprofusion found in _King Lear_, but forming, as it were, the soul of asingle character, and united with an intellectual superiority so greatthat he watches its advance fascinated and appalled. He sees it, initself almost irresistible, aided at every step by fortunate accidentsand the innocent mistakes of its victims. He seems to breathe anatmosphere as fateful as that of _King Lear_, but more confined andoppressive, the darkness not of night but of a close-shut murderousroom. His imagination is excited to intense activity, but it is theactivity of concentration rather than dilation. I will not dwell now on aspects of the play which modify thisimpression, and I reserve for later discussion one of its principalsources, the character of Iago. But if we glance at some of its othersources, we shall find at the same time certain distinguishingcharacteristics of _Othello_. (1) One of these has been already mentioned in our discussion ofShakespeare's technique. _Othello_ is not only the most masterly of thetragedies in point of construction, but its method of construction isunusual. And this method, by which the conflict begins late, andadvances without appreciable pause and with accelerating speed to thecatastrophe, is a main cause of the painful tension just described. Tothis may be added that, after the conflict has begun, there is verylittle relief by way of the ridiculous. Henceforward at any rate Iago'shumour never raises a smile. The clown is a poor one; we hardly attendto him and quickly forget him; I believe most readers of Shakespeare, ifasked whether there is a clown in _Othello_, would answer No. (2) In the second place, there is no subject more exciting than sexualjealousy rising to the pitch of passion; and there can hardly be anyspectacle at once so engrossing and so painful as that of a great naturesuffering the torment of this passion, and driven by it to a crime whichis also a hideous blunder. Such a passion as ambition, however terribleits results, is not itself ignoble; if we separate it in thought fromthe conditions which make it guilty, it does not appear despicable; itis not a kind of suffering, its nature is active; and therefore we canwatch its course without shrinking. But jealousy, and especially sexualjealousy, brings with it a sense of shame and humiliation. For thisreason it is generally hidden; if we perceive it we ourselves areashamed and turn our eyes away; and when it is not hidden it commonlystirs contempt as well as pity. Nor is this all. Such jealousy asOthello's converts human nature into chaos, and liberates the beast inman; and it does this in relation to one of the most intense and alsothe most ideal of human feelings. What spectacle can be more painfulthan that of this feeling turned into a tortured mixture of longing andloathing, the 'golden purity' of passion split by poison into fragments,the animal in man forcing itself into his consciousness in nakedgrossness, and he writhing before it but powerless to deny it entrance,gasping inarticulate images of pollution, and finding relief only in abestial thirst for blood? This is what we have to witness in one who wasindeed 'great of heart' and no less pure and tender than he was great. And this, with what it leads to, the blow to Desdemona, and the scenewhere she is treated as the inmate of a brothel, a scene far morepainful than the murder scene, is another cause of the special effect ofthis tragedy. [86](3) The mere mention of these scenes will remind us painfully of a thirdcause; and perhaps it is the most potent of all. I mean the suffering ofDesdemona. This is, unless I mistake, the most nearly intolerablespectacle that Shakespeare offers us. For one thing, it is _mere_suffering; and, _ceteris paribus_, that is much worse to witness thansuffering that issues in action. Desdemona is helplessly passive. Shecan do nothing whatever. She cannot retaliate even in speech; no, noteven in silent feeling. And the chief reason of her helplessness onlymakes the sight of her suffering more exquisitely painful. She ishelpless because her nature is infinitely sweet and her love absolute. Iwould not challenge Mr. Swinburne's statement that we _pity_ Othelloeven more than Desdemona; but we watch Desdemona with more unmitigateddistress. We are never wholly uninfluenced by the feeling that Othellois a man contending with another man; but Desdemona's suffering is likethat of the most loving of dumb creatures tortured without cause by thebeing he adores. (4) Turning from the hero and heroine to the third principal character,we observe (what has often been pointed out) that the action andcatastrophe of _Othello_ depend largely on intrigue. We must not saymore than this. We must not call the play a tragedy of intrigue asdistinguished from a tragedy of character. Iago's plot is Iago'scharacter in action; and it is built on his knowledge of Othello'scharacter, and could not otherwise have succeeded. Still it remains truethat an elaborate plot was necessary to elicit the catastrophe; forOthello was no Leontes, and his was the last nature to engender suchjealousy from itself. Accordingly Iago's intrigue occupies a position inthe drama for which no parallel can be found in the other tragedies; theonly approach, and that a distant one, being the intrigue of Edmund inthe secondary plot of _King Lear_. Now in any novel or play, even if thepersons rouse little interest and are never in serious danger, askilfully-worked intrigue will excite eager attention and suspense. Andwhere, as in _Othello_, the persons inspire the keenest sympathy andantipathy, and life and death depend on the intrigue, it becomes thesource of a tension in which pain almost overpowers pleasure. Nowhereelse in Shakespeare do we hold our breath in such anxiety and for solong a time as in the later Acts of _Othello_. (5) One result of the prominence of the element of intrigue is that_Othello_ is less unlike a story of private life than any other of thegreat tragedies. And this impression is strengthened in further ways. Inthe other great tragedies the action is placed in a distant period, sothat its general significance is perceived through a thin veil whichseparates the persons from ourselves and our own world. But _Othello_ isa drama of modern life; when it first appeared it was a drama almost ofcontemporary life, for the date of the Turkish attack on Cyprus is 1570. The characters come close to us, and the application of the drama toourselves (if the phrase may be pardoned) is more immediate than it canbe in _Hamlet_ or _Lear_. Besides this, their fortunes affect us asthose of private individuals more than is possible in any of the latertragedies with the exception of _Timon_. I have not forgotten theSenate, nor Othello's position, nor his service to the State;[87] buthis deed and his death have not that influence on the interests of anation or an empire which serves to idealise, and to remove far from ourown sphere, the stories of Hamlet and Macbeth, of Coriolanus and Antony. Indeed he is already superseded at Cyprus when his fate is consummated,and as we leave him no vision rises on us, as in other tragedies, ofpeace descending on a distracted land. (6) The peculiarities so far considered combine with others to producethose feelings of oppression, of confinement to a comparatively narrowworld, and of dark fatality, which haunt us in reading _Othello_. In_Macbeth_ the fate which works itself out alike in the external conflictand in the hero's soul, is obviously hostile to evil; and theimagination is dilated both by the consciousness of its presence and bythe appearance of supernatural agencies. These, as we have seen, producein _Hamlet_ a somewhat similar effect, which is increased by the hero'sacceptance of the accidents as a providential shaping of his end. _KingLear_ is undoubtedly the tragedy which comes nearest to _Othello_ in theimpression of darkness and fatefulness, and in the absence of directindications of any guiding power. [88] But in _King Lear_, apart fromother differences to be considered later, the conflict assumesproportions so vast that the imagination seems, as in _Paradise Lost_,to traverse spaces wider than the earth. In reading _Othello_ the mindis not thus distended. It is more bound down to the spectacle of noblebeings caught in toils from which there is no escape; while theprominence of the intrigue diminishes the sense of the dependence of thecatastrophe on character, and the part played by accident[89] in thiscatastrophe accentuates the feeling of fate. This influence of accidentis keenly felt in _King Lear_ only once, and at the very end of theplay. In _Othello_, after the temptation has begun, it is incessant andterrible. The skill of Iago was extraordinary, but so was his goodfortune. Again and again a chance word from Desdemona, a chance meetingof Othello and Cassio, a question which starts to our lips and whichanyone but Othello would have asked, would have destroyed Iago's plotand ended his life. In their stead, Desdemona drops her handkerchief atthe moment most favourable to him,[90] Cassio blunders into the presenceof Othello only to find him in a swoon, Bianca arrives precisely whenshe is wanted to complete Othello's deception and incense his anger intofury. All this and much more seems to us quite natural, so potent is theart of the dramatist; but it confounds us with a feeling, such as weexperience in the _Oedipus Tyrannus_, that for these star-crossedmortals--both [Greek: dysdaimones]--there is no escape from fate, andeven with a feeling, absent from that play, that fate has taken sideswith villainy. [91] It is not surprising, therefore, that _Othello_should affect us as _Hamlet_ and _Macbeth_ never do, and as _King Lear_does only in slighter measure. On the contrary, it is marvellous that,before the tragedy is over, Shakespeare should have succeeded in toningdown this impression into harmony with others more solemn and serene. But has he wholly succeeded? Or is there a justification for the fact--afact it certainly is--that some readers, while acknowledging, of course,the immense power of _Othello_, and even admitting that it isdramatically perhaps Shakespeare's greatest triumph, still regard itwith a certain distaste, or, at any rate, hardly allow it a place intheir minds beside _Hamlet_, _King Lear_ and _Macbeth_? The distaste to which I refer is due chiefly to two causes. First, tomany readers in our time, men as well as women, the subject of sexualjealousy, treated with Elizabethan fulness and frankness, is not merelypainful but so repulsive that not even the intense tragic emotions whichthe story generates can overcome this repulsion. But, while it is easyto understand a dislike of _Othello_ thus caused, it does not seemnecessary to discuss it, for it may fairly be called personal orsubjective. It would become more than this, and would amount to acriticism of the play, only if those who feel it maintained that thefulness and frankness which are disagreeable to them are also needlessfrom a dramatic point of view, or betray a design of appealing tounpoetic feelings in the audience. But I do not think that this ismaintained, or that such a view would be plausible. To some readers, again, parts of _Othello_ appear shocking or evenhorrible. They think--if I may formulate their objection--that in theseparts Shakespeare has sinned against the canons of art, by representingon the stage a violence or brutality the effect of which isunnecessarily painful and rather sensational than tragic. The passageswhich thus give offence are probably those already referred to,--thatwhere Othello strikes Desdemona (IV. i. 251), that where he affects totreat her as an inmate of a house of ill-fame (IV. ii. ), and finally thescene of her death. The issues thus raised ought not to be ignored or impatiently dismissed,but they cannot be decided, it seems to me, by argument. All we canprofitably do is to consider narrowly our experience, and to askourselves this question: If we feel these objections, do we feel themwhen we are reading the play with all our force, or only when we arereading it in a half-hearted manner? For, however matters may stand inthe former case, in the latter case evidently the fault is ours and notShakespeare's. And if we try the question thus, I believe we shall findthat on the whole the fault is ours. The first, and least important, ofthe three passages--that of the blow--seems to me the most doubtful. Iconfess that, do what I will, I cannot reconcile myself with it. Itseems certain that the blow is by no means a tap on the shoulder with aroll of paper, as some actors, feeling the repulsiveness of the passage,have made it. It must occur, too, on the open stage. And there is not, Ithink, a sufficiently overwhelming tragic feeling in the passage to makeit bearable. But in the other two scenes the case is different. There,it seems to me, if we fully imagine the inward tragedy in the souls ofthe persons as we read, the more obvious and almost physical sensationsof pain or horror do not appear in their own likeness, and only serve tointensify the tragic feelings in which they are absorbed. Whether thiswould be so in the murder-scene if Desdemona had to be imagined asdragged about the open stage (as in some modern performances) may bedoubtful; but there is absolutely no warrant in the text for imaginingthis, and it is also quite clear that the bed where she is stifled waswithin the curtains,[92] and so, presumably, in part concealed. Here, then, _Othello_ does not appear to be, unless perhaps at onepoint,[93] open to criticism, though it has more passages than the otherthree tragedies where, if imagination is not fully exerted, it isshocked or else sensationally excited. If nevertheless we feel it tooccupy a place in our minds a little lower than the other three (and Ibelieve this feeling, though not general, is not rare), the reason liesnot here but in another characteristic, to which I have alreadyreferred,--the comparative confinement of the imaginative atmosphere. _Othello_ has not equally with the other three the power of dilating theimagination by vague suggestions of huge universal powers working in theworld of individual fate and passion. It is, in a sense, less'symbolic. ' We seem to be aware in it of a certain limitation, a partialsuppression of that element in Shakespeare's mind which unites him withthe mystical poets and with the great musicians and philosophers. In oneor two of his plays, notably in _Troilus and Cressida_, we are almostpainfully conscious of this suppression; we feel an intense intellectualactivity, but at the same time a certain coldness and hardness, asthough some power in his soul, at once the highest and the sweetest,were for a time in abeyance. In other plays, notably in the _Tempest_,we are constantly aware of the presence of this power; and in such caseswe seem to be peculiarly near to Shakespeare himself. Now this is so in_Hamlet_ and _King Lear_, and, in a slighter degree, in _Macbeth_; butit is much less so in _Othello_. I do not mean that in _Othello_ thesuppression is marked, or that, as in _Troilus and Cressida_, it strikesus as due to some unpleasant mood; it seems rather to follow simply fromthe design of a play on a contemporary and wholly mundane subject. Stillit makes a difference of the kind I have attempted to indicate, and itleaves an impression that in _Othello_ we are not in contact with thewhole of Shakespeare. And it is perhaps significant in this respect thatthe hero himself strikes us as having, probably, less of the poet'spersonality in him than many characters far inferior both as dramaticcreations and as men. 2The character of Othello is comparatively simple, but, as I have dwelton the prominence of intrigue and accident in the play, it is desirableto show how essentially the success of Iago's plot is connected withthis character. Othello's description of himself as one not easily jealous, but, being wrought, Perplexed in the extreme,is perfectly just. His tragedy lies in this--that his whole nature wasindisposed to jealousy, and yet was such that he was unusually open todeception, and, if once wrought to passion, likely to act with littlereflection, with no delay, and in the most decisive manner conceivable. Let me first set aside a mistaken view. I do not mean the ridiculousnotion that Othello was jealous by temperament, but the idea, which hassome little plausibility, that the play is primarily a study of a noblebarbarian, who has become a Christian and has imbibed some of thecivilisation of his employers, but who retains beneath the surface thesavage passions of his Moorish blood and also the suspiciousnessregarding female chastity common among Oriental peoples, and that thelast three Acts depict the outburst of these original feelings throughthe thin crust of Venetian culture. It would take too long to discussthis idea,[94] and it would perhaps be useless to do so, for allarguments against it must end in an appeal to the reader's understandingof Shakespeare. If he thinks it is like Shakespeare to look at things inthis manner; that he had a historical mind and occupied himself withproblems of 'Culturgeschichte'; that he laboured to make his Romansperfectly Roman, to give a correct view of the Britons in the days ofLear or Cymbeline, to portray in Hamlet a stage of the moralconsciousness not yet reached by the people around him, the reader willalso think this interpretation of _Othello_ probable. To me it appearshopelessly un-Shakespearean. I could as easily believe that Chaucermeant the Wife of Bath for a study of the peculiarities ofSomersetshire. I do not mean that Othello's race is a matter of noaccount. It has, as we shall presently see, its importance in the play. It makes a difference to our idea of him; it makes a difference to theaction and catastrophe. But in regard to the essentials of his characterit is not important; and if anyone had told Shakespeare that noEnglishman would have acted like the Moor, and had congratulated him onthe accuracy of his racial psychology, I am sure he would have laughed. Othello is, in one sense of the word, by far the most romantic figureamong Shakespeare's heroes; and he is so partly from the strange life ofwar and adventure which he has lived from childhood. He does not belongto our world, and he seems to enter it we know not whence--almost as iffrom wonderland. There is something mysterious in his descent from menof royal siege; in his wanderings in vast deserts and among marvellouspeoples; in his tales of magic handkerchiefs and prophetic Sibyls; inthe sudden vague glimpses we get of numberless battles and sieges inwhich he has played the hero and has borne a charmed life; even inchance references to his baptism, his being sold to slavery, his sojournin Aleppo. And he is not merely a romantic figure; his own nature is romantic. Hehas not, indeed, the meditative or speculative imagination of Hamlet;but in the strictest sense of the word he is more poetic than Hamlet. Indeed, if one recalls Othello's most famous speeches--those that begin,'Her father loved me,' 'O now for ever,' 'Never, Iago,' 'Had it pleasedHeaven,' 'It is the cause,' 'Behold, I have a weapon,' 'Soft you, a wordor two before you go'--and if one places side by side with thesespeeches an equal number by any other hero, one will not doubt thatOthello is the greatest poet of them all. There is the same poetry inhis casual phrases--like 'These nine moons wasted,' 'Keep up your brightswords, for the dew will rust them,' 'You chaste stars,' 'It is a swordof Spain, the ice-brook's temper,' 'It is the very error of themoon'--and in those brief expressions of intense feeling which eversince have been taken as the absolute expression, like If it were now to die, 'Twere now to be most happy; for, I fear, My soul hath her content so absolute That not another comfort like to this Succeeds in unknown fate,or If she be false, O then Heaven mocks itself. I'll not believe it;or No, my heart is turned to stone; I strike it, and it hurts my hand,or But yet the pity of it, Iago! O Iago, the pity of it, Iago! or O thou weed, Who art so lovely fair and smell'st so sweet That the sense aches at thee, would thou hadst ne'er been born. And this imagination, we feel, has accompanied his whole life. He haswatched with a poet's eye the Arabian trees dropping their med'cinablegum, and the Indian throwing away his chance-found pearl; and has gazedin a fascinated dream at the Pontic sea rushing, never to return, to thePropontic and the Hellespont; and has felt as no other man ever felt(for he speaks of it as none other ever did) the poetry of the pride,pomp, and circumstance of glorious war. So he comes before us, dark and grand, with a light upon him from thesun where he was born; but no longer young, and now grave,self-controlled, steeled by the experience of countless perils,hardships and vicissitudes, at once simple and stately in bearing and inspeech, a great man naturally modest but fully conscious of his worth,proud of his services to the state, unawed by dignitaries and unelatedby honours, secure, it would seem, against all dangers from without andall rebellion from within. And he comes to have his life crowned withthe final glory of love, a love as strange, adventurous and romantic asany passage of his eventful history, filling his heart with tendernessand his imagination with ecstasy. For there is no love, not that ofRomeo in his youth, more steeped in imagination than Othello's. The sources of danger in this character are revealed but too clearly bythe story. In the first place, Othello's mind, for all its poetry, isvery simple. He is not observant. His nature tends outward. He is quitefree from introspection, and is not given to reflection. Emotion exciteshis imagination, but it confuses and dulls his intellect. On this sidehe is the very opposite of Hamlet, with whom, however, he shares a greatopenness and trustfulness of nature. In addition, he has littleexperience of the corrupt products of civilised life, and is ignorant ofEuropean women. In the second place, for all his dignity and massive calm (and he hasgreater dignity than any other of Shakespeare's men), he is by naturefull of the most vehement passion. Shakespeare emphasises hisself-control, not only by the wonderful pictures of the First Act, butby references to the past. Lodovico, amazed at his violence, exclaims: Is this the noble Moor whom our full Senate Call all in all sufficient? Is this the nature Whom passion could not shake? whose solid virtue The shot of accident nor dart of chance Could neither graze nor pierce? Iago, who has here no motive for lying, asks: Can he be angry? I have seen the cannon When it hath blown his ranks into the air, And, like the devil, from his very arm Puffed his own brother--and can he be angry? [95]This, and other aspects of his character, are best exhibited by a singleline--one of Shakespeare's miracles--the words by which Othello silencesin a moment the night-brawl between his attendants and those ofBrabantio: Keep up your bright swords, for the dew will rust them. And the same self-control is strikingly shown where Othello endeavoursto elicit some explanation of the fight between Cassio and Montano. Here, however, there occur ominous words, which make us feel hownecessary was this self-control, and make us admire it the more: Now, by heaven, My blood begins my safer guides to rule, And passion, having my best judgment collied, Assays to lead the way. We remember these words later, when the sun of reason is 'collied,'blackened and blotted out in total eclipse. Lastly, Othello's nature is all of one piece. His trust, where hetrusts, is absolute. Hesitation is almost impossible to him. He isextremely self-reliant, and decides and acts instantaneously. If stirredto indignation, as 'in Aleppo once,' he answers with one lightningstroke. Love, if he loves, must be to him the heaven where either hemust live or bear no life. If such a passion as jealousy seizes him, itwill swell into a well-nigh incontrollable flood. He will press forimmediate conviction or immediate relief. Convinced, he will act withthe authority of a judge and the swiftness of a man in mortal pain. Undeceived, he will do like execution on himself. This character is so noble, Othello's feelings and actions follow soinevitably from it and from the forces brought to bear on it, and hissufferings are so heart-rending, that he stirs, I believe, in mostreaders a passion of mingled love and pity which they feel for no otherhero in Shakespeare, and to which not even Mr. Swinburne can do morethan justice. Yet there are some critics and not a few readers whocherish a grudge against him. They do not merely think that in the laterstages of his temptation he showed a certain obtuseness, and that, tospeak pedantically, he acted with unjustifiable precipitance andviolence; no one, I suppose, denies that. But, even when they admit thathe was not of a jealous temper, they consider that he _was_ 'easilyjealous'; they seem to think that it was inexcusable in him to feel anysuspicion of his wife at all; and they blame him for never suspectingIago or asking him for evidence. I refer to this attitude of mindchiefly in order to draw attention to certain points in the story. Itcomes partly from mere inattention (for Othello did suspect Iago and didask him for evidence); partly from a misconstruction of the text whichmakes Othello appear jealous long before he really is so;[96] and partlyfrom failure to realise certain essential facts. I will begin withthese. (1) Othello, we have seen, was trustful, and thorough in his trust. Heput entire confidence in the honesty of Iago, who had not only been hiscompanion in arms, but, as he believed, had just proved his faithfulnessin the matter of the marriage. This confidence was misplaced, and wehappen to know it; but it was no sign of stupidity in Othello. For hisopinion of Iago was the opinion of practically everyone who knew him:and that opinion was that Iago was before all things 'honest,' his veryfaults being those of excess in honesty. This being so, even if Othellohad not been trustful and simple, it would have been quite unnatural inhim to be unmoved by the warnings of so honest a friend, warningsoffered with extreme reluctance and manifestly from a sense of afriend's duty. [97] _Any_ husband would have been troubled by them. (2) Iago does not bring these warnings to a husband who had lived with awife for months and years and knew her like his sister or hisbosom-friend. Nor is there any ground in Othello's character forsupposing that, if he had been such a man, he would have felt and actedas he does in the play. |
But he was newly married; in the circumstanceshe cannot have known much of Desdemona before his marriage; and furtherhe was conscious of being under the spell of a feeling which can giveglory to the truth but can also give it to a dream. (3) This consciousness in any imaginative man is enough, in suchcircumstances, to destroy his confidence in his powers of perception. InOthello's case, after a long and most artful preparation, there nowcomes, to reinforce its effect, the suggestions that he is not anItalian, not even a European; that he is totally ignorant of thethoughts and the customary morality of Venetian women;[98] that he hadhimself seen in Desdemona's deception of her father how perfect anactress she could be. As he listens in horror, for a moment at least thepast is revealed to him in a new and dreadful light, and the groundseems to sink under his feet. These suggestions are followed by atentative but hideous and humiliating insinuation of what his honest andmuch-experienced friend fears may be the true explanation of Desdemona'srejection of acceptable suitors, and of her strange, and naturallytemporary, preference for a black man. Here Iago goes too far. He seessomething in Othello's face that frightens him, and he breaks off. Nordoes this idea take any hold of Othello's mind. But it is not surprisingthat his utter powerlessness to repel it on the ground of knowledge ofhis wife, or even of that instinctive interpretation of character whichis possible between persons of the same race,[99] should complete hismisery, so that he feels he can bear no more, and abruptly dismisses hisfriend (III. iii. 238). Now I repeat that _any_ man situated as Othello was would have beendisturbed by Iago's communications, and I add that many men would havebeen made wildly jealous. But up to this point, where Iago is dismissed,Othello, I must maintain, does not show jealousy. His confidence isshaken, he is confused and deeply troubled, he feels even horror; but heis not yet jealous in the proper sense of that word. In his soliloquy(III. iii. 258 ff. ) the beginning of this passion may be traced; but itis only after an interval of solitude, when he has had time to dwell onthe idea presented to him, and especially after statements of fact, notmere general grounds of suspicion, are offered, that the passion layshold of him. Even then, however, and indeed to the very end, he is quiteunlike the essentially jealous man, quite unlike Leontes. No doubt thethought of another man's possessing the woman he loves is intolerable tohim; no doubt the sense of insult and the impulse of revenge are attimes most violent; and these are the feelings of jealousy proper. Butthese are not the chief or the deepest source of Othello's suffering. Itis the wreck of his faith and his love. It is the feeling, If she be false, oh then Heaven mocks itself;the feeling, O Iago, the pity of it, Iago! the feeling, But there where I have garner'd up my heart, Where either I must live, or bear no life; The fountain from the which my current runs, Or else dries up--to be discarded thence. . . . You will find nothing like this in Leontes. Up to this point, it appears to me, there is not a syllable to be saidagainst Othello. But the play is a tragedy, and from this point we mayabandon the ungrateful and undramatic task of awarding praise and blame. When Othello, after a brief interval, re-enters (III. iii. 330), we seeat once that the poison has been at work and 'burns like the mines ofsulphur. ' Look where he comes! Not poppy, nor mandragora, Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world, Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep Which thou owedst yesterday. He is 'on the rack,' in an agony so unbearable that he cannot endure thesight of Iago. Anticipating the probability that Iago has spared him thewhole truth, he feels that in that case his life is over and his'occupation gone' with all its glories. But he has not abandoned hope. The bare possibility that his friend is deliberately deceivinghim--though such a deception would be a thing so monstrously wicked thathe can hardly conceive it credible--is a kind of hope. He furiouslydemands proof, ocular proof. And when he is compelled to see that he isdemanding an impossibility he still demands evidence. He forces it fromthe unwilling witness, and hears the maddening tale of Cassio's dream. It is enough. And if it were not enough, has he not sometimes seen ahandkerchief spotted with strawberries in his wife's hand? Yes, it washis first gift to her. I know not that; but such a handkerchief-- I am sure it was your wife's--did I to-day See Cassio wipe his beard with. 'If it be that,' he answers--but what need to test the fact? The'madness of revenge' is in his blood, and hesitation is a thing he neverknew. He passes judgment, and controls himself only to make his sentencea solemn vow. The Othello of the Fourth Act is Othello in his fall. His fall is nevercomplete, but he is much changed. Towards the close of theTemptation-scene he becomes at times most terrible, but his grandeurremains almost undiminished. Even in the following scene (III. iv. ),where he goes to test Desdemona in the matter of the handkerchief, andreceives a fatal confirmation of her guilt, our sympathy with him ishardly touched by any feeling of humiliation. But in the Fourth Act'Chaos has come. ' A slight interval of time may be admitted here. It isbut slight; for it was necessary for Iago to hurry on, and terriblydangerous to leave a chance for a meeting of Cassio with Othello; andhis insight into Othello's nature taught him that his plan was todeliver blow on blow, and never to allow his victim to recover from theconfusion of the first shock. Still there is a slight interval; and whenOthello reappears we see at a glance that he is a changed man. He isphysically exhausted, and his mind is dazed. [100] He sees everythingblurred through a mist of blood and tears. He has actually forgotten theincident of the handkerchief, and has to be reminded of it. When Iago,perceiving that he can now risk almost any lie, tells him that Cassiohas confessed his guilt, Othello, the hero who has seemed to us onlysecond to Coriolanus in physical power, trembles all over; he muttersdisjointed words; a blackness suddenly intervenes between his eyes andthe world; he takes it for the shuddering testimony of nature to thehorror he has just heard,[101] and he falls senseless to the ground. When he recovers it is to watch Cassio, as he imagines, laughing overhis shame. It is an imposition so gross, and should have been one soperilous, that Iago would never have ventured it before. But he is safenow. The sight only adds to the confusion of intellect the madness ofrage; and a ravenous thirst for revenge, contending with motions ofinfinite longing and regret, conquers them. The delay till night-fall istorture to him. His self-control has wholly deserted him, and he strikeshis wife in the presence of the Venetian envoy. He is so lost to allsense of reality that he never asks himself what will follow the deathsof Cassio and his wife. An ineradicable instinct of justice, rather thanany last quiver of hope, leads him to question Emilia; but nothing couldconvince him now, and there follows the dreadful scene of accusation;and then, to allow us the relief of burning hatred and burning tears,the interview of Desdemona with Iago, and that last talk of hers withEmilia, and her last song. But before the end there is again a change. The supposed death of Cassio(V. i. ) satiates the thirst for vengeance. The Othello who enters thebed-chamber with the words, It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul,is not the man of the Fourth Act. The deed he is bound to do is nomurder, but a sacrifice. He is to save Desdemona from herself, not inhate but in honour; in honour, and also in love. His anger has passed; aboundless sorrow has taken its place; and this sorrow's heavenly: It strikes where it doth love. Even when, at the sight of her apparent obduracy, and at the hearing ofwords which by a crowning fatality can only reconvince him of her guilt,these feelings give way to others, it is to righteous indignation theygive way, not to rage; and, terribly painful as this scene is, there isalmost nothing here to diminish the admiration and love which heightenpity. [102] And pity itself vanishes, and love and admiration aloneremain, in the majestic dignity and sovereign ascendancy of the close. Chaos has come and gone; and the Othello of the Council-chamber and thequay of Cyprus has returned, or a greater and nobler Othello still. Ashe speaks those final words in which all the glory and agony of hislife--long ago in India and Arabia and Aleppo, and afterwards in Venice,and now in Cyprus--seem to pass before us, like the pictures that flashbefore the eyes of a drowning man, a triumphant scorn for the fetters ofthe flesh and the littleness of all the lives that must survive himsweeps our grief away, and when he dies upon a kiss the most painful ofall tragedies leaves us for the moment free from pain, and exulting inthe power of 'love and man's unconquerable mind. '3The words just quoted come from Wordsworth's sonnet to Toussaintl'Ouverture. Toussaint was a Negro; and there is a question, which,though of little consequence, is not without dramatic interest, whetherShakespeare imagined Othello as a Negro or as a Moor. Now I will not saythat Shakespeare imagined him as a Negro and not as a Moor, for thatmight imply that he distinguished Negroes and Moors precisely as we do;but what appears to me nearly certain is that he imagined Othello as ablack man, and not as a light-brown one. In the first place, we must remember that the brown or bronze to whichwe are now accustomed in the Othellos of our theatres is a recentinnovation. Down to Edmund Kean's time, so far as is known, Othello wasalways quite black. This stage-tradition goes back to the Restoration,and it almost settles our question. For it is impossible that the colourof the original Othello should have been forgotten so soon afterShakespeare's time, and most improbable that it should have been changedfrom brown to black. If we turn to the play itself, we find many references to Othello'scolour and appearance. Most of these are indecisive; for the word'black' was of course used then where we should speak of a 'dark'complexion now; and even the nickname 'thick-lips,' appealed to as proofthat Othello was a Negro, might have been applied by an enemy to what wecall a Moor. On the other hand, it is hard to believe that, if Othellohad been light-brown, Brabantio would have taunted him with having a'sooty bosom,' or that (as Mr. Furness observes) he himself would haveused the words, her name, that was as fresh As Dian's visage, is now begrimed and black As mine own face. These arguments cannot be met by pointing out that Othello was of royalblood, is not called an Ethiopian, is called a Barbary horse, and issaid to be going to Mauritania. All this would be of importance if wehad reason to believe that Shakespeare shared our ideas, knowledge andterms. Otherwise it proves nothing. And we know that sixteenth-centurywriters called any dark North-African a Moor, or a black Moor, or ablackamoor. Sir Thomas Elyot, according to Hunter,[103] calls EthiopiansMoors; and the following are the first two illustrations of 'Blackamoor'in the Oxford _English Dictionary_: 1547, 'I am a blake More borne inBarbary'; 1548, '_Ethiopo_, a blake More, or a man of Ethiope. ' Thusgeographical names can tell us nothing about the question howShakespeare imagined Othello. He may have known that a Mauritanian isnot a Negro nor black, but we cannot assume that he did. He may haveknown, again, that the Prince of Morocco, who is described in the_Merchant of Venice_ as having, like Othello, the complexion of a devil,was no Negro. But we cannot tell: nor is there any reason why he shouldnot have imagined the Prince as a brown Moor and Othello as aBlackamoor. _Titus Andronicus_ appeared in the Folio among Shakespeare's works. Itis believed by some good critics to be his: hardly anyone doubts that hehad a hand in it: it is certain that he knew it, for reminiscences of itare scattered through his plays. Now no one who reads _Titus Andronicus_with an open mind can doubt that Aaron was, in our sense, black; and heappears to have been a Negro. To mention nothing else, he is twicecalled 'coal-black'; his colour is compared with that of a raven and aswan's legs; his child is coal-black and thick-lipped; he himself has a'fleece of woolly hair. ' Yet he is 'Aaron the Moor,' just as Othello is'Othello the Moor. ' In the _Battle of Alcazar_ (Dyce's _Peele_, p. 421)Muly the Moor is called 'the negro'; and Shakespeare himself in a singleline uses 'negro' and 'Moor' of the same person (_Merchant of Venice_,III. v. 42). The horror of most American critics (Mr. Furness is a bright exception)at the idea of a black Othello is very amusing, and their arguments arehighly instructive. But they were anticipated, I regret to say, byColeridge, and we will hear him. 'No doubt Desdemona saw Othello'svisage in his mind; yet, as we are constituted, and most surely as anEnglish audience was disposed in the beginning of the seventeenthcentury, it would be something monstrous to conceive this beautifulVenetian girl falling in love with a veritable negro. It would argue adisproportionateness, a want of balance, in Desdemona, which Shakespearedoes not appear to have in the least contemplated. '[104] Could anyargument be more self-destructive? It actually _did_ appear to Brabantio'something monstrous to conceive' his daughter falling in love withOthello,--so monstrous that he could account for her love only by drugsand foul charms. And the suggestion that such love would argue'disproportionateness' is precisely the suggestion that Iago _did_ makein Desdemona's case: Foh! one may smell in such a will most rank, Foul _disproportion_, thoughts unnatural. In fact he spoke of the marriage exactly as a filthy-minded cynic nowmight speak of the marriage of an English lady to a negro likeToussaint. Thus the argument of Coleridge and others points straight tothe conclusion against which they argue. But this is not all. The question whether to Shakespeare Othello wasblack or brown is not a mere question of isolated fact or historicalcuriosity; it concerns the character of Desdemona. Coleridge, and stillmore the American writers, regard her love, in effect, as Brabantioregarded it, and not as Shakespeare conceived it. They are simplyblurring this glorious conception when they try to lessen the distancebetween her and Othello, and to smooth away the obstacle which his'visage' offered to her romantic passion for a hero. Desdemona, the'eternal womanly' in its most lovely and adorable form, simple andinnocent as a child, ardent with the courage and idealism of a saint,radiant with that heavenly purity of heart which men worship the morebecause nature so rarely permits it to themselves, had no theories aboutuniversal brotherhood, and no phrases about 'one blood in all thenations of the earth' or 'barbarian, Scythian, bond and free'; but whenher soul came in sight of the noblest soul on earth, she made nothing ofthe shrinking of her senses, but followed her soul until her senses tookpart with it, and 'loved him with the love which was her doom. ' It wasnot prudent. It even turned out tragically. She met in life with thereward of those who rise too far above our common level; and we continueto allot her the same reward when we consent to forgive her for loving abrown man, but find it monstrous that she should love a black one. [105]There is perhaps a certain excuse for our failure to rise toShakespeare's meaning, and to realise how extraordinary and splendid athing it was in a gentle Venetian girl to love Othello, and to assailfortune with such a 'downright violence and storm' as is expected onlyin a hero. It is that when first we hear of her marriage we have not yetseen the Desdemona of the later Acts; and therefore we do not perceivehow astonishing this love and boldness must have been in a maiden soquiet and submissive. And when we watch her in her suffering and deathwe are so penetrated by the sense of her heavenly sweetness andself-surrender that we almost forget that she had shown herself quite asexceptional in the active assertion of her own soul and will. She tendsto become to us predominantly pathetic, the sweetest and most patheticof Shakespeare's women, as innocent as Miranda and as loving as Viola,yet suffering more deeply than Cordelia or Imogen. And she seems to lackthat independence and strength of spirit which Cordelia and Imogenpossess, and which in a manner raises them above suffering. She appearspassive and defenceless, and can oppose to wrong nothing but theinfinite endurance and forgiveness of a love that knows not how toresist or resent. She thus becomes at once the most beautiful example ofthis love, and the most pathetic heroine in Shakespeare's world. If herpart were acted by an artist equal to Salvini, and with a Salvini forOthello, I doubt if the spectacle of the last two Acts would not bepronounced intolerable. Of course this later impression of Desdemona is perfectly right, but itmust be carried back and united with the earlier before we can see whatShakespeare imagined. Evidently, we are to understand, innocence,gentleness, sweetness, lovingness were the salient and, in a sense, theprincipal traits in Desdemona's character. She was, as her fathersupposed her to be, a maiden never bold, Of spirit so still and quiet that her motion Blushed at herself. But suddenly there appeared something quite different--something whichcould never have appeared, for example, in Ophelia--a love not only fullof romance but showing a strange freedom and energy of spirit, andleading to a most unusual boldness of action; and this action wascarried through with a confidence and decision worthy of Juliet orCordelia. Desdemona does not shrink before the Senate; and her languageto her father, though deeply respectful, is firm enough to stir in ussome sympathy with the old man who could not survive his daughter'sloss. This then, we must understand, was the emergence in Desdemona, asshe passed from girlhood to womanhood, of an individuality and strengthwhich, if she had lived, would have been gradually fused with her moreobvious qualities and have issued in a thousand actions, sweet and good,but surprising to her conventional or timid neighbours. And, indeed, wehave already a slight example in her overflowing kindness, her boldnessand her ill-fated persistence in pleading Cassio's cause. But the fullripening of her lovely and noble nature was not to be. In her briefwedded life she appeared again chiefly as the sweet and submissive beingof her girlhood; and the strength of her soul, first evoked by love,found scope to show itself only in a love which, when harshly repulsed,blamed only its own pain; when bruised, only gave forth a more exquisitefragrance; and, when rewarded with death, summoned its last labouringbreath to save its murderer. Many traits in Desdemona's character have been described withsympathetic insight by Mrs. Jameson, and I will pass them by and add buta few words on the connection between this character and the catastropheof _Othello_. Desdemona, as Mrs. Jameson remarks, shows less quicknessof intellect and less tendency to reflection than most of Shakespeare'sheroines; but I question whether the critic is right in adding that sheshows much of the 'unconscious address common in women. ' She seems to medeficient in this address, having in its place a frank childlikeboldness and persistency, which are full of charm but are unhappilyunited with a certain want of perception. And these graces and thisdeficiency appear to be inextricably intertwined, and in thecircumstances conspire tragically against her. They, with her innocence,hinder her from understanding Othello's state of mind, and lead her tothe most unlucky acts and words; and unkindness or anger subdues her socompletely that she becomes passive and seems to drift helplesslytowards the cataract in front. In Desdemona's incapacity to resist there is also, in addition to herperfect love, something which is very characteristic. She is, in asense, a child of nature. That deep inward division which leads to clearand conscious oppositions of right and wrong, duty and inclination,justice and injustice, is alien to her beautiful soul. She is not good,kind and true in spite of a temptation to be otherwise, any more thanshe is charming in spite of a temptation to be otherwise. She seems toknow evil only by name, and, her inclinations being good, she acts oninclination. This trait, with its results, may be seen if we compareher, at the crises of the story, with Cordelia. In Desdemona's place,Cordelia, however frightened at Othello's anger about the losthandkerchief, would not have denied its loss. Painful experience hadproduced in her a conscious principle of rectitude and a proud hatred offalseness, which would have made a lie, even one wholly innocent inspirit, impossible to her; and the clear sense of justice and rightwould have led her, instead, to require an explanation of Othello'sagitation which would have broken Iago's plot to pieces. In the sameway, at the final crisis, no instinctive terror of death would havecompelled Cordelia suddenly to relinquish her demand for justice and toplead for life. But these moments are fatal to Desdemona, who actsprecisely as if she were guilty; and they are fatal because they ask forsomething which, it seems to us, could hardly be united with thepeculiar beauty of her nature. This beauty is all her own. Something as beautiful may be found inCordelia, but not the same beauty. Desdemona, confronted with Lear'sfoolish but pathetic demand for a profession of love, could have done, Ithink, what Cordelia could not do--could have refused to compete withher sisters, and yet have made her father feel that she loved him well. And I doubt if Cordelia, 'falsely murdered,' would have been capable ofthose last words of Desdemona--her answer to Emilia's 'O, who hath donethis deed? ' Nobody: I myself. Farewell. Commend me to my kind lord. O, farewell! Were we intended to remember, as we hear this last 'falsehood,' thatother falsehood, 'It is not lost,' and to feel that, alike in themomentary child's fear and the deathless woman's love, Desdemona isherself and herself alone? [106]FOOTNOTES:[Footnote 85: One instance is worth pointing out, because the passage in_Othello_ has, oddly enough, given trouble. Desdemona says of the maidBarbara: 'She was in love, and he she loved proved mad And did forsakeher. ' Theobald changed 'mad' to 'bad. ' Warburton read 'and he she lovedforsook her, And she proved mad'! Johnson said 'mad' meant only 'wild,frantic, uncertain. ' But what Desdemona says of Barbara is just whatOphelia might have said of herself. ][Footnote 86: The whole force of the passages referred to can be feltonly by a reader. The Othello of our stage can never be Shakespeare'sOthello, any more than the Cleopatra of our stage can be his Cleopatra. ][Footnote 87: See p. 9. ][Footnote 88: Even here, however, there is a great difference; foralthough the idea of such a power is not suggested by _King Lear_ as itis by _Hamlet_ and _Macbeth_, it is repeatedly expressed by persons _in_the drama. Of such references there are very few in _Othello_. But forsomewhat frequent allusions to hell and the devil the view of thecharacters is almost strictly secular. Desdemona's sweetness andforgivingness are not based on religion, and her only way of accountingfor her undeserved suffering is by an appeal to Fortune: 'It is mywretched fortune' (IV. ii. 128). In like manner Othello can only appealto Fate (V. ii. 264): but, oh vain boast! Who can control his fate? ][Footnote 89: Ulrici has good remarks, though he exaggerates, on thispoint and the element of intrigue. ][Footnote 90: And neither she nor Othello observes what handkerchief itis. Else she would have remembered how she came to lose it, and wouldhave told Othello; and Othello, too, would at once have detected Iago'slie (III. iii. 438) that he had seen Cassio wipe his beard with thehandkerchief 'to-day. ' For in fact the handkerchief had been lost _notan hour_ before Iago told that lie (line 288 of the _same scene_), andit was at that moment in his pocket. He lied therefore most rashly, butwith his usual luck. ][Footnote 91: For those who know the end of the story there is aterrible irony in the enthusiasm with which Cassio greets the arrival ofDesdemona in Cyprus. Her ship (which is also Iago's) sets out fromVenice a week later than the others, but reaches Cyprus on the same daywith them: Tempests themselves, high seas and howling winds, The gutter'd rocks and congregated sands-- Traitors ensteep'd to clog the guiltless keel-- As having sense of beauty, do omit Their mortal natures, letting go safely by The divine Desdemona. So swiftly does Fate conduct her to her doom. ][Footnote 92: The dead bodies are not carried out at the end, as theymust have been if the bed had been on the main stage (for this had nofront curtain). The curtains within which the bed stood were drawntogether at the words, 'Let it be hid' (V. ii. 365). ][Footnote 93: Against which may be set the scene of the blinding ofGloster in _King Lear_. ][Footnote 94: The reader who is tempted by it should, however, first askhimself whether Othello does act like a barbarian, or like a man who,though wrought almost to madness, does 'all in honour. '][Footnote 95: For the actor, then, to represent him as violently angrywhen he cashiers Cassio is an utter mistake. ][Footnote 96: I cannot deal fully with this point in the lecture. SeeNote L. ][Footnote 97: It is important to observe that, in his attempt to arriveat the facts about Cassio's drunken misdemeanour, Othello had just hadan example of Iago's unwillingness to tell the whole truth where it mustinjure a friend. No wonder he feels in the Temptation-scene that 'thishonest creature doubtless Sees and knows more, much more, than heunfolds. '][Footnote 98: To represent that Venetian women do not regard adultery soseriously as Othello does, and again that Othello would be wise toaccept the situation like an Italian husband, is one of Iago's mostartful and most maddening devices. ][Footnote 99: If the reader has ever chanced to see an African violentlyexcited, he may have been startled to observe how completely at a losshe was to interpret those bodily expressions of passion which in afellow-countryman he understands at once, and in a European foreignerwith somewhat less certainty. The effect of difference in blood inincreasing Othello's bewilderment regarding his wife is not sufficientlyrealised. The same effect has to be remembered in regard to Desdemona'smistakes in dealing with Othello in his anger. ][Footnote 100: See Note M. ][Footnote 101: Cf. _Winter's Tale_, I. ii. 137 ff. : Can thy dam? --may't be? -- Affection! thy intention stabs the centre: Thou dost make possible things not so held, Communicatest with dreams;--how can this be? With what's unreal thou coactive art, And fellow'st nothing: then 'tis very credent Thou may'st cojoin with something; and thou dost, And that beyond commission, and I find it, And that to the infection of my brains And hardening of my brows. ][Footnote 102: See Note O. ][Footnote 103: New Illustrations, ii. 281. ][Footnote 104: _Lectures on Shakespeare_, ed. Ashe, p. 386. ][Footnote 105: I will not discuss the further question whether, grantedthat to Shakespeare Othello was a black, he should be represented as ablack in our theatres now. I dare say not. We do not like the realShakespeare. We like to have his language pruned and his conceptionsflattened into something that suits our mouths and minds. And even if wewere prepared to make an effort, still, as Lamb observes, to imagine isone thing and to see is another. Perhaps if we saw Othello coal-blackwith the bodily eye, the aversion of our blood, an aversion which comesas near to being merely physical as anything human can, would overpowerour imagination and sink us below not Shakespeare only but the audiencesof the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. As I have mentioned Lamb, I may observe that he differed from Coleridgeas to Othello's colour, but, I am sorry to add, thought Desdemona tostand in need of excuse. 'This noble lady, with a singularity rather tobe wondered at than imitated, had chosen for the object of heraffections a Moor, a black. . . . Neither is Desdemona to be altogethercondemned for the unsuitableness of the person whom she selected for herlover' (_Tales from Shakespeare_). Others, of course, have gone muchfurther and have treated all the calamities of the tragedy as a sort ofjudgment on Desdemona's rashness, wilfulness and undutifulness. There isno arguing with opinions like this; but I cannot believe that even Lambis true to Shakespeare in implying that Desdemona is in some degree tobe condemned. What is there in the play to show that Shakespeareregarded her marriage differently from Imogen's? ][Footnote 106: When Desdemona spoke her last words, perhaps that line ofthe ballad which she sang an hour before her death was still busy in herbrain, Let nobody blame him: his scorn I approve. Nature plays such strange tricks, and Shakespeare almost alone amongpoets seems to create in somewhat the same manner as Nature. In the sameway, as Malone pointed out, Othello's exclamation, 'Goats and monkeys! '(IV. i. 274) is an unconscious reminiscence of Iago's words at III. iii. 403. ]LECTURE VIOTHELLO1Evil has nowhere else been portrayed with such mastery as in thecharacter of Iago. Richard III. , for example, beside being less subtlyconceived, is a far greater figure and a less repellent. His physicaldeformity, separating him from other men, seems to offer some excuse forhis egoism. In spite of his egoism, too, he appears to us more than amere individual: he is the representative of his family, the Fury of theHouse of York. Nor is he so negative as Iago: he has strong passions, hehas admirations, and his conscience disturbs him. There is the glory ofpower about him. Though an excellent actor, he prefers force to fraud,and in his world there is no general illusion as to his true nature. Again, to compare Iago with the Satan of _Paradise Lost_ seems almostabsurd, so immensely does Shakespeare's man exceed Milton's Fiend inevil. That mighty Spirit, whose form had yet not lost All her original brightness, nor appeared Less than archangel ruined and the excess Of glory obscured;who knew loyalty to comrades and pity for victims; who felt how awful goodness is, and saw Virtue in her shape how lovely; saw, and pined His loss;who could still weep--how much further distant is he than Iago fromspiritual death, even when, in procuring the fall of Man, he completeshis own fall! It is only in Goethe's Mephistopheles that a fit companionfor Iago can be found. Here there is something of the same deadlycoldness, the same gaiety in destruction. But then Mephistopheles, likeso many scores of literary villains, has Iago for his father. AndMephistopheles, besides, is not, in the strict sense, a character. He ishalf person, half symbol. A metaphysical idea speaks through him. He isearthy, but could never live upon the earth. Of Shakespeare's characters Falstaff, Hamlet, Iago, and Cleopatra (Iname them in the order of their births) are probably the most wonderful. Of these, again, Hamlet and Iago, whose births come nearest together,are perhaps the most subtle. And if Iago had been a person as attractiveas Hamlet, as many thousands of pages might have been written about him,containing as much criticism good and bad. As it is, the majority ofinterpretations of his character are inadequate not only toShakespeare's conception, but, I believe, to the impressions of mostreaders of taste who are unbewildered by analysis. These falseinterpretations, if we set aside the usual lunacies,[107] fall into twogroups. The first contains views which reduce Shakespeare tocommonplace. In different ways and degrees they convert his Iago intoan ordinary villain. Their Iago is simply a man who has been slightedand revenges himself; or a husband who believes he has been wronged, andwill make his enemy suffer a jealousy worse than his own; or anambitious man determined to ruin his successful rival--one of these, ora combination of these, endowed with unusual ability and cruelty. Theseare the more popular views. The second group of false interpretations ismuch smaller, but it contains much weightier matter than the first. HereIago is a being who hates good simply because it is good, and loves evilpurely for itself. His action is not prompted by any plain motive likerevenge, jealousy or ambition. It springs from a 'motiveless malignity,'or a disinterested delight in the pain of others; and Othello, Cassioand Desdemona are scarcely more than the material requisite for the fullattainment of this delight. This second Iago, evidently, is noconventional villain, and he is much nearer to Shakespeare's Iago thanthe first. Only he is, if not a psychological impossibility, at any ratenot a _human_ being. He might be in place, therefore, in a symbolicalpoem like _Faust_, but in a purely human drama like _Othello_ he wouldbe a ruinous blunder. Moreover, he is not in _Othello_: he is a productof imperfect observation and analysis. Coleridge, the author of that misleading phrase 'motiveless malignity,'has some fine remarks on Iago; and the essence of the character has beendescribed, first in some of the best lines Hazlitt ever wrote, and thenrather more fully by Mr. Swinburne,--so admirably described that I amtempted merely to read and illustrate these two criticisms. This plan,however, would make it difficult to introduce all that I wish to say. Ipropose, therefore, to approach the subject directly, and, first, toconsider how Iago appeared to those who knew him, and what inferencesmay be drawn from their illusions; and then to ask what, if we judgefrom the play, his character really was. And I will indicate the pointswhere I am directly indebted to the criticisms just mentioned. But two warnings are first required. One of these concerns Iago'snationality. It has been held that he is a study of that peculiarlyItalian form of villainy which is considered both too clever and toodiabolical for an Englishman. I doubt if there is much more to be saidfor this idea than for the notion that Othello is a study of Moorishcharacter. No doubt the belief in that Italian villainy was prevalent inShakespeare's time, and it may perhaps have influenced him in someslight degree both here and in drawing the character of Iachimo in_Cymbeline_. But even this slight influence seems to me doubtful. If DonJohn in _Much Ado_ had been an Englishman, critics would have admiredShakespeare's discernment in making his English villain sulky andstupid. If Edmund's father had been Duke of Ferrara instead of Earl ofGloster, they would have said that Edmund could have been nothing but anItalian. Change the name and country of Richard III. , and he would becalled a typical despot of the Italian Renaissance. Change those ofJuliet, and we should find her wholesome English nature contrasted withthe southern dreaminess of Romeo. But this way of interpretingShakespeare is not Shakespearean. With him the differences of period,race, nationality and locality have little bearing on the inwardcharacter, though they sometimes have a good deal on the totalimaginative effect, of his figures. When he does lay stress on suchdifferences his intention is at once obvious, as in characters likeFluellen or Sir Hugh Evans, or in the talk of the French princes beforethe battle of Agincourt. I may add that Iago certainly cannot be takento exemplify the popular Elizabethan idea of a disciple of Macchiavelli. There is no sign that he is in theory an atheist or even an unbelieverin the received religion. On the contrary, he uses its language, andsays nothing resembling the words of the prologue to the _Jew of Malta_: I count religion but a childish toy, And hold there is no sin but ignorance. Aaron in _Titus Andronicus_ might have said this (and is not more likelyto be Shakespeare's creation on that account), but not Iago. I come to a second warning. One must constantly remember not to believea syllable that Iago utters on any subject, including himself, until onehas tested his statement by comparing it with known facts and with otherstatements of his own or of other people, and by considering whether hehad in the particular circumstances any reason for telling a lie or fortelling the truth. The implicit confidence which his acquaintancesplaced in his integrity has descended to most of his critics; and this,reinforcing the comical habit of quoting as Shakespeare's own statementeverything said by his characters, has been a fruitful source ofmisinterpretation. I will take as an instance the very first assertionsmade by Iago. In the opening scene he tells his dupe Roderigo that threegreat men of Venice went to Othello and begged him to make Iago hislieutenant; that Othello, out of pride and obstinacy, refused; that inrefusing he talked a deal of military rigmarole, and ended by declaring(falsely, we are to understand) that he had already filled up thevacancy; that Cassio, whom he chose, had absolutely no practicalknowledge of war, nothing but bookish theoric, mere prattle, arithmetic,whereas Iago himself had often fought by Othello's side, and by 'oldgradation' too ought to have been preferred. Most or all of this isrepeated by some critics as though it were information given byShakespeare, and the conclusion is quite naturally drawn that Iago hadsome reason to feel aggrieved. But if we ask ourselves how much of allthis is true we shall answer, I believe, as follows. It is absolutelycertain that Othello appointed Cassio his lieutenant, and _nothing_ elseis absolutely certain. But there is no reason to doubt the statementthat Iago had seen service with him, nor is there anything inherentlyimprobable in the statement that he was solicited by three greatpersonages on Iago's behalf. On the other hand, the suggestions that herefused out of pride and obstinacy, and that he lied in saying he hadalready chosen his officer, have no verisimilitude; and if there is anyfact at all (as there probably is) behind Iago's account of theconversation, it doubtless is the fact that Iago himself was ignorant ofmilitary science, while Cassio was an expert, and that Othello explainedthis to the great personages. That Cassio, again, was an interloper anda mere closet-student without experience of war is incredible,considering first that Othello chose him for lieutenant, and secondlythat the senate appointed him to succeed Othello in command at Cyprus;and we have direct evidence that part of Iago's statement is a lie, forDesdemona happens to mention that Cassio was a man who 'all his time hadfounded his good fortunes' on Othello's love and had 'shared dangers'with him (III. iv. 93). There remains only the implied assertion that,if promotion had gone by old gradation, Iago, as the senior, would havebeen preferred. It may be true: Othello was not the man to hesitate topromote a junior for good reasons. But it is just as likely to be a pureinvention; and, though Cassio was young, there is nothing to show thathe was younger, in years or in service, than Iago. Iago, for instance,never calls him 'young,' as he does Roderigo; and a mere youth would nothave been made Governor of Cyprus. What is certain, finally, in thewhole business is that Othello's mind was perfectly at ease about theappointment, and that he never dreamed of Iago's being discontented atit, not even when the intrigue was disclosed and he asked himself how hehad offended Iago. 2It is necessary to examine in this manner every statement made by Iago. But it is not necessary to do so in public, and I proceed to thequestion what impression he made on his friends and acquaintances. Inthe main there is here no room for doubt. Nothing could be less likeIago than the melodramatic villain so often substituted for him on thestage, a person whom everyone in the theatre knows for a scoundrel atthe first glance. Iago, we gather, was a Venetian[108] soldier,eight-and-twenty years of age, who had seen a good deal of service andhad a high reputation for courage. Of his origin we are ignorant, but,unless I am mistaken, he was not of gentle birth or breeding. [109] Hedoes not strike one as a degraded man of culture: for all his greatpowers, he is vulgar, and his probable want of military science may wellbe significant. He was married to a wife who evidently lackedrefinement, and who appears in the drama almost in the relation of aservant to Desdemona. His manner was that of a blunt, bluff soldier, whospoke his mind freely and plainly. He was often hearty, and could bethoroughly jovial; but he was not seldom rather rough and caustic ofspeech, and he was given to making remarks somewhat disparaging to humannature. He was aware of this trait in himself, and frankly admitted thathe was nothing if not critical, and that it was his nature to spy intoabuses. In these admissions he characteristically exaggerated his fault,as plain-dealers are apt to do; and he was liked none the less for it,seeing that his satire was humorous, that on serious matters he did notspeak lightly (III. iii. 119), and that the one thing perfectly obviousabout him was his honesty. 'Honest' is the word that springs to the lipsof everyone who speaks of him. It is applied to him some fifteen timesin the play, not to mention some half-dozen where he employs it, inderision, of himself. In fact he was one of those sterling men who, indisgust at gush, say cynical things which they do not believe, and then,the moment you are in trouble, put in practice the very sentiment theyhad laughed at. On such occasions he showed the kindliest sympathy andthe most eager desire to help. When Cassio misbehaved so dreadfully andwas found fighting with Montano, did not Othello see that 'honest Iagolooked dead with grieving'? With what difficulty was he induced, nay,compelled, to speak the truth against the lieutenant! Another man mighthave felt a touch of satisfaction at the thought that the post he hadcoveted was now vacant; but Iago not only comforted Cassio, talking tohim cynically about reputation, just to help him over his shame, but heset his wits to work and at once perceived that the right plan forCassio to get his post again was to ask Desdemona to intercede. Sotroubled was he at his friend's disgrace that his own wife was sure 'itgrieved her husband as if the case was his. ' What wonder that anyone insore trouble, like Desdemona, should send at once for Iago (IV. ii. 106)? If this rough diamond had any flaw, it was that Iago's warm loyalheart incited him to too impulsive action. If he merely heard a friendlike Othello calumniated, his hand flew to his sword; and though herestrained himself he almost regretted his own virtue (I. ii. 1-10). Such seemed Iago to the people about him, even to those who, likeOthello, had known him for some time. And it is a fact too littlenoticed but most remarkable, that he presented an appearance not verydifferent to his wife. There is no sign either that Emilia's marriagewas downright unhappy, or that she suspected the true nature of herhusband. [110] No doubt she knew rather more of him than others. Thus wegather that he was given to chiding and sometimes spoke shortly andsharply to her (III. iii. 300 f. ); and it is quite likely that she gavehim a good deal of her tongue in exchange (II. i. 101 f. ). He was alsounreasonably jealous; for his own statement that he was jealous ofOthello is confirmed by Emilia herself, and must therefore be believed(IV. ii. 145). [111] But it seems clear that these defects of his had notseriously impaired Emilia's confidence in her husband or her affectionfor him. She knew in addition that he was not quite so honest as heseemed, for he had often begged her to steal Desdemona's handkerchief. But Emilia's nature was not very delicate or scrupulous about trifles. She thought her husband odd and 'wayward,' and looked on his fancy forthe handkerchief as an instance of this (III. iii. 292); but she neverdreamed he was a villain, and there is no reason to doubt the sincerityof her belief that he was heartily sorry for Cassio's disgrace. Herfailure, on seeing Othello's agitation about the handkerchief, to formany suspicion of an intrigue, shows how little she doubted her husband. Even when, later, the idea strikes her that some scoundrel has poisonedOthello's mind, the tone of all her speeches, and her mention of therogue who (she believes) had stirred up Iago's jealousy of her, provebeyond doubt that the thought of Iago's being the scoundrel has notcrossed her mind (IV. ii. 115-147). And if any hesitation on the subjectcould remain, surely it must be dispelled by the thrice-repeated cry ofastonishment and horror, 'My husband! ', which follows Othello's words,'Thy husband knew it all'; and by the choking indignation and desperatehope which we hear in her appeal when Iago comes in: Disprove this villain if thou be'st a man: He says thou told'st him that his wife was false: I know thou did'st not, thou'rt not such a villain: Speak, for my heart is full. Even if Iago _had_ betrayed much more of his true self to his wife thanto others, it would make no difference to the contrast between his trueself and the self he presented to the world in general. But he never didso. Only the feeble eyes of the poor gull Roderigo were allowed aglimpse into that pit. The bearing of this contrast upon the apparently excessive credulity ofOthello has been already pointed out. What further conclusions can bedrawn from it? Obviously, to begin with, the inference, which isaccompanied by a thrill of admiration, that Iago's powers ofdissimulation and of self-control must have been prodigious: for he wasnot a youth, like Edmund, but had worn this mask for years, and he hadapparently never enjoyed, like Richard, occasional explosions of thereality within him. In fact so prodigious does his self-control appearthat a reader might be excused for feeling a doubt of its possibility. But there are certain observations and further inferences which, apartfrom confidence in Shakespeare, would remove this doubt. It is to beobserved, first, that Iago was able to find a certain relief from thediscomfort of hypocrisy in those caustic or cynical speeches which,being misinterpreted, only heightened confidence in his honesty. Theyacted as a safety-valve, very much as Hamlet's pretended insanity did. Next, I would infer from the entire success of his hypocrisy--what mayalso be inferred on other grounds, and is of great importance--that hewas by no means a man of strong feelings and passions, like Richard, butdecidedly cold by temperament. Even so, his self-control was wonderful,but there never was in him any violent storm to be controlled. Thirdly,I would suggest that Iago, though thoroughly selfish and unfeeling, wasnot by nature malignant, nor even morose, but that, on the contrary, hehad a superficial good-nature, the kind of good-nature that winspopularity and is often taken as the sign, not of a good digestion, butof a good heart. And lastly, it may be inferred that, before the giantcrime which we witness, Iago had never been detected in any seriousoffence and may even never have been guilty of one, but had pursued aselfish but outwardly decent life, enjoying the excitement of war and ofcasual pleasures, but never yet meeting with any sufficient temptationto risk his position and advancement by a dangerous crime. So that, infact, the tragedy of _Othello_ is in a sense his tragedy too. It showsus not a violent man, like Richard, who spends his life in murder, but athoroughly bad, _cold_ man, who is at last tempted to let loose theforces within him, and is at once destroyed. 3In order to see how this tragedy arises let us now look more closelyinto Iago's inner man. We find here, in the first place, as has beenimplied in part, very remarkable powers both of intellect and of will. Iago's insight, within certain limits, into human nature; his ingenuityand address in working upon it; his quickness and versatility in dealingwith sudden difficulties and unforeseen opportunities, have probably noparallel among dramatic characters. Equally remarkable is his strengthof will. Not Socrates himself, not the ideal sage of the Stoics, wasmore lord of himself than Iago appears to be. It is not merely that henever betrays his true nature; he seems to be master of _all_ themotions that might affect his will. In the most dangerous moments of hisplot, when the least slip or accident would be fatal, he never shows atrace of nervousness. When Othello takes him by the throat he merelyshifts his part with his usual instantaneous adroitness. When he isattacked and wounded at the end he is perfectly unmoved. As Mr. Swinburne says, you cannot believe for a moment that the pain of torturewill ever open Iago's lips. He is equally unassailable by thetemptations of indolence or of sensuality. It is difficult to imaginehim inactive; and though he has an obscene mind, and doubtless took hispleasures when and how he chose, he certainly took them by choice andnot from weakness, and if pleasure interfered with his purposes theholiest of ascetics would not put it more resolutely by. 'What should Ido? ' Roderigo whimpers to him; 'I confess it is my shame to be so fond;but it is not in my virtue to amend it. ' He answers: 'Virtue! a fig! 'tis in ourselves that we are thus and thus. It all depends on our will. Love is merely a lust of the blood and a permission of the will. Come,be a man. . . . Ere I would say I would drown myself for the love of aguinea-hen, I would change my humanity with a baboon. ' Forget for amoment that love is for Iago the appetite of a baboon; forget that he isas little assailable by pity as by fear or pleasure; and you willacknowledge that this lordship of the will, which is his practice aswell as his doctrine, is great, almost sublime. Indeed, in intellect(always within certain limits) and in will (considered as a mere power,and without regard to its objects) Iago _is_ great. To what end does he use these great powers? His creed--for he is nosceptic, he has a definite creed--is that absolute egoism is the onlyrational and proper attitude, and that conscience or honour or any kindof regard for others is an absurdity. He does not deny that thisabsurdity exists. He does not suppose that most people secretly sharehis creed, while pretending to hold and practise another. On thecontrary, he regards most people as honest fools. He declares that hehas never yet met a man who knew how to love himself; and his oneexpression of admiration in the play is for servants Who, trimmed in forms and visages of duty, Keep yet their hearts attending on themselves. 'These fellows,' he says, 'have some soul. ' He professes to stand, andhe, attempts to stand, wholly outside the world of morality. The existence of Iago's creed and of his corresponding practice isevidently connected with a characteristic in which he surpasses nearlyall the other inhabitants of Shakespeare's world. Whatever he may oncehave been, he appears, when we meet him, to be almost destitute ofhumanity, of sympathetic or social feeling. He shows no trace ofaffection, and in presence of the most terrible suffering he showseither pleasure or an indifference which, if not complete, is nearly so. Here, however, we must be careful. It is important to realise, and fewreaders are in danger of ignoring, this extraordinary deadness offeeling, but it is also important not to confuse it with a generalpositive ill-will. When Iago has no dislike or hostility to a person hedoes _not_ show pleasure in the suffering of that person: he shows atmost the absence of pain. There is, for instance, not the least sign ofhis enjoying the distress of Desdemona. But his sympathetic feelings areso abnormally feeble and cold that, when his dislike is roused, or whenan indifferent person comes in the way of his purpose, there is scarcelyanything within him to prevent his applying the torture. What is it that provokes his dislike or hostility? Here again we mustlook closely. Iago has been represented as an incarnation of envy, as aman who, being determined to get on in the world, regards everyone elsewith enmity as his rival. But this idea, though containing truth, seemsmuch exaggerated. Certainly he is devoted to himself; but if he were aneagerly ambitious man, surely we should see much more positive signs ofthis ambition; and surely too, with his great powers, he would alreadyhave risen high, instead of being a mere ensign, short of money, andplaying Captain Rook to Roderigo's Mr. Pigeon. Taking all the facts, onemust conclude that his desires were comparatively moderate and hisambition weak; that he probably enjoyed war keenly, but, if he had moneyenough, did not exert himself greatly to acquire reputation or position;and, therefore, that he was not habitually burning with envy andactively hostile to other men as possible competitors. But what is clear is that Iago is keenly sensitive to anything thattouches his pride or self-esteem. It would be most unjust to call himvain, but he has a high opinion of himself and a great contempt forothers. He is quite aware of his superiority to them in certainrespects; and he either disbelieves in or despises the qualities inwhich they are superior to him. Whatever disturbs or wounds his sense ofsuperiority irritates him at once; and in _that_ sense he is highlycompetitive. This is why the appointment of Cassio provokes him. This iswhy Cassio's scientific attainments provoke him. This is the reason ofhis jealousy of Emilia. He does not care for his wife; but the fear ofanother man's getting the better of him, and exposing him to pity orderision as an unfortunate husband, is wormwood to him; and as he issure that no woman is virtuous at heart, this fear is ever with him. Formuch the same reason he has a spite against goodness in men (for it ischaracteristic that he is less blind to its existence in men, thestronger, than in women, the weaker). He has a spite against it, notfrom any love of evil for evil's sake, but partly because it annoys hisintellect as a stupidity; partly (though he hardly knows this) becauseit weakens his satisfaction with himself, and disturbs his faith thategoism is the right and proper thing; partly because, the world beingsuch a fool, goodness is popular and prospers. But he, a man ten timesas able as Cassio or even Othello, does not greatly prosper. Somehow,for all the stupidity of these open and generous people, they get onbetter than the 'fellow of some soul' And this, though he is notparticularly eager to get on, wounds his pride. Goodness thereforeannoys him. He is always ready to scoff at it, and would like to strikeat it. In ordinary circumstances these feelings of irritation are notvivid in Iago--_no_ feeling is so--but they are constantly present. 4Our task of analysis is not finished; but we are now in a position toconsider the rise of Iago's tragedy. |
Why did he act as we see him actingin the play? What is the answer to that appeal of Othello's: Will you, I pray, demand that demi-devil Why he hath thus ensnared my soul and body? This question Why? is _the_ question about Iago, just as the questionWhy did Hamlet delay? is _the_ question about Hamlet. Iago refused toanswer it; but I will venture to say that he _could_ not have answeredit, any more than Hamlet could tell why he delayed. But Shakespeare knewthe answer, and if these characters are great creations and not blunderswe ought to be able to find it too. Is it possible to elicit it from Iago himself against his will? He makesvarious statements to Roderigo, and he has several soliloquies. Fromthese sources, and especially from the latter, we should learnsomething. For with Shakespeare soliloquy generally gives informationregarding the secret springs as well as the outward course of the plot;and, moreover, it is a curious point of technique with him that thesoliloquies of his villains sometimes read almost like explanationsoffered to the audience. [112] Now, Iago repeatedly offers explanationseither to Roderigo or to himself. In the first place, he says more thanonce that he 'hates' Othello. He gives two reasons for his hatred. Othello has made Cassio lieutenant; and he suspects, and has heard itreported, that Othello has an intrigue with Emilia. Next there isCassio. He never says he hates Cassio, but he finds in him three causesof offence: Cassio has been preferred to him; he suspects _him_ too ofan intrigue with Emilia; and, lastly, Cassio has a daily beauty in hislife which makes Iago ugly. In addition to these annoyances he wantsCassio's place. As for Roderigo, he calls him a snipe, and who can hatea snipe? But Roderigo knows too much; and he is becoming a nuisance,getting angry, and asking for the gold and jewels he handed to Iago togive to Desdemona. So Iago kills Roderigo. Then for Desdemona: afig's-end for her virtue! but he has no ill-will to her. In fact he'loves' her, though he is good enough to explain, varying the word, thathis 'lust' is mixed with a desire to pay Othello in his own coin. To besure she must die, and so must Emilia, and so would Bianca if only theauthorities saw things in their true light; but he did not set out withany hostile design against these persons. Is the account which Iago gives of the causes of his action the trueaccount? The answer of the most popular view will be, 'Yes. Iago was, ashe says, chiefly incited by two things, the desire of advancement, and ahatred of Othello due principally to the affair of the lieutenancy. These are perfectly intelligible causes; we have only to add to themunusual ability and cruelty, and all is explained. Why should Coleridgeand Hazlitt and Swinburne go further afield? ' To which last question Iwill at once oppose these: If your view is correct, why should Iago beconsidered an extraordinary creation; and is it not odd that the peoplewho reject it are the people who elsewhere show an exceptionalunderstanding of Shakespeare? The difficulty about this popular view is, in the first place, that itattributes to Iago what cannot be found in the Iago of the play. ItsIago is impelled by _passions_, a passion of ambition and a passion ofhatred; for no ambition or hatred short of passion could drive a man whois evidently so clear-sighted, and who must hitherto have been soprudent, into a plot so extremely hazardous. Why, then, in the Iago ofthe play do we find no sign of these passions or of anything approachingto them? Why, if Shakespeare meant that Iago was impelled by them, doeshe suppress the signs of them? Surely not from want of ability todisplay them. The poet who painted Macbeth and Shylock understood hisbusiness. Who ever doubted Macbeth's ambition or Shylock's hate? Andwhat resemblance is there between these passions and any feeling that wecan trace in Iago? The resemblance between a volcano in eruption and aflameless fire of coke; the resemblance between a consuming desire tohack and hew your enemy's flesh, and the resentful wish, only toofamiliar in common life, to inflict pain in return for a slight. Passion, in Shakespeare's plays, is perfectly easy to recognise. Whatvestige of it, of passion unsatisfied or of passion gratified, isvisible in Iago? None: that is the very horror of him. He has _less_passion than an ordinary man, and yet he does these frightful things. The only ground for attributing to him, I do not say a passionatehatred, but anything deserving the name of hatred at all, is his ownstatement, 'I hate Othello'; and we know what his statements are worth. But the popular view, beside attributing to Iago what he does not show,ignores what he does show. It selects from his own account of hismotives one or two, and drops the rest; and so it makes everythingnatural. But it fails to perceive how unnatural, how strange andsuspicious, his own account is. Certainly he assigns motives enough; thedifficulty is that he assigns so many. A man moved by simple passionsdue to simple causes does not stand fingering his feelings,industriously enumerating their sources, and groping about for new ones. But this is what Iago does. And this is not all. These motives appearand disappear in the most extraordinary manner. Resentment at Cassio'sappointment is expressed in the first conversation with Roderigo, andfrom that moment is never once mentioned again in the whole play. Hatredof Othello is expressed in the First Act alone. Desire to get Cassio'splace scarcely appears after the first soliloquy, and when it isgratified Iago does not refer to it by a single word. The suspicion ofCassio's intrigue with Emilia emerges suddenly, as an after-thought, notin the first soliloquy but the second, and then disappears forever. [113] Iago's 'love' of Desdemona is alluded to in the secondsoliloquy; there is not the faintest trace of it in word or deed eitherbefore or after. The mention of jealousy of Othello is followed bydeclarations that Othello is infatuated about Desdemona and is of aconstant nature, and during Othello's sufferings Iago never shows a signof the idea that he is now paying his rival in his own coin. In thesecond soliloquy he declares that he quite believes Cassio to be in lovewith Desdemona; it is obvious that he believes no such thing, for henever alludes to the idea again, and within a few hours describes Cassioin soliloquy as an honest fool. His final reason for ill-will to Cassionever appears till the Fifth Act. What is the meaning of all this? Unless Shakespeare was out of his mind,it must have a meaning. And certainly this meaning is not contained inany of the popular accounts of Iago. Is it contained then in Coleridge's word 'motive-hunting'? Yes,'motive-hunting' exactly answers to the impression that Iago'ssoliloquies produce. He is pondering his design, and unconsciouslytrying to justify it to himself. He speaks of one or two real feelings,such as resentment against Othello, and he mentions one or two realcauses of these feelings. But these are not enough for him. Along withthem, or alone, there come into his head, only to leave it again, ideasand suspicions, the creations of his own baseness or uneasiness, someold, some new, caressed for a moment to feed his purpose and give it areasonable look, but never really believed in, and never the main forceswhich are determining his action. In fact, I would venture to describeIago in these soliloquies as a man setting out on a project whichstrongly attracts his desire, but at the same time conscious of aresistance to the desire, and unconsciously trying to argue theresistance away by assigning reasons for the project. He is thecounterpart of Hamlet, who tries to find reasons for his delay inpursuing a design which excites his aversion. And most of Iago's reasonsfor action are no more the real ones than Hamlet's reasons for delaywere the real ones. Each is moved by forces which he does notunderstand; and it is probably no accident that these two studies ofstates psychologically so similar were produced at about the sameperiod. What then were the real moving forces of Iago's action? Are we to fallback on the idea of a 'motiveless malignity;'[114] that is to say, adisinterested love of evil, or a delight in the pain of others as simpleand direct as the delight in one's own pleasure? Surely not. I will notinsist that this thing or these things are inconceivable, mere phrases,not ideas; for, even so, it would remain possible that Shakespeare hadtried to represent an inconceivability. But there is not the slightestreason to suppose that he did so. Iago's action is intelligible; andindeed the popular view contains enough truth to refute this desperatetheory. It greatly exaggerates his desire for advancement, and theill-will caused by his disappointment, and it ignores other forces moreimportant than these; but it is right in insisting on the presence ofthis desire and this ill-will, and their presence is enough to destroyIago's claims to be more than a demi-devil. For love of the evil thatadvances my interest and hurts a person I dislike, is a very differentthing from love of evil simply as evil; and pleasure in the pain of aperson disliked or regarded as a competitor is quite distinct frompleasure in the pain of others simply as others. The first isintelligible, and we find it in Iago. The second, even if it wereintelligible, we do not find in Iago. Still, desire of advancement and resentment about the lieutenancy,though factors and indispensable factors in the cause of Iago's action,are neither the principal nor the most characteristic factors. To findthese, let us return to our half-completed analysis of the character. Let us remember especially the keen sense of superiority, the contemptof others, the sensitiveness to everything which wounds these feelings,the spite against goodness in men as a thing not only stupid but, bothin its nature and by its success, contrary to Iago's nature andirritating to his pride. Let us remember in addition the annoyance ofhaving always to play a part, the consciousness of exceptional butunused ingenuity and address, the enjoyment of action, and the absenceof fear. And let us ask what would be the greatest pleasure of such aman, and what the situation which might tempt him to abandon hishabitual prudence and pursue this pleasure. Hazlitt and Mr. Swinburne donot put this question, but the answer I proceed to give to it is inprinciple theirs. [115]The most delightful thing to such a man would be something that gave anextreme satisfaction to his sense of power and superiority; and if itinvolved, secondly, the triumphant exertion of his abilities, and,thirdly, the excitement of danger, his delight would be consummated. Andthe moment most dangerous to such a man would be one when his sense ofsuperiority had met with an affront, so that its habitual craving wasreinforced by resentment, while at the same time he saw an opportunityof satisfying it by subjecting to his will the very persons who hadaffronted it. Now, this is the temptation that comes to Iago. Othello'seminence, Othello's goodness, and his own dependence on Othello, musthave been a perpetual annoyance to him. At _any_ time he would haveenjoyed befooling and tormenting Othello. Under ordinary circumstanceshe was restrained, chiefly by self-interest, in some slight degreeperhaps by the faint pulsations of conscience or humanity. Butdisappointment at the loss of the lieutenancy supplied the touch oflively resentment that was required to overcome these obstacles; and theprospect of satisfying the sense of power by mastering Othello throughan intricate and hazardous intrigue now became irresistible. Iago didnot clearly understand what was moving his desire; though he tried togive himself reasons for his action, even those that had some realitymade but a small part of the motive force; one may almost say they wereno more than the turning of the handle which admits the driving powerinto the machine. Only once does he appear to see something of thetruth. It is when he uses the phrase '_to plume up my will_ in doubleknavery. 'To 'plume up the will,' to heighten the sense of power orsuperiority--this seems to be the unconscious motive of many acts ofcruelty which evidently do not spring chiefly from ill-will, and whichtherefore puzzle and sometimes horrify us most. It is often this thatmakes a man bully the wife or children of whom he is fond. The boy whotorments another boy, as we say, 'for no reason,' or who without anyhatred for frogs tortures a frog, is pleased with his victim's pain, notfrom any disinterested love of evil or pleasure in pain, but mainlybecause this pain is the unmistakable proof of his own power over hisvictim. So it is with Iago. His thwarted sense of superiority wantssatisfaction. What fuller satisfaction could it find than theconsciousness that he is the master of the General who has undervaluedhim and of the rival who has been preferred to him; that these worthypeople, who are so successful and popular and stupid, are mere puppetsin his hands, but living puppets, who at the motion of his finger mustcontort themselves in agony, while all the time they believe that he istheir one true friend and comforter? It must have been an ecstasy ofbliss to him. And this, granted a most abnormal deadness of humanfeeling, is, however horrible, perfectly intelligible. There is nomystery in the psychology of Iago; the mystery lies in a furtherquestion, which the drama has not to answer, the question why such abeing should exist. Iago's longing to satisfy the sense of power is, I think, the strongestof the forces that drive him on. But there are two others to be noticed. One is the pleasure in an action very difficult and perilous and,therefore, intensely exciting. This action sets all his powers on thestrain. He feels the delight of one who executes successfully a featthoroughly congenial to his special aptitude, and only just within hiscompass; and, as he is fearless by nature, the fact that a single slipwill cost him his life only increases his pleasure. His exhilarationbreaks out in the ghastly words with which he greets the sunrise afterthe night of the drunken tumult which has led to Cassio's disgrace: 'Bythe mass, 'tis morning. Pleasure and action make the hours seem short. 'Here, however, the joy in exciting action is quickened by otherfeelings. It appears more simply elsewhere in such a way as to suggestthat nothing but such actions gave him happiness, and that his happinesswas greater if the action was destructive as well as exciting. We findit, for instance, in his gleeful cry to Roderigo, who proposes to shoutto Brabantio in order to wake him and tell him of his daughter's flight: Do, with like timorous[116] accent and dire yell As when, by night and negligence, the fire Is spied in populous cities. All through that scene; again, in the scene where Cassio is attacked andRoderigo murdered; everywhere where Iago is in physical action, we catchthis sound of almost feverish enjoyment. His blood, usually so cold andslow, is racing through his veins. But Iago, finally, is not simply a man of action; he is an artist. Hisaction is a plot, the intricate plot of a drama, and in the conceptionand execution of it he experiences the tension and the joy of artisticcreation. 'He is,' says Hazlitt, 'an amateur of tragedy in real life;and, instead of employing his invention on imaginary characters orlong-forgotten incidents, he takes the bolder and more dangerous courseof getting up his plot at home, casts the principal parts among hisnewest friends and connections, and rehearses it in downright earnest,with steady nerves and unabated resolution. ' Mr. Swinburne lays evengreater stress on this aspect of Iago's character, and even declaresthat 'the very subtlest and strongest component of his complex nature'is 'the instinct of what Mr. Carlyle would call an inarticulate poet. 'And those to whom this idea is unfamiliar, and who may suspect it atfirst sight of being fanciful, will find, if they examine the play inthe light of Mr. Swinburne's exposition, that it rests on a true anddeep perception, will stand scrutiny, and might easily be illustrated. They may observe, to take only one point, the curious analogy betweenthe early stages of dramatic composition and those soliloquies in whichIago broods over his plot, drawing at first only an outline, puzzled howto fix more than the main idea, and gradually seeing it develop andclarify as he works upon it or lets it work. Here at any rateShakespeare put a good deal of himself into Iago. But the tragedian inreal life was not the equal of the tragic poet. His psychology, as weshall see, was at fault at a critical point, as Shakespeare's never was. And so his catastrophe came out wrong, and his piece was ruined. Such, then, seem to be the chief ingredients of the force which,liberated by his resentment at Cassio's promotion, drives Iago frominactivity into action, and sustains him through it. And, to pass to anew point, this force completely possesses him; it is his fate. It islike the passion with which a tragic hero wholly identifies himself, andwhich bears him on to his doom. It is true that, once embarked on hiscourse, Iago _could_ not turn back, even if this passion did abate; andit is also true that he is compelled, by his success in convincingOthello, to advance to conclusions of which at the outset he did notdream. He is thus caught in his own web, and could not liberate himselfif he would. But, in fact, he never shows a trace of wishing to do so,not a trace of hesitation, of looking back, or of fear, any more than ofremorse; there is no ebb in the tide. As the crisis approaches therepasses through his mind a fleeting doubt whether the deaths of Cassioand Roderigo are indispensable; but that uncertainty, which does notconcern the main issue, is dismissed, and he goes forward withundiminished zest. Not even in his sleep--as in Richard's before hisfinal battle--does any rebellion of outraged conscience or pity, or anyforeboding of despair, force itself into clear consciousness. Hisfate--which is himself--has completely mastered him: so that, in thelater scenes, where the improbability of the entire success of a designbuilt on so many different falsehoods forces itself on the reader, Iagoappears for moments not as a consummate schemer, but as a man absolutelyinfatuated and delivered over to certain destruction. 5Iago stands supreme among Shakespeare's evil characters because thegreatest intensity and subtlety of imagination have gone to his making,and because he illustrates in the most perfect combination the two factsconcerning evil which seem to have impressed Shakespeare most. The firstof these is the fact that perfectly sane people exist in whomfellow-feeling of any kind is so weak that an almost absolute egoismbecomes possible to them, and with it those hard vices--such asingratitude and cruelty--which to Shakespeare were far the worst. Thesecond is that such evil is compatible, and even appears to ally itselfeasily, with exceptional powers of will and intellect. In the latterrespect Iago is nearly or quite the equal of Richard, in egoism he isthe superior, and his inferiority in passion and massive force onlymakes him more repulsive. How is it then that we can bear to contemplatehim; nay, that, if we really imagine him, we feel admiration and somekind of sympathy? Henry the Fifth tells us: There is some soul of goodness in things evil, Would men observingly distil it out;but here, it may be said, we are shown a thing absolutely evil,and--what is more dreadful still--this absolute evil is united withsupreme intellectual power. Why is the representation tolerable, and whydo we not accuse its author either of untruth or of a desperatepessimism? To these questions it might at once be replied: Iago does not standalone; he is a factor in a whole; and we perceive him there and not inisolation, acted upon as well as acting, destroyed as well asdestroying. [117] But, although this is true and important, I pass it byand, continuing to regard him by himself, I would make three remarks inanswer to the questions. In the first place, Iago is not merely negative or evil--far from it. Those very forces that moved him and made his fate--sense of power,delight in performing a difficult and dangerous action, delight in theexercise of artistic skill--are not at all evil things. We sympathisewith one or other of them almost every day of our lives. And,accordingly, though in Iago they are combined with something detestableand so contribute to evil, our perception of them is accompanied withsympathy. In the same way, Iago's insight, dexterity, quickness,address, and the like, are in themselves admirable things; the perfectman would possess them. And certainly he would possess also Iago'scourage and self-control, and, like Iago, would stand above the impulsesof mere feeling, lord of his inner world. All this goes to evil ends inIago, but in itself it has a great worth; and, although in reading, ofcourse, we do not sift it out and regard it separately, it inevitablyaffects us and mingles admiration with our hatred or horror. All this, however, might apparently co-exist with absolute egoism andtotal want of humanity. But, in the second place, it is not true that inIago this egoism and this want are absolute, and that in this sense heis a thing of mere evil. They are frightful, but if they were absoluteIago would be a monster, not a man. The fact is, he _tries_ to make themabsolute and cannot succeed; and the traces of conscience, shame andhumanity, though faint, are discernible. If his egoism were absolute hewould be perfectly indifferent to the opinion of others; and he clearlyis not so. His very irritation at goodness, again, is a sign that hisfaith in his creed is not entirely firm; and it is not entirely firmbecause he himself has a perception, however dim, of the goodness ofgoodness. What is the meaning of the last reason he gives himself forkilling Cassio: He hath a daily beauty in his life That makes me ugly? Does he mean that he is ugly to others? Then he is not an absoluteegoist. Does he mean that he is ugly to himself? Then he makes an openconfession of moral sense. And, once more, if he really possessed nomoral sense, we should never have heard those soliloquies which soclearly betray his uneasiness and his unconscious desire to persuadehimself that he has some excuse for the villainy he contemplates. Theseseem to be indubitable proofs that, against his will, Iago is a littlebetter than his creed, and has failed to withdraw himself wholly fromthe human atmosphere about him. And to these proofs I would add, thoughwith less confidence, two others. Iago's momentary doubt towards the endwhether Roderigo and Cassio must be killed has always surprised me. As amere matter of calculation it is perfectly obvious that they must; and Ibelieve his hesitation is not merely intellectual, it is another symptomof the obscure working of conscience or humanity. Lastly, is it notsignificant that, when once his plot has begun to develop, Iago neverseeks the presence of Desdemona; that he seems to leave her as quicklyas he can (III. iv. 138); and that, when he is fetched byEmilia to see her in her distress (IV. ii. 110 ff. ), we fail tocatch in his words any sign of the pleasure he shows in Othello'smisery, and seem rather to perceive a certain discomfort, and, if onedare say it, a faint touch of shame or remorse? This interpretation ofthe passage, I admit, is not inevitable, but to my mind (quite apartfrom any theorising about Iago) it seems the natural one. [118] And if itis right, Iago's discomfort is easily understood; for Desdemona is theone person concerned against whom it is impossible for him even toimagine a ground of resentment, and so an excuse for cruelty. [119]There remains, thirdly, the idea that Iago is a man of supremeintellect who is at the same time supremely wicked. That he is supremelywicked nobody will doubt; and I have claimed for him nothing that willinterfere with his right to that title. But to say that his intellectualpower is supreme is to make a great mistake. Within certain limits hehas indeed extraordinary penetration, quickness, inventiveness,adaptiveness; but the limits are defined with the hardest of lines, andthey are narrow limits. It would scarcely be unjust to call him simplyastonishingly clever, or simply a consummate master of intrigue. Butcompare him with one who may perhaps be roughly called a bad man ofsupreme intellectual power, Napoleon, and you see how small and negativeIago's mind is, incapable of Napoleon's military achievements, and muchmore incapable of his political constructions. Or, to keep within theShakespearean world, compare him with Hamlet, and you perceive howmiserably close is his intellectual horizon; that such a thing as athought beyond the reaches of his soul has never come near him; that heis prosaic through and through, deaf and blind to all but a tinyfragment of the meaning of things. Is it not quite absurd, then, to callhim a man of supreme intellect? And observe, lastly, that his failure in perception is closely connectedwith his badness. He was destroyed by the power that he attacked, thepower of love; and he was destroyed by it because he could notunderstand it; and he could not understand it because it was not in him. Iago never meant his plot to be so dangerous to himself. He knew thatjealousy is painful, but the jealousy of a love like Othello's he couldnot imagine, and he found himself involved in murders which were no partof his original design. That difficulty he surmounted, and his changedplot still seemed to prosper. Roderigo and Cassio and Desdemona oncedead, all will be well. Nay, when he fails to kill Cassio, all may stillbe well. He will avow that he told Othello of the adultery, and persistthat he told the truth, and Cassio will deny it in vain. And then, in amoment, his plot is shattered by a blow from a quarter where he neverdreamt of danger. He knows his wife, he thinks. She is notover-scrupulous, she will do anything to please him, and she has learntobedience. But one thing in her he does not know--that she _loves_ hermistress and would face a hundred deaths sooner than see her fair famedarkened. There is genuine astonishment in his outburst 'What! Are youmad? ' as it dawns upon him that she means to speak the truth about thehandkerchief. But he might well have applied to himself the words sheflings at Othello, O gull! O dolt! As ignorant as dirt! The foulness of his own soul made him so ignorant that he built into themarvellous structure of his plot a piece of crass stupidity. To the thinking mind the divorce of unusual intellect from goodness is athing to startle; and Shakespeare clearly felt it so. The combination ofunusual intellect with extreme evil is more than startling, it isfrightful. It is rare, but it exists; and Shakespeare represented it inIago. But the alliance of evil like Iago's with _supreme_ intellect isan impossible fiction; and Shakespeare's fictions were truth. 6The characters of Cassio and Emilia hardly require analysis, and I willtouch on them only from a single point of view. In their combination ofexcellences and defects they are good examples of that truth to naturewhich in dramatic art is the one unfailing source of moral instruction. Cassio is a handsome, light-hearted, good-natured young fellow, whotakes life gaily, and is evidently very attractive and popular. Othello,who calls him by his Christian name, is fond of him; Desdemona likes himmuch; Emilia at once interests herself on his behalf. He has warmgenerous feelings, an enthusiastic admiration for the General, and achivalrous adoration for his peerless wife. But he is too easy-going. Hefinds it hard to say No; and accordingly, although he is aware that hehas a very weak head, and that the occasion is one on which he is boundto run no risk, he gets drunk--not disgustingly so, but ludicrouslyso. [120] And, besides, he amuses himself without any scruple byfrequenting the company of a woman of more than doubtful reputation, whohas fallen in love with his good looks. Moralising critics point outthat he pays for the first offence by losing his post, and for thesecond by nearly losing his life. They are quite entitled to do so,though the careful reader will not forget Iago's part in thesetransactions. But they ought also to point out that Cassio's loosenessdoes not in the least disturb our confidence in him in his relationswith Desdemona and Othello. He is loose, and we are sorry for it; but wenever doubt that there was 'a daily beauty in his life,' or that hisrapturous admiration of Desdemona was as wholly beautiful a thing as itappears, or that Othello was perfectly safe when in his courtship heemployed Cassio to 'go between' Desdemona and himself. It is fortunatelya fact in human nature that these aspects of Cassio's character arequite compatible. Shakespeare simply sets it down; and it is justbecause he is truthful in these smaller things that in greater things wetrust him absolutely never to pervert the truth for the sake of somedoctrine or purpose of his own. There is something very lovable about Cassio, with his fresh eagerfeelings; his distress at his disgrace and still more at having lostOthello's trust; his hero-worship; and at the end his sorrow and pity,which are at first too acute for words. He is carried in, wounded, on achair. He looks at Othello and cannot speak. His first words come laterwhen, to Lodovico's question, 'Did you and he consent in Cassio'sdeath? ' Othello answers 'Ay. ' Then he falters out, 'Dear General, Inever gave you cause. ' One is sure he had never used that adjectivebefore. The love in it makes it beautiful, but there is something elsein it, unknown to Cassio, which goes to one's heart. It tells us thathis hero is no longer unapproachably above him. Few of Shakespeare's minor characters are more distinct than Emilia, andtowards few do our feelings change so much within the course of a play. Till close to the end she frequently sets one's teeth on edge; and atthe end one is ready to worship her. She nowhere shows any sign ofhaving a bad heart; but she is common, sometimes vulgar, in minormatters far from scrupulous, blunt in perception and feeling, and quitedestitute of imagination. She let Iago take the handkerchief though sheknew how much its loss would distress Desdemona; and she said nothingabout it though she saw that Othello was jealous. We rightly resent herunkindness in permitting the theft, but--it is an important point--weare apt to misconstrue her subsequent silence, because we know thatOthello's jealousy was intimately connected with the loss of thehandkerchief. Emilia, however, certainly failed to perceive this; forotherwise, when Othello's anger showed itself violently and she wasreally distressed for her mistress, she could not have failed to thinkof the handkerchief, and would, I believe, undoubtedly have told thetruth about it. But, in fact, she never thought of it, although sheguessed that Othello was being deceived by some scoundrel. Even afterDesdemona's death, nay, even when she knew that Iago had brought itabout, she still did not remember the handkerchief; and when Othello atlast mentions, as a proof of his wife's guilt, that he had seen thehandkerchief in Cassio's hand, the truth falls on Emilia like athunder-bolt. 'O God! ' she bursts out, 'O heavenly God! '[121] Herstupidity in this matter is gross, but it is stupidity and nothingworse. But along with it goes a certain coarseness of nature. The contrastbetween Emilia and Desdemona in their conversation about the infidelityof wives (IV. iii. ) is too famous to need a word,--unless it be a wordof warning against critics who take her light talk too seriously. Butthe contrast in the preceding scene is hardly less remarkable. Othello,affecting to treat Emilia as the keeper of a brothel, sends her away,bidding her shut the door behind her; and then he proceeds to torturehimself as well as Desdemona by accusations of adultery. But, as acritic has pointed out, Emilia listens at the door, for we find, as soonas Othello is gone and Iago has been summoned, that she knows whatOthello has said to Desdemona. And what could better illustrate thosedefects of hers which make one wince, than her repeating again and againin Desdemona's presence the word Desdemona could not repeat; than hertalking before Desdemona of Iago's suspicions regarding Othello andherself; than her speaking to Desdemona of husbands who strike theirwives; than the expression of her honest indignation in the words, Has she forsook so many noble matches, Her father and her country and her friends, To be called whore? If one were capable of laughing or even of smiling when this point inthe play is reached, the difference between Desdemona's anguish at theloss of Othello's love, and Emilia's recollection of the noble matchesshe might have secured, would be irresistibly ludicrous. And yet how all this, and all her defects, vanish into nothingness whenwe see her face to face with that which she can understand and feel! From the moment of her appearance after the murder to the moment of herdeath she is transfigured; and yet she remains perfectly true toherself, and we would not have her one atom less herself. She is theonly person who utters for us the violent common emotions which we feel,together with those more tragic emotions which she does not comprehend. She has done this once already, to our great comfort. When she suggeststhat some villain has poisoned Othello's mind, and Iago answers, Fie, there is no such man; it is impossible;and Desdemona answers, If any such there be, Heaven pardon him;Emilia's retort, A halter pardon him, and Hell gnaw his bones,says what we long to say, and helps us. And who has not felt in the lastscene how her glorious carelessness of her own life, and her outburstsagainst Othello--even that most characteristic one, She was too fond of her most filthy bargain--lift the overwhelming weight of calamity that oppresses us, and bring usan extraordinary lightening of the heart? Terror and pity are here toomuch to bear; we long to be allowed to feel also indignation, if notrage; and Emilia lets us feel them and gives them words. She brings ustoo the relief of joy and admiration,--a joy that is not lessened by herdeath. Why should she live? If she lived for ever she never could soar ahigher pitch, and nothing in her life became her like the losingit. [122]FOOTNOTES:[Footnote 107: It has been held, for example, that Othello treated Iagoabominably in preferring Cassio to him; that he _did_ seduce Emilia;that he and Desdemona were too familiar before marriage; and that in anycase his fate was a moral judgment on his sins, and Iago a righteous, ifsharp, instrument of Providence. ][Footnote 108: See III. iii. 201, V. i. 89 f. The statements are hisown, but he has no particular reason for lying. One reason of hisdisgust at Cassio's appointment was that Cassio was a Florentine (I. i. 20). When Cassio says (III. i. 42) 'I never knew a Florentine more kindand honest,' of course he means, not that Iago is a Florentine, but thathe could not be kinder and honester if he were one. ][Footnote 109: I am here merely recording a general impression. There isno specific evidence, unless we take Cassio's language in his drink (II. ii. 105 f. ) to imply that Iago was not a 'man of quality' like himself. I do not know if it has been observed that Iago uses more nauticalphrases and metaphors than is at all usual with Shakespeare'scharacters. This might naturally be explained by his roving militarylife, but it is curious that almost all the examples occur in theearlier scenes (see _e. g. _ I. i. 30, 153, 157; I. ii. 17, 50; I. iii. 343; II. iii. 65), so that the use of these phrases and metaphors maynot be characteristic of Iago but symptomatic of a particular state ofShakespeare's mind. ][Footnote 110: See further Note P. ][Footnote 111: But it by no means follows that we are to believe hisstatement that there was a report abroad about an intrigue between hiswife and Othello (I. iii. 393), or his statement (which may be divinedfrom IV. ii. 145) that someone had spoken to him on the subject. ][Footnote 112: See, for instance, Aaron in _Titus Andronicus_, II. iii. ;Richard in _3 Henry VI. _, III. ii. and V. vi. , and in _Richard III. _, I. i. (twice), I. ii. ; Edmund in _King Lear_, I. ii. (twice), III. iii. andv. , V. i. ][Footnote 113: See, further, Note Q. ][Footnote 114: On the meaning which this phrase had for its author,Coleridge, see note on p. 228. ][Transcriber's note: Reference is toFootnote 115. ][Footnote 115: Coleridge's view is not materially different, though lesscomplete. When he speaks of 'the motive-hunting of a motivelessmalignity,' he does not mean by the last two words that 'disinterestedlove of evil' or 'love of evil for evil's sake' of which I spoke justnow, and which other critics attribute to Iago. He means really thatIago's malignity does not spring from the causes to which Iago himselfrefers it, nor from any 'motive' in the sense of an idea present toconsciousness. But unfortunately his phrase suggests the theory whichhas been criticised above. On the question whether there is such a thingas this supposed pure malignity, the reader may refer to a discussionbetween Professor Bain and F. H. Bradley in _Mind_, vol. viii. ][Footnote 116: _I. e. _ terrifying. ][Footnote 117: Cf. note at end of lecture. ][Transcriber's note: Refersto Footnote 122. ][Footnote 118: It was suggested to me by a Glasgow student. ][Footnote 119: A curious proof of Iago's inability to hold by his creedthat absolute egoism is the only proper attitude, and that loyalty andaffection are mere stupidity or want of spirit, may be found in his onemoment of real passion, where he rushes at Emilia with the cry,'Villainous whore! ' (V. ii. 229). There is more than fury in his cry,there is indignation. She has been false to him, she has betrayed him. Well, but why should she not, if his creed is true? And what amelancholy exhibition of human inconsistency it is that he should use asterms of reproach words which, according to him, should be quiteneutral, if not complimentary! ][Footnote 120: Cassio's invective against drink may be compared withHamlet's expressions of disgust at his uncle's drunkenness. Possibly thesubject may for some reason have been prominent in Shakespeare's mindabout this time. ][Footnote 121: So the Quarto, and certainly rightly, though moderneditors reprint the feeble alteration of the Folio, due to fear of theCensor, 'O heaven! O heavenly Powers! '][Footnote 122: The feelings evoked by Emilia are one of the causes whichmitigate the excess of tragic pain at the conclusion. Others are thedownfall of Iago, and the fact, already alluded to, that both Desdemonaand Othello show themselves at their noblest just before death. ]LECTURE VIIKING LEAR_King Lear_ has again and again been described as Shakespeare's greatestwork, the best of his plays, the tragedy in which he exhibits most fullyhis multitudinous powers; and if we were doomed to lose all his dramasexcept one, probably the majority of those who know and appreciate himbest would pronounce for keeping _King Lear_. Yet this tragedy is certainly the least popular of the famous four. The'general reader' reads it less often than the others, and, though heacknowledges its greatness, he will sometimes speak of it with a certaindistaste. It is also the least often presented on the stage, and theleast successful there. And when we look back on its history we find acurious fact. Some twenty years after the Restoration, Nahum Tatealtered _King Lear_ for the stage, giving it a happy ending, and puttingEdgar in the place of the King of France as Cordelia's lover. From thattime Shakespeare's tragedy in its original form was never seen on thestage for a century and a half. Betterton acted Tate's version; Garrickacted it and Dr. Johnson approved it. Kemble acted it, Kean acted it. In1823 Kean, 'stimulated by Hazlitt's remonstrances and Charles Lamb'sessays,' restored the original tragic ending. At last, in 1838, Macreadyreturned to Shakespeare's text throughout. What is the meaning of these opposite sets of facts? Are the lovers ofShakespeare wholly in the right; and is the general reader andplay-goer, were even Tate and Dr. Johnson, altogether in the wrong? Iventure to doubt it. When I read _King Lear_ two impressions are left onmy mind, which seem to answer roughly to the two sets of facts. _KingLear_ seems to me Shakespeare's greatest achievement, but it seems to me_not_ his best play. And I find that I tend to consider it from tworather different points of view. When I regard it strictly as a drama,it appears to me, though in certain parts overwhelming, decidedlyinferior as a whole to _Hamlet_, _Othello_ and _Macbeth_. When I amfeeling that it is greater than any of these, and the fullest revelationof Shakespeare's power, I find I am not regarding it simply as a drama,but am grouping it in my mind with works like the _Prometheus Vinctus_and the _Divine Comedy_, and even with the greatest symphonies ofBeethoven and the statues in the Medici Chapel. This two-fold character of the play is to some extent illustrated by theaffinities and the probable chronological position of _King Lear_. It isallied with two tragedies, _Othello_ and _Timon of Athens_; and thesetwo tragedies are utterly unlike. [123] _Othello_ was probably composedabout 1604, and _King Lear_ about 1605; and though there is a somewhatmarked change in style and versification, there are obvious resemblancesbetween the two. The most important have been touched on already: theseare the most painful and the most pathetic of the four tragedies, thosein which evil appears in its coldest and most inhuman forms, and thosewhich exclude the supernatural from the action. But there is also in_King Lear_ a good deal which sounds like an echo of _Othello_,--a factwhich should not surprise us, since there are other instances where thematter of a play seems to go on working in Shakespeare's mind andre-appears, generally in a weaker form, in his next play. So, in _KingLear_, the conception of Edmund is not so fresh as that of Goneril. Goneril has no predecessor; but Edmund, though of course essentiallydistinguished from Iago, often reminds us of him, and the soliloquy,'This is the excellent foppery of the world,' is in the very tone ofIago's discourse on the sovereignty of the will. The gulling of Gloster,again, recalls the gulling of Othello. Even Edmund's idea (not carriedout) of making his father witness, without over-hearing, hisconversation with Edgar, reproduces the idea of the passage whereOthello watches Iago and Cassio talking about Bianca; and the conclusionof the temptation, where Gloster says to Edmund: and of my land, Loyal and natural boy, I'll work the means To make thee capable,reminds us of Othello's last words in the scene of temptation, 'Now artthou my lieutenant. ' This list might be extended; and the appearance ofcertain unusual words and phrases in both the plays increases thelikelihood that the composition of the one followed at no great distanceon that of the other. [124]When we turn from _Othello_ to _Timon of Athens_ we find a play of quiteanother kind. _Othello_ is dramatically the most perfect of thetragedies. _Timon_, on the contrary, is weak, ill-constructed andconfused; and, though care might have made it clear, no mere care couldmake it really dramatic. Yet it is undoubtedly Shakespearean in part,probably in great part; and it immediately reminds us of _King Lear_. Both plays deal with the tragic effects of ingratitude. In both thevictim is exceptionally unsuspicious, soft-hearted and vehement. In bothhe is completely overwhelmed, passing through fury to madness in the onecase, to suicide in the other. Famous passages in both plays are curses. The misanthropy of Timon pours itself out in a torrent of maledictionson the whole race of man; and these at once recall, alike by their formand their substance, the most powerful speeches uttered by Lear in hismadness. In both plays occur repeated comparisons between man and thebeasts; the idea that 'the strain of man's bred out into baboon,' wolf,tiger, fox; the idea that this bestial degradation will end in a furiousstruggle of all with all, in which the race will perish. The'pessimistic' strain in _Timon_ suggests to many readers, even moreimperatively than _King Lear_, the notion that Shakespeare was givingvent to some personal feeling, whether present or past; for the signs ofhis hand appear most unmistakably when the hero begins to pour the vialsof his wrath upon mankind. _Timon_, lastly, in some of theunquestionably Shakespearean parts, bears (as it appears to me) sostrong a resemblance to _King Lear_ in style and in versification thatit is hard to understand how competent judges can suppose that itbelongs to a time at all near that of the final romances, or even thatit was written so late as the last Roman plays. It is more likely tohave been composed immediately after _King Lear_ and before_Macbeth_. [125]Drawing these comparisons together, we may say that, while as a work ofart and in tragic power _King Lear_ is infinitely nearer to _Othello_than to _Timon_, in its spirit and substance its affinity with _Timon_is a good deal the stronger. And, returning to the point from whichthese comparisons began, I would now add that there is in _King Lear_ areflection or anticipation, however faint, of the structural weakness of_Timon_. This weakness in _King Lear_ is not due, however, to anythingintrinsically undramatic in the story, but to characteristics which werenecessary to an effect not wholly dramatic. The stage is the test ofstrictly dramatic quality, and _King Lear_ is too huge for the stage. Ofcourse, I am not denying that it is a great stage-play. It has scenesimmensely effective in the theatre; three of them--the two between Learand Goneril and between Lear, Goneril and Regan, and the ineffablybeautiful scene in the Fourth Act between Lear and Cordelia--lose in thetheatre very little of the spell they have for imagination; and thegradual interweaving of the two plots is almost as masterly as in _MuchAdo_. But (not to speak of defects due to mere carelessness) that whichmakes the _peculiar_ greatness of King Lear,--the immense scope of thework; the mass and variety of intense experience which it contains; theinterpenetration of sublime imagination, piercing pathos, and humouralmost as moving as the pathos; the vastness of the convulsion both ofnature and of human passion; the vagueness of the scene where the actiontakes place, and of the movements of the figures which cross this scene;the strange atmosphere, cold and dark, which strikes on us as we enterthis scene, enfolding these figures and magnifying their dim outlineslike a winter mist; the half-realised suggestions of vast universalpowers working in the world of individual fates and passions,--all thisinterferes with dramatic clearness even when the play is read, and inthe theatre not only refuses to reveal itself fully through the sensesbut seems to be almost in contradiction with their reports. This is notso with the other great tragedies. No doubt, as Lamb declared,theatrical representation gives only a part of what we imagine when weread them; but there is no _conflict_ between the representation and theimagination, because these tragedies are, in essentials, perfectlydramatic. But _King Lear_, as a whole, is imperfectly dramatic, andthere is something in its very essence which is at war with the senses,and demands a purely imaginative realisation. It is thereforeShakespeare's greatest work, but it is not what Hazlitt called it, thebest of his plays; and its comparative unpopularity is due, not merelyto the extreme painfulness of the catastrophe, but in part to itsdramatic defects, and in part to a failure in many readers to catch thepeculiar effects to which I have referred,--a failure which is naturalbecause the appeal is made not so much to dramatic perception as to ararer and more strictly poetic kind of imagination. For this reason,too, even the best attempts at exposition of _King Lear_ aredisappointing; they remind us of attempts to reduce to prose theimpalpable spirit of the _Tempest_. I propose to develop some of these ideas by considering, first, thedramatic defects of the play, and then some of the causes of itsextraordinary imaginative effect. 1We may begin, however, by referring to two passages which have oftenbeen criticised with injustice. The first is that where the blindedGloster, believing that he is going to leap down Dover cliff, does infact fall flat on the ground at his feet, and then is persuaded that he_has_ leaped down Dover cliff but has been miraculously preserved. Imagine this incident transferred to _Othello_, and you realise howcompletely the two tragedies differ in dramatic atmosphere. In _Othello_it would be a shocking or a ludicrous dissonance, but it is in harmonywith the spirit of _King Lear_. And not only is this so, but, contraryto expectation, it is not, if properly acted, in the least absurd on thestage. The imagination and the feelings have been worked upon with sucheffect by the description of the cliff, and by the portrayal of the oldman's despair and his son's courageous and loving wisdom, that we areunconscious of the grotesqueness of the incident for common sense. The second passage is more important, for it deals with the origin ofthe whole conflict. The oft-repeated judgment that the first scene of_King Lear_ is absurdly improbable, and that no sane man would think ofdividing his kingdom among his daughters in proportion to the strengthof their several protestations of love, is much too harsh and is basedupon a strange misunderstanding. This scene acts effectively, and toimagination the story is not at all incredible. It is merely strange,like so many of the stories on which our romantic dramas are based. Shakespeare, besides, has done a good deal to soften the improbabilityof the legend, and he has done much more than the casual readerperceives. The very first words of the drama, as Coleridge pointed out,tell us that the division of the kingdom is already settled in all itsdetails, so that only the public announcement of it remains. [126] Laterwe find that the lines of division have already been drawn on the map ofBritain (l. 38), and again that Cordelia's share, which is her dowry, isperfectly well known to Burgundy, if not to France (ll. 197, 245). Thatthen which is censured as absurd, the dependence of the division on thespeeches of the daughters, was in Lear's intention a mere form, devisedas a childish scheme to gratify his love of absolute power and hishunger for assurances of devotion. And this scheme is perfectly incharacter. We may even say that the main cause of its failure was notthat Goneril and Regan were exceptionally hypocritical, but thatCordelia was exceptionally sincere and unbending. And it is essential toobserve that its failure, and the consequent necessity of publiclyreversing his whole well-known intention, is one source of Lear'sextreme anger. He loved Cordelia most and knew that she loved him best,and the supreme moment to which he looked forward was that in which sheshould outdo her sisters in expressions of affection, and should berewarded by that 'third' of the kingdom which was the most 'opulent. 'And then--so it naturally seemed to him--she put him to open shame. There is a further point, which seems to have escaped the attention ofColeridge and others. Part of the absurdity of Lear's plan is taken tobe his idea of living with his three daughters in turn. But he nevermeant to do this. He meant to live with Cordelia, and with heralone. [127] The scheme of his alternate monthly stay with Goneril andRegan is forced on him at the moment by what he thinks the undutifulnessof his favourite child. In fact his whole original plan, though foolishand rash, was not a 'hideous rashness'[128] or incredible folly. Ifcarried out it would have had no such consequences as followed itsalteration. It would probably have led quickly to war,[129] but not tothe agony which culminated in the storm upon the heath. The first scene,therefore, is not absurd, though it must be pronounced dramaticallyfaulty in so far as it discloses the true position of affairs only to anattention more alert than can be expected in a theatrical audience orhas been found in many critics of the play. Let us turn next to two passages of another kind, the two which aremainly responsible for the accusation of excessive painfulness, and sofor the distaste of many readers and the long theatrical eclipse of_King Lear_. The first of these is much the less important; it is thescene of the blinding of Gloster. The blinding of Gloster on the stagehas been condemned almost universally; and surely with justice, becausethe mere physical horror of such a spectacle would in the theatre be asensation so violent as to overpower the purely tragic emotions, andtherefore the spectacle would seem revolting or shocking. But it isotherwise in reading. For mere imagination the physical horror, thoughnot lost, is so far deadened that it can do its duty as a stimulus topity, and to that appalled dismay at the extremity of human crueltywhich it is of the essence of the tragedy to excite. Thus the blindingof Gloster belongs rightly to _King Lear_ in its proper world ofimagination; it is a blot upon _King Lear_ as a stage-play. But what are we to say of the second and far more important passage, theconclusion of the tragedy, the 'unhappy ending,' as it is called, thoughthe word 'unhappy' sounds almost ironical in its weakness? Is this too ablot upon _King Lear_ as a stage-play? The question is not so easilyanswered as might appear. Doubtless we are right when we turn withdisgust from Tate's sentimental alterations, from his marriage of Edgarand Cordelia, and from that cheap moral which every one of Shakespeare'stragedies contradicts, 'that Truth and Virtue shall at last succeed. 'But are we so sure that we are right when we unreservedly condemn thefeeling which prompted these alterations, or at all events the feelingwhich beyond question comes naturally to many readers of _King Lear_ whowould like Tate as little as we? What they wish, though they have notalways the courage to confess it even to themselves, is that the deathsof Edmund, Goneril, Regan and Gloster should be followed by the escapeof Lear and Cordelia from death, and that we should be allowed toimagine the poor old King passing quietly in the home of his belovedchild to the end which cannot be far off. Now, I do not dream of sayingthat we ought to wish this, so long as we regard _King Lear_ simply as awork of poetic imagination. But if _King Lear_ is to be consideredstrictly as a drama, or simply as we consider _Othello_, it is not soclear that the wish is unjustified. In fact I will take my courage inboth hands and say boldly that I share it, and also that I believeShakespeare would have ended his play thus had he taken the subject inhand a few years later, in the days of _Cymbeline_ and the _Winter'sTale_. If I read _King Lear_ simply as a drama, I find that my feelingscall for this 'happy ending. ' I do not mean the human, thephilanthropic, feelings, but the dramatic sense. The former wish Hamletand Othello to escape their doom; the latter does not; but it does wishLear and Cordelia to be saved. Surely, it says, the tragic emotions havebeen sufficiently stirred already. Surely the tragic outcome of Lear'serror and his daughters' ingratitude has been made clear enough andmoving enough. And, still more surely, such a tragic catastrophe as thisshould seem _inevitable_. But this catastrophe, unlike those of all theother mature tragedies, does not seem at all inevitable. It is not evensatisfactorily motived. [130] In fact it seems expressly designed to fallsuddenly like a bolt from a sky cleared by the vanished storm. Andalthough from a wider point of view one may fully recognise the value ofthis effect, and may even reject with horror the wish for a 'happyending,' this wider point of view, I must maintain, is not strictlydramatic or tragic. Of course this is a heresy and all the best authority is against it. Butthen the best authority, it seems to me, is either influencedunconsciously by disgust at Tate's sentimentalism or unconsciously takesthat wider point of view. |
When Lamb--there is no higherauthority--writes, 'A happy ending! --as if the living martyrdom thatLear had gone through, the flaying of his feelings alive, did not make afair dismissal from the stage of life the only decorous thing for him,'I answer, first, that it is precisely this _fair_ dismissal which wedesire for him instead of renewed anguish; and, secondly, that what wedesire for him during the brief remainder of his days is not 'thechildish pleasure of getting his gilt robes and sceptre again,' not whatTate gives him, but what Shakespeare himself might have given him--peaceand happiness by Cordelia's fireside. And if I am told that he hassuffered too much for this, how can I possibly believe it with thesewords ringing in my ears: Come, let's away to prison: We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage. When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down, And ask of thee forgiveness: so we'll live, And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh At gilded butterflies? And again when Schlegel declares that, if Lear were saved, 'the whole'would 'lose its significance,' because it would no longer show us thatthe belief in Providence 'requires a wider range than the darkpilgrimage on earth to be established in its whole extent,' I answerthat, if the drama does show us that, it takes us beyond the strictlytragic point of view. [131]A dramatic mistake in regard to the catastrophe, however, even supposingit to exist, would not seriously affect the whole play. The principalstructural weakness of _King Lear_ lies elsewhere. It is felt to someextent in the earlier Acts, but still more (as from our study ofShakespeare's technique we have learnt to expect) in the Fourth and thefirst part of the Fifth. And it arises chiefly from the double action,which is a peculiarity of _King Lear_ among the tragedies. By the sideof Lear, his daughters, Kent, and the Fool, who are the principalfigures in the main plot, stand Gloster and his two sons, the chiefpersons of the secondary plot. Now by means of this double actionShakespeare secured certain results highly advantageous even from thestrictly dramatic point of view, and easy to perceive. But thedisadvantages were dramatically greater. The number of essentialcharacters is so large, their actions and movements are so complicated,and events towards the close crowd on one another so thickly, that thereader's attention,[132] rapidly transferred from one centre of interestto another, is overstrained. He becomes, if not intellectually confused,at least emotionally fatigued. The battle, on which everything turns,scarcely affects him. The deaths of Edmund, Goneril, Regan and Glosterseem 'but trifles here'; and anything short of the incomparable pathosof the close would leave him cold. There is something almost ludicrousin the insignificance of this battle, when it is compared with thecorresponding battles in _Julius Caesar_ and _Macbeth_; and though theremay have been further reasons for its insignificance, the main one issimply that there was no room to give it its due effect among such ahost of competing interests. [133]A comparison of the last two Acts of _Othello_ with the last two Acts of_King Lear_ would show how unfavourable to dramatic clearness is amultiplicity of figures. But that this multiplicity is not in itself afatal obstacle is evident from the last two Acts of _Hamlet_, andespecially from the final scene. This is in all respects one ofShakespeare's triumphs, yet the stage is crowded with characters. Onlythey are not _leading_ characters. The plot is single; Hamlet and theKing are the 'mighty opposites'; and Ophelia, the only other person inwhom we are obliged to take a vivid interest, has already disappeared. It is therefore natural and right that the deaths of Laertes and theQueen should affect us comparatively little. But in _King Lear_, becausethe plot is double, we have present in the last scene no less than fivepersons who are technically of the first importance--Lear, his threedaughters and Edmund; not to speak of Kent and Edgar, of whom the latterat any rate is technically quite as important as Laertes. And again,owing to the pressure of persons and events, and owing to theconcentration of our anxiety on Lear and Cordelia, the combat of Edgarand Edmund, which occupies so considerable a space, fails to excite atithe of the interest of the fencing-match in _Hamlet_. The truth isthat all through these Acts Shakespeare has too vast a material to usewith complete dramatic effectiveness, however essential this veryvastness was for effects of another kind. Added to these defects there are others, which suggest that in _KingLear_ Shakespeare was less concerned than usual with dramatic fitness:improbabilities, inconsistencies, sayings and doings which suggestquestions only to be answered by conjecture. The improbabilities in_King Lear_ surely far surpass those of the other great tragedies innumber and in grossness. And they are particularly noticeable in thesecondary plot. For example, no sort of reason is given why Edgar, wholives in the same house with Edmund, should write a letter to himinstead of speaking; and this is a letter absolutely damning to hischaracter. Gloster was very foolish, but surely not so foolish as topass unnoticed this improbability; or, if so foolish, what need forEdmund to forge a letter rather than a conversation, especially asGloster appears to be unacquainted with his son's handwriting? [134] Isit in character that Edgar should be persuaded without the slightestdemur to avoid his father instead of confronting him and asking him thecause of his anger? Why in the world should Gloster, when expelled fromhis castle, wander painfully all the way to Dover simply in order todestroy himself (IV. i. 80)? And is it not extraordinary that, afterGloster's attempted suicide, Edgar should first talk to him in thelanguage of a gentleman, then to Oswald in his presence in broad peasantdialect, then again to Gloster in gentle language, and yet that Glostershould not manifest the least surprise? Again, to take three instances of another kind; (_a_) only a fortnightseems to have elapsed between the first scene and the breach withGoneril; yet already there are rumours not only of war between Goneriland Regan but of the coming of a French army; and this, Kent says, isperhaps connected with the harshness of _both_ the sisters to theirfather, although Regan has apparently had no opportunity of showing anyharshness till the day before. (_b_) In the quarrel with Goneril Learspeaks of his having to dismiss fifty of his followers at a clap, yetshe has neither mentioned any number nor had any opportunity ofmentioning it off the stage. (_c_) Lear and Goneril, intending to hurryto Regan, both send off messengers to her, and both tell the messengersto bring back an answer. But it does not appear either how themessengers _could_ return or what answer could be required, as theirsuperiors are following them with the greatest speed. Once more, (_a_) why does Edgar not reveal himself to his blind father,as he truly says he ought to have done? The answer is left to mereconjecture. (_b_) Why does Kent so carefully preserve his incognito tillthe last scene? He says he does it for an important purpose, but whatthe purpose is we have to guess. (_c_) Why Burgundy rather than Franceshould have first choice of Cordelia's hand is a question we cannot helpasking, but there is no hint of any answer. [135] (_d_) I have referredalready to the strange obscurity regarding Edmund's delay in trying tosave his victims, and I will not extend this list of examples. No one ofsuch defects is surprising when considered by itself, but their numberis surely significant. Taken in conjunction with other symptoms it meansthat Shakespeare, set upon the dramatic effect of the great scenes andupon certain effects not wholly dramatic, was exceptionally careless ofprobability, clearness and consistency in smaller matters, introducingwhat was convenient or striking for a momentary purpose withouttroubling himself about anything more than the moment. In presence ofthese signs it seems doubtful whether his failure to give informationabout the fate of the Fool was due to anything more than carelessness oran impatient desire to reduce his overloaded material. [136]Before I turn to the other side of the subject I will refer to one morecharacteristic of this play which is dramatically disadvantageous. InShakespeare's dramas, owing to the absence of scenery from theElizabethan stage, the question, so vexatious to editors, of the exactlocality of a particular scene is usually unimportant and oftenunanswerable; but, as a rule, we know, broadly speaking, where thepersons live and what their journeys are. The text makes this plain, forexample, almost throughout _Hamlet_, _Othello_ and _Macbeth_; and theimagination is therefore untroubled. But in _King Lear_ the indicationsare so scanty that the reader's mind is left not seldom both vague andbewildered. Nothing enables us to imagine whereabouts in Britain Lear'spalace lies, or where the Duke of Albany lives. In referring to thedividing-lines on the map, Lear tells us of shadowy forests andplenteous rivers, but, unlike Hotspur and his companions, he studiouslyavoids proper names. The Duke of Cornwall, we presume in the absence ofinformation, is likely to live in Cornwall; but we suddenly find, fromthe introduction of a place-name which all readers take at first for asurname, that he lives at Gloster (I. v. 1). [137] This seems likely tobe also the home of the Earl of Gloster, to whom Cornwall is patron. Butno: it is a night's journey from Cornwall's 'house' to Gloster's, andGloster's is in the middle of an uninhabited heath. [138] Here, for thepurpose of the crisis, nearly all the persons assemble, but they do soin a manner which no casual spectator or reader could follow. Afterwardsthey all drift towards Dover for the purpose of the catastrophe; butagain the localities and movements are unusually indefinite. And thisindefiniteness is found in smaller matters. One cannot help asking, forexample, and yet one feels one had better not ask, where that 'lodging'of Edmund's can be, in which he hides Edgar from his father, and whetherEdgar is mad that he should return from his hollow tree (in a districtwhere 'for many miles about there's scarce a bush') to his father'scastle in order to soliloquise (II. iii. ):--for the favouritestage-direction, 'a wood' (which is more than 'a bush'), howeverconvenient to imagination, is scarcely compatible with the presence ofKent asleep in the stocks. [139] Something of the confusion whichbewilders the reader's mind in _King Lear_ recurs in _Antony andCleopatra_, the most faultily constructed of all the tragedies; butthere it is due not so much to the absence or vagueness of theindications as to the necessity of taking frequent and fatiguingjourneys over thousands of miles. Shakespeare could not help himself inthe Roman play: in _King Lear_ he did not choose to help himself,perhaps deliberately chose to be vague. From these defects, or from some of them, follows one result which mustbe familiar to many readers of _King Lear_. It is far more difficult toretrace in memory the steps of the action in this tragedy than in_Hamlet_, _Othello_, or _Macbeth_. The outline is of course quite clear;anyone could write an 'argument' of the play. But when an attempt ismade to fill in the detail, it issues sooner or later in confusion evenwith readers whose dramatic memory is unusually strong. [140]2How is it, now, that this defective drama so overpowers us that we areeither unconscious of its blemishes or regard them as almost irrelevant? As soon as we turn to this question we recognise, not merely that _KingLear_ possesses purely dramatic qualities which far outweigh itsdefects, but that its greatness consists partly in imaginative effectsof a wider kind. And, looking for the sources of these effects, we findamong them some of those very things which appeared to us dramaticallyfaulty or injurious. Thus, to take at once two of the simplest examplesof this, that very vagueness in the sense of locality which we have justconsidered, and again that excess in the bulk of the material and thenumber of figures, events and movements, while they interfere with theclearness of vision, have at the same time a positive value forimagination. They give the feeling of vastness, the feeling not of ascene or particular place, but of a world; or, to speak more accurately,of a particular place which is also a world. This world is dim to us,partly from its immensity, and partly because it is filled with gloom;and in the gloom shapes approach and recede, whose half-seen faces andmotions touch us with dread, horror, or the most painfulpity,--sympathies and antipathies which we seem to be feeling not onlyfor them but for the whole race. This world, we are told, is calledBritain; but we should no more look for it in an atlas than for theplace, called Caucasus, where Prometheus was chained by Strength andForce and comforted by the daughters of Ocean, or the place whereFarinata stands erect in his glowing tomb, 'Come avesse lo Inferno ingran dispitto. 'Consider next the double action. It has certain strictly dramaticadvantages, and may well have had its origin in purely dramaticconsiderations. To go no further, the secondary plot fills out a storywhich would by itself have been somewhat thin, and it provides a mosteffective contrast between its personages and those of the main plot,the tragic strength and stature of the latter being heightened bycomparison with the slighter build of the former. But its chief valuelies elsewhere, and is not merely dramatic. It lies in the fact--inShakespeare without a parallel--that the sub-plot simply repeats thetheme of the main story. Here, as there, we see an old man 'with a whitebeard. ' He, like Lear, is affectionate, unsuspicious, foolish, andself-willed. He, too, wrongs deeply a child who loves him not less forthe wrong. He, too, meets with monstrous ingratitude from the child whomhe favours, and is tortured and driven to death. This repetition doesnot simply double the pain with which the tragedy is witnessed: itstartles and terrifies by suggesting that the folly of Lear and theingratitude of his daughters are no accidents or merely individualaberrations, but that in that dark cold world some fateful malignantinfluence is abroad, turning the hearts of the fathers against theirchildren and of the children against their fathers, smiting the earthwith a curse, so that the brother gives the brother to death and thefather the son, blinding the eyes, maddening the brain, freezing thesprings of pity, numbing all powers except the nerves of anguish and thedull lust of life. [141]Hence too, as well as from other sources, comes that feeling whichhaunts us in _King Lear_, as though we were witnessing somethinguniversal,--a conflict not so much of particular persons as of thepowers of good and evil in the world. And the treatment of many of thecharacters confirms this feeling. Considered simply as psychologicalstudies few of them, surely, are of the highest interest. Fine andsubtle touches could not be absent from a work of Shakespeare'smaturity; but, with the possible exception of Lear himself, no one ofthe characters strikes us as psychologically a _wonderful_ creation,like Hamlet or Iago or even Macbeth; one or two seem even to be somewhatfaint and thin. And, what is more significant, it is not quite naturalto us to regard them from this point of view at all. Rather we observe amost unusual circumstance. If Lear, Gloster and Albany are set apart,the rest fall into two distinct groups, which are strongly, evenviolently, contrasted: Cordelia, Kent, Edgar, the Fool on one side,Goneril, Regan, Edmund, Cornwall, Oswald on the other. These charactersare in various degrees individualised, most of them completely so; butstill in each group there is a quality common to all the members, or onespirit breathing through them all. Here we have unselfish and devotedlove, there hard self-seeking. On both sides, further, the commonquality takes an extreme form; the love is incapable of being chilled byinjury, the selfishness of being softened by pity; and, it may be added,this tendency to extremes is found again in the characters of Lear andGloster, and is the main source of the accusations of improbabilitydirected against their conduct at certain points. Hence the members ofeach group tend to appear, at least in part, as varieties of onespecies; the radical differences of the two species are emphasized inbroad hard strokes; and the two are set in conflict, almost as ifShakespeare, like Empedocles, were regarding Love and Hate as the twoultimate forces of the universe. The presence in _King Lear_ of so large a number of characters in whomlove or self-seeking is so extreme, has another effect. They do notmerely inspire in us emotions of unusual strength, but they also stirthe intellect to wonder and speculation. How can there be such men andwomen? we ask ourselves. How comes it that humanity can take suchabsolutely opposite forms? And, in particular, to what omission ofelements which should be present in human nature, or, if there is noomission, to what distortion of these elements is it due that suchbeings as some of these come to exist? This is a question which Iago(and perhaps no previous creation of Shakespeare's) forces us to ask,but in _King Lear_ it is provoked again and again. And more, it seems tous that the author himself is asking this question. 'Then let themanatomise Regan, see what breeds about her heart. Is there any cause innature that makes these hard hearts? '--the strain of thought whichappears here seems to be present in some degree throughout the play. Weseem to trace the tendency which, a few years later, produced Ariel andCaliban, the tendency of imagination to analyse and abstract, todecompose human nature into its constituent factors, and then toconstruct beings in whom one or more of these factors is absent oratrophied or only incipient. This, of course, is a tendency whichproduces symbols, allegories, personifications of qualities and abstractideas; and we are accustomed to think it quite foreign to Shakespeare'sgenius, which was in the highest degree concrete. No doubt in the mainwe are right here; but it is hazardous to set limits to that genius. TheSonnets, if nothing else, may show us how easy it was to Shakespeare'smind to move in a world of 'Platonic' ideas;[142] and, while it would begoing too far to suggest that he was employing conscious symbolism orallegory in _King Lear_, it does appear to disclose a mode ofimagination not so very far removed from the mode with which, we mustremember, Shakespeare was perfectly familiar in Morality plays and inthe _Fairy Queen_. This same tendency shows itself in _King Lear_ in other forms. To it isdue the idea of monstrosity--of beings, actions, states of mind, whichappear not only abnormal but absolutely contrary to nature; an idea,which, of course, is common enough in Shakespeare, but appears withunusual frequency in _King Lear_, for instance in the lines: Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend, More hideous when thou show'st thee in a child Than the sea-monster! or in the exclamation, Filial ingratitude! Is it not as this mouth should tear this hand For lifting food to't? It appears in another shape in that most vivid passage where Albany, ashe looks at the face which had bewitched him, now distorted withdreadful passions, suddenly sees it in a new light and exclaims inhorror: Thou changed and self-cover'd thing, for shame. Be-monster not thy feature. Were't my fitness To let these hands obey my blood, They are apt enough to dislocate and tear Thy flesh and bones: howe'er thou art a fiend, A woman's shape doth shield thee. [143]It appears once more in that exclamation of Kent's, as he listens tothe description of Cordelia's grief: It is the stars, The stars above us, govern our conditions; Else one self mate and mate could not beget Such different issues. (This is not the only sign that Shakespeare had been musing overheredity, and wondering how it comes about that the composition of twostrains of blood or two parent souls can produce such astonishinglydifferent products. )This mode of thought is responsible, lastly, for a very strikingcharacteristic of _King Lear_--one in which it has no parallel except_Timon_--the incessant references to the lower animals[144] and man'slikeness to them. These references are scattered broadcast through thewhole play, as though Shakespeare's mind were so busy with the subjectthat he could hardly write a page without some allusion to it. The dog,the horse, the cow, the sheep, the hog, the lion, the bear, the wolf,the fox, the monkey, the pole-cat, the civet-cat, the pelican, the owl,the crow, the chough, the wren, the fly, the butterfly, the rat, themouse, the frog, the tadpole, the wall-newt, the water-newt, the worm--Iam sure I cannot have completed the list, and some of them are mentionedagain and again. Often, of course, and especially in the talk of Edgaras the Bedlam, they have no symbolical meaning; but not seldom, even inhis talk, they are expressly referred to for their typicalqualities--'hog in sloth, fox in stealth, wolf in greediness, dog inmadness, lion in prey,' 'The fitchew nor the soiled horse goes to't Witha more riotous appetite. ' Sometimes a person in the drama is compared,openly or implicitly, with one of them. Goneril is a kite: heringratitude has a serpent's tooth: she has struck her father mostserpent-like upon the very heart: her visage is wolvish: she has tiedsharp-toothed unkindness like a vulture on her father's breast: for herhusband she is a gilded serpent: to Gloster her cruelty seems to havethe fangs of a boar. She and Regan are dog-hearted: they are tigers, notdaughters: each is an adder to the other: the flesh of each is coveredwith the fell of a beast. Oswald is a mongrel, and the son and heir of amongrel: ducking to everyone in power, he is a wag-tail: white withfear, he is a goose. Gloster, for Regan, is an ingrateful fox: Albany,for his wife, has a cowish spirit and is milk-liver'd: when Edgar as theBedlam first appeared to Lear he made him think a man a worm. As weread, the souls of all the beasts in turn seem to us to have entered thebodies of these mortals; horrible in their venom, savagery, lust,deceitfulness, sloth, cruelty, filthiness; miserable in theirfeebleness, nakedness, defencelessness, blindness; and man, 'considerhim well,' is even what they are. Shakespeare, to whom the idea of thetransmigration of souls was familiar and had once been material forjest,[145] seems to have been brooding on humanity in the light of it. It is remarkable, and somewhat sad, that he seems to find none of man'sbetter qualities in the world of the brutes (though he might well havefound the prototype of the self-less love of Kent and Cordelia in thedog whom he so habitually maligns);[146] but he seems to have beenasking himself whether that which he loathes in man may not be due tosome strange wrenching of this frame of things, through which the loweranimal souls have found a lodgment in human forms, and there found--tothe horror and confusion of the thinking mind--brains to forge, tonguesto speak, and hands to act, enormities which no mere brute can conceiveor execute. He shows us in _King Lear_ these terrible forces burstinginto monstrous life and flinging themselves upon those human beings whoare weak and defenceless, partly from old age, but partly because they_are_ human and lack the dreadful undivided energy of the beast. And theonly comfort he might seem to hold out to us is the prospect that atleast this bestial race, strong only where it is vile, cannot endure:though stars and gods are powerless, or careless, or empty dreams, yetthere must be an end of this horrible world: It will come; Humanity must perforce prey on itself Like monsters of the deep. [147]The influence of all this on imagination as we read _King Lear_ is verygreat; and it combines with other influences to convey to us, not in theform of distinct ideas but in the manner proper to poetry, the wider oruniversal significance of the spectacle presented to the inward eye. Butthe effect of theatrical exhibition is precisely the reverse. There thepoetic atmosphere is dissipated; the meaning of the very words whichcreate it passes half-realised; in obedience to the tyranny of the eyewe conceive the characters as mere particular men and women; and allthat mass of vague suggestion, if it enters the mind at all, appears inthe shape of an allegory which we immediately reject. A similar conflictbetween imagination and sense will be found if we consider the dramaticcentre of the whole tragedy, the Storm-scenes. The temptation of Othelloand the scene of Duncan's murder may lose upon the stage, but they donot lose their essence, and they gain as well as lose. The Storm-scenesin _King Lear_ gain nothing and their very essence is destroyed. It iscomparatively a small thing that the theatrical storm, not to drown thedialogue, must be silent whenever a human being wishes to speak, and iswretchedly inferior to many a storm we have witnessed. Nor is it simplythat, as Lamb observed, the corporal presence of Lear, 'an old mantottering about the stage with a walking-stick,' disturbs and depressesthat sense of the greatness of his mind which fills the imagination. There is a further reason, which is not expressed, but still emerges, inthese words of Lamb's: 'the explosions of his passion are terrible as avolcano: they are storms turning up and disclosing to the bottom thatsea, his mind, with all its vast riches. ' Yes, 'they are _storms_. ' Forimagination, that is to say, the explosions of Lear's passion, and thebursts of rain and thunder, are not, what for the senses they must be,two things, but manifestations of one thing. It is the powers of thetormented soul that we hear and see in the 'groans of roaring wind andrain' and the 'sheets of fire'; and they that, at intervals almost moreoverwhelming, sink back into darkness and silence. Nor yet is even thisall; but, as those incessant references to wolf and tiger made us seehumanity 'reeling back into the beast' and ravening against itself, soin the storm we seem to see Nature herself convulsed by the samehorrible passions; the 'common mother,' Whose womb immeasurable and infinite breast Teems and feeds all,turning on her children, to complete the ruin they have wrought uponthemselves. Surely something not less, but much more, than thesehelpless words convey, is what comes to us in these astounding scenes;and if, translated thus into the language of prose, it becomes confusedand inconsistent, the reason is simply that it itself is poetry, andsuch poetry as cannot be transferred to the space behind thefoot-lights, but has its being only in imagination. Here then isShakespeare at his very greatest, but not the mere dramatistShakespeare. [148]And now we may say this also of the catastrophe, which we foundquestionable from the strictly dramatic point of view. Its purpose isnot merely dramatic. This sudden blow out of the darkness, which seemsso far from inevitable, and which strikes down our reviving hopes forthe victims of so much cruelty, seems now only what we might haveexpected in a world so wild and monstrous. It is as if Shakespeare saidto us: 'Did you think weakness and innocence have any chance here? Wereyou beginning to dream that? I will show you it is not so. 'I come to a last point. As we contemplate this world, the questionpresses on us, What can be the ultimate power that moves it, thatexcites this gigantic war and waste, or, perhaps, that suffers them andoverrules them? And in _King Lear_ this question is not left to us toask, it is raised by the characters themselves. References to religiousor irreligious beliefs and feelings are more frequent than is usual inShakespeare's tragedies, as frequent perhaps as in his final plays. Heintroduces characteristic differences in the language of the differentpersons about fortune or the stars or the gods, and shows how thequestion What rules the world? is forced upon their minds. They answerit in their turn: Kent, for instance: It is the stars, The stars above us, govern our condition:Edmund: Thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy law My services are bound:and again, This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune--often the surfeit of our own behaviour--we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon and the stars; as if we were villains by necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion, . . . and all that we are evil in by a divine thrusting on:Gloster: As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; They kill us for their sport;Edgar: Think that the clearest gods, who make them honours Of men's impossibilities, have preserved thee. Here we have four distinct theories of the nature of the ruling power. And besides this, in such of the characters as have any belief in godswho love good and hate evil, the spectacle of triumphant injustice orcruelty provokes questionings like those of Job, or else the thought,often repeated, of divine retribution. To Lear at one moment the stormseems the messenger of heaven: Let the great gods, That keep this dreadful pother o'er our heads, Find out their enemies now. Tremble, thou wretch, That hast within thee undivulged crimes. . . . At another moment those habitual miseries of the poor, of which he hastaken too little account, seem to him to accuse the gods of injustice: Take physic, pomp; Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel, That thou mayst shake the superflux to them And show the heavens more just;and Gloster has almost the same thought (IV. i. 67 ff. ). Gloster again,thinking of the cruelty of Lear's daughters, breaks out, but I shall see The winged vengeance overtake such children. The servants who have witnessed the blinding of Gloster by Cornwall andRegan, cannot believe that cruelty so atrocious will pass unpunished. One cries, I'll never care what wickedness I do, If this man come to good;and another, if she live long, And in the end meet the old course of death, Women will all turn monsters. Albany greets the news of Cornwall's death with the exclamation, This shows you are above, You justicers, that these our nether crimes So speedily can venge;and the news of the deaths of the sisters with the words, This judgment[149] of the heavens, that makes us tremble, Touches us not with pity. Edgar, speaking to Edmund of their father, declares The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices Make instruments to plague us,and Edmund himself assents. Almost throughout the latter half of thedrama we note in most of the better characters a pre-occupation with thequestion of the ultimate power, and a passionate need to explain byreference to it what otherwise would drive them to despair. And theinfluence of this pre-occupation and need joins with other influences inaffecting the imagination, and in causing it to receive from _King Lear_an impression which is at least as near of kin to the _Divine Comedy_ asto _Othello_. 3For Dante that which is recorded in the _Divine Comedy_ was the justiceand love of God. What did _King Lear_ record for Shakespeare? Something,it would seem, very different. This is certainly the most terriblepicture that Shakespeare painted of the world. In no other of histragedies does humanity appear more pitiably infirm or more hopelesslybad. What is Iago's malignity against an envied stranger compared withthe cruelty of the son of Gloster and the daughters of Lear? What arethe sufferings of a strong man like Othello to those of helpless age? Much too that we have already observed--the repetition of the main themein that of the under-plot, the comparisons of man with the most wretchedand the most horrible of the beasts, the impression of Nature'shostility to him, the irony of the unexpected catastrophe--these, withmuch else, seem even to indicate an intention to show things at theirworst, and to return the sternest of replies to that question of theultimate power and those appeals for retribution. Is it an accident, forexample, that Lear's first appeal to something beyond the earth, O heavens, If you do love old men, if your sweet sway Allow[150] obedience, if yourselves are old, Make it your cause:is immediately answered by the iron voices of his daughters, raising byturns the conditions on which they will give him a humiliatingharbourage; or that his second appeal, heart-rending in its piteousness, You see me here, you gods, a poor old man, As full of grief as age; wretched in both:is immediately answered from the heavens by the sounds of the breakingstorm? [151] Albany and Edgar may moralise on the divine justice as theywill, but how, in face of all that we see, shall we believe that theyspeak Shakespeare's mind? Is not his mind rather expressed in the bittercontrast between their faith and the events we witness, or in thescornful rebuke of those who take upon them the mystery of things as ifthey were God's spies? [152] Is it not Shakespeare's judgment on his kindthat we hear in Lear's appeal, And thou, all-shaking thunder, Smite flat the thick rotundity o' the world! Crack nature's moulds, all germens spill at once, That make ingrateful man! and Shakespeare's judgment on the worth of existence that we hear inLear's agonised cry, 'No, no, no life! '? Beyond doubt, I think, some such feelings as these possess us, and, ifwe follow Shakespeare, ought to possess us, from time to time as we read_King Lear_. And some readers will go further and maintain that this isalso the ultimate and total impression left by the tragedy. _King Lear_has been held to be profoundly 'pessimistic' in the full meaning of thatword,--the record of a time when contempt and loathing for his kind hadovermastered the poet's soul, and in despair he pronounced man's life tobe simply hateful and hideous. And if we exclude the biographical partof this view,[153] the rest may claim some support even from thegreatest of Shakespearean critics since the days of Coleridge, Hazlittand Lamb. Mr. Swinburne, after observing that _King Lear_ is 'by far themost Aeschylean' of Shakespeare's works, proceeds thus:'But in one main point it differs radically from the work and the spiritof Aeschylus. Its fatalism is of a darker and harder nature. ToPrometheus the fetters of the lord and enemy of mankind were bitter;upon Orestes the hand of heaven was laid too heavily to bear; yet in thenot utterly infinite or everlasting distance we see beyond them thepromise of the morning on which mystery and justice shall be made one;when righteousness and omnipotence at last shall kiss each other. But onthe horizon of Shakespeare's tragic fatalism we see no such twilight ofatonement, such pledge of reconciliation as this. Requital, redemption,amends, equity, explanation, pity and mercy, are words without a meaninghere. As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; They kill us for their sport. Here is no need of the Eumenides, children of Night everlasting; forhere is very Night herself. 'The words just cited are not casual or episodical; they strike thekeynote of the whole poem, lay the keystone of the whole arch ofthought. There is no contest of conflicting forces, no judgment so muchas by casting of lots: far less is there any light of heavenly harmonyor of heavenly wisdom, of Apollo or Athene from above. We have heardmuch and often from theologians of the light of revelation: and somesuch thing indeed we find in Aeschylus; but the darkness of revelationis here. '[154]It is hard to refuse assent to these eloquent words, for they express inthe language of a poet what we feel at times in reading _King Lear_ butcannot express. But do they represent the total and final impressionproduced by the play? If they do, this impression, so far as thesubstance of the drama is concerned (and nothing else is in questionhere), must, it would seem, be one composed almost wholly of painfulfeelings,--utter depression, or indignant rebellion, or appalleddespair. And that would surely be strange. For _King Lear_ is admittedlyone of the world's greatest poems, and yet there is surely no other ofthese poems which produces on the whole this effect, and we regard it asa very serious flaw in any considerable work of art that this should beits ultimate effect. [155] So that Mr. Swinburne's description, if takenas final, and any description of King Lear as 'pessimistic' in theproper sense of that word, would imply a criticism which is notintended, and which would make it difficult to leave the work in theposition almost universally assigned to it. But in fact these descriptions, like most of the remarks made on _KingLear_ in the present lecture, emphasise only certain aspects of the playand certain elements in the total impression; and in that impression theeffect of these aspects, though far from being lost, is modified by thatof others. I do not mean that the final effect resembles that of the_Divine Comedy_ or the _Oresteia_: how should it, when the first ofthese can be called by its author a 'Comedy,' and when the second,ending (as doubtless the _Prometheus_ trilogy also ended) with asolution, is not in the Shakespearean sense a tragedy at all? [156] Nordo I mean that _King Lear_ contains a revelation of righteousomnipotence or heavenly harmony, or even a promise of the reconciliationof mystery and justice. But then, as we saw, neither do Shakespeare'sother tragedies contain these things. Any theological interpretation ofthe world on the author's part is excluded from them, and their effectwould be disordered or destroyed equally by the ideas of righteous or ofunrighteous omnipotence. Nor, in reading them, do we think of 'justice'or 'equity' in the sense of a strict requital or such an adjustment ofmerit and prosperity as our moral sense is said to demand; and therenever was vainer labour than that of critics who try to make out thatthe persons in these dramas meet with 'justice' or their 'deserts. '[157]But, on the other hand, man is not represented in these tragedies as themere plaything of a blind or capricious power, suffering woes which haveno relation to his character and actions; nor is the world representedas given over to darkness. And in these respects _King Lear_, though themost terrible of these works, does not differ in essence from the rest. Its keynote is surely to be heard neither in the words wrung fromGloster in his anguish, nor in Edgar's words 'the gods are just. ' Itsfinal and total result is one in which pity and terror, carried perhapsto the extreme limits of art, are so blended with a sense of law andbeauty that we feel at last, not depression and much less despair, but aconsciousness of greatness in pain, and of solemnity in the mystery wecannot fathom. FOOTNOTES:[Footnote 123: I leave undiscussed the position of _King Lear_ inrelation to the 'comedies' of _Measure for Measure_, _Troilus andCressida_ and _All's Well_. ][Footnote 124: See Note R. ][Footnote 125: On some of the points mentioned in this paragraph seeNote S. ][Footnote 126: '_Kent. _ I thought the king had more affected the Duke of Albany than Cornwall. _Glos. _ It did always seem so to us: but now, in the division of the kingdom, it appears not which of the dukes he values most. 'For (Gloster goes on to say) their shares are exactly equal in value. And if the shares of the two elder daughters are fixed, obviously thatof the third is so too. ][Footnote 127: I loved her most, and thought to set my rest On her kind nursery. ][Footnote 128: It is to Lear's altered plan that Kent applies thesewords. ][Footnote 129: There is talk of a war between Goneril and Regan within afortnight of the division of the kingdom (II. i. 11 f. ). ][Footnote 130: I mean that no sufficiently clear reason is supplied forEdmund's delay in attempting to save Cordelia and Lear. The matterstands thus. Edmund, after the defeat of the opposing army, sends Learand Cordelia to prison. Then, in accordance with a plan agreed onbetween himself and Goneril, he despatches a captain with secret ordersto put them both to death _instantly_ (V. iii. 26-37, 244, 252). He thenhas to fight with the disguised Edgar. He is mortally wounded, and, ashe lies dying, he says to Edgar (at line 162, _more than a hundredlines_ after he gave that commission to the captain): What you have charged me with, that have I done; And more, much more; the time will bring it out; 'Tis past, and so am I. In 'more, much more' he seems to be thinking of the order for the deathsof Lear and Cordelia (what else remained undisclosed? ); yet he saysnothing about it. A few lines later he recognises the justice of hisfate, yet still says nothing. Then he hears the story of his father'sdeath, says it has moved him and 'shall perchance do good' (What goodexcept saving his victims? ); yet he still says nothing. Even when hehears that Goneril is dead and Regan poisoned, he _still_ says nothing. It is only when directly questioned about Lear and Cordelia that hetries to save the victims who were to be killed 'instantly' (242). Howcan we explain his delay? Perhaps, thinking the deaths of Lear andCordelia would be of use to Goneril and Regan, he will not speak till heis sure that both the sisters are dead. Or perhaps, though he canrecognise the justice of his fate and can be touched by the account ofhis father's death, he is still too self-absorbed to rise to the activeeffort to 'do some good, despite of his own nature. ' But, while eitherof these conjectures is possible, it is surely far from satisfactorythat we should be left to mere conjecture as to the cause of the delaywhich permits the catastrophe to take place. The _real_ cause liesoutside the dramatic _nexus_. It is Shakespeare's wish to deliver asudden and crushing blow to the hopes which he has excited. ][Footnote 131: Everything in these paragraphs must, of course, be takenin connection with later remarks. ][Footnote 132: I say 'the reader's,' because on the stage, whenever Ihave seen _King Lear_, the 'cuts' necessitated by modern scenery wouldhave made this part of the play absolutely unintelligible to me if I hadnot been familiar with it. It is significant that Lamb in his _Tale ofKing Lear_ almost omits the sub-plot. ][Footnote 133: Even if Cordelia had won the battle, Shakespeare wouldprobably have hesitated to concentrate interest on it, for her victorywould have been a British defeat. On Spedding's view, that he did meanto make the battle more interesting, and that his purpose has beendefeated by our wrong division of Acts IV. and V. , see Note X. ][Footnote 134: It is vain to suggest that Edmund has only just comehome, and that the letter is supposed to have been sent to him when hewas 'out' See I. ii. 38-40, 65 f. ][Footnote 135: The idea in scene i. , perhaps, is that Cordelia'smarriage, like the division of the kingdom, has really beenpre-arranged, and that the ceremony of choosing between France andBurgundy (I. i. 46 f. ) is a mere fiction. Burgundy is to be her husband,and that is why, when Lear has cast her off, he offers her to Burgundyfirst (l. 192 ff. ). It might seem from 211 ff. that Lear's reason fordoing so is that he prefers France, or thinks him the greater man, andtherefore will not offer him first what is worthless: but the languageof France (240 ff. ) seems to show that he recognises a prior right inBurgundy. ][Footnote 136: See Note T. and p. 315. ][Footnote 137: See Note U. ][Footnote 138: The word 'heath' in the stage-directions of thestorm-scenes is, I may remark, Rowe's, not Shakespeare's, who never usedthe word till he wrote _Macbeth_. ][Footnote 139: It is pointed out in Note V. that what modern editorscall Scenes ii. , iii. , iv. of Act II. are really one scene, for Kent ison the stage through them all. ][Footnote 140: [On the locality of Act I. , Sc. ii. , see _Modern LanguageReview_ for Oct. , 1908, and Jan. , 1909. ]][Footnote 141: This effect of the double action seems to have beenpointed out first by Schlegel. ][Footnote 142: How prevalent these are is not recognised by readersfamiliar only with English poetry. See Simpson's _Introduction to thePhilosophy of Shakespeare's Sonnets_ (1868) and Mr. Wyndham's edition ofShakespeare's Poems. Perhaps both writers overstate, and Simpson'sinterpretations are often forced or arbitrary, but his book is valuableand ought not to remain out of print. ][Footnote 143: The monstrosity here is a being with a woman's body and afiend's soul. For the interpretation of the lines see Note Y. ][Footnote 144: Since this paragraph was written I have found that theabundance of these references has been pointed out and commented on byJ. Kirkman, _New Shaks. Soc. Trans. _, 1877. ][Footnote 145: _E. g. _ in _As You Like It_, III. ii. 187, 'I was never soberhymed since Pythagoras' time, that I was an Irish rat, which I canhardly remember'; _Twelfth Night_, IV. ii. 55, '_Clown. _ What is theopinion of Pythagoras concerning wild fowl? _Mal. _ That the soul of ourgrandam might haply inhabit a bird. _Clown. _ What thinkest thou of hisopinion? _Mal. _ I think nobly of the soul, and no way approve hisopinion,' etc. But earlier comes a passage which reminds us of _KingLear_, _Merchant of Venice_, IV. i. 128: O be thou damn'd, inexecrable dog! And for thy life let justice be accused. Thou almost makest me waver in my faith To hold opinion with Pythagoras, That souls of animals infuse themselves Into the trunks of men: thy currish spirit Govern'd a wolf, who, hang'd for human slaughter, Even from the gallows did his fell soul fleet, And, whilst thou lay'st in thy unhallow'd dam, Infused itself in thee; for thy desires Are wolvish, bloody, starved and ravenous. ][Footnote 146: I fear it is not possible, however, to refute, on thewhole, one charge,--that the dog is a snob, in the sense that herespects power and prosperity, and objects to the poor and despised. Itis curious that Shakespeare refers to this trait three times in _KingLear_, as if he were feeling a peculiar disgust at it. See III. vi. 65,'The little dogs and all,' etc. : IV. vi. 159, 'Thou hast seen a farmer'sdog bark at a beggar . . . and the creature run from the cur? There thoumightst behold the great image of authority': V. iii. 186, 'taught me toshift Into a madman's rags; to assume a semblance That very dogsdisdain'd. ' Cf. _Oxford Lectures_, p. 341. ][Footnote 147: With this compare the following lines in the great speechon 'degree' in _Troilus and Cressida_, I. iii. : Take but degree away, untune that string, And, hark, what discord follows! Each thing meets In mere oppugnancy: the bounded waters Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores And make a sop of all this solid globe: Strength should be lord of imbecility, And the rude son should strike his father dead: Force should be right; or, rather, right and wrong, Between whose endless jar justice resides, Should lose their names, and so should justice too. Then everything includes itself in power, Power into will, will into appetite; And appetite, an universal wolf, So doubly seconded with will and power, Must make perforce an universal prey, And last eat up himself. ][Footnote 148: Nor is it believable that Shakespeare, whose means ofimitating a storm were so greatly inferior even to ours, had thestage-performance only or chiefly in view in composing these scenes. Hemay not have thought of readers (or he may), but he must in any casehave written to satisfy his own imagination. I have taken no notice ofthe part played in these scenes by anyone except Lear. The matter is toohuge, and too strictly poetic, for analysis. I may observe that in ourpresent theatres, owing to the use of elaborate scenery, the threeStorm-scenes are usually combined, with disastrous effect. Shakespeare,as we saw (p. 49), interposed between them short scenes of much lowertone. ][Footnote 149: 'justice,' Qq. ][Footnote 150: =approve. ][Footnote 151: The direction 'Storm and tempest' at the end of thisspeech is not modern, it is in the Folio. ][Footnote 152: The gods are mentioned many times in _King Lear_, but'God' only here (V. ii. 16). ][Footnote 153: The whole question how far Shakespeare's works representhis personal feelings and attitude, and the changes in them, would carryus so far beyond the bounds of the four tragedies, is so needless forthe understanding of them, and is so little capable of decision, that Ihave excluded it from these lectures; and I will add here a note on itonly as it concerns the 'tragic period. 'There are here two distinct sets of facts, equally important, (1) On theone side there is the fact that, so far as we can make out, after_Twelfth Night_ Shakespeare wrote, for seven or eight years, no playwhich, like many of his earlier works, can be called happy, much lessmerry or sunny. He wrote tragedies; and if the chronological order_Hamlet_, _Othello_, _King Lear_, _Timon_, _Macbeth_, is correct, thesetragedies show for some time a deepening darkness, and _King Lear_ and_Timon_ lie at the nadir. He wrote also in these years (probably in theearlier of them) certain 'comedies,' _Measure for Measure_ and _Troilusand Cressida_, and perhaps _All's Well_. But about these comedies thereis a peculiar air of coldness; there is humour, of course, but littlemirth; in _Measure for Measure_ perhaps, certainly in _Troilus andCressida_, a spirit of bitterness and contempt seems to pervade anintellectual atmosphere of an intense but hard clearness. With _Macbeth_perhaps, and more decidedly in the two Roman tragedies which followed,the gloom seems to lift; and the final romances show a mellow serenitywhich sometimes warms into radiant sympathy, and even into a mirthalmost as light-hearted as that of younger days. When we consider thesefacts, not as barely stated thus but as they affect us in reading theplays, it is, to my mind, very hard to believe that their origin wassimply and solely a change in dramatic methods or choice of subjects, oreven merely such inward changes as may be expected to accompany thearrival and progress of middle age. (2) On the other side, and over against these facts, we have to set themultitudinousness of Shakespeare's genius, and his almost unlimitedpower of conceiving and expressing human experience of all kinds. And wehave to set more. Apparently during this period of years he never ceasedto write busily, or to exhibit in his writings the greatest mentalactivity. He wrote also either nothing or very little (_Troilus andCressida_ and his part of _Timon_ are the possible exceptions) in whichthere is any appearance of personal feeling overcoming or seriouslyendangering the self-control or 'objectivity' of the artist. And finallyit is not possible to make out any continuously deepening _personal_note: for although _Othello_ is darker than _Hamlet_ it surely strikesone as about as impersonal as a play can be; and, on grounds of styleand versification, it appears (to me, at least) impossible to bring_Troilus and Cressida_ chronologically close to _King Lear_ and _Timon_;even if parts of it are later than others, the late parts must bedecidedly earlier than those plays. The conclusion we may very tentatively draw from these sets of factswould seem to be as follows. Shakespeare during these years was probablynot a happy man, and it is quite likely that he felt at times even anintense melancholy, bitterness, contempt, anger, possibly even loathingand despair. It is quite likely too that he used these experiences ofhis in writing such plays as _Hamlet_, _Troilus and Cressida_, _KingLear_, _Timon_. But it is evident that he cannot have been for anyconsiderable time, if, ever, overwhelmed by such feelings, and there isno appearance of their having issued in any settled 'pessimistic'conviction which coloured his whole imagination and expressed itself inhis works. The choice of the subject of ingratitude, for instance, in_King Lear_ and _Timon_, and the method of handling it, may have beendue in part to personal feeling; but it does not follow that thisfeeling was particularly acute at this particular time, and, even if itwas, it certainly was not so absorbing as to hinder Shakespeare fromrepresenting in the most sympathetic manner aspects of life the veryreverse of pessimistic. Whether the total impression of _King Lear_ canbe called pessimistic is a further question, which is considered in thetext. ][Footnote 154: _A Study of Shakespeare_, pp. 171, 172. ][Footnote 155: A flaw, I mean, in a work of art considered not as amoral or theological document but as a work of art,--an aesthetic flaw. I add the word 'considerable' because we do not regard the effect inquestion as a flaw in a work like a lyric or a short piece of music,which may naturally be taken as expressions merely of a mood or asubordinate aspect of things. ][Footnote 156: Caution is very necessary in making comparisons betweenShakespeare and the Greek dramatists. A tragedy like the _Antigone_stands, in spite of differences, on the same ground as a Shakespeareantragedy; it is a self-contained whole with a catastrophe. A drama likethe _Philoctetes_ is a self-contained whole, but, ending with asolution, it corresponds not with a Shakespearean tragedy but with aplay like _Cymbeline_. A drama like the _Agamemnon_ or the _PrometheusVinctus_ answers to no Shakespearean form of play. It is not aself-contained whole, but a part of a trilogy. If the trilogy isconsidered as a unit, it answers not to _Hamlet_ but to _Cymbeline_. Ifthe part is considered as a whole, it answers to _Hamlet_, but may thenbe open to serious criticism. Shakespeare never made a tragedy end withthe complete triumph of the worse side: the _Agamemnon_ and_Prometheus_, if wrongly taken as wholes, would do this, and would sofar, I must think, be bad tragedies. [It can scarcely be necessary toremind the reader that, in point of 'self-containedness,' there is adifference of degree between the pure tragedies of Shakespeare and someof the historical. ]][Footnote 157: I leave it to better authorities to say how far theseremarks apply also to Greek Tragedy, however much the language of'justice' may be used there. ]LECTURE VIIIKING LEARWe have now to look at the characters in _King Lear_; and I propose toconsider them to some extent from the point of view indicated at theclose of the last lecture, partly because we have so far been regardingthe tragedy mainly from an opposite point of view, and partly becausethese characters are so numerous that it would not be possible withinour limits to examine them fully. 1The position of the hero in this tragedy is in one important respectpeculiar. The reader of _Hamlet_, _Othello_, or _Macbeth_, is in nodanger of forgetting, when the catastrophe is reached, the part playedby the hero in bringing it on. His fatal weakness, error, wrong-doing,continues almost to the end. It is otherwise with _King Lear_. When theconclusion arrives, the old King has for a long while been passive. Wehave long regarded him not only as 'a man more sinned against thansinning,' but almost wholly as a sufferer, hardly at all as an agent. His sufferings too have been so cruel, and our indignation against thosewho inflicted them has been so intense, that recollection of the wronghe did to Cordelia, to Kent, and to his realm, has been well-nigheffaced. Lastly, for nearly four Acts he has inspired in us, togetherwith this pity, much admiration and affection. The force of his passionhas made us feel that his nature was great; and his frankness andgenerosity, his heroic efforts to be patient, the depth of his shame andrepentance, and the ecstasy of his re-union with Cordelia, have meltedour very hearts. Naturally, therefore, at the close we are in somedanger of forgetting that the storm which has overwhelmed him wasliberated by his own deed. Yet it is essential that Lear's contribution to the action of the dramashould be remembered; not at all in order that we may feel that he'deserved' what he suffered, but because otherwise his fate would appearto us at best pathetic, at worst shocking, but certainly not tragic. Andwhen we were reading the earlier scenes of the play we recognised thiscontribution clearly enough. At the very beginning, it is true, we areinclined to feel merely pity and misgivings. The first lines tell usthat Lear's mind is beginning to fail with age. [158] Formerly he hadperceived how different were the characters of Albany and Cornwall, butnow he seems either to have lost this perception or to be unwiselyignoring it. The rashness of his division of the kingdom troubles us,and we cannot but see with concern that its motive is mainly selfish. The absurdity of the pretence of making the division depend onprotestations of love from his daughters, his complete blindness to thehypocrisy which is patent to us at a glance, his piteous delight inthese protestations, the openness of his expressions of preference forhis youngest daughter--all make us smile, but all pain us. But pitybegins to give way to another feeling when we witness the precipitance,the despotism, the uncontrolled anger of his injustice to Cordelia andKent, and the 'hideous rashness' of his persistence in dividing thekingdom after the rejection of his one dutiful child. We feel now thepresence of force, as well as weakness, but we feel also the presence ofthe tragic [Greek: hubris]. Lear, we see, is generous and unsuspicious,of an open and free nature, like Hamlet and Othello and indeed most ofShakespeare's heroes, who in this, according to Ben Jonson, resemble thepoet who made them. Lear, we see, is also choleric by temperament--thefirst of Shakespeare's heroes who is so. And a long life of absolutepower, in which he has been flattered to the top of his bent, hasproduced in him that blindness to human limitations, and thatpresumptuous self-will, which in Greek tragedy we have so often seenstumbling against the altar of Nemesis. Our consciousness that the decayof old age contributes to this condition deepens our pity and our senseof human infirmity, but certainly does not lead us to regard the oldKing as irresponsible, and so to sever the tragic _nexus_ which bindstogether his error and his calamities. The magnitude of this first error is generally fully recognised by thereader owing to his sympathy with Cordelia, though, as we have seen, heoften loses the memory of it as the play advances. But this is not so, Ithink, with the repetition of this error, in the quarrel with Goneril. Here the daughter excites so much detestation, and the father so muchsympathy, that we often fail to receive the due impression of hisviolence. There is not here, of course, the _injustice_ of his rejectionof Cordelia, but there is precisely the same [Greek: hubris]. This hadbeen shown most strikingly in the first scene when, _immediately_ uponthe apparently cold words of Cordelia, 'So young, my lord, and true,'there comes this dreadful answer: Let it be so; thy truth then be thy dower. For, by the sacred radiance of the sun, The mysteries of Hecate and the night; By all the operation of the orbs From whom we do exist and cease to be; Here I disclaim all my paternal care, Propinquity and property of blood, And as a stranger to my heart and me Hold thee from this for ever. The barbarous Scythian, Or he that makes his generation messes To gorge his appetite, shall to my bosom Be as well neighbour'd, pitied and relieved, As thou my sometime daughter. Now the dramatic effect of this passage is exactly, and doubtlessintentionally, repeated in the curse pronounced against Goneril. Thisdoes not come after the daughters have openly and wholly turned againsttheir father. Up to the moment of its utterance Goneril has done no morethan to require him 'a little to disquantity' and reform his train ofknights. Certainly her manner and spirit in making this demand arehateful, and probably her accusations against the knights are false; andwe should expect from any father in Lear's position passionate distressand indignation. But surely the famous words which form Lear's immediatereply were meant to be nothing short of frightful: Hear, nature, hear; dear goddess, hear! Suspend thy purpose, if thou didst intend To make this creature fruitful! Into her womb convey sterility! Dry up in her the organs of increase; And from her derogate body never spring A babe to honour her! If she must teem, Create her child of spleen; that it may live, And be a thwart disnatured torment to her! Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth; With cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks; Turn all her mother's pains and benefits To laughter and contempt; that she may feel How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is To have a thankless child! The question is not whether Goneril deserves these appallingimprecations, but what they tell us about Lear. They show that, althoughhe has already recognised his injustice towards Cordelia, is secretlyblaming himself, and is endeavouring to do better, the disposition fromwhich his first error sprang is still unchanged. And it is precisely thedisposition to give rise, in evil surroundings, to calamities dreadfulbut at the same time tragic, because due in some measure to the personwho endures them. The perception of this connection, if it is not lost as the playadvances, does not at all diminish our pity for Lear, but it makes itimpossible for us permanently to regard the world displayed in thistragedy as subject to a mere arbitrary or malicious power. It makes usfeel that this world is so far at least a rational and a moral order,that there holds in it the law, not of proportionate requital, but ofstrict connection between act and consequence. It is, so far, the worldof all Shakespeare's tragedies. But there is another aspect of Lear's story, the influence of whichmodifies, in a way quite different and more peculiar to this tragedy,the impressions called pessimistic and even this impression of law. There is nothing more noble and beautiful in literature thanShakespeare's exposition of the effect of suffering in reviving thegreatness and eliciting the sweetness of Lear's nature. The occasionalrecurrence, during his madness, of autocratic impatience or of desirefor revenge serves only to heighten this effect, and the moments whenhis insanity becomes merely infinitely piteous do not weaken it. The oldKing who in pleading with his daughters feels so intensely his ownhumiliation and their horrible ingratitude, and who yet, at fourscoreand upward, constrains himself to practise a self-control and patienceso many years disused; who out of old affection for his Fool, and inrepentance for his injustice to the Fool's beloved mistress, toleratesincessant and cutting reminders of his own folly and wrong; in whom therage of the storm awakes a power and a poetic grandeur surpassing eventhat of Othello's anguish; who comes in his affliction to think ofothers first, and to seek, in tender solicitude for his poor boy, theshelter he scorns for his own bare head; who learns to feel and to prayfor the miserable and houseless poor, to discern the falseness offlattery and the brutality of authority, and to pierce below thedifferences of rank and raiment to the common humanity beneath; whosesight is so purged by scalding tears that it sees at last how power andplace and all things in the world are vanity except love; who tastes inhis last hours the extremes both of love's rapture and of its agony, butcould never, if he lived on or lived again, care a jot for aughtbeside--there is no figure, surely, in the world of poetry at once sogrand, so pathetic, and so beautiful as his. Well, but Lear owes thewhole of this to those sufferings which made us doubt whether life werenot simply evil, and men like the flies which wanton boys torture fortheir sport. Should we not be at least as near the truth if we calledthis poem _The Redemption of King Lear_, and declared that the businessof 'the gods' with him was neither to torment him, nor to teach him a'noble anger,' but to lead him to attain through apparently hopelessfailure the very end and aim of life? One can believe that Shakespearehad been tempted at times to feel misanthropy and despair, but it isquite impossible that he can have been mastered by such feelings at thetime when he produced this conception. To dwell on the stages of this process of purification (the word isProfessor Dowden's) is impossible here; and there are scenes, such asthat of the meeting of Lear and Cordelia, which it seems almost aprofanity to touch. [159] But I will refer to two scenes which may remindus more in detail of some of the points just mentioned. The third andfourth scenes of Act III. present one of those contrasts which speak aseloquently even as Shakespeare's words, and which were made possible inhis theatre by the absence of scenery and the consequent absence ofintervals between the scenes. First, in a scene of twenty-three lines,mostly in prose, Gloster is shown, telling his son Edmund how Goneriland Regan have forbidden him on pain of death to succour the houselessKing; how a secret letter has reached him, announcing the arrival of aFrench force; and how, whatever the consequences may be, he isdetermined to relieve his old master. Edmund, left alone, soliloquisesin words which seem to freeze one's blood: This courtesy, forbid thee, shall the duke Instantly know; and of that letter too: This seems a fair deserving, and must draw me That which my father loses; no less than all: The younger rises when the old doth fall. He goes out; and the next moment, as the fourth scene opens, we findourselves in the icy storm with Lear, Kent and the Fool, and yet in theinmost shrine of love. I am not speaking of the devotion of the othersto Lear, but of Lear himself. He had consented, merely for the Fool'ssake, to seek shelter in the hovel: Come, your hovel. Poor fool and knave, I have one part in my heart That's sorry yet for thee. |
But on the way he has broken down and has been weeping (III. iv. 17),and now he resists Kent's efforts to persuade him to enter. He does notfeel the storm: when the mind's free The body's delicate: the tempest in my mind Doth from my senses take all feeling else Save what beats there:and the thoughts that will drive him mad are burning in his brain: Filial ingratitude! Is it not as this mouth should tear this hand For lifting food to't? But I will punish home. No, I will weep no more. In such a night To shut me out! Pour on; I will endure. In such a night as this! O Regan, Goneril! Your old kind father, whose frank heart gave all,-- O, that way madness lies; let me shun that; No more of that. And then suddenly, as he controls himself, the blessed spirit ofkindness breathes on him 'like a meadow gale of spring,' and he turnsgently to Kent: Prithee, go in thyself; seek thine own ease: This tempest will not give me leave to ponder On things would hurt me more. But I'll go in. In, boy; go first. You houseless poverty-- Nay, get thee in. I'll pray, and then I'll sleep. But his prayer is not for himself. Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are,it begins, and I need not quote more. This is one of those passageswhich make one worship Shakespeare. [160]Much has been written on the representation of insanity in _King Lear_,and I will confine myself to one or two points which may have escapednotice. The most obvious symptom of Lear's insanity, especially in itsfirst stages, is of course the domination of a fixed idea. Whateverpresents itself to his senses, is seized on by this idea and compelledto express it; as for example in those words, already quoted, whichfirst show that his mind has actually given way: Hast thou given all To thy two daughters? And art thou come to this? [161]But it is remarkable that what we have here is only, in an exaggeratedand perverted form, the very same action of imagination that, justbefore the breakdown of reason, produced those sublime appeals: O heavens, If you do love old men, if your sweet sway Allow obedience, if yourselves are old, Make it your cause;and: Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! spout, rain! Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters: I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness; I never gave you kingdom, call'd you children, You owe me no subscription: then let fall Your horrible pleasure; here I stand, your slave, A poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man: But yet I call you servile ministers, That have with two pernicious daughters join'd Your high engender'd battles 'gainst a head So old and white as this. O! O! 'tis foul! Shakespeare, long before this, in the _Midsummer Night's Dream_, hadnoticed the resemblance between the lunatic, the lover, and the poet;and the partial truth that genius is allied to insanity was quitefamiliar to him. But he presents here the supplementary half-truth thatinsanity is allied to genius. He does not, however, put into the mouth of the insane Lear any suchsublime passages as those just quoted. Lear's insanity, which destroysthe coherence, also reduces the poetry of his imagination. What itstimulates is that power of moral perception and reflection which hadalready been quickened by his sufferings. This, however partial andhowever disconnectedly used, first appears, quite soon after theinsanity has declared itself, in the idea that the naked beggarrepresents truth and reality, in contrast with those conventions,flatteries, and corruptions of the great world, by which Lear has solong been deceived and will never be deceived again: Is man no more than this? Consider him well. Thou owest the worm no silk, the beast no hide, the sheep no wool, the cat no perfume. Ha! here's three on's are sophisticated: thou art the thing itself. Lear regards the beggar therefore with reverence and delight, as aperson who is in the secret of things, and he longs to question himabout their causes. It is this same strain of thought which much later(IV. vi. ), gaining far greater force, though the insanity has otherwiseadvanced, issues in those famous Timon-like speeches which make usrealise the original strength of the old King's mind. And when thisstrain, on his recovery, unites with the streams of repentance and love,it produces that serene renunciation of the world, with its power andglory and resentments and revenges, which is expressed in the speech (V. iii. ): No, no, no, no! Come, let's away to prison: We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage: When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down, And ask of thee forgiveness: so we'll live, And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues Talk of court news; and we'll talk with them too, Who loses, and who wins; who's in, who's out; And take upon's the mystery of things, As if we were God's spies: and we'll wear out, In a wall'd prison, packs and sets of great ones, That ebb and flow by the moon. This is that renunciation which is at the same time a sacrifice offeredto the gods, and on which the gods themselves throw incense; and, it maybe, it would never have been offered but for the knowledge that came toLear in his madness. I spoke of Lear's 'recovery,' but the word is too strong. The Lear ofthe Fifth Act is not indeed insane, but his mind is greatly enfeebled. The speech just quoted is followed by a sudden flash of the oldpassionate nature, reminding us most pathetically of Lear's efforts,just before his madness, to restrain his tears: Wipe thine eyes: The good-years shall devour them, flesh and fell, Ere they shall make us weep: we'll see 'em starve first. And this weakness is still more pathetically shown in the blindness ofthe old King to his position now that he and Cordelia are madeprisoners. It is evident that Cordelia knows well what mercy her fatheris likely to receive from her sisters; that is the reason of herweeping. But he does not understand her tears; it never crosses his mindthat they have anything more than imprisonment to fear. And what is thatto them? They have made that sacrifice, and all is well: Have I caught thee? He that parts us shall bring a brand from heaven, And fire us hence like foxes. This blindness is most affecting to us, who know in what manner theywill be parted; but it is also comforting. And we find the same minglingof effects in the overwhelming conclusion of the story. If to thereader, as to the bystanders, that scene brings one unbroken pain, it isnot so with Lear himself. His shattered mind passes from the firsttransports of hope and despair, as he bends over Cordelia's body andholds the feather to her lips, into an absolute forgetfulness of thecause of these transports. This continues so long as he can conversewith Kent; becomes an almost complete vacancy; and is disturbed only toyield, as his eyes suddenly fall again on his child's corpse, to anagony which at once breaks his heart. And, finally, though he is killedby an agony of pain, the agony in which he actually dies is one not ofpain but of ecstasy. Suddenly, with a cry represented in the oldest textby a four-times repeated 'O,' he exclaims: Do you see this? Look on her, look, her lips, Look there, look there! These are the last words of Lear. He is sure, at last, that she _lives_:and what had he said when he was still in doubt? She lives! if it be so, It is a chance which does redeem all sorrows That ever I have felt! To us, perhaps, the knowledge that he is deceived may bring aculmination of pain: but, if it brings _only_ that, I believe we arefalse to Shakespeare, and it seems almost beyond question that any actoris false to the text who does not attempt to express, in Lear's lastaccents and gestures and look, an unbearable _joy_. [162]To dwell on the pathos of Lear's last speech would be an impertinence,but I may add a remark on the speech from the literary point of view. Inthe simplicity of its language, which consists almost wholly ofmonosyllables of native origin, composed in very brief sentences of theplainest structure, it presents an extraordinary contrast to the dyingspeech of Hamlet and the last words of Othello to the by-standers. Thefact that Lear speaks in passion is one cause of the difference, but notthe sole cause. The language is more than simple, it is familiar. Andthis familiarity is characteristic of Lear (except at certain moments,already referred to) from the time of his madness onwards, and is thesource of the peculiarly poignant effect of some of his sentences (suchas 'The little dogs and all. . . . '). We feel in them the loss of power tosustain his royal dignity; we feel also that everything external hasbecome nothingness to him, and that what remains is 'the thing itself,'the soul in its bare greatness. Hence also it is that two lines in thislast speech show, better perhaps than any other passage of poetry, oneof the qualities we have in mind when we distinguish poetry as'romantic. ' Nothing like Hamlet's mysterious sigh 'The rest is silence,'nothing like Othello's memories of his life of marvel and achievement,was possible to Lear. Those last thoughts are romantic in theirstrangeness: Lear's five-times repeated 'Never,' in which the simplestand most unanswerable cry of anguish rises note by note till the heartbreaks, is romantic in its naturalism; and to make a verse out of thisone word required the boldness as well as the inspiration which cameinfallibly to Shakespeare at the greatest moments. But the familiarity,boldness and inspiration are surpassed (if that can be) by the nextline, which shows the bodily oppression asking for bodily relief. Theimagination that produced Lear's curse or his defiance of the storm maybe paralleled in its kind, but where else are we to seek the imaginationthat could venture to follow that cry of 'Never' with such a phrase as'undo this button,' and yet could leave us on the topmost peaks ofpoetry? [163]2Gloster and Albany are the two neutral characters of the tragedy. Theparallel between Lear and Gloster, already noticed, is, up to a certainpoint, so marked that it cannot possibly be accidental. Both are oldwhite-haired men (III. vii. 37); both, it would seem, widowers, withchildren comparatively young. Like Lear, Gloster is tormented, and hislife is sought, by the child whom he favours; he is tended and healed bythe child whom he has wronged. His sufferings, like Lear's, are partlytraceable to his own extreme folly and injustice, and, it may be added,to a selfish pursuit of his own pleasure. [164] His sufferings, again,like Lear's, purify and enlighten him: he dies a better and wiser manthan he showed himself at first. They even learn the same lesson, andGloster's repetition (noticed and blamed by Johnson) of the thought in afamous speech of Lear's is surely intentional. [165] And, finally,Gloster dies almost as Lear dies. Edgar reveals himself to him and askshis blessing (as Cordelia asks Lear's): but his flaw'd heart-- Alack, too weak the conflict to support-- 'Twixt two extremes of passion, joy and grief, Burst smilingly. So far, the resemblance of the two stories, and also of the ways inwhich their painful effect is modified, is curiously close. And incharacter too Gloster is, like his master, affectionate,[166] credulousand hasty. But otherwise he is sharply contrasted with the tragic Lear,who is a towering figure, every inch a king,[167] while Gloster is builton a much smaller scale, and has infinitely less force and fire. He is,indeed, a decidedly weak though good-hearted man; and, failing wholly tosupport Kent in resisting Lear's original folly and injustice,[168] heonly gradually takes the better part. Nor is his character either veryinteresting or very distinct. He often gives one the impression of beingwanted mainly to fill a place in the scheme of the play; and, though itwould be easy to give a long list of his characteristics, they scarcely,it seems to me, compose an individual, a person whom we are sure weshould recognise at once. If this is so, the fact is curious,considering how much we see and hear of him. I will add a single note. Gloster is the superstitious character of thedrama,--the only one. He thinks much of 'these late eclipses in the sunand moon. ' His two sons, from opposite points of view, make nothing ofthem. His easy acceptance of the calumny against Edgar is partly due tothis weakness, and Edmund builds upon it, for an evil purpose, when hedescribes Edgar thus: Here stood he in the dark, his sharp sword out, Mumbling of wicked charms, conjuring the moon, To prove's auspicious mistress. Edgar in turn builds upon it, for a good purpose, when he persuades hisblind father that he was led to jump down Dover cliff by the temptationof a fiend in the form of a beggar, and was saved by a miracle: As I stood here below, methought his eyes Were two full moons; he had a thousand noses, Horns whelk'd and waved like the enridged sea: It was some fiend; therefore, thou happy father, Think that the clearest gods, who make them honours Of men's impossibilities, have preserved thee. This passage is odd in its collocation of the thousand noses and theclearest gods, of grotesque absurdity and extreme seriousness. Edgarknew that the 'fiend' was really Gloster's 'worser spirit,' and that'the gods' were himself. Doubtless, however--for he is the mostreligious person in the play--he thought that it _was_ the gods who,through him, had preserved his father; but he knew that the truth couldonly enter this superstitious mind in a superstitious form. The combination of parallelism and contrast that we observe in Lear andGloster, and again in the attitude of the two brothers to their father'ssuperstition, is one of many indications that in _King Lear_ Shakespearewas working more than usual on a basis of conscious and reflectiveideas. Perhaps it is not by accident, then, that he makes Edgar and Learpreach to Gloster in precisely the same strain. Lear says to him: If thou wilt weep my fortunes, take my eyes. I know thee well enough; thy name is Gloster: Thou must be patient; we came crying hither: Thou know'st, the first time that we smell the air, We wawl and cry. I will preach to thee: mark. Edgar's last words to him are: What, in ill thoughts again? Men must endure Their going hence, even as their coming hither: Ripeness is all. Albany is merely sketched, and he is so generally neglected that a fewwords about him may be in place. He too ends a better and wiser man thanhe began. When the play opens he is, of course, only just married toGoneril; and the idea is, I think, that he has been bewitched by herfiery beauty not less than by her dowry. He is an inoffensivepeace-loving man, and is overborne at first by his 'great love' for hiswife and by her imperious will. He is not free from responsibility forthe treatment which the King receives in his house; the Knight says toLear, 'there's a great abatement of kindness appears as well in thegeneral dependants as in _the duke himself also_ and your daughter. ' Buthe takes no part in the quarrel, and doubtless speaks truly when heprotests that he is as guiltless as ignorant of the cause of Lear'sviolent passion. When the King departs, he begins to remonstrate withGoneril, but shrinks in a cowardly manner, which is a trifle comical,from contest with her. She leaves him behind when she goes to joinRegan, and he is not further responsible for what follows. When he hearsof it, he is struck with horror: the scales drop from his eyes, Gonerilbecomes hateful to him, he determines to revenge Gloster's eyes. Hisposition is however very difficult, as he is willing to fight againstCordelia in so far as her army is French, and unwilling in so far as sherepresents her father. This difficulty, and his natural inferiority toEdmund in force and ability, pushes him into the background; the battleis not won by him but by Edmund; and but for Edgar he would certainlyhave fallen a victim to the murderous plot against him. When it isdiscovered, however, he is fearless and resolute enough, beside beingfull of kind feeling towards Kent and Edgar, and of sympathetic distressat Gloster's death. And one would be sure that he is meant to retainthis strength till the end, but for his last words. He has announced hisintention of resigning, during Lear's life, the 'absolute power' whichhas come to him; and that may be right. But after Lear's death he saysto Kent and Edgar: Friends of my soul, you twain Rule in this realm, and the gored state sustain. If this means that he wishes to hand over his absolute power to them,Shakespeare's intention is certainly to mark the feebleness of awell-meaning but weak man. But possibly he means by 'this realm' onlythat half of Britain which had belonged to Cornwall and Regan. 3I turn now to those two strongly contrasted groups of good and evilbeings; and to the evil first. The members of this group are by no meanson a level. Far the most contemptible of them is Oswald, and Kent hasfortunately expressed our feelings towards him. Yet twice we are able tofeel sympathy with him. Regan cannot tempt him to let her open Goneril'sletter to Edmund; and his last thought as he dies is given to thefulfilment of his trust. It is to a monster that he is faithful, and heis faithful to her in a monstrous design. Still faithfulness isfaithfulness, and he is not wholly worthless. Dr. Johnson says: 'I knownot well why Shakespeare gives to Oswald, who is a mere factor ofwickedness, so much fidelity'; but in any other tragedy this touch, sotrue to human nature, is only what we should expect. If it surprises usin _King Lear_, the reason is that Shakespeare, in dealing with theother members of the group, seems to have been less concerned than usualwith such mingling of light with darkness, and intent rather on makingthe shadows as utterly black as a regard for truth would permit. Cornwall seems to have been a fit mate for Regan; and what worse can besaid of him? It is a great satisfaction to think that he endured what tohim must have seemed the dreadful disgrace of being killed by a servant. He shows, I believe, no redeeming trait, and he is a coward, as may beseen from the sudden rise in his courage when Goneril arrives at thecastle and supports him and Regan against Lear (II. iv. 202). But as hiscruelties are not aimed at a blood-relation, he is not, in this sense, a'monster,' like the remaining three. Which of these three is the least and which the most detestable therecan surely be no question. For Edmund, not to mention otheralleviations, is at any rate not a woman. And the differences betweenthe sisters, which are distinctly marked and need not be exhibited oncemore in full, are all in favour of 'the elder and more terrible. ' ThatRegan did not commit adultery, did not murder her sister or plot tomurder her husband, did not join her name with Edmund's on the order forthe deaths of Cordelia and Lear, and in other respects failed to takequite so active a part as Goneril in atrocious wickedness, is quite truebut not in the least to her credit. It only means that she had much lessforce, courage and initiative than her sister, and for that reason isless formidable and more loathsome. Edmund judged right when, caring forneither sister but aiming at the crown, he preferred Goneril, for hecould trust her to remove the living impediments to her desires. Thescornful and fearless exclamation, 'An interlude! ' with which she greetsthe exposure of her design, was quite beyond Regan. Her unhesitatingsuicide was perhaps no less so. She would not have condescended to thelie which Regan so needlessly tells to Oswald: It was great ignorance, Gloster's eyes being out, To let him live: where he arrives he moves All hearts against us: Edmund, I think, is gone, _In pity of his misery_, to dispatch His nighted life. Her father's curse is nothing to her. She scorns even to mention thegods. [169] Horrible as she is, she is almost awful. But, to set againstRegan's inferiority in power, there is nothing: she is superior only ina venomous meanness which is almost as hateful as her cruelty. She isthe most hideous human being (if she is one) that Shakespeare ever drew. I have already noticed the resemblance between Edmund and Iago in onepoint; and Edmund recalls his greater forerunner also in courage,strength of will, address, egoism, an abnormal want of feeling, and thepossession of a sense of humour. But here the likeness ends. Indeed adecided difference is observable even in the humour. Edmund isapparently a good deal younger than Iago. He has a lighter and moresuperficial nature, and there is a certain genuine gaiety in him whichmakes one smile not unsympathetically as one listens to his firstsoliloquy, with its cheery conclusion, so unlike Iago's references tothe powers of darkness, Now, gods, stand up for bastards! Even after we have witnessed his dreadful deeds, a touch of thissympathy is felt again when we hear his nonchalant reflections beforethe battle: To both these sisters have I sworn my love: Each jealous of the other, as the stung Are of the adder. Which of them shall I take? Both? one? or neither? Besides, there is nothing in Edmund of Iago's motive-hunting, and verylittle of any of the secret forces which impelled Iago. He iscomparatively a straightforward character, as straightforward as theIago of some critics. He moves wonder and horror merely because the factthat a man so young can have a nature so bad is a dark mystery. Edmund is an adventurer pure and simple. He acts in pursuance of apurpose, and, if he has any affections or dislikes, ignores them. He isdetermined to make his way, first to his brother's lands, then--as theprospect widens--to the crown; and he regards men and women, with theirvirtues and vices, together with the bonds of kinship, friendship, orallegiance, merely as hindrances or helps to his end. They are for himdivested of all quality except their relation to this end; asindifferent as mathematical quantities or mere physical agents. A credulous father and a brother noble, . . . I see the business,he says, as if he were talking of _x_ and _y_. This seems a fair deserving, and must draw me That which my father loses; no less than all: The younger rises when the old doth fall:he meditates, as if he were considering a problem in mechanics. Hepreserves this attitude with perfect consistency until the possibilityof attaining his end is snatched from him by death. Like the deformity of Richard, Edmund's illegitimacy furnishes, ofcourse, no excuse for his villainy, but it somewhat influences ourfeelings. It is no fault of his, and yet it separates him from othermen. He is the product of Nature--of a natural appetite asserting itselfagainst the social order; and he has no recognised place within thisorder. So he devotes himself to Nature, whose law is that of thestronger, and who does not recognise those moral obligations which existonly by convention,--by 'custom' or 'the curiosity of nations. '[170]Practically, his attitude is that of a professional criminal. 'You tellme I do not belong to you,' he seems to say to society: 'very well: Iwill make my way into your treasure-house if I can. And if I have totake life in doing so, that is your affair. ' How far he is serious inthis attitude, and really indignant at the brand of bastardy, how farhis indignation is a half-conscious self-excuse for his meditatedvillainy, it is hard to say; but the end shows that he is not entirelyin earnest. As he is an adventurer, with no more ill-will to anyone than good-will,it is natural that, when he has lost the game, he should accept hisfailure without showing personal animosity. But he does more. He admitsthe truth of Edgar's words about the justice of the gods, and appliesthem to his own case (though the fact that he himself refers tofortune's wheel rather than to the gods may be significant). He showstoo that he is not destitute of feeling; for he is touched by the storyof his father's death, and at last 'pants for life' in the effort to do'some good' by saving Lear and Cordelia. There is something pathetichere which tempts one to dream that, if Edmund had been whole brother toEdgar, and had been at home during those 'nine years' when he was 'out,'he might have been a very different man. But perhaps his words, Some good I mean to do, _Despite of mine own nature_,suggest rather that Shakespeare is emphasising the mysterious fact,commented on by Kent in the case of the three daughters of Lear, of animmense original difference between children of one father. Strangerthan this emergence of better feelings, and curiously pathetic, is thepleasure of the dying man in the thought that he was loved by both thewomen whose corpses are almost the last sight he is to see. Perhaps, aswe conjectured, the cause of his delay in saving Lear and Cordelia evenafter he hears of the deaths of the sisters is that he is sunk in dreamyreflections on his past. When he murmurs, 'Yet Edmund was beloved,' oneis almost in danger of forgetting that he had done much more than rejectthe love of his father and half-brother. The passage is one of severalin Shakespeare's plays where it strikes us that he is recording somefact about human nature with which he had actually met, and which hadseemed to him peculiarly strange. What are we to say of the world which contains these five beings,Goneril, Regan, Edmund, Cornwall, Oswald? I have tried to answer thisquestion in our first lecture; for in its representation of evil _KingLear_ differs from the other tragedies only in degree and manner. It isthe tragedy in which evil is shown in the greatest abundance; and theevil characters are peculiarly repellent from their hard savagery, andbecause so little good is mingled with their evil. The effect istherefore more startling than elsewhere; it is even appalling. But insubstance it is the same as elsewhere; and accordingly, although it maybe useful to recall here our previous discussion, I will do so only bythe briefest statement. On the one hand we see a world which generates terrible evil inprofusion. Further, the beings in whom this evil appears at itsstrongest are able, to a certain extent, to thrive. They are notunhappy, and they have power to spread misery and destruction aroundthem. All this is undeniable fact. On the other hand this evil is _merely_ destructive: it founds nothing,and seems capable of existing only on foundations laid by its opposite. It is also self-destructive: it sets these beings at enmity; they canscarcely unite against a common and pressing danger; if it were avertedthey would be at each other's throats in a moment; the sisters do noteven wait till it is past. Finally, these beings, all five of them, aredead a few weeks after we see them first; three at least die young; theoutburst of their evil is fatal to them. These also are undeniablefacts; and, in face of them, it seems odd to describe _King Lear_ as 'aplay in which the wicked prosper' (Johnson). Thus the world in which evil appears seems to be at heart unfriendly toit. And this impression is confirmed by the fact that the convulsion ofthis world is due to evil, mainly in the worst forms here considered,partly in the milder forms which we call the errors or defects of thebetter characters. Good, in the widest sense, seems thus to be theprinciple of life and health in the world; evil, at least in these worstforms, to be a poison. The world reacts against it violently, and, inthe struggle to expel it, is driven to devastate itself. If we ask why the world should generate that which convulses and wastesit, the tragedy gives no answer, and we are trying to go beyond tragedyin seeking one. But the world, in this tragic picture, is convulsed byevil, and rejects it. 4And if here there is 'very Night herself,' she comes 'with stars in herraiment. ' Cordelia, Kent, Edgar, the Fool--these form a group not lessremarkable than that which we have just left. There is in the world of_King Lear_ the same abundance of extreme good as of extreme evil. Itgenerates in profusion self-less devotion and unconquerable love. Andthe strange thing is that neither Shakespeare nor we are surprised. Weapprove these characters, admire them, love them; but we feel nomystery. We do not ask in bewilderment, Is there any cause in naturethat makes these kind hearts? Such hardened optimists are we, andShakespeare,--and those who find the darkness of revelation in a tragedywhich reveals Cordelia. Yet surely, if we condemn the universe forCordelia's death, we ought also to remember that it gave her birth. Thefact that Socrates was executed does not remove the fact that he lived,and the inference thence to be drawn about the world that produced him. Of these four characters Edgar excites the least enthusiasm, but he isthe one whose development is the most marked. His behaviour in the earlypart of the play, granted that it is not too improbable, is so foolishas to provoke one. But he learns by experience, and becomes the mostcapable person in the story, without losing any of his purity andnobility of mind. There remain in him, however, touches which a littlechill one's feeling for him. The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices Make instruments to plague us: The dark and vicious place where thee he got Cost him his eyes:--one wishes he had not said to his dying brother those words abouttheir dead father. 'The gods are just' would have been enough. [171] Itmay be suggested that Shakespeare merely wished to introduce this moralsomehow, and did not mean the speech to be characteristic of thespeaker. But I doubt this: he might well have delivered it throughAlbany, if he was determined to deliver it. This trait in Edgar _is_characteristic. It seems to be connected with his pronounced andconscious religiousness. He interprets everything religiously, and isspeaking here from an intense conviction which overrides personalfeelings. With this religiousness, on the other side, is connected hischeerful and confident endurance, and his practical helpfulness andresource. He never thinks of despairing; in the worst circumstances heis sure there is something to be done to make things better. And he issure of this, not only from temperament, but from faith in 'the clearestgods. ' He is the man on whom we are to rely at the end for the recoveryand welfare of the state: and we do rely on him. I spoke of his temperament. There is in Edgar, with much else that isfine, something of that buoyancy of spirit which charms us in Imogen. Nothing can subdue in him the feeling that life is sweet and must becherished. At his worst, misconstrued, contemned, exiled, under sentenceof death, 'the lowest and most dejected thing of fortune,' he keeps hishead erect. The inextinguishable spirit of youth and delight is in him;he _embraces_ the unsubstantial air which has blown him to the worst;for him 'the worst returns to laughter. '[172] 'Bear free and patientthoughts,' he says to his father. His own thoughts are more thanpatient, they are 'free,' even joyous, in spite of the tender sympathieswhich strive in vain to overwhelm him. This ability to feel and offergreat sympathy with distress, without losing through the sympathy anyelasticity or strength, is a noble quality, sometimes found in soulslike Edgar's, naturally buoyant and also religious. It may even becharacteristic of him that, when Lear is sinking down in death, he triesto rouse him and bring him back to life. 'Look up, my lord! ' he cries. It is Kent who feels that he hates him, That would upon the rack of this tough world Stretch him out longer. Kent is one of the best-loved characters in Shakespeare. He is belovedfor his own sake, and also for the sake of Cordelia and of Lear. We aregrateful to him because he stands up for Cordelia, and because, when sheis out of sight, he constantly keeps her in our minds. And how wellthese two love each other we see when they meet. Yet it is not Cordeliawho is dearest to Kent. His love for Lear is the passion of his life: it_is_ his life. At the beginning he braves Lear's wrath even more forLear's sake than Cordelia's. [173] At the end he seems to realiseCordelia's death only as it is reflected in Lear's agony. Nor does hemerely love his master passionately, as Cordelia loves her father. Thatword 'master,' and Kent's appeal to the 'authority' he saw in the oldKing's face, are significant. He belongs to Lear, body and soul, as adog does to his master and god. The King is not to him old, wayward,unreasonable, piteous: he is still terrible, grand, the king of men. Through his eyes we see the Lear of Lear's prime, whom Cordelia neversaw. Kent never forgets this Lear. In the Storm-scenes, even after theKing becomes insane, Kent never addresses him without the old terms ofrespect, 'your grace,' 'my lord,' 'sir. ' How characteristic it is thatin the scene of Lear's recovery Kent speaks to him but once: it is whenthe King asks 'Am I in France? ' and he answers 'In your own kingdom,sir. 'In acting the part of a blunt and eccentric serving-man Kent retainsmuch of his natural character. The eccentricity seems to be put on, butthe plainness which gets him set in the stocks is but an exaggeration ofhis plainness in the opening scene, and Shakespeare certainly meant himfor one of those characters whom we love none the less for theirdefects. He is hot and rash; noble but far from skilful in hisresistance to the King; he might well have chosen wiser words to gainhis point. But, as he himself says, he has more man than wit about him. He shows this again when he rejoins Lear as a servant, for he at oncebrings the quarrel with Goneril to a head; and, later, by falling uponOswald, whom he so detests that he cannot keep his hands off him, heprovides Regan and Cornwall with a pretext for their inhospitality. Onehas not the heart to wish him different, but he illustrates the truththat to run one's head unselfishly against a wall is not the best way tohelp one's friends. One fact about Kent is often overlooked. He is an old man. He tells Learthat he is eight and forty, but it is clear that he is much older; notso old as his master, who was 'four-score and upward' and whom he 'lovedas his father,' but, one may suppose, three-score and upward. From thefirst scene we get this impression, and in the scene with Oswald it isrepeatedly confirmed. His beard is grey. 'Ancient ruffian,' 'oldfellow,' 'you stubborn ancient knave, you reverent braggart'--these aresome of the expressions applied to him. 'Sir,' he says to Cornwall, 'Iam too old to learn. ' If his age is not remembered, we fail to realisethe full beauty of his thoughtlessness of himself, his incessant care ofthe King, his light-hearted indifference to fortune or fate. [174] Welose also some of the naturalness and pathos of his feeling that histask is nearly done. Even at the end of the Fourth Act we find himsaying, My point and period will be throughly wrought Or well or ill, as this day's battle's fought. His heart is ready to break when he falls with his strong arms aboutEdgar's neck; bellows out as he'd burst heaven (how like him! ); threw him on my father, Told the most piteous tale of Lear and him That ever ear received; which in recounting His grief grew puissant, and the strings of life Began to crack. Twice then the trumpet sounded, And there I left him tranced;and a little after, when he enters, we hear the sound of death in hisvoice: I am come To bid my king and master aye goodnight. This desire possesses him wholly. When the bodies of Goneril and Reganare brought in he asks merely, 'Alack, why thus? ' How can he care? He iswaiting for one thing alone. He cannot but yearn for recognition, cannotbut beg for it even when Lear is bending over the body of Cordelia; andeven in that scene of unmatched pathos we feel a sharp pang at hisfailure to receive it. It is of himself he is speaking, perhaps, when hemurmurs, as his master dies, 'Break, heart, I prithee, break! ' He putsaside Albany's invitation to take part in the government; his task isover: I have a journey, sir, shortly to go: My master calls me; I must not say no. Kent in his devotion, his self-effacement, his cheerful stoicism, hisdesire to follow his dead lord, has been well likened to Horatio. ButHoratio is not old; nor is he hot-headed; and though he is stoical he isalso religious. Kent, as compared with him and with Edgar, is not so. Hehas not Edgar's ever-present faith in the 'clearest gods. ' He refers tothem, in fact, less often than to fortune or the stars. He lives mainlyby the love in his own heart. [175] * * * * *The theatrical fool or clown (we need not distinguish them here) was asore trial to the cultured poet and spectator in Shakespeare's day. Hecame down from the Morality plays, and was beloved of the groundlings. His antics, his songs, his dances, his jests, too often unclean,delighted them, and did something to make the drama, what the vulgar,poor or rich, like it to be, a variety entertainment. Even if heconfined himself to what was set down for him, he often disturbed thedramatic unity of the piece; and the temptation to 'gag' was too strongfor him to resist. Shakespeare makes Hamlet object to it in emphaticterms. The more learned critics and poets went further and would haveabolished the fool altogether. His part declines as the drama advances,diminishing markedly at the end of the sixteenth century. Jonson andMassinger exclude him. Shakespeare used him--we know to what effect--ashe used all the other popular elements of the drama; but he abstainedfrom introducing him into the Roman plays,[176] and there is no fool inthe last of the pure tragedies, _Macbeth_. But the Fool is one of Shakespeare's triumphs in _King Lear_. Imaginethe tragedy without him, and you hardly know it. To remove him wouldspoil its harmony, as the harmony of a picture would be spoiled if oneof the colours were extracted. One can almost imagine that Shakespeare,going home from an evening at the Mermaid, where he had listened toJonson fulminating against fools in general and perhaps criticising theClown in _Twelfth Night_ in particular, had said to himself: 'Come, myfriends, I will show you once for all that the mischief is in you, andnot in the fool or the audience. I will have a fool in the most tragicof my tragedies. He shall not play a little part. He shall keep fromfirst to last the company in which you most object to see him, thecompany of a king. Instead of amusing the king's idle hours, he shallstand by him in the very tempest and whirlwind of passion. Before I havedone you shall confess, between laughter and tears, that he is of thevery essence of life, that you have known him all your days though younever recognised him till now, and that you would as soon go withoutHamlet as miss him. 'The Fool in _King Lear_ has been so favourite a subject with goodcritics that I will confine myself to one or two points on which adifference of opinion is possible. To suppose that the Fool is, likemany a domestic fool at that time, a perfectly sane man pretending to behalf-witted, is surely a most prosaic blunder. There is no difficulty inimagining that, being slightly touched in the brain, and holding theoffice of fool, he performs the duties of his office intentionally aswell as involuntarily: it is evident that he does so. But unless wesuppose that he _is_ touched in the brain we lose half the effect ofhis appearance in the Storm-scenes. The effect of those scenes (to statethe matter as plainly as possible) depends largely on the presence ofthree characters, and on the affinities and contrasts between them; onour perception that the differences of station in King, Fool, andbeggar-noble, are levelled by one blast of calamity; but also on ourperception of the differences between these three in one respect,--viz. in regard to the peculiar affliction of insanity. The insanity of theKing differs widely in its nature from that of the Fool, and that of theFool from that of the beggar. But the insanity of the King differs fromthat of the beggar not only in its nature, but also in the fact that oneis real and the other simply a pretence. Are we to suppose then that theinsanity of the third character, the Fool, is, in this respect, a mererepetition of that of the second, the beggar,--that it too is _mere_pretence? To suppose this is not only to impoverish miserably theimpression made by the trio as a whole, it is also to diminish theheroic and pathetic effect of the character of the Fool. For his heroismconsists largely in this, that his efforts to outjest his master'sinjuries are the efforts of a being to whom a responsible and consistentcourse of action, nay even a responsible use of language, is at the bestof times difficult, and from whom it is never at the best of timesexpected. It is a heroism something like that of Lear himself in hisendeavour to learn patience at the age of eighty. But arguments againstthe idea that the Fool is wholly sane are either needless or futile; forin the end they are appeals to the perception that this idea almostdestroys the poetry of the character. This is not the case with another question, the question whether theFool is a man or a boy. Here the evidence and the grounds for discussionare more tangible. He is frequently addressed as 'boy. ' This is notdecisive; but Lear's first words to him, 'How now, my pretty knave, howdost thou? ' are difficult to reconcile with the idea of his being a man,and the use of this phrase on his first entrance may show Shakespeare'sdesire to prevent any mistake on the point. As a boy, too, he would bemore strongly contrasted in the Storm-scenes with Edgar as well as withLear; his faithfulness and courage would be even more heroic andtouching; his devotion to Cordelia, and the consequent bitterness ofsome of his speeches to Lear, would be even more natural. Nor does heseem to show a knowledge of the world impossible to a quick-wittedthough not whole-witted lad who had lived at Court. The only seriousobstacle to this view, I think, is the fact that he is not known to havebeen represented as a boy or youth till Macready produced _KingLear_. [177]But even if this obstacle were serious and the Fool were imagined as agrown man, we may still insist that he must also be imagined as a timid,delicate and frail being, who on that account and from the expression ofhis face has a boyish look. [178] He pines away when Cordelia goes toFrance. Though he takes great liberties with his master he is frightenedby Goneril, and becomes quite silent when the quarrel rises high. In theterrible scene between Lear and his two daughters and Cornwall(II. iv. 129-289), he says not a word; we have almost forgottenhis presence when, at the topmost pitch of passion, Lear suddenly turnsto him from the hateful faces that encompass him: You think I'll weep; No, I'll not weep: I have full cause of weeping; but this heart Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws Or ere I'll weep. O fool, I shall go mad. From the beginning of the Storm-scenes, though he thinks of his masteralone, we perceive from his words that the cold and rain are almost morethan he can bear. His childishness comes home to us when he runs out ofthe hovel, terrified by the madman and crying out to the King 'Help me,help me,' and the good Kent takes him by the hand and draws him to hisside. A little later he exclaims, 'This cold night will turn us all tofools and madmen'; and almost from that point he leaves the King toEdgar, speaking only once again in the remaining hundred lines of thescene. In the shelter of the 'farm-house' (III. vi. ) he revives, andresumes his office of love; but I think that critic is right whoconsiders his last words significant. 'We'll go to supper i' themorning,' says Lear; and the Fool answers 'And I'll go to bed at noon,'as though he felt he had taken his death. When, a little later, the Kingis being carried away on a litter, the Fool sits idle. He is so benumbedand worn out that he scarcely notices what is going on. Kent has torouse him with the words, Come, help to bear thy master, Thou must not stay behind. We know no more. For the famous exclamation 'And my poor fool is hanged'unquestionably refers to Cordelia; and even if it is intended to show aconfused association in Lear's mind between his child and the Fool whoso loved her (as a very old man may confuse two of his children), stillit tells us nothing of the Fool's fate. It seems strange indeed thatShakespeare should have left us thus in ignorance. But we have seen thatthere are many marks of haste and carelessness in _King Lear_; and itmay also be observed that, if the poet imagined the Fool dying on theway to Dover of the effects of that night upon the heath, he couldperhaps convey this idea to the audience by instructing the actor whotook the part to show, as he left the stage for the last time, therecognised tokens of approaching death. [179]Something has now been said of the four characters, Lear, Edgar, Kentand the Fool, who are together in the storm upon the heath. I have madeno attempt to analyse the whole effect of these scenes, but one remarkmay be added. These scenes, as we observed, suggest the idea of aconvulsion in which Nature herself joins with the forces of evil in manto overpower the weak; and they are thus one of the main sources of themore terrible impressions produced by _King Lear_. But they have at thesame time an effect of a totally different kind, because in them areexhibited also the strength and the beauty of Lear's nature, and, inKent and the Fool and Edgar, the ideal of faithful devoted love. Hencefrom the beginning to the end of these scenes we have, mingled with painand awe and a sense of man's infirmity, an equally strong feeling of hisgreatness; and this becomes at times even an exulting sense of thepowerlessness of outward calamity or the malice of others against hissoul. And this is one reason why imagination and emotion are never herepressed painfully inward, as in the scenes between Lear and hisdaughters, but are liberated and dilated. 5The character of Cordelia is not a masterpiece of invention or subtletylike that of Cleopatra; yet in its own way it is a creation aswonderful. Cordelia appears in only four of the twenty-six scenes of_King Lear_; she speaks--it is hard to believe it--scarcely more than ahundred lines; and yet no character in Shakespeare is more absolutelyindividual or more ineffaceably stamped on the memory of his readers. There is a harmony, strange but perhaps the result of intention, betweenthe character itself and this reserved or parsimonious method ofdepicting it. An expressiveness almost inexhaustible gained throughpaucity of expression; the suggestion of infinite wealth and beautyconveyed by the very refusal to reveal this beauty in expansivespeech--this is at once the nature of Cordelia herself and the chiefcharacteristic of Shakespeare's art in representing it. Perhaps it isnot fanciful to find a parallel in his drawing of a person verydifferent, Hamlet. It was natural to Hamlet to examine himself minutely,to discuss himself at large, and yet to remain a mystery to himself; andShakespeare's method of drawing the character answers to it; it isextremely detailed and searching, and yet its effect is to enhance thesense of mystery. The results in the two cases differ correspondingly. No one hesitates to enlarge upon Hamlet, who speaks of himself so much;but to use many words about Cordelia seems to be a kind of impiety. I am obliged to speak of her chiefly because the devotion she inspiresalmost inevitably obscures her part in the tragedy. This devotion iscomposed, so to speak, of two contrary elements, reverence and pity. Thefirst, because Cordelia's is a higher nature than that of most even ofShakespeare's heroines. With the tenderness of Viola or Desdemona sheunites something of the resolution, power, and dignity of Hermione, andreminds us sometimes of Helena, sometimes of Isabella, though she hasnone of the traits which prevent Isabella from winning our hearts. Herassertion of truth and right, her allegiance to them, even the touch ofseverity that accompanies it, instead of compelling mere respect oradmiration, become adorable in a nature so loving as Cordelia's. She isa thing enskyed and sainted, and yet we feel no incongruity in the loveof the King of France for her, as we do in the love of the Duke forIsabella. But with this reverence or worship is combined in the reader's mind apassion of championship, of pity, even of protecting pity. She is sodeeply wronged, and she appears, for all her strength, so defenceless. We think of her as unable to speak for herself. We think of her as quiteyoung, and as slight and small. [180] 'Her voice was ever soft, gentle,and low'; ever so, whether the tone was that of resolution, or rebuke,or love. [181] Of all Shakespeare's heroines she knew least of joy. Shegrew up with Goneril and Regan for sisters. Even her love for her fathermust have been mingled with pain and anxiety. She must early havelearned to school and repress emotion. She never knew the bliss of younglove: there is no trace of such love for the King of France. She hadknowingly to wound most deeply the being dearest to her. He cast heroff; and, after suffering an agony for him, and before she could see himsafe in death, she was brutally murdered. We have to thank the poet forpassing lightly over the circumstances of her death. We do not think ofthem. Her image comes before us calm and bright and still. The memory of Cordelia thus becomes detached in a manner from the actionof the drama. The reader refuses to admit into it any idea ofimperfection, and is outraged when any share in her father's sufferingsis attributed to the part she plays in the opening scene. Because shewas deeply wronged he is ready to insist that she was wholly right. Herefuses, that is, to take the tragic point of view, and, when it istaken, he imagines that Cordelia is being attacked, or is being declaredto have 'deserved' all that befell her. But Shakespeare's was the tragicpoint of view. He exhibits in the opening scene a situation tragic forCordelia as well as for Lear. At a moment where terrible issues join,Fate makes on her the one demand which she is unable to meet. As I havealready remarked in speaking of Desdemona, it was a demand which otherheroines of Shakespeare could have met. Without loss of self-respect,and refusing even to appear to compete for a reward, they could havemade the unreasonable old King feel that he was fondly loved. Cordeliacannot, because she is Cordelia. And so she is not merely rejected andbanished, but her father is left to the mercies of her sisters. And thecause of her failure--a failure a thousand-fold redeemed--is a compoundin which imperfection appears so intimately mingled with the noblestqualities that--if we are true to Shakespeare--we do not think either ofjustifying her or of blaming her: we feel simply the tragic emotions offear and pity. In this failure a large part is played by that obvious characteristic towhich I have already referred. Cordelia is not, indeed, alwaystongue-tied, as several passages in the drama, and even in this scene,clearly show. But tender emotion, and especially a tender love for theperson to whom she has to speak, makes her dumb. Her love, as she says,is more ponderous than her tongue:[182] Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave My heart into my mouth. This expressive word 'heave' is repeated in the passage which describesher reception of Kent's letter: Faith, once or twice she heaved the name of 'Father' Pantingly forth, as if it press'd her heart:two or three broken ejaculations escape her lips, and she 'starts' away'to deal with grief alone. ' The same trait reappears with an ineffablebeauty in the stifled repetitions with which she attempts to answer herfather in the moment of his restoration: _Lear. _ Do not laugh at me; For, as I am a man, I think this lady To be my child Cordelia. _Cor. _ And so I am, I am. _Lear. _ Be your tears wet? yes, faith. I pray, weep not; If you have poison for me, I will drink it. I know you do not love me; for your sisters Have, as I do remember, done me wrong: You have some cause, they have not. _Cor. _ No cause, no cause. We see this trait for the last time, marked by Shakespeare with adecision clearly intentional, in her inability to answer one syllable tothe last words we hear her father speak to her: No, no, no, no! Come, let's away to prison: We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage: When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down, And ask of thee forgiveness: so we'll live, And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh At gilded butterflies. . . . She stands and weeps, and goes out with him silent. And we see her aliveno more. But (I am forced to dwell on the point, because I am sure to slur itover is to be false to Shakespeare) this dumbness of love was not thesole source of misunderstanding. If this had been all, even Lear couldhave seen the love in Cordelia's eyes when, to his question 'What canyou say to draw a third more opulent than your sisters? ' she answered'Nothing. ' But it did not shine there. She is not merely silent, nordoes she merely answer 'Nothing. ' She tells him that she loves him'according to her bond, nor more nor less'; and his answer, How now, Cordelia! mend your speech a little, Lest it may mar your fortunes,so intensifies her horror at the hypocrisy of her sisters that shereplies, Good my Lord, You have begot me, bred me, loved me: I Return those duties back as are right fit, Obey you, love you, and most honour you. Why have my sisters husbands, if they say They love you all? Haply, when I shall wed, That lord whose hand must take my plight shall carry Half my love with him, half my care and duty: Sure, I shall never marry like my sisters, To love my father all. What words for the ear of an old father, unreasonable, despotic, butfondly loving, indecent in his own expressions of preference, and blindto the indecency of his appeal for protestations of fondness! Blankastonishment, anger, wounded love, contend within him; but for themoment he restrains himself and asks, But goes thy heart with this? Imagine Imogen's reply! But Cordelia answers, Ay, good my lord. _Lear. _ So young, and so untender? _Cor. _ So young, my lord, and true. Yes, 'heavenly true. ' But truth is not the only good in the world, noris the obligation to tell truth the only obligation. The matter here wasto keep it inviolate, but also to preserve a father. And even if truth_were_ the one and only obligation, to tell much less than truth is notto tell it. And Cordelia's speech not only tells much less than truthabout her love, it actually perverts the truth when it implies that togive love to a husband is to take it from a father. There surely neverwas a more unhappy speech. When Isabella goes to plead with Angelo for her brother's life, herhorror of her brother's sin is so intense, and her perception of thejustice of Angelo's reasons for refusing her is so clear and keen, thatshe is ready to abandon her appeal before it is well begun; she wouldactually do so but that the warm-hearted profligate Lucio reproaches herfor her coldness and urges her on. Cordelia's hatred of hypocrisy and ofthe faintest appearance of mercenary professions reminds us ofIsabella's hatred of impurity; but Cordelia's position is infinitelymore difficult, and on the other hand there is mingled with her hatred atouch of personal antagonism and of pride. |
Lear's words, Let pride, which she calls plainness, marry her! [183]are monstrously unjust, but they contain one grain of truth; and indeedit was scarcely possible that a nature so strong as Cordelia's, and withso keen a sense of dignity, should feel here nothing whatever of prideand resentment. This side of her character is emphatically shown in herlanguage to her sisters in the first scene--language perfectly just, butlittle adapted to soften their hearts towards their father--and again inthe very last words we hear her speak. She and her father are broughtin, prisoners, to the enemy's camp; but she sees only Edmund, not those'greater' ones on whose pleasure hangs her father's fate and her own. For her own she is little concerned; she knows how to meet adversity: For thee, oppressed king, am I cast down; Myself could else out-frown false fortune's frown. Yes, that is how she would meet fortune, frowning it down, even asGoneril would have met it; nor, if her father had been already dead,would there have been any great improbability in the false story thatwas to be told of her death, that, like Goneril, she 'fordid herself. 'Then, after those austere words about fortune, she suddenly asks, Shall we not see these daughters and these sisters? Strange last words for us to hear from a being so worshipped andbeloved; but how characteristic! Their tone is unmistakable. I doubt ifshe could have brought herself to plead with her sisters for herfather's life; and if she had attempted the task, she would haveperformed it but ill. Nor is our feeling towards her altered one whit bythat. But what is true of Kent and the Fool[184] is, in its measure,true of her. Any one of them would gladly have died a hundred deaths tohelp King Lear; and they do help his soul; but they harm his cause. Theyare all involved in tragedy. * * * * *Why does Cordelia die? I suppose no reader ever failed to ask thatquestion, and to ask it with something more than pain,--to ask it, ifonly for a moment, in bewilderment or dismay, and even perhaps in tonesof protest. These feelings are probably evoked more strongly here thanat the death of any other notable character in Shakespeare; and it maysound a wilful paradox to assert that the slightest element ofreconciliation is mingled with them or succeeds them. Yet it seems to meindubitable that such an element is present, though difficult to makeout with certainty what it is or whence it proceeds. And I will try tomake this out, and to state it methodically. (_a_) It is not due in any perceptible degree to the fact, which we havejust been examining, that Cordelia through her tragic imperfectioncontributes something to the conflict and catastrophe; and I drewattention to that imperfection without any view to our present problem. The critics who emphasise it at this point in the drama are surelyuntrue to Shakespeare's mind; and still more completely astray are thosewho lay stress on the idea that Cordelia, in bringing a foreign army tohelp her father, was guilty of treason to her country. When she dies weregard her, practically speaking, simply as we regard Ophelia orDesdemona, as an innocent victim swept away in the convulsion caused bythe error or guilt of others. (_b_) Now this destruction of the good through the evil of others is oneof the tragic facts of life, and no one can object to the use of it,within certain limits, in tragic art. And, further, those who because ofit declaim against the nature of things, declaim without thinking. It isobviously the other side of the fact that the effects of good spread farand wide beyond the doer of good; and we should ask ourselves whether wereally could wish (supposing it conceivable) to see this double-sidedfact abolished. Nevertheless the touch of reconciliation that we feel incontemplating the death of Cordelia is not due, or is due only in someslight degree, to a perception that the event is true to life,admissible in tragedy, and a case of a law which we cannot seriouslydesire to see abrogated. (_c_) What then is this feeling, and whence does it come? I believe weshall find that it is a feeling not confined to _King Lear_, but presentat the close of other tragedies; and that the reason why it has anexceptional tone or force at the close of _King Lear_, lies in that verypeculiarity of the close which also--at least for the moment--excitesbewilderment, dismay, or protest. The feeling I mean is the impressionthat the heroic being, though in one sense and outwardly he has failed,is yet in another sense superior to the world in which he appears; is,in some way which we do not seek to define, untouched by the doom thatovertakes him; and is rather set free from life than deprived of it. Some such feeling as this--some feeling which, from this description ofit, may be recognised as their own even by those who would dissent fromthe description--we surely have in various degrees at the deaths ofHamlet and Othello and Lear, and of Antony and Cleopatra andCoriolanus. [185] It accompanies the more prominent tragic impressions,and, regarded alone, could hardly be called tragic. For it seems toimply (though we are probably quite unconscious of the implication) anidea which, if developed, would transform the tragic view of things. Itimplies that the tragic world, if taken as it is presented, with all itserror, guilt, failure, woe and waste, is no final reality, but only apart of reality taken for the whole, and, when so taken, illusive; andthat if we could see the whole, and the tragic facts in their true placein it, we should find them, not abolished, of course, but so transmutedthat they had ceased to be strictly tragic,--find, perhaps, thesuffering and death counting for little or nothing, the greatness of thesoul for much or all, and the heroic spirit, in spite of failure, nearerto the heart of things than the smaller, more circumspect, and perhapseven 'better' beings who survived the catastrophe. The feeling which Ihave tried to describe, as accompanying the more obvious tragic emotionsat the deaths of heroes, corresponds with some such idea as this. [186]Now this feeling is evoked with a quite exceptional strength by thedeath of Cordelia. [187] It is not due to the perception that she, likeLear, has attained through suffering; we know that she had suffered andattained in his days of prosperity. It is simply the feeling that whathappens to such a being does not matter; all that matters is what sheis. How this can be when, for anything the tragedy tells us, she hasceased to exist, we do not ask; but the tragedy itself makes us feelthat somehow it is so. And the force with which this impression isconveyed depends largely on the very fact which excites our bewildermentand protest, that her death, following on the deaths of all the evilcharacters, and brought about by an unexplained delay in Edmund's effortto save her, comes on us, not as an inevitable conclusion to thesequence of events, but as the sudden stroke of mere fate or chance. Theforce of the impression, that is to say, depends on the very violence ofthe contrast between the outward and the inward, Cordelia's death andCordelia's soul. The more unmotived, unmerited, senseless, monstrous,her fate, the more do we feel that it does not concern her. Theextremity of the disproportion between prosperity and goodness firstshocks us, and then flashes on us the conviction that our whole attitudein asking or expecting that goodness should be prosperous is wrong;that, if only we could see things as they are, we should see that theoutward is nothing and the inward is all. And some such thought as this (which, to bring it clearly out, I havestated, and still state, in a form both exaggerated and much tooexplicit) is really present through the whole play. Whether Shakespeareknew it or not, it is present. I might almost say that the 'moral' of_King Lear_ is presented in the irony of this collocation: _Albany. _ The gods defend her! _Enter Lear with Cordelia dead in his arms. _The 'gods,' it seems, do _not_ show their approval by 'defending' theirown from adversity or death, or by giving them power and prosperity. These, on the contrary, are worthless, or worse; it is not on them, buton the renunciation of them, that the gods throw incense. They breedlust, pride, hardness of heart, the insolence of office, cruelty, scorn,hypocrisy, contention, war, murder, self-destruction. The whole storybeats this indictment of prosperity into the brain. Lear's greatspeeches in his madness proclaim it like the curses of Timon on life andman. But here, as in _Timon_, the poor and humble are, almost withoutexception, sound and sweet at heart, faithful and pitiful. [188] And hereadversity, to the blessed in spirit, is blessed. It wins fragrance fromthe crushed flower. It melts in aged hearts sympathies which prosperityhad frozen. It purges the soul's sight by blinding that of theeyes. [189] Throughout that stupendous Third Act the good are seengrowing better through suffering, and the bad worse through success. Thewarm castle is a room in hell, the storm-swept heath a sanctuary. Thejudgment of this world is a lie; its goods, which we covet, corrupt us;its ills, which break our bodies, set our souls free; Our means secure us,[190] and our mere defects Prove our commodities. Let us renounce the world, hate it, and lose it gladly. The only realthing in it is the soul, with its courage, patience, devotion. Andnothing outward can touch that. This, if we like to use the word, is Shakespeare's 'pessimism' in _KingLear_. As we have seen, it is not by any means the whole spirit of thetragedy, which presents the world as a place where heavenly good growsside by side with evil, where extreme evil cannot long endure, and whereall that survives the storm is good, if not great. But still this strainof thought, to which the world appears as the kingdom of evil andtherefore worthless, is in the tragedy, and may well be the record ofmany hours of exasperated feeling and troubled brooding. Pursued furtherand allowed to dominate, it would destroy the tragedy; for it isnecessary to tragedy that we should feel that suffering and death domatter greatly, and that happiness and life are not to be renounced asworthless. Pursued further, again, it leads to the idea that the world,in that obvious appearance of it which tragedy cannot dissolve withoutdissolving itself, is illusive. And its tendency towards this idea istraceable in _King Lear_, in the shape of the notion that this 'greatworld' is transitory, or 'will wear out to nought' like the little worldcalled 'man' (IV. vi. 137), or that humanity will destroy itself. [191]In later days, in the drama that was probably Shakespeare's lastcomplete work, the _Tempest_, this notion of the transitoriness ofthings appears, side by side with the simpler feeling that man's life isan illusion or dream, in some of the most famous lines he ever wrote: Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits and Are melted into air, into thin air: And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep. These lines, detached from their context, are familiar to everyone; but,in the _Tempest_, they are dramatic as well as poetical. The suddenemergence of the thought expressed in them has a specific and mostsignificant cause; and as I have not seen it remarked I will point itout. Prospero, by means of his spirits, has been exhibiting to Ferdinand andMiranda a masque in which goddesses appear, and which is so majestic andharmonious that to the young man, standing beside such a father and sucha wife, the place seems Paradise,--as perhaps the world once seemed toShakespeare. Then, at the bidding of Iris, there begins a dance ofNymphs with Reapers, sunburnt, weary of their August labour, but now intheir holiday garb. But, as this is nearing its end, Prospero 'startssuddenly, and speaks'; and the visions vanish. And what he 'speaks' isshown in these lines, which introduce the famous passage just quoted: _Pros. _ [_Aside_] I had forgot that foul conspiracy Of the beast Caliban and his confederates Against my life: the minute of their plot Is almost come. [_To the Spirits. _] Well done! avoid; no more. _Fer. _ This is strange; your father's in some passion That works him strongly. _Mir. _ Never till this day Saw I him touch'd with anger so distemper'd. _Pros. _ You do look, my son, in a moved sort, As if you were dismay'd: be cheerful, sir. Our revels. . . . And then, after the famous lines, follow these: Sir, I am vex'd: Bear with my weakness; my old brain is troubled; Be not disturb'd with my infirmity; If you be pleased, retire into my cell And there repose: a turn or two I'll walk, To still my beating mind. We seem to see here the whole mind of Shakespeare in his last years. That which provokes in Prospero first a 'passion' of anger, and, amoment later, that melancholy and mystical thought that the great worldmust perish utterly and that man is but a dream, is the suddenrecollection of gross and apparently incurable evil in the 'monster'whom he had tried in vain to raise and soften, and in the monster'shuman confederates. It is this, which is but the repetition of hisearlier experience of treachery and ingratitude, that troubles his oldbrain, makes his mind 'beat,'[192] and forces on him the sense ofunreality and evanescence in the world and the life that are haunted bysuch evil. Nor, though Prospero can spare and forgive, is there any signto the end that he believes the evil curable either in the monster, the'born devil,' or in the more monstrous villains, the 'worse thandevils,' whom he so sternly dismisses. But he has learned patience, hascome to regard his anger and loathing as a weakness or infirmity, andwould not have it disturb the young and innocent. And so, in the days of_King Lear_, it was chiefly the power of 'monstrous' and apparentlycureless evil in the 'great world' that filled Shakespeare's soul withhorror, and perhaps forced him sometimes to yield to the infirmity ofmisanthropy and despair, to cry 'No, no, no life,' and to take refuge inthe thought that this fitful fever is a dream that must soon fade into adreamless sleep; until, to free himself from the perilous stuff thatweighed upon his heart, he summoned to his aid his 'so potent art,' andwrought this stuff into the stormy music of his greatest poem, whichseems to cry, You heavens, give me that patience, patience I need,and, like the _Tempest_, seems to preach to us from end to end, 'Thoumust be patient,' 'Bear free and patient thoughts. '[193]FOOTNOTES:[Footnote 158: Of course I do not mean that he is beginning to beinsane, and still less that he _is_ insane (as some medical criticssuggest). ][Footnote 159: I must however point out that the modern stage-directionsare most unfortunate in concealing the fact that here Cordelia sees herfather again _for the first time_. See Note W. ][Footnote 160: What immediately follows is as striking an illustrationof quite another quality, and of the effects which make us think of Learas pursued by a relentless fate. If he could go in and sleep after hisprayer, as he intends, his mind, one feels, might be saved: so far therehas been only the menace of madness. But from within the hovelEdgar--the last man who would willingly have injured Lear--cries,'Fathom and half, fathom and half! Poor Tom! '; the Fool runs outterrified; Edgar, summoned by Kent, follows him; and, at sight of Edgar,in a moment something gives way in Lear's brain, and he exclaims: Hast thou given all To thy two daughters? And art thou come to this? Henceforth he is mad. And they remain out in the storm. I have not seen it noticed that this stroke of fate is repeated--surelyintentionally--in the sixth scene. Gloster has succeeded in persuadingLear to come into the 'house'; he then leaves, and Kent after muchdifficulty induces Lear to lie down and rest upon the cushions. Sleepbegins to come to him again, and he murmurs, 'Make no noise, make no noise; draw the curtains; so, so, so. We'll go to supper i' the morning. So, so, so. 'At that moment Gloster enters with the news that he has discovered aplot to kill the King; the rest that 'might yet have balm'd his brokensenses' is again interrupted; and he is hurried away on a litter towardsDover. (His recovery, it will be remembered, is due to a long sleepartificially induced. )][Footnote 161: III. iv. 49. This is printed as prose in the Globeedition, but is surely verse. Lear has not yet spoken prose in thisscene, and his next three speeches are in verse. The next is in prose,and, ending, in his tearing off his clothes, shows the advance ofinsanity. ][Footnote 162: [Lear's death is thus, I am reminded, like _père_Goriot's. ] This interpretation may be condemned as fantastic, but thetext, it appears to me, will bear no other. This is the whole speech (inthe Globe text): And my poor fool is hang'd! No, no, no life! Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life, And thou no breath at all? Thou'lt come no more, Never, never, never, never, never! Pray you, undo this button: thank you, sir. Do you see this? Look on her, look, her lips, Look there, look there! The transition at 'Do you see this? ' from despair to something more thanhope is exactly the same as in the preceding passage at the word 'Ha! ': A plague upon you, murderers, traitors all! I might have saved her; now she's gone for ever! Cordelia, Cordelia, stay a little. Ha! What is't thou say'st? Her voice was ever soft, Gentle, and low, an excellent thing in woman. As to my other remarks, I will ask the reader to notice that the passagefrom Lear's entrance with the body of Cordelia to the stage-direction_He dies_ (which probably comes a few lines too soon) is 54 lines inlength, and that 30 of them represent the interval during which he hasabsolutely forgotten Cordelia. (It begins when he looks up at theCaptain's words, line 275. ) To make Lear during this interval turncontinually in anguish to the corpse, is to act the passage in a mannerirreconcilable with the text, and insufferable in its effect. I speakfrom experience. I have seen the passage acted thus, and my sympathieswere so exhausted long before Lear's death that his last speech, themost pathetic speech ever written, left me disappointed and weary. ][Footnote 163: The Quartos give the 'Never' only thrice (surelywrongly), and all the actors I have heard have preferred this easiertask. I ought perhaps to add that the Quartos give the words 'Break,heart; I prithee, break! ' to Lear, not Kent. They and the Folio are atodds throughout the last sixty lines of King Lear, and all good moderntexts are eclectic. ][Footnote 164: The connection of these sufferings with the sin ofearlier days (not, it should be noticed, of youth) is almost thrust uponour notice by the levity of Gloster's own reference to the subject inthe first scene, and by Edgar's often quoted words 'The gods are just,'etc. The following collocation, also, may be intentional (III. iv. 116): _Fool_. Now a little fire in a wild field were like an old lecher's heart; a small spark, all the rest on's body cold. Look, here comes a walking fire. [_Enter_ GLOSTER with a torch. ]Pope destroyed the collocation by transferring the stage-direction to apoint some dozen lines later. ][Footnote 165: The passages are here printed together (III. iv. 28 ff. and IV. i. 67 ff. ): _Lear. _ Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are, That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm, How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides, Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you From seasons such as these? O, I have ta'en Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp; Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel, That thou mayst shake the superflux to them, And show the heavens just. _Glo. _ Here, take this purse, thou whom the heavens' plagues Have humbled to all strokes: that I am wretched Makes thee the happier: heavens, deal so still! Let the superfluous and lust-dieted man, That slaves your ordinance, that will not see Because he doth not feel, feel your power quickly; So distribution should undo excess, And each man have enough. ][Footnote 166: Schmidt's idea--based partly on the omission from theFolios at I. ii. 103 (see Furness' Variorum) of the words 'To his fatherthat so tenderly and entirely loves him'--that Gloster loved neither ofhis sons, is surely an entire mistake. See, not to speak of generalimpressions, III. iv. 171 ff. ][Footnote 167: Imagination demands for Lear, even more than for Othello,majesty of stature and mien. Tourgénief felt this and made his 'Lear ofthe Steppes' a _gigantic_ peasant. If Shakespeare's texts give noexpress authority for ideas like these, the reason probably is that hewrote primarily for the theatre, where the principal actor might not bea large man. ][Footnote 168: He is not present, of course, till France and Burgundyenter; but while he is present he says not a word beyond 'Here's Franceand Burgundy, my noble lord. ' For some remarks on the possibility thatShakespeare imagined him as having encouraged Lear in his idea ofdividing the kingdom see Note T. It must be remembered that Cornwall wasGloster's 'arch and patron. '][Footnote 169: In this she stands alone among the more notablecharacters of the play. Doubtless Regan's exclamation 'O the blest gods'means nothing, but the fact that it is given to her means something. Forsome further remarks on Goneril see Note T. I may add that touches ofGoneril reappear in the heroine of the next tragedy, _Macbeth_; and thatwe are sometimes reminded of her again by the character of the Queen in_Cymbeline_, who bewitched the feeble King by her beauty, and marriedhim for greatness while she abhorred his person (_Cymbeline_, V. v. 62f. , 31 f. ); who tried to poison her step-daughter and intended to poisonher husband; who died despairing because she could not execute all theevil she purposed; and who inspirited her husband to defy the Romans bywords that still stir the blood (_Cymbeline_, III. i. 14 f. Cf. _KingLear_, IV. ii. 50 f. ). ][Footnote 170: I. ii. 1 f. Shakespeare seems to have in mind the ideaexpressed in the speech of Ulysses about the dependence of the world ondegree, order, system, custom, and about the chaos which would resultfrom the free action of appetite, the 'universal wolf' (_Troilus andCr. _ I. iii. 83 f. ). Cf. the contrast between 'particular will' and 'themoral laws of nature and of nations,' II. ii. 53, 185 ('nature' here ofcourse is the opposite of the 'nature' of Edmund's speech). ][Footnote 171: The line last quoted is continued by Edmund in the Foliosthus: 'Th' hast spoken right; 'tis true,' but in the Quartos thus: 'Thouhast spoken truth,' which leaves the line imperfect. This, and theimperfect line 'Make instruments to plague us,' suggest that Shakespearewrote at first simply, Make instruments to plague us. _Edm. _ Th' hast spoken truth. The Quartos show other variations which seem to point to the fact thatthe MS. was here difficult to make out. ][Footnote 172: IV. i. 1-9. I am indebted here to Koppel,_Verbesserungsvorschläge zu den Erläuterungen und der Textlesung desLear_ (1899). ][Footnote 173: See I. i. 142 ff. Kent speaks, not of the _injustice_ ofLear's action, but of its 'folly,' its 'hideous rashness. ' When the Kingexclaims 'Kent, on thy life, no more,' he answers: My life I never held but as a pawn To wage against thy enemies; nor fear to lose it, _Thy safety being the motive_. (The first Folio omits 'a,' and in the next line reads 'nere' for 'nor. 'Perhaps the first line should read 'My life I ne'er held but as pawn towage. ')][Footnote 174: See II. ii. 162 to end. The light-heartedness disappears,of course, as Lear's misfortunes thicken. ][Footnote 175: This difference, however, must not be pressed too far;nor must we take Kent's retort, Now by Apollo, king, Thou swear'st thy gods in vain,for a sign of disbelief. He twice speaks of the gods in another manner(I. i. 185, III. vi. 5), and he was accustomed to think of Lear in his'prayers' (I. i. 144). ][Footnote 176: The 'clown' in _Antony and Cleopatra_ is merely an oldpeasant. There is a fool in _Timon of Athens_, however, and he appearsin a scene (II. ii. ) generally attributed to Shakespeare. His talksometimes reminds one of Lear's fool; and Kent's remark, 'This is notaltogether fool, my lord,' is repeated in _Timon_, II. ii. 122, 'Thouart not altogether a fool. '][Footnote 177: [This is no obstacle. There could hardly be a stagetradition hostile to his youth, since he does not appear in Tate'sversion, which alone was acted during the century and a half beforeMacready's production. I had forgotten this; and my memory must alsohave been at fault regarding an engraving to which I referred in thefirst edition. Both mistakes were pointed out by Mr. Archer. ]][Footnote 178: In parts of what follows I am indebted to remarks byCowden Clarke, quoted by Furness on I. iv. 91. ][Footnote 179: See also Note T. ][Footnote 180: 'Our last and least' (according to the Folio reading). Lear speaks again of 'this little seeming substance. ' He can carry herdead body in his arms. ][Footnote 181: Perhaps then the 'low sound' is not merely metaphoricalin Kent's speech in I. i. 153 f. : answer my life my judgment, Thy youngest daughter does not love thee least; Nor are those empty-hearted whose low sound Reverbs no hollowness. ][Footnote 182: I. i. 80. 'More ponderous' is the reading of the Folios,'more richer' that of the Quartos. The latter is usually preferred, andMr. Aldis Wright says 'more ponderous' has the appearance of being aplayer's correction to avoid a piece of imaginary bad grammar. Does itnot sound more like the author's improvement of a phrase that he thoughta little flat? And, apart from that, is it not significant that itexpresses the same idea of weight that appears in the phrase 'I cannotheave my heart into my mouth'? ][Footnote 183: Cf. Cornwall's satirical remarks on Kent's 'plainness' inII. ii. 101 ff. ,--a plainness which did no service to Kent's master. (Asa matter of fact, Cordelia had said nothing about 'plainness. ')][Footnote 184: Who, like Kent, hastens on the quarrel with Goneril. ][Footnote 185: I do not wish to complicate the discussion by examiningthe differences, in degree or otherwise, in the various cases, or byintroducing numerous qualifications; and therefore I do not add thenames of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. ][Footnote 186: It follows from the above that, if this idea were madeexplicit and accompanied our reading of a tragedy throughout, it wouldconfuse or even destroy the tragic impression. So would the constantpresence of Christian beliefs. The reader most attached to these beliefsholds them in temporary suspension while he is immersed in aShakespearean tragedy. Such tragedy assumes that the world, as it ispresented, is the truth, though it also provokes feelings which implythat this world is not the whole truth, and therefore not the truth. ][Footnote 187: Though Cordelia, of course, does not occupy the positionof the hero. ][Footnote 188: _E. g. _ in _King Lear_ the servants, and the old man whosuccours Gloster and brings to the naked beggar 'the best 'parel that hehas, come on't what will,' _i. e. _ whatever vengeance Regan can inflict. Cf. the Steward and the Servants in _Timon_. Cf. there also (V. i. 23),'Promising is the very air o' the time . . . performance is ever theduller for his act; and, _but in the plainer and simpler kind ofpeople_, the deed of saying [performance of promises] is quite out ofuse. ' Shakespeare's feeling on this subject, though apparently speciallykeen at this time of his life, is much the same throughout (cf. Adam in_As You Like It_). He has no respect for the plainer and simpler kind ofpeople as politicians, but a great respect and regard for their hearts. ][Footnote 189: 'I stumbled when I saw,' says Gloster. ][Footnote 190: Our advantages give us a blind confidence in oursecurity. Cf. _Timon_, IV. iii. 76, _Alc. _ I have heard in some sort of thy miseries. _Tim. _ Thou saw'st them when I had prosperity. ][Footnote 191: Biblical ideas seem to have been floating inShakespeare's mind. Cf. the words of Kent, when Lear enters withCordelia's body, 'Is this the promised end? ' and Edgar's answer, 'Orimage of that horror? ' The 'promised end' is certainly the end of theworld (cf. with 'image' 'the great doom's image,' _Macbeth_, II. iii. 83); and the next words, Albany's 'Fall and cease,' _may_ be addressedto the heavens or stars, not to Lear. It seems probable that in writingGloster's speech about the predicted horrors to follow 'these lateeclipses' Shakespeare had a vague recollection of the passage in_Matthew_ xxiv. , or of that in _Mark_ xiii. , about the tribulationswhich were to be the sign of 'the end of the world. ' (I do not mean, ofcourse, that the 'prediction' of I. ii. 119 is the prediction to befound in one of these passages. )][Footnote 192: Cf. _Hamlet_, III. i. 181: This something-settled matter in his heart, Whereon his brains still beating puts him thus From fashion of himself. ][Footnote 193: I believe the criticism of _King Lear_ which hasinfluenced me most is that in Prof. Dowden's _Shakspere, his Mind andArt_ (though, when I wrote my lectures, I had not read that criticismfor many years); and I am glad that this acknowledgment gives me theopportunity of repeating in print an opinion which I have oftenexpressed to students, that anyone entering on the study of Shakespeare,and unable or unwilling to read much criticism, would do best to takeProf. Dowden for his guide. ]LECTURE IXMACBETH_Macbeth_, it is probable, was the last-written of the four greattragedies, and immediately preceded _Antony and Cleopatra_. [194] In thatplay Shakespeare's final style appears for the first time completelyformed, and the transition to this style is much more decidedly visiblein _Macbeth_ than in _King Lear_. Yet in certain respects _Macbeth_recalls _Hamlet_ rather than _Othello_ or _King Lear_. In the heroes ofboth plays the passage from thought to a critical resolution and actionis difficult, and excites the keenest interest. In neither play, as in_Othello_ and _King Lear_, is painful pathos one of the main effects. Evil, again, though it shows in _Macbeth_ a prodigious energy, is notthe icy or stony inhumanity of Iago or Goneril; and, as in _Hamlet_, itis pursued by remorse. Finally, Shakespeare no longer restricts theaction to purely human agencies, as in the two preceding tragedies;portents once more fill the heavens, ghosts rise from their graves, anunearthly light flickers about the head of the doomed man. The specialpopularity of _Hamlet_ and _Macbeth_ is due in part to some of thesecommon characteristics, notably to the fascination of the supernatural,the absence of the spectacle of extreme undeserved suffering, theabsence of characters which horrify and repel and yet are destitute ofgrandeur. The reader who looks unwillingly at Iago gazes at Lady Macbethin awe, because though she is dreadful she is also sublime. The wholetragedy is sublime. In this, however, and in other respects, _Macbeth_ makes an impressionquite different from that of _Hamlet_. The dimensions of the principalcharacters, the rate of movement in the action, the supernatural effect,the style, the versification, are all changed; and they are all changedin much the same manner. In many parts of _Macbeth_ there is in thelanguage a peculiar compression, pregnancy, energy, even violence; theharmonious grace and even flow, often conspicuous in _Hamlet_, havealmost disappeared. The cruel characters, built on a scale at least aslarge as that of _Othello_, seem to attain at times an almost superhumanstature. The diction has in places a huge and rugged grandeur, whichdegenerates here and there into tumidity. The solemn majesty of theroyal Ghost in _Hamlet_, appearing in armour and standing silent in themoonlight, is exchanged for shapes of horror, dimly seen in the murkyair or revealed by the glare of the caldron fire in a dark cavern, orfor the ghastly face of Banquo badged with blood and staring with blankeyes. The other three tragedies all open with conversations which leadinto the action: here the action bursts into wild life amidst the soundsof a thunder-storm and the echoes of a distant battle. It hurriesthrough seven very brief scenes of mounting suspense to a terriblecrisis, which is reached, in the murder of Duncan, at the beginning ofthe Second Act. Pausing a moment and changing its shape, it hastes againwith scarcely diminished speed to fresh horrors. And even when the speedof the outward action is slackened, the same effect is continued inanother form: we are shown a soul tortured by an agony which admits nota moment's repose, and rushing in frenzy towards its doom. _Macbeth_ isvery much shorter than the other three tragedies, but our experience intraversing it is so crowded and intense that it leaves an impression notof brevity but of speed. It is the most vehement, the most concentrated,perhaps we may say the most tremendous, of the tragedies. 1A Shakespearean tragedy, as a rule, has a special tone or atmosphere ofits own, quite perceptible, however difficult to describe. The effect ofthis atmosphere is marked with unusual strength in _Macbeth_. It is dueto a variety of influences which combine with those just noticed, sothat, acting and reacting, they form a whole; and the desolation of theblasted heath, the design of the Witches, the guilt in the hero's soul,the darkness of the night, seem to emanate from one and the same source. This effect is strengthened by a multitude of small touches, which atthe moment may be little noticed but still leave their mark on theimagination. We may approach the consideration of the characters and theaction by distinguishing some of the ingredients of this general effect. Darkness, we may even say blackness, broods over this tragedy. It isremarkable that almost all the scenes which at once recur to memory takeplace either at night or in some dark spot. The vision of the dagger,the murder of Duncan, the murder of Banquo, the sleep-walking of LadyMacbeth, all come in night-scenes. The Witches dance in the thick air ofa storm, or, 'black and midnight hags,' receive Macbeth in a cavern. Theblackness of night is to the hero a thing of fear, even of horror; andthat which he feels becomes the spirit of the play. The faintglimmerings of the western sky at twilight are here menacing: it is thehour when the traveller hastens to reach safety in his inn, and whenBanquo rides homeward to meet his assassins; the hour when 'lightthickens,' when 'night's black agents to their prey do rouse,' when thewolf begins to howl, and the owl to scream, and withered murder stealsforth to his work. Macbeth bids the stars hide their fires that his'black' desires may be concealed; Lady Macbeth calls on thick night tocome, palled in the dunnest smoke of hell. The moon is down and no starsshine when Banquo, dreading the dreams of the coming night, goesunwillingly to bed, and leaves Macbeth to wait for the summons of thelittle bell. When the next day should dawn, its light is 'strangled,'and 'darkness does the face of earth entomb. ' In the whole drama the sunseems to shine only twice: first, in the beautiful but ironical passagewhere Duncan sees the swallows flitting round the castle of death; and,afterwards, when at the close the avenging army gathers to rid the earthof its shame. Of the many slighter touches which deepen this effect Inotice only one. The failure of nature in Lady Macbeth is marked by herfear of darkness; 'she has light by her continually. ' And in the onephrase of fear that escapes her lips even in sleep, it is of thedarkness of the place of torment that she speaks. [195]The atmosphere of _Macbeth_, however, is not that of unrelievedblackness. On the contrary, as compared with _King Lear_ and its colddim gloom, _Macbeth_ leaves a decided impression of colour; it is reallythe impression of a black night broken by flashes of light and colour,sometimes vivid and even glaring. They are the lights and colours of thethunder-storm in the first scene; of the dagger hanging before Macbeth'seyes and glittering alone in the midnight air; of the torch borne by theservant when he and his lord come upon Banquo crossing the castle-courtto his room; of the torch, again, which Fleance carried to light hisfather to death, and which was dashed out by one of the murderers; ofthe torches that flared in the hall on the face of the Ghost and theblanched cheeks of Macbeth; of the flames beneath the boiling caldronfrom which the apparitions in the cavern rose; of the taper which showedto the Doctor and Gentlewoman the wasted face and blank eyes of LadyMacbeth. And, above all, the colour is the colour of blood. It cannot bean accident that the image of blood is forced upon us continually, notmerely by the events themselves, but by full descriptions, and even byreiteration of the word in unlikely parts of the dialogue. The Witches,after their first wild appearance, have hardly quitted the stage whenthere staggers onto it a 'bloody man,' gashed with wounds. His tale isof a hero whose 'brandished steel smoked with bloody execution,' 'carvedout a passage' to his enemy, and 'unseam'd him from the nave to thechaps. ' And then he tells of a second battle so bloody that thecombatants seemed as if they 'meant to bathe in reeking wounds. ' Whatmetaphors! What a dreadful image is that with which Lady Macbeth greetsus almost as she enters, when she prays the spirits of cruelty so tothicken her blood that pity cannot flow along her veins! What picturesare those of the murderer appearing at the door of the banquet-room withBanquo's 'blood upon his face'; of Banquo himself 'with twenty trenchedgashes on his head,' or 'blood-bolter'd' and smiling in derision at hismurderer; of Macbeth, gazing at his hand, and watching it dye the wholegreen ocean red; of Lady Macbeth, gazing at hers, and stretching it awayfrom her face to escape the smell of blood that all the perfumes ofArabia will not subdue! The most horrible lines in the whole tragedy arethose of her shuddering cry, 'Yet who would have thought the old man tohave had so much blood in him? ' And it is not only at such moments thatthese images occur. Even in the quiet conversation of Malcolm andMacduff, Macbeth is imagined as holding a bloody sceptre, and Scotlandas a country bleeding and receiving every day a new gash added to herwounds. It is as if the poet saw the whole story through an ensanguinedmist, and as if it stained the very blackness of the night. WhenMacbeth, before Banquo's murder, invokes night to scarf up the tendereye of pitiful day, and to tear in pieces the great bond that keeps himpale, even the invisible hand that is to tear the bond is imagined ascovered with blood. Let us observe another point. The vividness, magnitude, and violence ofthe imagery in some of these passages are characteristic of _Macbeth_almost throughout; and their influence contributes to form itsatmosphere. Images like those of the babe torn smiling from the breastand dashed to death; of pouring the sweet milk of concord into hell; ofthe earth shaking in fever; of the frame of things disjointed; ofsorrows striking heaven on the face, so that it resounds and yells outlike syllables of dolour; of the mind lying in restless ecstasy on arack; of the mind full of scorpions; of the tale told by an idiot, fullof sound and fury;--all keep the imagination moving on a 'wild andviolent sea,' while it is scarcely for a moment permitted to dwell onthoughts of peace and beauty. In its language, as in its action, thedrama is full of tumult and storm. Whenever the Witches are present wesee and hear a thunder-storm: when they are absent we hear ofship-wrecking storms and direful thunders; of tempests that blow downtrees and churches, castles, palaces and pyramids; of the frightfulhurricane of the night when Duncan was murdered; of the blast on whichpity rides like a new-born babe, or on which Heaven's cherubim arehorsed. There is thus something magnificently appropriate in the cry'Blow, wind! Come, wrack! ' with which Macbeth, turning from the sight ofthe moving wood of Birnam, bursts from his castle. He was borne to histhrone on a whirlwind, and the fate he goes to meet comes on the wingsof storm. Now all these agencies--darkness, the lights and colours that illuminateit, the storm that rushes through it, the violent and giganticimages--conspire with the appearances of the Witches and the Ghost toawaken horror, and in some degree also a supernatural dread. And to thiseffect other influences contribute. The pictures called up by the merewords of the Witches stir the same feelings,--those, for example, of thespell-bound sailor driven tempest-tost for nine times nine weary weeks,and never visited by sleep night or day; of the drop of poisonous foamthat forms on the moon, and, falling to earth, is collected forpernicious ends; of the sweltering venom of the toad, the finger of thebabe killed at its birth by its own mother, the tricklings from themurderer's gibbet. In Nature, again, something is felt to be at work,sympathetic with human guilt and supernatural malice. She labours withportents. Lamentings heard in the air, strange screams of death, And prophesying with accents terrible,burst from her. The owl clamours all through the night; Duncan's horsesdevour each other in frenzy; the dawn comes, but no light with it. Common sights and sounds, the crying of crickets, the croak of theraven, the light thickening after sunset, the home-coming of the rooks,are all ominous. Then, as if to deepen these impressions, Shakespearehas concentrated attention on the obscurer regions of man's being, onphenomena which make it seem that he is in the power of secret forceslurking below, and independent of his consciousness and will: such asthe relapse of Macbeth from conversation into a reverie, during which hegazes fascinated at the image of murder drawing closer and closer; thewriting on his face of strange things he never meant to show; thepressure of imagination heightening into illusion, like the vision of adagger in the air, at first bright, then suddenly splashed with blood,or the sound of a voice that cried 'Sleep no more' and would not besilenced. [196] To these are added other, and constant, allusions tosleep, man's strange half-conscious life; to the misery of itswithholding; to the terrible dreams of remorse; to the cursed thoughtsfrom which Banquo is free by day, but which tempt him in his sleep: andagain to abnormal disturbances of sleep; in the two men, of whom oneduring the murder of Duncan laughed in his sleep, and the other raised acry of murder; and in Lady Macbeth, who rises to re-enact insomnambulism those scenes the memory of which is pushing her on tomadness or suicide. All this has one effect, to excite supernaturalalarm and, even more, a dread of the presence of evil not only in itsrecognised seat but all through and around our mysterious nature. Perhaps there is no other work equal to _Macbeth_ in the production ofthis effect. [197]It is enhanced--to take a last point--by the use of a literaryexpedient. Not even in _Richard III. _, which in this, as in otherrespects, has resemblances to _Macbeth_, is there so much of Irony. I donot refer to irony in the ordinary sense; to speeches, for example,where the speaker is intentionally ironical, like that of Lennox in III. vi. I refer to irony on the part of the author himself, to ironicaljuxtapositions of persons and events, and especially to the 'Sophocleanirony' by which a speaker is made to use words bearing to the audience,in addition to his own meaning, a further and ominous sense, hidden fromhimself and, usually, from the other persons on the stage. The veryfirst words uttered by Macbeth, So foul and fair a day I have not seen,are an example to which attention has often been drawn; for they startlethe reader by recalling the words of the Witches in the first scene, Fair is foul, and foul is fair. When Macbeth, emerging from his murderous reverie, turns to the noblessaying, 'Let us toward the King,' his words are innocent, but to thereader have a double meaning. Duncan's comment on the treachery ofCawdor, There's no art To find the mind's construction in the face: He was a gentleman on whom I built An absolute trust,is interrupted[198] by the entrance of the traitor Macbeth, who isgreeted with effusive gratitude and a like 'absolute trust. ' I havealready referred to the ironical effect of the beautiful lines in whichDuncan and Banquo describe the castle they are about to enter. To thereader Lady Macbeth's light words, A little water clears us of this deed: How easy is it then,summon up the picture of the sleep-walking scene. The idea of thePorter's speech, in which he imagines himself the keeper of hell-gate,shows the same irony. So does the contrast between the obvious and thehidden meanings of the apparitions of the armed head, the bloody child,and the child with the tree in his hand. It would be easy to add furtherexamples. Perhaps the most striking is the answer which Banquo, as herides away, never to return alive, gives to Macbeth's reminder, 'Failnot our feast. ' 'My lord, I will not,' he replies, and he keeps hispromise. It cannot be by accident that Shakespeare so frequently in thisplay uses a device which contributes to excite the vague fear of hiddenforces operating on minds unconscious of their influence. [199]2But of course he had for this purpose an agency more potent than any yetconsidered. It would be almost an impertinence to attempt to describeanew the influence of the Witch-scenes on the imagination of thereader. [200] Nor do I believe that among different readers thisinfluence differs greatly except in degree. But when critics begin toanalyse the imaginative effect, and still more when, going behind it,they try to determine the truth which lay for Shakespeare or lies for usin these creations, they too often offer us results which, eitherthrough perversion or through inadequacy, fail to correspond with thateffect. This happens in opposite ways. On the one hand the Witches,whose contribution to the 'atmosphere' of Macbeth can hardly beexaggerated, are credited with far too great an influence upon theaction; sometimes they are described as goddesses, or even as fates,whom Macbeth is powerless to resist. And this is perversion. On theother hand, we are told that, great as is their influence on the action,it is so because they are merely symbolic representations of theunconscious or half-conscious guilt in Macbeth himself. And this isinadequate. The few remarks I have to make may take the form of acriticism on these views. (1) As to the former, Shakespeare took, as material for his purposes,the ideas about witch-craft that he found existing in people around himand in books like Reginald Scot's _Discovery_ (1584). And he used theseideas without changing their substance at all. He selected and improved,avoiding the merely ridiculous, dismissing (unlike Middleton) thesexually loathsome or stimulating, rehandling and heightening whatevercould touch the imagination with fear, horror, and mysteriousattraction. The Witches, that is to say, are not goddesses, or fates,or, in any way whatever, supernatural beings. They are old women, poorand ragged, skinny and hideous, full of vulgar spite, occupied inkilling their neighbours' swine or revenging themselves on sailors'wives who have refused them chestnuts. If Banquo considers their beardsa proof that they are not women, that only shows his ignorance: Sir HughEvans would have known better. [201] There is not a syllable in _Macbeth_to imply that they are anything but women. But, again in accordance withthe popular ideas, they have received from evil spirits certainsupernatural powers. They can 'raise haile, tempests, and hurtfullweather; as lightening, thunder etc. ' They can 'passe from place toplace in the aire invisible. ' They can 'keepe divels and spirits in thelikenesse of todes and cats,' Paddock or Graymalkin. They can'transferre corne in the blade from one place to another. ' They can'manifest unto others things hidden and lost, and foreshew things tocome, and see them as though they were present. ' The reader will applythese phrases and sentences at once to passages in _Macbeth_. They areall taken from Scot's first chapter, where he is retailing the currentsuperstitions of his time; and, in regard to the Witches, Shakespearementions scarcely anything, if anything, that was not to be found, ofcourse in a more prosaic shape, either in Scot or in some other easilyaccessible authority. [202] He read, to be sure, in Holinshed, his mainsource for the story of Macbeth, that, according to the common opinion,the 'women' who met Macbeth 'were eyther the weird sisters, that is (asye would say) ye Goddesses of destinee, or els some Nimphes or Feiries. 'But what does that matter? What he read in his authority was absolutelynothing to his audience, and remains nothing to us, unless he _used_what he read. And he did not use this idea. He used nothing but thephrase 'weird sisters,'[203] which certainly no more suggested to aLondon audience the Parcae of one mythology or the Norns of another thanit does to-day. His Witches owe all their power to the spirits; they are'_instruments_ of darkness'; the spirits are their 'masters' (IV. i. 63). Fancy the fates having masters! Even if the passages where Hecateappears are Shakespeare's,[204] that will not help the Witches; for theyare subject to Hecate, who is herself a goddess or superior devil, not afate. [205]Next, while the influence of the Witches' prophecies on Macbeth is verygreat, it is quite clearly shown to be an influence and nothing more. There is no sign whatever in the play that Shakespeare meant the actionsof Macbeth to be forced on him by an external power, whether that of theWitches, or of their 'masters,' or of Hecate. It is needless thereforeto insist that such a conception would be in contradiction with hiswhole tragic practice. The prophecies of the Witches are presentedsimply as dangerous circumstances with which Macbeth has to deal: theyare dramatically on the same level as the story of the Ghost in_Hamlet_, or the falsehoods told by Iago to Othello. Macbeth is, in theordinary sense, perfectly free in regard to them: and if we speak ofdegrees of freedom, he is even more free than Hamlet, who was crippledby melancholy when the Ghost appeared to him. That the influence of thefirst prophecies upon him came as much from himself as from them, ismade abundantly clear by the obviously intentional contrast between himand Banquo. Banquo, ambitious but perfectly honest, is scarcely evenstartled by them, and he remains throughout the scene indifferent tothem. But when Macbeth heard them he was not an innocent man. Preciselyhow far his mind was guilty may be a question; but no innocent man wouldhave started, as he did, with a start of _fear_ at the mere prophecy ofa crown, or have conceived thereupon _immediately_ the thought ofmurder. Either this thought was not new to him,[206] or he had cherishedat least some vaguer dishonourable dream, the instantaneous recurrenceof which, at the moment of his hearing the prophecy, revealed to him aninward and terrifying guilt. |
In either case not only was he free toaccept or resist the temptation, but the temptation was already withinhim. We are admitting too much, therefore, when we compare him withOthello, for Othello's mind was perfectly free from suspicion when histemptation came to him. And we are admitting, again, too much when weuse the word 'temptation' in reference to the first prophecies of theWitches. Speaking strictly we must affirm that he was tempted only byhimself. _He_ speaks indeed of their 'supernatural soliciting'; but infact they did not solicit. They merely announced events: they hailed himas Thane of Glamis, Thane of Cawdor, and King hereafter. No connectionof these announcements with any action of his was even hinted by them. For all that appears, the natural death of an old man might havefulfilled the prophecy any day. [207] In any case, the idea of fulfillingit by murder was entirely his own. [208]When Macbeth sees the Witches again, after the murders of Duncan andBanquo, we observe, however, a striking change. They no longer need togo and meet him; he seeks them out. He has committed himself to hiscourse of evil. Now accordingly they do 'solicit. ' They prophesy, butthey also give advice: they bid him be bloody, bold, and secure. We haveno hope that he will reject their advice; but so far are they fromhaving, even now, any power to compel him to accept it, that they makecareful preparations to deceive him into doing so. And, almost as thoughto intimate how entirely the responsibility for his deeds still lieswith Macbeth, Shakespeare makes his first act after this interview onefor which his tempters gave him not a hint--the slaughter of Macduff'swife and children. To all this we must add that Macbeth himself nowhere betrays a suspicionthat his action is, or has been, thrust on him by an external power. Hecurses the Witches for deceiving him, but he never attempts to shift tothem the burden of his guilt. Neither has Shakespeare placed in themouth of any other character in this play such fatalistic expressions asmay be found in _King Lear_ and occasionally elsewhere. He appearsactually to have taken pains to make the natural psychological genesisof Macbeth's crimes perfectly clear, and it was a most unfortunatenotion of Schlegel's that the Witches were required because naturalagencies would have seemed too weak to drive such a man as Macbeth tohis first murder. 'Still,' it may be said, 'the Witches did foreknow Macbeth's future; andwhat is foreknown is fixed; and how can a man be responsible when hisfuture is fixed? ' With this question, as a speculative one, we have noconcern here; but, in so far as it relates to the play, I answer, first,that not one of the things foreknown is an action. This is just as trueof the later prophecies as of the first. That Macbeth will be harmed bynone of woman born, and will never be vanquished till Birnam Wood shallcome against him, involves (so far as we are informed) no action of his. It may be doubted, indeed, whether Shakespeare would have introducedprophecies of Macbeth's deeds, even if it had been convenient to do so;he would probably have felt that to do so would interfere with theinterest of the inward struggle and suffering. And, in the second place,_Macbeth_ was not written for students of metaphysics or theology, butfor people at large; and, however it may be with prophecies of actions,prophecies of mere events do not suggest to people at large any sort ofdifficulty about responsibility. Many people, perhaps most, habituallythink of their 'future' as something fixed, and of themselves as 'free. 'The Witches nowadays take a room in Bond Street and charge a guinea; andwhen the victim enters they hail him the possessor of £1000 a year, orprophesy to him of journeys, wives, and children. But though he isstruck dumb by their prescience, it does not even cross his mind that heis going to lose his glorious 'freedom'--not though journeys andmarriages imply much more agency on his part than anything foretold toMacbeth. This whole difficulty is undramatic; and I may add thatShakespeare nowhere shows, like Chaucer, any interest in speculativeproblems concerning foreknowledge, predestination and freedom. (2) We may deal more briefly with the opposite interpretation. Accordingto it the Witches and their prophecies are to be taken merely assymbolical representations of thoughts and desires which have slumberedin Macbeth's breast and now rise into consciousness and confront him. With this idea, which springs from the wish to get rid of a mereexternal supernaturalism, and to find a psychological and spiritualmeaning in that which the groundlings probably received as hard facts,one may feel sympathy. But it is evident that it is rather a'philosophy' of the Witches than an immediate dramatic apprehension ofthem; and even so it will be found both incomplete and, in otherrespects, inadequate. It is incomplete because it cannot possibly be applied to all the facts. Let us grant that it will apply to the most important prophecy, that ofthe crown; and that the later warning which Macbeth receives, to bewareof Macduff, also answers to something in his own breast and 'harps hisfear aright' But there we have to stop. Macbeth had evidently nosuspicion of that treachery in Cawdor through which he himself becameThane; and who will suggest that he had any idea, however subconscious,about Birnam Wood or the man not born of woman? It may be held--andrightly, I think--that the prophecies which answer to nothing inward,the prophecies which are merely supernatural, produce, now at any rate,much less imaginative effect than the others,--even that they are in_Macbeth_ an element which was of an age and not for all time; but stillthey are there, and they are essential to the plot. [209] And as thetheory under consideration will not apply to them at all, it is notlikely that it gives an adequate account even of those prophecies towhich it can in some measure be applied. It is inadequate here chiefly because it is much too narrow. The Witchesand their prophecies, if they are to be rationalised or takensymbolically, must represent not only the evil slumbering in the hero'ssoul, but all those obscurer influences of the evil around him in theworld which aid his own ambition and the incitements of his wife. Suchinfluences, even if we put aside all belief in evil 'spirits,' are ascertain, momentous, and terrifying facts as the presence of inchoateevil in the soul itself; and if we exclude all reference to these factsfrom our idea of the Witches, it will be greatly impoverished and willcertainly fail to correspond with the imaginative effect. The union ofthe outward and inward here may be compared with something of the samekind in Greek poetry. [210] In the first Book of the _Iliad_ we are toldthat, when Agamemnon threatened to take Briseis from Achilles, 'griefcame upon Peleus' son, and his heart within his shaggy breast wasdivided in counsel, whether to draw his keen blade from his thigh andset the company aside and so slay Atreides, or to assuage his anger andcurb his soul. While yet he doubted thereof in heart and soul, and wasdrawing his great sword from his sheath, Athene came to him from heaven,sent forth of the white-armed goddess Hera, whose heart loved both alikeand had care for them. She stood behind Peleus' son and caught him byhis golden hair, to him only visible, and of the rest no man beheldher. ' And at her bidding he mastered his wrath, 'and stayed his heavyhand on the silver hilt, and thrust the great sword back into thesheath, and was not disobedient to the saying of Athene. '[211] Thesuccour of the goddess here only strengthens an inward movement in themind of Achilles, but we should lose something besides a poetic effectif for that reason we struck her out of the account. We should lose theidea that the inward powers of the soul answer in their essence tovaster powers without, which support them and assure the effect of theirexertion. So it is in _Macbeth_. [212] The words of the Witches are fatalto the hero only because there is in him something which leaps intolight at the sound of them; but they are at the same time the witness offorces which never cease to work in the world around him, and, on theinstant of his surrender to them, entangle him inextricably in the webof Fate. If the inward connection is once realised (and Shakespeare hasleft us no excuse for missing it), we need not fear, and indeed shallscarcely be able, to exaggerate the effect of the Witch-scenes inheightening and deepening the sense of fear, horror, and mystery whichpervades the atmosphere of the tragedy. 3From this murky background stand out the two great terrible figures, whodwarf all the remaining characters of the drama. Both are sublime, andboth inspire, far more than the other tragic heroes, the feeling of awe. They are never detached in imagination from the atmosphere whichsurrounds them and adds to their grandeur and terror. It is, as it were,continued into their souls. For within them is all that we feltwithout--the darkness of night, lit with the flame of tempest and thehues of blood, and haunted by wild and direful shapes, 'murderingministers,' spirits of remorse, and maddening visions of peace lost andjudgment to come. The way to be untrue to Shakespeare here, as always,is to relax the tension of imagination, to conventionalise, to conceiveMacbeth, for example, as a half-hearted cowardly criminal, and LadyMacbeth as a whole-hearted fiend. These two characters are fired by one and the same passion of ambition;and to a considerable extent they are alike. The disposition of each ishigh, proud, and commanding. They are born to rule, if not to reign. They are peremptory or contemptuous to their inferiors. They are notchildren of light, like Brutus and Hamlet; they are of the world. Weobserve in them no love of country, and no interest in the welfare ofanyone outside their family. Their habitual thoughts and aims are, and,we imagine, long have been, all of station and power. And though in boththere is something, and in one much, of what is higher--honour,conscience, humanity--they do not live consciously in the light of thesethings or speak their language. Not that they are egoists, like Iago;or, if they are egoists, theirs is an _egoïsme à deux_. They have noseparate ambitions. [213] They support and love one another. They suffertogether. And if, as time goes on, they drift a little apart, they arenot vulgar souls, to be alienated and recriminate when they experiencethe fruitlessness of their ambition. They remain to the end tragic, evengrand. So far there is much likeness between them. Otherwise they arecontrasted, and the action is built upon this contrast. Their attitudestowards the projected murder of Duncan are quite different; and itproduces in them equally different effects. In consequence, they appearin the earlier part of the play as of equal importance, if indeed LadyMacbeth does not overshadow her husband; but afterwards she retires moreand more into the background, and he becomes unmistakably the leadingfigure. His is indeed far the more complex character: and I will speakof it first. Macbeth, the cousin of a King mild, just, and beloved, but now too oldto lead his army, is introduced to us as a general of extraordinaryprowess, who has covered himself with glory in putting down a rebellionand repelling the invasion of a foreign army. In these conflicts heshowed great personal courage, a quality which he continues to displaythroughout the drama in regard to all plain dangers. It is difficult tobe sure of his customary demeanour, for in the play we see him either inwhat appears to be an exceptional relation to his wife, or else in thethroes of remorse and desperation; but from his behaviour during hisjourney home after the war, from his _later_ conversations with LadyMacbeth, and from his language to the murderers of Banquo and to others,we imagine him as a great warrior, somewhat masterful, rough, andabrupt, a man to inspire some fear and much admiration. He was thought'honest,' or honourable; he was trusted, apparently, by everyone;Macduff, a man of the highest integrity, 'loved him well. ' And therewas, in fact, much good in him. We have no warrant, I think, fordescribing him, with many writers, as of a 'noble' nature, like Hamletor Othello;[214] but he had a keen sense both of honour and of the worthof a good name. The phrase, again, 'too much of the milk of humankindness,' is applied to him in impatience by his wife, who did notfully understand him; but certainly he was far from devoid of humanityand pity. At the same time he was exceedingly ambitious. He must have been so bytemper. The tendency must have been greatly strengthened by hismarriage. When we see him, it has been further stimulated by hisremarkable success and by the consciousness of exceptional powers andmerit. It becomes a passion. The course of action suggested by it isextremely perilous: it sets his good name, his position, and even hislife on the hazard. It is also abhorrent to his better feelings. Theirdefeat in the struggle with ambition leaves him utterly wretched, andwould have kept him so, however complete had been his outward successand security. On the other hand, his passion for power and his instinctof self-assertion are so vehement that no inward misery could persuadehim to relinquish the fruits of crime, or to advance from remorse torepentance. In the character as so far sketched there is nothing very peculiar,though the strength of the forces contending in it is unusual. But thereis in Macbeth one marked peculiarity, the true apprehension of which isthe key to Shakespeare's conception. [215] This bold ambitious man ofaction has, within certain limits, the imagination of a poet,--animagination on the one hand extremely sensitive to impressions of acertain kind, and, on the other, productive of violent disturbance bothof mind and body. Through it he is kept in contact with supernaturalimpressions and is liable to supernatural fears. And through it,especially, come to him the intimations of conscience and honour. Macbeth's better nature--to put the matter for clearness' sake toobroadly--instead of speaking to him in the overt language of moralideas, commands, and prohibitions, incorporates itself in images whichalarm and horrify. His imagination is thus the best of him, somethingusually deeper and higher than his conscious thoughts; and if he hadobeyed it he would have been safe. But his wife quite misunderstands it,and he himself understands it only in part. The terrifying images whichdeter him from crime and follow its commission, and which are really theprotest of his deepest self, seem to his wife the creations of merenervous fear, and are sometimes referred by himself to the dread ofvengeance or the restlessness of insecurity. [216] His conscious orreflective mind, that is, moves chiefly among considerations of outwardsuccess and failure, while his inner being is convulsed by conscience. And his inability to understand himself is repeated and exaggerated inthe interpretations of actors and critics, who represent him as acoward, cold-blooded, calculating, and pitiless, who shrinks from crimesimply because it is dangerous, and suffers afterwards simply because heis not safe. In reality his courage is frightful. He strides from crimeto crime, though his soul never ceases to bar his advance with shapes ofterror, or to clamour in his ears that he is murdering his peace andcasting away his 'eternal jewel. 'It is of the first importance to realise the strength, and also (whathas not been so clearly recognised) the limits, of Macbeth'simagination. It is not the universal meditative imagination of Hamlet. He came to see in man, as Hamlet sometimes did, the 'quintessence ofdust'; but he must always have been incapable of Hamlet's reflections onman's noble reason and infinite faculty, or of seeing with Hamlet's eyes'this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted withgolden fire. ' Nor could he feel, like Othello, the romance of war or theinfinity of love. He shows no sign of any unusual sensitiveness to theglory or beauty in the world or the soul; and it is partly for thisreason that we have no inclination to love him, and that we regard himwith more of awe than of pity. His imagination is excitable and intense,but narrow. That which stimulates it is, almost solely, that whichthrills with sudden, startling, and often supernatural fear. [217] Thereis a famous passage late in the play (V. v. 10) which is here verysignificant, because it refers to a time before his conscience wasburdened, and so shows his native disposition: The time has been, my senses would have cool'd To hear a night-shriek; and my fell of hair Would at a dismal treatise rise and stir As life were in't. This 'time' must have been in his youth, or at least before we see him. And, in the drama, everything which terrifies him is of this character,only it has now a deeper and a moral significance. Palpable dangersleave him unmoved or fill him with fire. He does himself mere justicewhen he asserts he 'dare do all that may become a man,' or when heexclaims to Banquo's ghost, What man dare, I dare: Approach thou like the rugged Russian bear, The arm'd rhinoceros, or the Hyrcan tiger; Take any shape but that, and my firm nerves Shall never tremble. What appals him is always the image of his own guilty heart or bloodydeed, or some image which derives from them its terror or gloom. These,when they arise, hold him spell-bound and possess him wholly, like ahypnotic trance which is at the same time the ecstasy of a poet. As thefirst 'horrid image' of Duncan's murder--of himself murderingDuncan--rises from unconsciousness and confronts him, his hair stands onend and the outward scene vanishes from his eyes. Why? For fear of'consequences'? The idea is ridiculous. Or because the deed is bloody? The man who with his 'smoking' steel 'carved out his passage' to therebel leader, and 'unseam'd him from the nave to the chaps,' wouldhardly be frightened by blood. How could fear of consequences make thedagger he is to use hang suddenly glittering before him in the air, andthen as suddenly dash it with gouts of blood? Even when he _talks_ ofconsequences, and declares that if he were safe against them he would'jump the life to come,' his imagination bears witness against him, andshows us that what really holds him back is the hideous vileness of thedeed: He's here in double trust; First, as I am his kinsman and his subject, Strong both against the deed; then, as his host, Who should against his murderer shut the door, Not bear the knife myself. Besides, this Duncan Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been So clear in his great office, that his virtues Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against The deep damnation of his taking-off; And pity, like a naked new-born babe, Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, horsed Upon the sightless couriers of the air, Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye, That tears shall drown the wind. It may be said that he is here thinking of the horror that others willfeel at the deed--thinking therefore of consequences. Yes, but could herealise thus how horrible the deed would look to others if it were notequally horrible to himself? It is the same when the murder is done. He is well-nigh mad with horror,but it is not the horror of detection. It is not he who thinks ofwashing his hands or getting his nightgown on. He has brought away thedaggers he should have left on the pillows of the grooms, but what doeshe care for that? What _he_ thinks of is that, when he heard one of themen awaked from sleep say 'God bless us,' he could not say 'Amen'; forhis imagination presents to him the parching of his throat as animmediate judgment from heaven. His wife heard the owl scream and thecrickets cry; but what _he_ heard was the voice that first cried'Macbeth doth murder sleep,' and then, a minute later, with a change oftense, denounced on him, as if his three names gave him threepersonalities to suffer in, the doom of sleeplessness: Glamis hath murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor Shall sleep no more, Macbeth shall sleep no more. There comes a sound of knocking. It should be perfectly familiar to him;but he knows not whence, or from what world, it comes. He looks down athis hands, and starts violently: 'What hands are here? ' For they seemalive, they move, they mean to pluck out his eyes. He looks at one ofthem again; it does not move; but the blood upon it is enough to dye thewhole ocean red. What has all this to do with fear of 'consequences'? Itis his soul speaking in the only shape in which it can speak freely,that of imagination. So long as Macbeth's imagination is active, we watch him fascinated; wefeel suspense, horror, awe; in which are latent, also, admiration andsympathy. But so soon as it is quiescent these feelings vanish. He is nolonger 'infirm of purpose': he becomes domineering, even brutal, or hebecomes a cool pitiless hypocrite. He is generally said to be a very badactor, but this is not wholly true. Whenever his imagination stirs, heacts badly. It so possesses him, and is so much stronger than hisreason, that his face betrays him, and his voice utters the mostimprobable untruths[218] or the most artificial rhetoric[219] But whenit is asleep he is firm, self-controlled and practical, as in theconversation where he skilfully elicits from Banquo that informationabout his movements which is required for the successful arrangement ofhis murder. [220] Here he is hateful; and so he is in the conversationwith the murderers, who are not professional cut-throats but oldsoldiers, and whom, without a vestige of remorse, he beguiles withcalumnies against Banquo and with such appeals as his wife had used tohim. [221] On the other hand, we feel much pity as well as anxiety in thescene (I. vii. ) where she overcomes his opposition to the murder; and wefeel it (though his imagination is not specially active) because thisscene shows us how little he understands himself. This is his greatmisfortune here. Not that he fails to realise in reflection the basenessof the deed (the soliloquy with which the scene opens shows that he doesnot). But he has never, to put it pedantically, accepted as theprinciple of his conduct the morality which takes shape in hisimaginative fears. Had he done so, and said plainly to his wife, 'Thething is vile, and, however much I have sworn to do it, I will not,' shewould have been helpless; for all her arguments proceed on theassumption that there is for them no such point of view. Macbeth doesapproach this position once, when, resenting the accusation ofcowardice, he answers, I dare do all that may become a man; Who dares do more is none. She feels in an instant that everything is at stake, and, ignoring thepoint, overwhelms him with indignant and contemptuous personal reproach. But he yields to it because he is himself half-ashamed of that answer ofhis, and because, for want of habit, the simple idea which it expresseshas no hold on him comparable to the force it acquires when it becomesincarnate in visionary fears and warnings. Yet these were so insistent, and they offered to his ambition aresistance so strong, that it is impossible to regard him as fallingthrough the blindness or delusion of passion. On the contrary, hehimself feels with such intensity the enormity of his purpose that, itseems clear, neither his ambition nor yet the prophecy of the Witcheswould ever without the aid of Lady Macbeth have overcome this feeling. As it is, the deed is done in horror and without the faintest desire orsense of glory,--done, one may almost say, as if it were an appallingduty; and, the instant it is finished, its futility is revealed toMacbeth as clearly as its vileness had been revealed beforehand. As hestaggers from the scene he mutters in despair, Wake Duncan with thy knocking! I would thou could'st. When, half an hour later, he returns with Lennox from the room of themurder, he breaks out: Had I but died an hour before this chance, I had lived a blessed time; for from this instant There's nothing serious in mortality: All is but toys: renown and grace is dead; The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees Is left this vault to brag of. This is no mere acting. The language here has none of the falserhetoric of his merely hypocritical speeches. It is meant to deceive,but it utters at the same time his profoundest feeling. And this he canhenceforth never hide from himself for long. However he may try to drownit in further enormities, he hears it murmuring, Duncan is in his grave: After life's fitful fever he sleeps well:or, better be with the dead:or, I have lived long enough:and it speaks its last words on the last day of his life: Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. How strange that this judgment on life, the despair of a man who hadknowingly made mortal war on his own soul, should be frequently quotedas Shakespeare's own judgment, and should even be adduced, in seriouscriticism, as a proof of his pessimism! It remains to look a little more fully at the history of Macbeth afterthe murder of Duncan. Unlike his first struggle this history exciteslittle suspense or anxiety on his account: we have now no hope for him. But it is an engrossing spectacle, and psychologically it is perhaps themost remarkable exhibition of the _development_ of a character to befound in Shakespeare's tragedies. That heart-sickness which comes from Macbeth's perception of thefutility of his crime, and which never leaves him for long, is not,however, his habitual state. It could not be so, for two reasons. In thefirst place the consciousness of guilt is stronger in him than theconsciousness of failure; and it keeps him in a perpetual agony ofrestlessness, and forbids him simply to droop and pine. His mind is'full of scorpions. ' He cannot sleep. He 'keeps alone,' moody andsavage. 'All that is within him does condemn itself for being there. 'There is a fever in his blood which urges him to ceaseless action in thesearch for oblivion. And, in the second place, ambition, the love ofpower, the instinct of self-assertion, are much too potent in Macbeth topermit him to resign, even in spirit, the prize for which he has putrancours in the vessel of his peace. The 'will to live' is mighty inhim. The forces which impelled him to aim at the crown re-assertthemselves. He faces the world, and his own conscience, desperate, butnever dreaming of acknowledging defeat. He will see 'the frame of thingsdisjoint' first. He challenges fate into the lists. The result is frightful. He speaks no more, as before Duncan's murder,of honour or pity. That sleepless torture, he tells himself, is nothingbut the sense of insecurity and the fear of retaliation. If only he weresafe, it would vanish. And he looks about for the cause of his fear; andhis eye falls on Banquo. Banquo, who cannot fail to suspect him, has notfled or turned against him: Banquo has become his chief counsellor. Why? Because, he answers, the kingdom was promised to Banquo's children. Banquo, then, is waiting to attack him, to make a way for them. The'bloody instructions' he himself taught when he murdered Duncan, areabout to return, as he said they would, to plague the inventor. _This_then, he tells himself, is the fear that will not let him sleep; and itwill die with Banquo. There is no hesitation now, and no remorse: he hasnearly learned his lesson. He hastens feverishly, not to murder Banquo,but to procure his murder: some strange idea is in his mind that thethought of the dead man will not haunt him, like the memory of Duncan,if the deed is done by other hands. [222] The deed is done: but, insteadof peace descending on him, from the depths of his nature hishalf-murdered conscience rises; his deed confronts him in the apparitionof Banquo's Ghost, and the horror of the night of his first murderreturns. But, alas, _it_ has less power, and _he_ has more will. Agonised and trembling, he still faces this rebel image, and it yields: Why, so: being gone, I am a man again. Yes, but his secret is in the hands of the assembled lords. And, worse,this deed is as futile as the first. For, though Banquo is dead and evenhis Ghost is conquered, that inner torture is unassuaged. But he willnot bear it. His guests have hardly left him when he turns roughly tohis wife: How say'st thou, that Macduff denies his person At our great bidding? Macduff it is that spoils his sleep. He shall perish,--he and aught elsethat bars the road to peace. For mine own good All causes shall give way: I am in blood Stepp'd in so far that, should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go o'er: Strange things I have in head that will to hand, Which must be acted ere they may be scann'd. She answers, sick at heart, You lack the season of all natures, sleep. No doubt: but he has found the way to it now: Come, we'll to sleep. My strange and self abuse Is the initiate fear that wants hard use; We are yet but young in deed. What a change from the man who thought of Duncan's virtues, and of pitylike a naked new-born babe! What a frightful clearness ofself-consciousness in this descent to hell, and yet what a furious forcein the instinct of life and self-assertion that drives him on! He goes to seek the Witches. He will know, by the worst means, theworst. He has no longer any awe of them. How now, you secret, black and midnight hags! --so he greets them, and at once he demands and threatens. They tell himhe is right to fear Macduff. They tell him to fear nothing, for none ofwoman born can harm him. He feels that the two statements are atvariance; infatuated, suspects no double meaning; but, that he may'sleep in spite of thunder,' determines not to spare Macduff. But hisheart throbs to know one thing, and he forces from the Witches thevision of Banquo's children crowned. The old intolerable thoughtreturns, 'for Banquo's issue have I filed my mind'; and with it, for allthe absolute security apparently promised him, there returns that inwardfever. Will nothing quiet it? Nothing but destruction. Macduff, onecomes to tell him, has escaped him; but that does not matter: he canstill destroy:[223] And even now, To crown my thoughts with acts, be it thought and done: The castle of Macduff I will surprise; Seize upon Fife; give to the edge o' the sword His wife, his babes, and all unfortunate souls That trace him in's line. No boasting like a fool; This deed I'll do before this purpose cool. But no more sights! No, he need fear no more 'sights. ' The Witches have done their work,and after this purposeless butchery his own imagination will trouble himno more. [224] He has dealt his last blow at the conscience and pitywhich spoke through it. The whole flood of evil in his nature is now let loose. He becomes anopen tyrant, dreaded by everyone about him, and a terror to his country. She 'sinks beneath the yoke. ' Each new morn New widows howl, new orphans cry, new sorrows Strike heaven on the face. She weeps, she bleeds, 'and each new day a gash is added to her wounds. 'She is not the mother of her children, but their grave; where nothing, But who knows nothing, is once seen to smile: Where sighs and groans and shrieks that rend the air Are made, not mark'd. For this wild rage and furious cruelty we are prepared; but vices ofanother kind start up as he plunges on his downward way. I grant him bloody, Luxurious, avaricious, false, deceitful, Sudden, malicious,says Malcolm; and two of these epithets surprise us. Who would haveexpected avarice or lechery[225] in Macbeth? His ruin seems complete. Yet it is never complete. To the end he never totally loses oursympathy; we never feel towards him as we do to those who appear theborn children of darkness. There remains something sublime in thedefiance with which, even when cheated of his last hope, he faces earthand hell and heaven. Nor would any soul to whom evil was congenial becapable of that heart-sickness which overcomes him when he thinks of the'honour, love, obedience, troops of friends' which 'he must not look tohave' (and which Iago would never have cared to have), and contrastswith them Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour, breath, Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not,(and which Iago would have accepted with indifference). Neither can Iagree with those who find in his reception of the news of his wife'sdeath proof of alienation or utter carelessness. There is no proof ofthese in the words, She should have died hereafter; There would have been a time for such a word,spoken as they are by a man already in some measure prepared for suchnews, and now transported by the frenzy of his last fight for life. Hehas no time now to feel. [226] Only, as he thinks of the morrow when timeto feel will come--if anything comes, the vanity of all hopes andforward-lookings sinks deep into his soul with an infinite weariness,and he murmurs, To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time, And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. In the very depths a gleam of his native love of goodness, and with it atouch of tragic grandeur, rests upon him. The evil he has desperatelyembraced continues to madden or to wither his inmost heart. Noexperience in the world could bring him to glory in it or make his peacewith it, or to forget what he once was and Iago and Goneril never were. FOOTNOTES:[Footnote 194: See note BB. ][Footnote 195: 'Hell is murky' (V. i. 35). This, surely, is not meantfor a scornful repetition of something said long ago by Macbeth. Hewould hardly in those days have used an argument or expressed a fearthat could provoke nothing but contempt. ][Footnote 196: Whether Banquo's ghost is a mere illusion, like thedagger, is discussed in Note FF. ][Footnote 197: In parts of this paragraph I am indebted to Hunter's_Illustrations of Shakespeare_. ][Footnote 198: The line is a foot short. ][Footnote 199: It should be observed that in some cases the irony wouldescape an audience ignorant of the story and watching the play for thefirst time,--another indication that Shakespeare did not write solelyfor immediate stage purposes. ][Footnote 200: Their influence on spectators is, I believe, veryinferior. These scenes, like the Storm-scenes in _King Lear_, belongproperly to the world of imagination. ][Footnote 201: 'By yea and no, I think the 'oman is a witch indeed: Ilike not when a 'oman has a great peard' (_Merry Wives_, IV. ii. 202). ][Footnote 202: Even the metaphor in the lines (II. iii. 127), What should be spoken here, where our fate, Hid in an auger-hole, may rush and seize us? was probably suggested by the words in Scot's first chapter, 'They cango in and out at awger-holes. '][Footnote 203: Once, 'weird women. ' Whether Shakespeare knew that'weird' signified 'fate' we cannot tell, but it is probable that he did. The word occurs six times in _Macbeth_ (it does not occur elsewhere inShakespeare). The first three times it is spelt in the Folio _weyward_,the last three _weyard_. This may suggest a miswriting or misprinting of_wayward_; but, as that word is always spelt in the Folio either rightlyor _waiward_, it is more likely that the _weyward_ and _weyard_ of_Macbeth_ are the copyist's or printer's misreading of Shakespeare's_weird_ or _weyrd_. ][Footnote 204: The doubt as to these passages (see Note Z) does notarise from the mere appearance of this figure. The idea of Hecate'sconnection with witches appears also at II. i. 52, and she is mentionedagain at III. ii. 41 (cf. _Mid. Night's Dream_, V. i. 391, for herconnection with fairies). It is part of the common traditional notion ofthe heathen gods being now devils. Scot refers to it several times. Seethe notes in the Clarendon Press edition on III. v. 1, or those inFurness's Variorum. Of course in the popular notion the witch's spirits are devils orservants of Satan. If Shakespeare openly introduces this idea only insuch phrases as 'the instruments of darkness' and 'what! can the devilspeak true? ' the reason is probably his unwillingness to give too muchprominence to distinctively religious ideas. ][Footnote 205: If this paragraph is true, some of the statements even ofLamb and of Coleridge about the Witches are, taken literally, incorrect. What these critics, and notably the former, describe so well is thepoetic aspect abstracted from the remainder; and in describing this theyattribute to the Witches themselves what belongs really to the complexof Witches, Spirits, and Hecate. For the purposes of imagination, nodoubt, this inaccuracy is of small consequence; and it is these purposesthat matter. [I have not attempted to fulfil them. ]][Footnote 206: See Note CC. ][Footnote 207: The proclamation of Malcolm as Duncan's successor (I. iv. ) changes the position, but the design of murder is prior to this. ][Footnote 208: Schlegel's assertion that the first thought of the murdercomes from the Witches is thus in flat contradiction with the text. (Thesentence in which he asserts this is, I may observe, badly mistranslatedin the English version, which, wherever I have consulted the original,shows itself untrustworthy. It ought to be revised, for Schlegel is wellworth reading. )][Footnote 209: It is noticeable that Dr. Forman, who saw the play in1610 and wrote a sketch of it in his journal, says nothing about thelater prophecies. Perhaps he despised them as mere stuff for thegroundlings. The reader will find, I think, that the great poetic effectof Act IV. Sc. i. depends much more on the 'charm' which precedesMacbeth's entrance, and on Macbeth himself, than on the predictions. ][Footnote 210: This comparison was suggested by a passage in Hegel's_Aesthetik_, i. 291 ff. ][Footnote 211: _Il. _ i. 188 ff. (Leaf's translation). ][Footnote 212: The supernaturalism of the modern poet, indeed, is more'external' than that of the ancient. We have already had evidence ofthis, and shall find more when we come to the character of Banquo. ][Footnote 213: The assertion that Lady Macbeth sought a crown forherself, or sought anything for herself, apart from her husband, isabsolutely unjustified by anything in the play. It is based on asentence of Holinshed's which Shakespeare did _not_ use. ][Footnote 214: The word is used of him (I. ii. 67), but not in a waythat decides this question or even bears on it. ][Footnote 215: This view, thus generally stated, is not original, but Icannot say who first stated it. ][Footnote 216: The latter, and more important, point was put quiteclearly by Coleridge. ][Footnote 217: It is the consequent insistence on the idea of fear, andthe frequent repetition of the word, that have principally led tomisinterpretation. ][Footnote 218: _E. g. _ I. iii. 149, where he excuses his abstraction bysaying that his 'dull brain was wrought with things forgotten,' whennothing could be more natural than that he should be thinking of his newhonour. ][Footnote 219: _E. g. _ in I. iv. This is so also in II. iii. 114 ff. ,though here there is some real imaginative excitement mingled with therhetorical antitheses and balanced clauses and forced bombast. ][Footnote 220: III. i. Lady Macbeth herself could not more naturallyhave introduced at intervals the questions 'Ride you this afternoon? '(l. 19), 'Is't far you ride? ' (l. 24), 'Goes Fleance with you? ' (l. 36). ][Footnote 221: We feel here, however, an underlying subdued frenzy whichawakes some sympathy. There is an almost unendurable impatienceexpressed even in the rhythm of many of the lines; _e. g. _: Well then, now Have you consider'd of my speeches? Know That it was he in the times past which held you So under fortune, which you thought had been Our innocent self: this I made good to you In our last conference, pass'd in probation with you, How you were borne in hand, how cross'd, the instruments, Who wrought with them, and all things else that might To half a soul and to a notion crazed Say, 'Thus did Banquo. 'This effect is heard to the end of the play in Macbeth's less poeticspeeches, and leaves the same impression of burning energy, though notof imaginative exaltation, as his great speeches. In these we findeither violent, huge, sublime imagery, or a torrent of figurativeexpressions (as in the famous lines about 'the innocent sleep'). Ourimpressions as to the diction of the play are largely derived from thesespeeches of the hero, but not wholly so. The writing almost throughoutleaves an impression of intense, almost feverish, activity. ][Footnote 222: See his first words to the Ghost: 'Thou canst not say Idid it. '][Footnote 223: For only in destroying I find ease To my relentless thoughts. --_Paradise Lost_, ix. 129. Milton's portrait of Satan's misery here, and at the beginning of BookIV. , might well have been suggested by _Macbeth_. Coleridge, afterquoting Duncan's speech, I. iv. 35 ff. , says: 'It is a fancy; but I cannever read this, and the following speeches of Macbeth, withoutinvoluntarily thinking of the Miltonic Messiah and Satan. ' I doubt if itwas a mere fancy. (It will be remembered that Milton thought at one timeof writing a tragedy on Macbeth. )][Footnote 224: The immediate reference in 'But no more sights' isdoubtless to the visions called up by the Witches; but one of these, the'blood-bolter'd Banquo,' recalls to him the vision of the precedingnight, of which he had said, You make me strange Even to the disposition that I owe, When now I think you can behold such _sights_, And keep the natural ruby of your cheeks, When mine is blanch'd with fear. ][Footnote 225: 'Luxurious' and 'luxury' are used by Shakespeare only inthis older sense. It must be remembered that these lines are spoken byMalcolm, but it seems likely that they are meant to be taken as truethroughout. ][Footnote 226: I do not at all suggest that his love for his wiferemains what it was when he greeted her with the words 'My dearest love,Duncan comes here to-night. ' He has greatly changed; she has ceased tohelp him, sunk in her own despair; and there is no intensity of anxietyin the questions he puts to the doctor about her. But his love for herwas probably never unselfish, never the love of Brutus, who, in somewhatsimilar circumstances, uses, on the death of Cassius, words which remindus of Macbeth's: I shall find time, Cassius, I shall find time. For the opposite strain of feeling cf. Sonnet 90: Then hate me if thou wilt; if ever, now, Now while the world is bent my deeds to cross. ]LECTURE XMACBETH1To regard _Macbeth_ as a play, like the love-tragedies _Romeo andJuliet_ and _Antony and Cleopatra_, in which there are two centralcharacters of equal importance, is certainly a mistake. But Shakespearehimself is in a measure responsible for it, because the first half of_Macbeth_ is greater than the second, and in the first half Lady Macbethnot only appears more than in the second but exerts the ultimatedeciding influence on the action. And, in the opening Act at least, LadyMacbeth is the most commanding and perhaps the most awe-inspiring figurethat Shakespeare drew. Sharing, as we have seen, certain traits with herhusband, she is at once clearly distinguished from him by aninflexibility of will, which appears to hold imagination, feeling, andconscience completely in check. To her the prophecy of things that willbe becomes instantaneously the determination that they shall be: Glamis thou art, and Cawdor, and shalt be That thou art promised. She knows her husband's weakness, how he scruples 'to catch the nearestway' to the object he desires; and she sets herself without a trace ofdoubt or conflict to counteract this weakness. To her there is noseparation between will and deed; and, as the deed falls in part to her,she is sure it will be done: The raven himself is hoarse That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan Under my battlements. On the moment of Macbeth's rejoining her, after braving infinite dangersand winning infinite praise, without a syllable on these subjects or aword of affection, she goes straight to her purpose and permits him tospeak of nothing else. She takes the superior position and assumes thedirection of affairs,--appears to assume it even more than she reallycan, that she may spur him on. She animates him by picturing the deed asheroic, 'this night's _great_ business,' or 'our _great_ quell,' whileshe ignores its cruelty and faithlessness. She bears down his faintresistance by presenting him with a prepared scheme which may removefrom him the terror and danger of deliberation. She rouses him with ataunt no man can bear, and least of all a soldier,--the word 'coward. 'She appeals even to his love for her: from this time Such I account thy love;--such, that is, as the protestations of a drunkard. Her reasonings aremere sophisms; they could persuade no man. It is not by them, it is bypersonal appeals, through the admiration she extorts from him, andthrough sheer force of will, that she impels him to the deed. Her eyesare fixed upon the crown and the means to it; she does not attend to theconsequences. Her plan of laying the guilt upon the chamberlains isinvented on the spur of the moment, and simply to satisfy her husband. Her true mind is heard in the ringing cry with which she answers hisquestion, 'Will it not be received . . . that they have done it? ' Who _dares_ receive it other? And this is repeated in the sleep-walking scene: 'What need we fear whoknows it, when none can call our power to account? ' Her passionatecourage sweeps him off his feet. His decision is taken in a moment ofenthusiasm: Bring forth men-children only; For thy undaunted mettle should compose Nothing but males. And even when passion has quite died away her will remains supreme. Inpresence of overwhelming horror and danger, in the murder scene and thebanquet scene, her self-control is perfect. When the truth of what shehas done dawns on her, no word of complaint, scarcely a word of her ownsuffering, not a single word of her own as apart from his, escapes herwhen others are by. She helps him, but never asks his help. She leans onnothing but herself. And from the beginning to the end--though she makesonce or twice a slip in acting her part--her will never fails her. Itsgrasp upon her nature may destroy her, but it is never relaxed. We aresure that she never betrayed her husband or herself by a word or even alook, save in sleep. However appalling she may be, she is sublime. In the earlier scenes of the play this aspect of Lady Macbeth'scharacter is far the most prominent. And if she seems invincible sheseems also inhuman. We find no trace of pity for the kind old king; noconsciousness of the treachery and baseness of the murder; no sense ofthe value of the lives of the wretched men on whom the guilt is to belaid; no shrinking even from the condemnation or hatred of the world. Yet if the Lady Macbeth of these scenes were really utterly inhuman, ora 'fiend-like queen,' as Malcolm calls her, the Lady Macbeth of thesleep-walking scene would be an impossibility. The one woman could neverbecome the other. And in fact, if we look below the surface, there isevidence enough in the earlier scenes of preparation for the later. I donot mean that Lady Macbeth was naturally humane. There is nothing in theplay to show this, and several passages subsequent to the murder-scenesupply proof to the contrary. One is that where she exclaims, on beinginformed of Duncan's murder, Woe, alas! What, in our house? This mistake in acting shows that she does not even know what thenatural feeling in such circumstances would be; and Banquo's curtanswer, 'Too cruel anywhere,' is almost a reproof of her insensibility. But, admitting this, we have in the first place to remember, inimagining the opening scenes, that she is deliberately bent oncounteracting the 'human kindness' of her husband, and also that she isevidently not merely inflexibly determined but in a condition ofabnormal excitability. That exaltation in the project which is soentirely lacking in Macbeth is strongly marked in her. When she tries tohelp him by representing their enterprise as heroic, she is deceivingherself as much as him. Their attainment of the crown presents itself toher, perhaps has long presented itself, as something so glorious, andshe has fixed her will upon it so completely, that for the time she seesthe enterprise in no other light than that of its greatness. When shesoliloquises, Yet do I fear thy nature: It is too full o' the milk of human kindness To catch the nearest way: thou wouldst be great; Art not without ambition, but without The illness should attend it; what thou wouldst highly, That wouldst thou holily,one sees that 'ambition' and 'great' and 'highly' and even 'illness' areto her simply terms of praise, and 'holily' and 'human kindness' simplyterms of blame. Moral distinctions do not in this exaltation exist forher; or rather they are inverted: 'good' means to her the crown andwhatever is required to obtain it, 'evil' whatever stands in the way ofits attainment. This attitude of mind is evident even when she is alone,though it becomes still more pronounced when she has to work upon herhusband. And it persists until her end is attained. But, without beingexactly forced, it betrays a strain which could not long endure. Besides this, in these earlier scenes the traces of feminine weaknessand human feeling, which account for her later failure, are not absent. Her will, it is clear, was exerted to overpower not only her husband'sresistance but some resistance in herself. Imagine Goneril uttering thefamous words, Had he not resembled My father as he slept, I had done 't. They are spoken, I think, without any sentiment--impatiently, as thoughshe regretted her weakness: but it was there. And in reality, quiteapart from this recollection of her father, she could never have donethe murder if her husband had failed. She had to nerve herself with wineto give her 'boldness' enough to go through her minor part. Thatappalling invocation to the spirits of evil, to unsex her and fill herfrom the crown to the toe topfull of direst cruelty, tells the same taleof determination to crush the inward protest. Goneril had no need ofsuch a prayer. In the utterance of the frightful lines, I have given suck, and know How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me: I would, while it was smiling in my face, Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums, And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn as you Have done to this,her voice should doubtless rise until it reaches, in 'dash'd the brainsout,' an almost hysterical scream. [227] These lines show unmistakablythat strained exaltation which, as soon as the end is reached, vanishes,never to return. The greatness of Lady Macbeth lies almost wholly in courage and force ofwill. It is an error to regard her as remarkable on the intellectualside. In acting a part she shows immense self-control, but not muchskill. Whatever may be thought of the plan of attributing the murder ofDuncan to the chamberlains, to lay their bloody daggers on theirpillows, as if they were determined to advertise their guilt, was amistake which can be accounted for only by the excitement of the moment. But the limitations of her mind appear most in the point where she ismost strongly contrasted with Macbeth,--in her comparative dulness ofimagination. I say 'comparative,' for she sometimes uses highly poeticlanguage, as indeed does everyone in Shakespeare who has any greatnessof soul. Nor is she perhaps less imaginative than the majority of hisheroines. But as compared with her husband she has little imagination. It is not _simply_ that she suppresses what she has. To her, thingsremain at the most terrible moment precisely what they were at thecalmest, plain facts which stand in a given relation to a certain deed,not visions which tremble and flicker in the light of other worlds. Theprobability that the old king will sleep soundly after his long journeyto Inverness is to her simply a fortunate circumstance; but one canfancy the shoot of horror across Macbeth's face as she mentions it. Sheuses familiar and prosaic illustrations, like Letting 'I dare not' wait upon 'I would,' Like the poor cat i' the adage,(the cat who wanted fish but did not like to wet her feet); or, We fail? But screw your courage to the sticking-place, And we'll not fail;[228]or, Was the hope drunk Wherein you dress'd yourself? hath it slept since? And wakes it now, to look so green and pale At what it did so freely? The Witches are practically nothing to her. She feels no sympathy inNature with her guilty purpose, and would never bid the earth not hearher steps, which way they walk. |
The noises before the murder, and duringit, are heard by her as simple facts, and are referred to their truesources. The knocking has no mystery for her: it comes from 'the southentry. ' She calculates on the drunkenness of the grooms, compares thedifferent effects of wine on herself and on them, and listens to theirsnoring. To her the blood upon her husband's hands suggests only thetaunt, My hands are of your colour, but I shame To wear a heart so white;and the blood to her is merely 'this filthy witness,'--words impossibleto her husband, to whom it suggested something quite other than sensuousdisgust or practical danger. The literalism of her mind appears fully intwo contemptuous speeches where she dismisses his imaginings; in themurder scene: Infirm of purpose! Give me the daggers! The sleeping and the dead Are but as pictures: 'tis the eye of childhood That fears a painted devil;and in the banquet scene: O these flaws and starts, Impostors to true fear, would well become A woman's story at a winter's fire, Authorised by her grandam. Shame itself! Why do you make such faces? When all's done, You look but on a stool. Even in the awful scene where her imagination breaks loose in sleep sheuses no such images as Macbeth's. It is the direct appeal of the factsto sense that has fastened on her memory. The ghastly realism of 'Yetwho would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him? ' or'Here's the smell of the blood still,' is wholly unlike him. Her mostpoetical words, 'All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this littlehand,' are equally unlike his words about great Neptune's ocean. Hers,like some of her other speeches, are the more moving, from their greatersimplicity and because they seem to tell of that self-restraint insuffering which is so totally lacking in him; but there is in themcomparatively little of imagination. If we consider most of the passagesto which I have referred, we shall find that the quality which moves ouradmiration is courage or force of will. This want of imagination, though it helps to make Lady Macbeth strongfor immediate action, is fatal to her. If she does not feel beforehandthe cruelty of Duncan's murder, this is mainly because she hardlyimagines the act, or at most imagines its outward show, 'the motion of amuscle this way or that. ' Nor does she in the least foresee those inwardconsequences which reveal themselves immediately in her husband, andless quickly in herself. It is often said that she understands him well. Had she done so, she never would have urged him on. She knows that he isgiven to strange fancies; but, not realising what they spring from, shehas no idea either that they may gain such power as to ruin the scheme,or that, while they mean present weakness, they mean also perception ofthe future. At one point in the murder scene the force of hisimagination impresses her, and for a moment she is startled; a lightthreatens to break on her: These deeds must not be thought After these ways: so, it will make us mad,she says, with a sudden and great seriousness. And when he goes pantingon, 'Methought I heard a voice cry, "Sleep no more,"' . . . she breaks in,'What do you mean? ' half-doubting whether this was not a real voice thathe heard. Then, almost directly, she recovers herself, convinced of thevanity of his fancy. Nor does she understand herself any better thanhim. She never suspects that these deeds _must_ be thought after theseways; that her facile realism, A little water clears us of this deed,will one day be answered by herself, 'Will these hands ne'er be clean? 'or that the fatal commonplace, 'What's done is done,' will make way forher last despairing sentence, 'What's done cannot be undone. 'Hence the development of her character--perhaps it would be morestrictly accurate to say, the change in her state of mind--is bothinevitable, and the opposite of the development we traced in Macbeth. When the murder has been done, the discovery of its hideousness, firstreflected in the faces of her guests, comes to Lady Macbeth with theshock of a sudden disclosure, and at once her nature begins to sink. Thefirst intimation of the change is given when, in the scene of thediscovery, she faints. [229] When next we see her, Queen of Scotland, theglory of her dream has faded. She enters, disillusioned, and weary withwant of sleep: she has thrown away everything and gained nothing: Nought's had, all's spent, Where our desire is got without content: 'Tis safer to be that which we destroy Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy. Henceforth she has no initiative: the stem of her being seems to be cutthrough. Her husband, physically the stronger, maddened by pangs he hadforeseen, but still flaming with life, comes into the foreground, andshe retires. Her will remains, and she does her best to help him; but herarely needs her help. Her chief anxiety appears to be that he shouldnot betray his misery. He plans the murder of Banquo without herknowledge (not in order to spare her, I think, for he never shows loveof this quality, but merely because he does not need her now); and evenwhen she is told vaguely of his intention she appears but littleinterested. In the sudden emergency of the banquet scene she makes aprodigious and magnificent effort; her strength, and with it herascendancy, returns, and she saves her husband at least from an opendisclosure. But after this she takes no part whatever in the action. Weonly know from her shuddering words in the sleep-walking scene, 'TheThane of Fife had a wife: where is she now? ' that she has even learnedof her husband's worst crime; and in all the horrors of his tyranny overScotland she has, so far as we hear, no part. Disillusionment anddespair prey upon her more and more. That she should seek any relief inspeech, or should ask for sympathy, would seem to her mere weakness, andwould be to Macbeth's defiant fury an irritation. Thinking of the changein him, we imagine the bond between them slackened, and Lady Macbethleft much alone. She sinks slowly downward. She cannot bear darkness,and has light by her continually: 'tis her command. At last her nature,not her will, gives way. The secrets of the past find vent in a disorderof sleep, the beginning perhaps of madness. What the doctor fears isclear. He reports to her husband no great physical mischief, but bidsher attendant to remove from her all means by which she could harmherself, and to keep eyes on her constantly. It is in vain. Her death isannounced by a cry from her women so sudden and direful that it wouldthrill her husband with horror if he were any longer capable of fear. Inthe last words of the play Malcolm tells us it is believed in thehostile army that she died by her own hand. And (not to speak of theindications just referred to) it is in accordance with her characterthat even in her weakest hour she should cut short by one determinedstroke the agony of her life. The sinking of Lady Macbeth's nature, and the marked change in herdemeanour to her husband, are most strikingly shown in the conclusion ofthe banquet scene; and from this point pathos is mingled with awe. Theguests are gone. She is completely exhausted, and answers Macbeth inlistless, submissive words which seem to come with difficulty. Howstrange sounds the reply 'Did you send to him, sir? ' to his imperiousquestion about Macduff! And when he goes on, 'waxing desperate inimagination,' to speak of new deeds of blood, she seems to sicken at thethought, and there is a deep pathos in that answer which tells at onceof her care for him and of the misery she herself has silently endured, You lack the season of all natures, sleep. We begin to think of her now less as the awful instigator of murder thanas a woman with much that is grand in her, and much that is piteous. Strange and almost ludicrous as the statement may sound,[230] she is, upto her light, a perfect wife. She gives her husband the best she has;and the fact that she never uses to him the terms of affection which, upto this point in the play, he employs to her, is certainly no indicationof want of love. She urges, appeals, reproaches, for a practical end,but she never recriminates. The harshness of her taunts is free frommere personal feeling, and also from any deep or more than momentarycontempt. She despises what she thinks the weakness which stands in theway of her husband's ambition; but she does not despise _him_. Sheevidently admires him and thinks him a great man, for whom the throne isthe proper place. Her commanding attitude in the moments of hishesitation or fear is probably confined to them. If we consider thepeculiar circumstances of the earlier scenes and the banquet scene, andif we examine the language of the wife and husband at other times, weshall come, I think, to the conclusion that their habitual relations arebetter represented by the later scenes than by the earlier, thoughnaturally they are not truly represented by either. Her ambition for herhusband and herself (there was no distinction to her mind) proved fatalto him, far more so than the prophecies of the Witches; but even whenshe pushed him into murder she believed she was helping him to do whathe merely lacked the nerve to attempt; and her part in the crime was somuch less open-eyed than his, that, if the impossible and undramatictask of estimating degrees of culpability were forced on us, we shouldsurely have to assign the larger share to Macbeth. 'Lady Macbeth,' says Dr. Johnson, 'is merely detested'; and for a longtime critics generally spoke of her as though she were Malcolm's'fiend-like queen. ' In natural reaction we tend to insist, as I havebeen doing, on the other and less obvious side; and in the criticism ofthe last century there is even a tendency to sentimentalise thecharacter. But it can hardly be doubted that Shakespeare meant thepredominant impression to be one of awe, grandeur, and horror, and thathe never meant this impression to be lost, however it might be modified,as Lady Macbeth's activity diminishes and her misery increases. I cannotbelieve that, when she said of Banquo and Fleance, But in them nature's copy's not eterne,she meant only that they would some day die; or that she felt anysurprise when Macbeth replied, There's comfort yet: they are assailable;though I am sure no light came into her eyes when he added thosedreadful words, 'Then be thou jocund. ' She was listless. She herselfwould not have moved a finger against Banquo. But she thought his death,and his son's death, might ease her husband's mind, and she suggestedthe murders indifferently and without remorse. The sleep-walking scene,again, inspires pity, but its main effect is one of awe. There is greathorror in the references to blood, but it cannot be said that there ismore than horror; and Campbell was surely right when, in alluding toMrs. Jameson's analysis, he insisted that in Lady Macbeth's misery thereis no trace of contrition. [231] Doubtless she would have given the worldto undo what she had done; and the thought of it killed her; but,regarding her from the tragic point of view, we may truly say she wastoo great to repent. [232]2The main interest of the character of Banquo arises from the changesthat take place in him, and from the influence of the Witches upon him. And it is curious that Shakespeare's intention here is so frequentlymissed. Banquo being at first strongly contrasted with Macbeth, as aninnocent man with a guilty, it seems to be supposed that this contrastmust be continued to his death; while, in reality, though it is neverremoved, it is gradually diminished. Banquo in fact may be describedmuch more truly than Macbeth as the victim of the Witches. If we followhis story this will be evident. He bore a part only less distinguished than Macbeth's in the battlesagainst Sweno and Macdonwald. He and Macbeth are called 'our captains,'and when they meet the Witches they are traversing the 'blastedheath'[233] alone together. Banquo accosts the strange shapes withoutthe slightest fear. They lay their fingers on their lips, as if tosignify that they will not, or must not, speak to _him_. To Macbeth'sbrief appeal, 'Speak, if you can: what are you? ' they at once reply, notby saying what they are, but by hailing him Thane of Glamis, Thane ofCawdor, and King hereafter. Banquo is greatly surprised that his partnershould start as if in fear, and observes that he is at once 'rapt'; andhe bids the Witches, if they know the future, to prophesy to _him_, whoneither begs their favour nor fears their hate. Macbeth, looking back ata later time, remembers Banquo's daring, and how he chid the sisters, When first they put the name of king upon me, And bade them speak to him. 'Chid' is an exaggeration; but Banquo is evidently a bold man, probablyan ambitious one, and certainly has no lurking guilt in his ambition. Onhearing the predictions concerning himself and his descendants he makesno answer, and when the Witches are about to vanish he shows none ofMacbeth's feverish anxiety to know more. On their vanishing he is simplyamazed, wonders if they were anything but hallucinations, makes noreference to the predictions till Macbeth mentions them, and thenanswers lightly. When Ross and Angus, entering, announce to Macbeth that he has been madeThane of Cawdor, Banquo exclaims, aside, to himself or Macbeth, 'What! can the devil speak true? ' He now believes that the Witches were realbeings and the 'instruments of darkness. ' When Macbeth, turning to him,whispers, Do you not hope your children shall be kings, When those that gave the Thane of Cawdor to me Promised no less to them? he draws with the boldness of innocence the inference which is reallyoccupying Macbeth, and answers, That, trusted home, Might yet enkindle you unto the crown Besides the thane of Cawdor. Here he still speaks, I think, in a free, off-hand, even jesting,[234]manner ('enkindle' meaning merely 'excite you to _hope_ for'). But then,possibly from noticing something in Macbeth's face, he becomes graver,and goes on, with a significant 'but,' But 'tis strange: And oftentimes, to win us to our harm, The instruments of darkness tell us truths, Win us with honest trifles, to betray's In deepest consequence. He afterwards observes for the second time that his partner is 'rapt';but he explains his abstraction naturally and sincerely by referring tothe surprise of his new honours; and at the close of the scene, whenMacbeth proposes that they shall discuss the predictions together atsome later time, he answers in the cheerful, rather bluff manner, whichhe has used almost throughout, 'Very gladly. ' Nor was there any reasonwhy Macbeth's rejoinder, 'Till then, enough,' should excite misgivingsin him, though it implied a request for silence, and though the wholebehaviour of his partner during the scene must have looked verysuspicious to him when the prediction of the crown was made good throughthe murder of Duncan. In the next scene Macbeth and Banquo join the King, who welcomes themboth with the kindest expressions of gratitude and with promises offavours to come. Macbeth has indeed already received a noble reward. Banquo, who is said by the King to have 'no less deserved,' receives asyet mere thanks. His brief and frank acknowledgment is contrasted withMacbeth's laboured rhetoric; and, as Macbeth goes out, Banquo turns withhearty praises of him to the King. And when next we see him, approaching Macbeth's castle in company withDuncan, there is still no sign of change. Indeed he gains on us. It ishe who speaks the beautiful lines, This guest of summer, The temple-haunting martlet, does approve, By his loved mansionry, that the heaven's breath Smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze, Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle: Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed, The air is delicate;--lines which tell of that freedom of heart, and that sympathetic senseof peace and beauty, which the Macbeth of the tragedy could never feel. But now Banquo's sky begins to darken. At the opening of the Second Actwe see him with Fleance crossing the court of the castle on his way tobed. The blackness of the moonless, starless night seems to oppress him. And he is oppressed by something else. A heavy summons lies like lead upon me, And yet I would not sleep: merciful powers, Restrain in me the cursed thoughts that nature Gives way to in repose! On Macbeth's entrance we know what Banquo means: he says toMacbeth--and it is the first time he refers to the subject unprovoked, I dreamt last night of the three weird sisters. His will is still untouched: he would repel the 'cursed thoughts'; andthey are mere thoughts, not intentions. But still they are 'thoughts,'something more, probably, than mere recollections; and they bring withthem an undefined sense of guilt. The poison has begun to work. The passage that follows Banquo's words to Macbeth is difficult tointerpret: I dreamt last night of the three weird sisters: To you they have show'd some truth. _Macb. _ I think not of them: Yet, when we can entreat an hour to serve, We would spend it in some words upon that business, If you would grant the time. _Ban. _ At your kind'st leisure. _Macb. _ If you shall cleave to my consent, when 'tis, It shall make honour for you. _Ban. _ So I lose none In seeking to augment it, but still keep My bosom franchised and allegiance clear, I shall be counsell'd. _Macb. _ Good repose the while! _Ban. _ Thanks, sir: the like to you! Macbeth's first idea is, apparently, simply to free himself from anysuspicion which the discovery of the murder might suggest, by showinghimself, just before it, quite indifferent to the predictions, andmerely looking forward to a conversation about them at some future time. But why does he go on, 'If you shall cleave,' etc. ? Perhaps he foreseesthat, on the discovery, Banquo cannot fail to suspect him, and thinks itsafest to prepare the way at once for an understanding with him (in theoriginal story he makes Banquo his accomplice _before_ the murder). Banquo's answer shows three things,--that he fears a treasonableproposal, that he has no idea of accepting it, and that he has no fearof Macbeth to restrain him from showing what is in his mind. Duncan is murdered. In the scene of discovery Banquo of course appears,and his behaviour is significant. When he enters, and Macduff cries outto him, O Banquo, Banquo, Our royal master's murdered,and Lady Macbeth, who has entered a moment before, exclaims, Woe, alas! What, in our house? his answer, Too cruel anywhere,shows, as I have pointed out, repulsion, and we may be pretty sure thathe suspects the truth at once. After a few words to Macduff he remainsabsolutely silent while the scene is continued for nearly forty lines. He is watching Macbeth and listening as he tells how he put thechamberlains to death in a frenzy of loyal rage. At last Banquo appearsto have made up his mind. On Lady Macbeth's fainting he proposes thatthey shall all retire, and that they shall afterwards meet, And question this most bloody piece of work To know it further. Fears and scruples[235] shake us: In the great hand of God I stand, and thence Against the undivulged pretence[236] I fight Of treasonous malice. His solemn language here reminds us of his grave words about 'theinstruments of darkness,' and of his later prayer to the 'mercifulpowers. ' He is profoundly shocked, full of indignation, and determinedto play the part of a brave and honest man. But he plays no such part. When next we see him, on the last day of hislife, we find that he has yielded to evil. The Witches and his ownambition have conquered him. He alone of the lords knew of theprophecies, but he has said nothing of them. He has acquiesced inMacbeth's accession, and in the official theory that Duncan's sons hadsuborned the chamberlains to murder him. Doubtless, unlike Macduff, hewas present at Scone to see the new king invested. He has, not formallybut in effect, 'cloven to' Macbeth's 'consent'; he is knit to him by 'amost indissoluble tie'; his advice in council has been 'most grave andprosperous'; he is to be the 'chief guest' at that night's supper. Andhis soliloquy tells us why: Thou hast it now: king, Cawdor, Glamis, all, As the weird women promised, and, I fear, Thou play'dst most foully for't: yet it was said It should not stand in thy posterity, But that myself should be the root and father Of many kings. If there come truth from them-- As upon thee, Macbeth, their speeches shine-- Why, by the verities on thee made good, May they not be my oracles as well, And set me up in hope? But hush! no more. This 'hush! no more' is not the dismissal of 'cursed thoughts': it onlymeans that he hears the trumpets announcing the entrance of the King andQueen. His punishment comes swiftly, much more swiftly than Macbeth's, andsaves him from any further fall. He is a very fearless man, and still sofar honourable that he has no thought of acting to bring about thefulfilment of the prophecy which has beguiled him. And therefore he hasno fear of Macbeth. But he little understands him. To Macbeth'stormented mind Banquo's conduct appears highly suspicious. _Why_ hasthis bold and circumspect[237] man kept his secret and become his chiefadviser? In order to make good _his_ part of the predictions afterMacbeth's own precedent. Banquo, he is sure, will suddenly and secretlyattack him. It is not the far-off accession of Banquo's descendants thathe fears; it is (so he tells himself) swift murder; not that the 'barrensceptre' will some day droop from his dying hand, but that it will be'wrenched' away now (III. i. 62). [238] So he kills Banquo. But theBanquo he kills is not the innocent soldier who met the Witches anddaffed their prophecies aside, nor the man who prayed to be deliveredfrom the temptation of his dreams. _Macbeth_ leaves on most readers a profound impression of the misery ofa guilty conscience and the retribution of crime. And the strength ofthis impression is one of the reasons why the tragedy is admired byreaders who shrink from _Othello_ and are made unhappy by _Lear_. Butwhat Shakespeare perhaps felt even more deeply, when he wrote this play,was the _incalculability_ of evil,--that in meddling with it humanbeings do they know not what. The soul, he seems to feel, is a thing ofsuch inconceivable depth, complexity, and delicacy, that when youintroduce into it, or suffer to develop in it, any change, andparticularly the change called evil, you can form only the vaguest ideaof the reaction you will provoke. All you can be sure of is that it willnot be what you expected, and that you cannot possibly escape it. Banquo's story, if truly apprehended, produces this impression quite asstrongly as the more terrific stories of the chief characters, andperhaps even more clearly, inasmuch as he is nearer to average humannature, has obviously at first a quiet conscience, and uses with evidentsincerity the language of religion. 3Apart from his story Banquo's character is not very interesting, nor isit, I think, perfectly individual. And this holds good of the rest ofthe minor characters. They are sketched lightly, and are seldomdeveloped further than the strict purposes of the action required. Fromthis point of view they are inferior to several of the less importantfigures in each of the other three tragedies. The scene in which LadyMacduff and her child appear, and the passage where their slaughter isreported to Macduff, have much dramatic value, but in neither case isthe effect due to any great extent to the special characters of thepersons concerned. Neither they, nor Duncan, nor Malcolm, nor evenBanquo himself, have been imagined intensely, and therefore they do notproduce that sense of unique personality which Shakespeare could conveyin a much smaller number of lines than he gives to most of them. [239]And this is of course even more the case with persons like Ross, Angus,and Lennox, though each of these has distinguishable features. I doubtif any other great play of Shakespeare's contains so many speeches whicha student of the play, if they were quoted to him, would be puzzled toassign to the speakers. Let the reader turn, for instance, to the secondscene of the Fifth Act, and ask himself why the names of the personsshould not be interchanged in all the ways mathematically possible. Canhe find, again, any signs of character by which to distinguish thespeeches of Ross and Angus in Act I. scenes ii. and iii. , or todetermine that Malcolm must have spoken I. iv. 2-11? Most of thiswriting, we may almost say, is simply Shakespeare's writing, not that ofShakespeare become another person. And can anything like the sameproportion of such writing be found in _Hamlet_, _Othello_, or _KingLear_? Is it possible to guess the reason of this characteristic of _Macbeth_? I cannot believe it is due to the presence of a second hand. Thewriting, mangled by the printer and perhaps by 'the players,' seems tobe sometimes obviously Shakespeare's, sometimes sufficientlyShakespearean to repel any attack not based on external evidence. It maybe, as the shortness of the play has suggested to some, that Shakespearewas hurried, and, throwing all his weight on the principal characters,did not exert himself in dealing with the rest. But there is anotherpossibility which may be worth considering. _Macbeth_ is distinguishedby its simplicity,--by grandeur in simplicity, no doubt, but still bysimplicity. The two great figures indeed can hardly be called simple,except in comparison with such characters as Hamlet and Iago; but inalmost every other respect the tragedy has this quality. Its plot isquite plain. It has very little intermixture of humour. It has littlepathos except of the sternest kind. The style, for Shakespeare, has notmuch variety, being generally kept at a higher pitch than in the otherthree tragedies; and there is much less than usual of the interchange ofverse and prose. [240] All this makes for simplicity of effect. And, thisbeing so, is it not possible that Shakespeare instinctively felt, orconsciously feared, that to give much individuality or attraction to thesubordinate figures would diminish this effect, and so, like a goodartist, sacrificed a part to the whole? And was he wrong? He hascertainly avoided the overloading which distresses us in _King Lear_,and has produced a tragedy utterly unlike it, not much less great as adramatic poem, and as a drama superior. I would add, though without much confidence, another suggestion. Thesimplicity of _Macbeth_ is one of the reasons why many readers feelthat, in spite of its being intensely 'romantic,' it is less unlike aclassical tragedy than _Hamlet_ or _Othello_ or _King Lear_. And it ispossible that this effect is, in a sense, the result of design. I do notmean that Shakespeare intended to imitate a classical tragedy; I meanonly that he may have seen in the bloody story of Macbeth a subjectsuitable for treatment in a manner somewhat nearer to that of Seneca, orof the English Senecan plays familiar to him in his youth, than was themanner of his own mature tragedies. The Witches doubtless are'romantic,' but so is the witch-craft in Seneca's _Medea_ and _HerculesOetaeus_; indeed it is difficult to read the account of Medea'spreparations (670-739) without being reminded of the incantations in_Macbeth_. Banquo's Ghost again is 'romantic,' but so are Seneca'sghosts. For the swelling of the style in some of the greatpassages--however immeasurably superior these may be to anything inSeneca--and certainly for the turgid bombast which occasionally appearsin _Macbeth_, and which seems to have horrified Jonson, Shakespearemight easily have found a model in Seneca. Did he not think that thiswas the high Roman manner? Does not the Sergeant's speech, as Coleridgeobserved, recall the style of the 'passionate speech' of the Player in_Hamlet_,--a speech, be it observed, on a Roman subject? [241] And is itentirely an accident that parallels between Seneca and Shakespeare seemto be more frequent in _Macbeth_ than in any other of his undoubtedlygenuine works except perhaps _Richard III. _, a tragedy unquestionablyinfluenced either by Seneca or by English Senecan plays? [242] If thereis anything in these suggestions, and if we suppose that Shakespearemeant to give to his play a certain classical tinge, he might naturallycarry out this idea in respect to the characters, as well as in otherrespects, by concentrating almost the whole interest on the importantfigures and leaving the others comparatively shadowy. 4_Macbeth_ being more simple than the other tragedies, and broader andmore massive in effect, three passages in it are of great importance assecuring variety in tone, and also as affording relief from the feelingsexcited by the Witch-scenes and the principal characters. They are thepassage where the Porter appears, the conversation between Lady Macduffand her little boy, and the passage where Macduff receives the news ofthe slaughter of his wife and babes. Yet the first of these, we are toldeven by Coleridge, is unworthy of Shakespeare and is not his; and thesecond, with the rest of the scene which contains it, appears to beusually omitted in stage representations of _Macbeth_. I question if either this scene or the exhibition of Macduff's grief isrequired to heighten our abhorrence of Macbeth's cruelty. They have atechnical value in helping to give the last stage of the action the formof a conflict between Macbeth and Macduff. But their chief function isof another kind. It is to touch the heart with a sense of beauty andpathos, to open the springs of love and of tears. Shakespeare is lovedfor the sweetness of his humanity, and because he makes this kind ofappeal with such irresistible persuasion; and the reason why _Macbeth_,though admired as much as any work of his, is scarcely loved, is thatthe characters who predominate cannot make this kind of appeal, and atno point are able to inspire unmingled sympathy. The two passages inquestion supply this want in such measure as Shakespeare thoughtadvisable in _Macbeth_, and the play would suffer greatly from theirexcision. The second, on the stage, is extremely moving, and Macbeth'sreception of the news of his wife's death may be intended to recall itby way of contrast. The first brings a relief even greater, because herethe element of beauty is more marked, and because humour is mingled withpathos. In both we escape from the oppression of huge sins andsufferings into the presence of the wholesome affections of unambitioushearts; and, though both scenes are painful and one dreadful, oursympathies can flow unchecked. [243]Lady Macduff is a simple wife and mother, who has no thought foranything beyond her home. Her love for her children shows her at oncethat her husband's flight exposes them to terrible danger. She is in anagony of fear for them, and full of indignation against him. It does noteven occur to her that he has acted from public spirit, or that there issuch a thing. What had he done to make him fly the land? He must have been mad to do it. He fled for fear. He does not love hiswife and children. He is a traitor. The poor soul is almost besideherself--and with too good reason. But when the murderer bursts in withthe question 'Where is your husband? ' she becomes in a moment the wife,and the great noble's wife: I hope, in no place so unsanctified Where such as thou may'st find him. What did Shakespeare mean us to think of Macduff's flight, for whichMacduff has been much blamed by others beside his wife? Certainly notthat fear for himself, or want of love for his family, had anything todo with it. His love for his country, so strongly marked in the scenewith Malcolm, is evidently his one motive. He is noble, wise, judicious, and best knows The fits o' the season,says Ross. That his flight was 'noble' is beyond doubt. That it was notwise or judicious in the interest of his family is no less clear. Butthat does not show that it was wrong; and, even if it were, to representits consequences as a judgment on him for his want of due considerationis equally monstrous and ludicrous. [244] The further question whether hedid fail in due consideration, or whether for his country's sake hedeliberately risked a danger which he fully realised, would inShakespeare's theatre have been answered at once by Macduff's expressionand demeanour on hearing Malcolm's words, Why in that rawness left you wife and child, Those precious motives, those strong knots of love, Without leave-taking? It cannot be decided with certainty from the mere text; but, withoutgoing into the considerations on each side, I may express the opinionthat Macduff knew well what he was doing, and that he fled withoutleave-taking for fear his purpose should give way. Perhaps he said tohimself, with Coriolanus, Not of a woman's tenderness to be, Requires nor child nor woman's face to see. Little Macduff suggests a few words on Shakespeare's boys (there arescarcely any little girls). It is somewhat curious that nearly all ofthem appear in tragic or semi-tragic dramas. I remember but twoexceptions: little William Page, who said his _Hic, haec, hoc_ to SirHugh Evans; and the page before whom Falstaff walked like a sow thathath overwhelmed all her litter but one; and it is to be feared thateven this page, if he is the Boy of _Henry V. _, came to an ill end,being killed with the luggage. So wise so young, they say, do ne'er live long,as Richard observed of the little Prince of Wales. Of too many of thesechildren (some of the 'boys,' _e. g. _ those in _Cymbeline_, are lads, notchildren) the saying comes true. They are pathetic figures, the more sobecause they so often appear in company with their unhappy mothers, andcan never be thought of apart from them. Perhaps Arthur is even thefirst creation in which Shakespeare's power of pathos showed itselfmature;[245] and the last of his children, Mamillius, assuredly provesthat it never decayed. They are almost all of them noble figures,too,--affectionate, frank, brave, high-spirited, 'of an open and freenature' like Shakespeare's best men. And almost all of them, again, areamusing and charming as well as pathetic; comical in their mingledacuteness and _naïveté_, charming in their confidence in themselves andthe world, and in the seriousness with which they receive the jocosityof their elders, who commonly address them as strong men, greatwarriors, or profound politicians. Little Macduff exemplifies most of these remarks. There is nothing inthe scene of a transcendent kind, like the passage about Mamillius'never-finished 'Winter's Tale' of the man who dwelt by a churchyard, orthe passage about his death, or that about little Marcius and thebutterfly, or the audacity which introduces him, at the supreme momentof the tragedy, outdoing the appeals of Volumnia and Virgilia by thestatement, 'A shall not tread on me: I'll run away till I'm bigger, but then I'll fight. Still one does not easily forget little Macduff's delightful andwell-justified confidence in his ability to defeat his mother inargument; or the deep impression she made on him when she spoke of hisfather as a 'traitor'; or his immediate response when he heard themurderer call his father by the same name,-- Thou liest, thou shag-haired villain. Nor am I sure that, if the son of Coriolanus had been murdered, his lastwords to his mother would have been, 'Run away, I pray you. 'I may add two remarks. The presence of this child is one of the thingsin which _Macbeth_ reminds us of _Richard III. _ And he is perhaps theonly person in the tragedy who provokes a smile. I say 'perhaps,' forthough the anxiety of the Doctor to escape from the company of hispatient's husband makes one smile, I am not sure that it was meant to. 5The Porter does not make me smile: the moment is too terrific. He isgrotesque; no doubt the contrast he affords is humorous as well asghastly; I dare say the groundlings roared with laughter at his coarsestremarks. But they are not comic enough to allow one to forget for amoment what has preceded and what must follow. And I am far fromcomplaining of this. I believe that it is what Shakespeare intended, andthat he despised the groundlings if they laughed. Of course he couldhave written without the least difficulty speeches five times ashumorous; but he knew better. The Grave-diggers make us laugh: the oldCountryman who brings the asps to Cleopatra makes us smile at least. Butthe Grave-digger scene does not come at a moment of extreme tension; andit is long. Our distress for Ophelia is not so absorbing that we refuseto be interested in the man who digs her grave, or even continuethroughout the long conversation to remember always with pain that thegrave is hers. It is fitting, therefore, that he should be madedecidedly humorous. The passage in _Antony and Cleopatra_ is much nearerto the passage in _Macbeth_, and seems to have been forgotten by thosewho say that there is nothing in Shakespeare resembling thatpassage. [246] The old Countryman comes at a moment of tragic exaltation,and the dialogue is appropriately brief. But the moment, though tragic,is emphatically one of exaltation. We have not been feeling horror, norare we feeling a dreadful suspense. We are going to see Cleopatra die,but she is to die gloriously and to triumph over Octavius. And thereforeour amusement at the old Countryman and the contrast he affords to thesehigh passions, is untroubled, and it was right to make him really comic. But the Porter's case is quite different. We cannot forget how theknocking that makes him grumble sounded to Macbeth, or that within a fewminutes of his opening the gate Duncan will be discovered in his blood;nor can we help feeling that in pretending to be porter of hell-gate heis terribly near the truth. To give him language so humorous that itwould ask us almost to lose the sense of these things would have been afatal mistake,--the kind of mistake that means want of dramaticimagination. And that was not the sort of error into which Shakespearefell. To doubt the genuineness of the passage, then, on the ground that it isnot humorous enough for Shakespeare, seems to me to show this want. Itis to judge the passage as though it were a separate composition,instead of conceiving it in the fulness of its relations to itssurroundings in a stage-play. Taken by itself, I admit, it would bear noindubitable mark of Shakespeare's authorship, not even in the phrase'the primrose way to the everlasting bonfire,' which Coleridge thoughtShakespeare might have added to an interpolation of 'the players. ' Andif there were reason (as in my judgment there is not) to suppose thatShakespeare thus permitted an interpolation, or that he collaboratedwith another author, I could believe that he left 'the players' or hiscollaborator to write the words of the passage. But that anyone exceptthe author of the scene of Duncan's murder _conceived_ the passage, isincredible. [247] * * * * *The speeches of the Porter, a low comic character, are in prose. So isthe letter of Macbeth to his wife. In both these cases Shakespearefollows his general rule or custom. The only other prose-speeches occurin the sleep-walking scene, and here the use of prose may seem strange. For in great tragic scenes we expect the more poetic medium ofexpression, and this is one of the most famous of such scenes. Besides,unless I mistake, Lady Macbeth is the only one of Shakespeare's greattragic characters who on a last appearance is denied the dignity ofverse. Yet in this scene also he adheres to his custom. Somnambulism is anabnormal condition, and it is his general rule to assign prose topersons whose state of mind is abnormal. Thus, to illustrate from thesefour plays, Hamlet when playing the madman speaks prose, but insoliloquy, in talking with Horatio, and in pleading with his mother, hespeaks verse. [248] Ophelia in her madness either sings snatches of songsor speaks prose. Almost all Lear's speeches, after he has becomedefinitely insane, are in prose: where he wakes from sleep recovered,the verse returns. The prose enters with that speech which closes withhis trying to tear off his clothes; but he speaks in verse--some of itvery irregular--in the Timon-like speeches where his intellect suddenlyin his madness seems to regain the force of his best days (IV. vi. ). Othello, in IV. i. , speaks in verse till the moment when Iago tells himthat Cassio has confessed. There follow ten lines of prose--exclamationsand mutterings of bewildered horror--and he falls to the groundunconscious. The idea underlying this custom of Shakespeare's evidently is that theregular rhythm of verse would be inappropriate where the mind issupposed to have lost its balance and to be at the mercy of chanceimpressions coming from without (as sometimes with Lear), or of ideasemerging from its unconscious depths and pursuing one another across itspassive surface. The somnambulism of Lady Macbeth is such a condition. There is no rational connection in the sequence of images and ideas. Thesight of blood on her hand, the sound of the clock striking the hour forDuncan's murder, the hesitation of her husband before that hour came,the vision of the old man in his blood, the idea of the murdered wife ofMacduff, the sight of the hand again, Macbeth's 'flaws and starts' atthe sight of Banquo's ghost, the smell on her hand, the washing of handsafter Duncan's murder again, her husband's fear of the buried Banquo,the sound of the knocking at the gate--these possess her, one afteranother, in this chance order. It is not much less accidental than theorder of Ophelia's ideas; the great difference is that with Opheliatotal insanity has effaced or greatly weakened the emotional force ofthe ideas, whereas to Lady Macbeth each new image or perception comesladen with anguish. There is, again, scarcely a sign of the exaltationof disordered imagination; we are conscious rather of an intensesuffering which forces its way into light against resistance, and speaksa language for the most part strikingly bare in its diction and simplein its construction. This language stands in strong contrast with thatof Macbeth in the surrounding scenes, full of a feverish and almostfurious excitement, and seems to express a far more desolating misery. The effect is extraordinarily impressive. The soaring pride and power ofLady Macbeth's first speeches return on our memory, and the change isfelt with a breathless awe. Any attempt, even by Shakespeare, to drawout the moral enfolded in this awe, would but weaken it. For the moment,too, all the language of poetry--even of Macbeth's poetry--seems to betouched with unreality, and these brief toneless sentences seem the onlyvoice of truth. [249]FOOTNOTES:[Footnote 227: So Mrs. Siddons is said to have given the passage. ][Footnote 228: Surely the usual interpretation of 'We fail? ' as aquestion of contemptuous astonishment, is right. 'We fail! ' givespractically the same sense, but alters the punctuation of the first twoFolios. In either case, 'But,' I think, means 'Only. ' On the other handthe proposal to read 'We fail. ' with a full stop, as expressive ofsublime acceptance of the possibility, seems to me, however attractiveat first sight, quite out of harmony with Lady Macbeth's mood throughoutthese scenes. ][Footnote 229: See Note DD. ][Footnote 230: It is not new. ][Footnote 231: The words about Lady Macduff are of course significant ofnatural human feeling, and may have been introduced expressly to markit, but they do not, I think, show any fundamental change in LadyMacbeth, for at no time would she have suggested or approved a_purposeless_ atrocity. It is perhaps characteristic that this humanfeeling should show itself most clearly in reference to an act for whichshe was not directly responsible, and in regard to which therefore shedoes not feel the instinct of self-assertion. ][Footnote 232: The tendency to sentimentalise Lady Macbeth is partly dueto Mrs. Siddons's fancy that she was a small, fair, blue-eyed woman,'perhaps even fragile. ' Dr. Bucknill, who was unaquainted with thisfancy, independently determined that she was 'beautiful and delicate,''unoppressed by weight of flesh,' 'probably small,' but 'a tawny orbrown blonde,' with grey eyes: and Brandes affirms that she was lean,slight, and hard. They know much more than Shakespeare, who tells usabsolutely nothing on these subjects. That Lady Macbeth, after takingpart in a murder, was so exhausted as to faint, will hardly demonstrateher fragility. That she must have been blue-eyed, fair, or red-haired,because she was a Celt, is a bold inference, and it is an idle dreamthat Shakespeare had any idea of making her or her husbandcharacteristically Celtic. The only evidence ever offered to prove thatshe was small is the sentence, 'All the perfumes of Arabia will notsweeten this little hand'; and Goliath might have called his hand'little' in contrast with all the perfumes of Arabia. One might as wellpropose to prove that Othello was a small man by quoting, I have seen the day, That, with this little arm and this good sword, I have made my way through more impediments Than twenty times your stop. The reader is at liberty to imagine Lady Macbeth's person in the waythat pleases him best, or to leave it, as Shakespeare very likely did,unimagined. Perhaps it may be well to add that there is not the faintest trace inthe play of the idea occasionally met with, and to some extent embodiedin Madame Bernhardt's impersonation of Lady Macbeth, that her hold uponher husband lay in seductive attractions deliberately exercised. Shakespeare was not unskilled or squeamish in indicating such ideas. ][Footnote 233: That it is Macbeth who feels the harmony between thedesolation of the heath and the figures who appear on it is acharacteristic touch. ][Footnote 234: So, in Holinshed, 'Banquho jested with him and sayde, nowMakbeth thou haste obtayned those things which the twoo former sistersprophesied, there remayneth onely for thee to purchase that which thethird sayd should come to passe. '][Footnote 235: =doubts. ][Footnote 236: =design. ][Footnote 237: 'tis much he dares, And, to that dauntless temper of his mind, He hath a wisdom that doth guide his valour To act in safety. ][Footnote 238: So when he hears that Fleance has escaped he is not muchtroubled (III. iv. 29): the worm that's fled Hath nature that in time will venom breed, No teeth for the present. I have repeated above what I have said before, because the meaning ofMacbeth's soliloquy is frequently misconceived. ][Footnote 239: Virgilia in _Coriolanus_ is a famous example. She speaksabout thirty-five lines. ][Footnote 240: The percentage of prose is, roughly, in _Hamlet_ 30-2/3,in _Othello_ 16-1/3, in _King Lear_ 27-1/2, in _Macbeth_ 8-1/2. ][Footnote 241: Cf. Note F. There are also in _Macbeth_ several shorterpassages which recall the Player's speech. Cf. 'Fortune . . . showed likea rebel's whore' (I. ii. 14) with 'Out! out! thou strumpet Fortune! ' Theform 'eterne' occurs in Shakespeare only in _Macbeth_, III. ii. 38, andin the 'proof eterne' of the Player's speech. Cf. 'So, as a paintedtyrant, Pyrrhus stood,' with _Macbeth_, V. viii. 26; 'the ruggedPyrrhus, like the Hyrcanian beast,' with 'the rugged Russian bear . . . orthe Hyrcan tiger' (_Macbeth_, III. iv. 100); 'like a neutral to his willand matter' with _Macbeth_, I. v. 47. The words 'Till he unseam'd himfrom the nave to the chaps,' in the Serjeant's speech, recall the words'Then from the navel to the throat at once He ript old Priam,' in _DidoQueen of Carthage_, where these words follow those others, about Priamfalling with the mere wind of Pyrrhus' sword, which seem to havesuggested 'the whiff and wind of his fell sword' in the Player'sspeech. ][Footnote 242: See Cunliffe, _The Influence of Seneca on ElizabethanTragedy_. The most famous of these parallels is that between 'Will allgreat Neptune's Ocean,' etc. , and the following passages: Quis eluet me Tanais? aut quae barbaris Maeotis undis Pontico incumbens mari? Non ipse toto magnus Oceano pater Tantum expiarit sceleris. (_Hipp. _ 715. ) Quis Tanais, aut quis Nilus, aut quis Persica Violentus unda Tigris, aut Rhenus ferox, Tagusve Ibera turbidus gaza fluens, Abluere dextram poterit? Arctoum licet Maeotis in me gelida transfundat mare, Et tota Tethys per meas currat manus, Haerebit altum facinus. (_Herc. Furens_, 1323. )(The reader will remember Othello's 'Pontic sea' with its 'violentpace. ') Medea's incantation in Ovid's _Metamorphoses_, vii. 197 ff. ,which certainly suggested Prospero's speech, _Tempest_, V. i. 33 ff. ,should be compared with Seneca, _Herc. Oet. _, 452 ff. , 'Artibusmagicis,' etc. It is of course highly probable that Shakespeare readsome Seneca at school. I may add that in the _Hippolytus_, beside thepassage quoted above, there are others which might have furnished himwith suggestions. Cf. for instance _Hipp. _, 30 ff. , with the lines aboutthe Spartan hounds in _Mids. Night's Dream_, IV. i. 117 ff. , andHippolytus' speech, beginning 483, with the Duke's speech in _As YouLike It_, II. i. ][Footnote 243: Cf. Coleridge's note on the Lady Macduff scene. ][Footnote 244: It is nothing to the purpose that Macduff himself says, Sinful Macduff, They were all struck for thee! naught that I am, Not for their own demerits, but for mine, Fell slaughter on their souls. There is no reason to suppose that the sin and demerit he speaks of isthat of leaving his home. And even if it were, it is Macduff thatspeaks, not Shakespeare, any more than Shakespeare speaks in thepreceding sentence, Did heaven look on, And would not take their part? And yet Brandes (ii. 104) hears in these words 'the voice of revolt . . . that sounds later through the despairing philosophy of _King Lear_. ' Itsounds a good deal earlier too; _e. g. _ in _Tit. And. _, IV. i. 81, and _2Henry VI. _, II. i. 154. The idea is a commonplace of Elizabethantragedy. ][Footnote 245: And the idea that it was the death of his son Hamnet,aged eleven, that brought this power to maturity is one of the moreplausible attempts to find in his dramas a reflection of his privatehistory. It implies however as late a date as 1596 for _King John_. ][Footnote 246: Even if this were true, the retort is obvious thatneither is there anything resembling the murder-scene in _Macbeth_. ][Footnote 247: I have confined myself to the single aspect of thisquestion on which I had what seemed something new to say. ProfessorHales's defence of the passage on fuller grounds, in the admirable paperreprinted in his _Notes and Essays on Shakespeare_, seems to me quiteconclusive. I may add two notes. (1) The references in the Porter'sspeeches to 'equivocation,' which have naturally, and probably rightly,been taken as allusions to the Jesuit Garnet's appeal to the doctrine ofequivocation in defence of his perjury when, on trial for participationin the Gunpowder Plot, do not stand alone in _Macbeth_. The laterprophecies of the Witches Macbeth calls 'the equivocation of the fiendThat lies like truth' (V. v. |
43); and the Porter's remarks about theequivocator who 'could swear in both the scales against either scale,who committed treason enough for God's sake, yet could not equivocate toheaven,' may be compared with the following dialogue (IV. ii. 45): _Son. _ What is a traitor? _Lady Macduff. _ Why, one that swears and lies. _Son. _ And be all traitors that do so? _Lady Macduff. _ Everyone that does so is a traitor, and must be hanged. Garnet, as a matter of fact, _was_ hanged in May, 1606; and it is to befeared that the audience applauded this passage. (2) The Porter's soliloquy on the different applicants for admittancehas, in idea and manner, a marked resemblance to Pompey's soliloquy onthe inhabitants of the prison, in _Measure for Measure_, IV. iii. 1 ff. ;and the dialogue between him and Abhorson on the 'mystery' of hanging(IV. ii. 22 ff. ) is of just the same kind as the Porter's dialogue withMacduff about drink. ][Footnote 248: In the last Act, however, he speaks in verse even in thequarrel with Laertes at Ophelia's grave. It would be plausible toexplain this either from his imitating what he thinks the rant ofLaertes, or by supposing that his 'towering passion' made him forget toact the madman. But in the final scene also he speaks in verse in thepresence of all. This again might be accounted for by saying that he issupposed to be in a lucid interval, as indeed his own language at 239ff. implies. But the probability is that Shakespeare's real reason forbreaking his rule here was simply that he did not choose to depriveHamlet of verse on his last appearance. I wonder the disuse of prose inthese two scenes has not been observed, and used as an argument, bythose who think that Hamlet, with the commission in his pocket, is nowresolute. ][Footnote 249: The verse-speech of the Doctor, which closes this scene,lowers the tension towards that of the next scene. His introductoryconversation with the Gentlewoman is written in prose (sometimes verynear verse), partly, perhaps, from its familiar character, but chieflybecause Lady Macbeth is to speak in prose. ]NOTE A. EVENTS BEFORE THE OPENING OF THE ACTION IN _HAMLET_. In Hamlet's first soliloquy he speaks of his father as being 'but twomonths dead,--nay, not so much, not two. ' He goes on to refer to thelove between his father and mother, and then says (I. ii. 145): and yet, within a month-- Let me not think on't--Frailty, thy name is woman! -- A little month, or ere those shoes were old With which she follow'd my poor father's body, Like Niobe, all tears, why she, even she-- O God! a beast, that wants discourse of reason, Would have mourn'd longer--married with my uncle. It seems hence to be usually assumed that at this time--the time whenthe action begins--Hamlet's mother has been married a little less than amonth. On this assumption difficulties, however, arise, though I have not foundthem referred to. Why has the Ghost waited nearly a month since themarriage before showing itself? Why has the King waited nearly a monthbefore appearing in public for the first time, as he evidently does inthis scene? And why has Laertes waited nearly a month since thecoronation before asking leave to return to France (I. ii. 53)? To this it might be replied that the marriage and the coronation wereseparated by some weeks; that, while the former occurred nearly a monthbefore the time of this scene, the latter has only just taken place; andthat what the Ghost cannot bear is, not the mere marriage, but theaccession of an incestuous murderer to the throne. But anyone who willread the King's speech at the opening of the scene will certainlyconclude that the marriage has only just been celebrated, and also thatit is conceived as involving the accession of Claudius to the throne. Gertrude is described as the 'imperial jointress' of the State, and theKing says that the lords consented to the marriage, but makes noseparate mention of his election. The solution of the difficulty is to be found in the lines quoted above. The marriage followed, within a month, not the _death_ of Hamlet'sfather, but the _funeral_. And this makes all clear. The death happenednearly two months ago. The funeral did not succeed it immediately, but(say) in a fortnight or three weeks. And the marriage and coronation,coming rather less than a month after the funeral, have just takenplace. So that the Ghost has not waited at all; nor has the King, norLaertes. On this hypothesis it follows that Hamlet's agonised soliloquy is notuttered nearly a month after the marriage which has so horrified him,but quite soon after it (though presumably he would know rather earlierwhat was coming). And from this hypothesis we get also a partialexplanation of two other difficulties, (_a_) When Horatio, at the end ofthe soliloquy, enters and greets Hamlet, it is evident that he andHamlet have not recently met at Elsinore. Yet Horatio came to Elsinorefor the funeral (I. ii. 176). Now even if the funeral took place somethree weeks ago, it seems rather strange that Hamlet, however absorbedin grief and however withdrawn from the Court, has not met Horatio; butif the funeral took place some seven weeks ago, the difficulty isconsiderably greater. (_b_) We are twice told that Hamlet has '_oflate_' been seeking the society of Ophelia and protesting his love forher (I. iii. 91, 99). It always seemed to me, on the usual view of thechronology, rather difficult (though not, of course, impossible) tounderstand this, considering the state of feeling produced in him by hismother's marriage, and in particular the shock it appears to have givento his faith in woman. But if the marriage has only just been celebratedthe words 'of late' would naturally refer to a time before it. This timepresumably would be subsequent to the death of Hamlet's father, but itis not so hard to fancy that Hamlet may have sought relief from mere_grief_ in his love for Ophelia. But here another question arises; May not the words 'of late' include,or even wholly refer to,[250] a time prior to the death of Hamlet'sfather? And this question would be answered universally, I suppose, inthe negative, on the ground that Hamlet was not at Court but atWittenberg when his father died. I will deal with this idea in aseparate note, and will only add here that, though it is quite possiblethat Shakespeare never imagined any of these matters clearly, and soproduced these unimportant difficulties, we ought not to assume thiswithout examination. FOOTNOTES:[Footnote 250: This is intrinsically not probable, and is the moreimprobable because in Q1 Hamlet's letter to Ophelia (which must havebeen written before the action of the play begins) is signed 'Thine everthe most unhappy Prince _Hamlet_. ' 'Unhappy' _might_ be meant todescribe an unsuccessful lover, but it probably shows that the letterwas written after his father's death. ]NOTE B. WHERE WAS HAMLET AT THE TIME OF HIS FATHER'S DEATH? The answer will at once be given: 'At the University of Wittenberg. Forthe king says to him (I. ii. 112): For your intent In going back to school in Wittenberg, It is most retrograde to our desire. The Queen also prays him not to go to Wittenberg: and he consents toremain. 'Now I quite agree that the obvious interpretation of this passage isthat universally accepted, that Hamlet, like Horatio, was at Wittenbergwhen his father died; and I do not say that it is wrong. But it involvesdifficulties, and ought not to be regarded as certain. (1) One of these difficulties has long been recognised. Hamlet,according to the evidence of Act V. , Scene i. , is thirty years of age;and that is a very late age for a university student. One solution isfound (by those who admit that Hamlet _was_ thirty) in a passage inNash's _Pierce Penniless_: 'For fashion sake some [Danes] will put theirchildren to schoole, but they set them not to it till they are fourteeneyears old, so that you shall see a great boy with a beard learne hisA. B. C. and sit weeping under the rod when he is thirty years old. 'Another solution, as we saw (p. 105), is found in Hamlet's character. Heis a philosopher who lingers on at the University from love of hisstudies there. (2) But there is a more formidable difficulty, which seems to haveescaped notice. Horatio certainly came from Wittenberg to the funeral. And observe how he and Hamlet meet (I. ii. 160). _Hor. _ Hail to your lordship! _Ham. _ I am glad to see you well: Horatio,--or I do forget myself. _Hor. _ The same, my lord, and your poor servant ever. _Ham. _ Sir, my good friend; I'll change that name with you: And what make you from Wittenberg, Horatio? Marcellus? _Mar. _ My good lord-- _Ham. _ I am very glad to see you. Good even, sir. [251] But what, in faith, make you from Wittenberg? _Hor. _ A truant disposition, good my lord. _Ham. _ I would not hear your enemy say so, Nor shall you do my ear that violence, To make it truster of your own report Against yourself: I know you are no truant. But what is your affair in Elsinore? We'll teach you to drink deep ere you depart. _Hor. _ My lord, I came to see your father's funeral. _Ham. _ I pray thee, do not mock me, fellow-student; I think it was to see my mother's wedding. Is not this passing strange? Hamlet and Horatio are supposed to befellow-students at Wittenberg, and to have left it for Elsinore lessthan two months ago. Yet Hamlet hardly recognises Horatio at first, andspeaks as if he himself lived at Elsinore (I refer to his bitter jest,'We'll teach you to drink deep ere you depart'). Who would dream thatHamlet had himself just come from Wittenberg, if it were not for theprevious words about his going back there? How can this be explained on the usual view? Only, I presume, bysupposing that Hamlet is so sunk in melancholy that he really doesalmost 'forget himself'[252] and forget everything else, so that heactually is in doubt who Horatio is. And this, though not impossible, ishard to believe. 'Oh no,' it may be answered, 'for he is doubtful about Marcellus too;and yet, if he were living at Elsinore, he must have seen Marcellusoften. ' But he is _not_ doubtful about Marcellus. That note ofinterrogation after 'Marcellus' is Capell's conjecture: it is not in anyQuarto or any Folio. The fact is that he knows perfectly well the manwho lives at Elsinore, but is confused by the appearance of the friendwho comes from Wittenberg. (3) Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are sent for, to wean Hamlet from hismelancholy and to worm his secret out of him, because he has known themfrom his youth and is fond of them (II. ii. 1 ff. ). They come _to_Denmark (II. ii. 247 f. ): they come therefore _from_ some other country. Where do they come from? They are, we hear, Hamlet's 'school-fellows'(III. iv. 202). And in the first Quarto we are directly told that theywere with him at Wittenberg: _Ham. _ What, Gilderstone, and Rossencraft, Welcome, kind school-fellows, to Elsanore. _Gil. _ We thank your grace, and would be very glad You were as when we were at Wittenberg. Now let the reader look at Hamlet's first greeting of them in thereceived text, and let him ask himself whether it is the greeting of aman to fellow-students whom he left two months ago: whether it is notrather, like his greeting of Horatio, the welcome of an oldfellow-student who has not seen his visitors for a considerable time(II. ii. 226 f. ). (4) Rosencrantz and Guildenstern tell Hamlet of the players who arecoming. He asks what players they are, and is told, 'Even those you werewont to take such delight in, the tragedians of the city. ' He asks, 'Dothey hold the same estimation they did when I was in the city? 'Evidently he has not been in the city for some time. And this is stillmore evident when the players come in, and he talks of one having growna beard, and another having perhaps cracked his voice, since they lastmet. What then is this city, where he has not been for some time, butwhere (it would appear) Rosencrantz and Guildenstern live? It is not inDenmark ('Comest thou to beard me in Denmark? '). It would seem to beWittenberg. [253]All these passages, it should be observed, are consistent with oneanother. And the conclusion they point to is that Hamlet has left theUniversity for some years and has been living at Court. This again isconsistent with his being thirty years of age, and with his beingmentioned as a soldier and a courtier as well as a scholar (III. i. 159). And it is inconsistent, I believe, with nothing in the play,unless with the mention of his 'going back to school in Wittenberg. ' Butit is not really inconsistent with that. The idea may quite well be thatHamlet, feeling it impossible to continue at Court after his mother'smarriage and Claudius' accession, thinks of the University where, yearsago, he was so happy, and contemplates a return to it. If this wereShakespeare's meaning he might easily fail to notice that the expression'going back to school in Wittenberg' would naturally suggest that Hamlethad only just left 'school. 'I do not see how to account for these passages except on thishypothesis. But it in its turn involves a certain difficulty. Horatio,Rosencrantz and Guildenstern seem to be of about the same age as Hamlet. How then do _they_ come to be at Wittenberg? I had thought that thisquestion might be answered in the following way. If 'the city' isWittenberg, Shakespeare would regard it as a place like London, and wemight suppose that Horatio, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were livingthere, though they had ceased to be students. But this can hardly betrue of Horatio, who, when he (to spare Hamlet's feelings) talks ofbeing 'a truant,' must mean a truant from his University. The onlysolution I can suggest is that, in the story or play which Shakespeareused, Hamlet and the others were all at the time of the murder youngstudents at Wittenberg, and that when he determined to make them oldermen (or to make Hamlet, at any rate, older), he did not take troubleenough to carry this idea through all the necessary detail, and so leftsome inconsistencies. But in any case the difficulty in the view which Isuggest seems to me not nearly so great as those which the usual viewhas to meet. [254]FOOTNOTES:[Footnote 251: These three words are evidently addressed to Bernardo. ][Footnote 252: Cf. Antonio in his melancholy (_Merchant of Venice_, I. i. 6), And such a want-wit sadness makes of me That I have much ado to know myself. ][Footnote 253: In _Der Bestrafte Brudermord_ it _is_ Wittenberg. Hamletsays to the actors: 'Were you not, a few years ago, at the University ofWittenberg? I think I saw you act there': Furness's _Variorum_, ii. 129. But it is very doubtful whether this play is anything but an adaptationand enlargement of _Hamlet_ as it existed in the stage represented byQ1. ][Footnote 254: It is perhaps worth while to note that in _Der BestrafteBrudermord_ Hamlet is said to have been 'in Germany' at the time of hisfather's murder. ]NOTE C. HAMLET'S AGE. The chief arguments on this question may be found in Furness's _VariorumHamlet_, vol. i. , pp. 391 ff. I will merely explain my position briefly. Even if the general impression I received from the play were that Hamletwas a youth of eighteen or twenty, I should feel quite unable to set itagainst the evidence of the statements in V. i. which show him to beexactly thirty, unless these statements seemed to be casual. But theyhave to my mind, on the contrary, the appearance of being expresslyinserted in order to fix Hamlet's age; and the fact that they differdecidedly from the statements in Q1 confirms that idea. So does the factthat the Player King speaks of having been married thirty years (III. ii. 165), where again the number differs from that in Q1. If V. i. did not contain those decisive statements, I believe myimpression as to Hamlet's age would be uncertain. His being severaltimes called 'young' would not influence me much (nor at all when he iscalled 'young' simply to distinguish him from his father, _as he is inthe very passage which shows him to be thirty_). But I think wenaturally take him to be about as old as Laertes, Rosencrantz andGuildenstern, and take them to be less than thirty. Further, thelanguage used by Laertes and Polonius to Ophelia in I. iii. wouldcertainly, by itself, lead one to imagine Hamlet as a good deal lessthan thirty; and the impression it makes is not, to me, altogethereffaced by the fact that Henry V. at his accession is said to be in 'thevery May-morn of his youth,'--an expression which corresponds closelywith those used by Laertes to Ophelia. In some passages, again, there isan air of boyish petulance. On the other side, however, we should haveto set (1) the maturity of Hamlet's thought; (2) his manner, on thewhole, to other men and to his mother, which, I think, is far fromsuggesting the idea of a mere youth; (3) such a passage as his words toHoratio at III. ii. 59 ff. , which imply that both he and Horatio haveseen a good deal of life (this passage has in Q1 nothing correspondingto the most significant lines). I have shown in Note B that it is veryunsafe to argue to Hamlet's youth from the words about his going back toWittenberg. On the whole I agree with Prof. Dowden that, apart from the statementsin V. i. , one would naturally take Hamlet to be a man of about five andtwenty. It has been suggested that in the old play Hamlet was a mere lad; thatShakespeare, when he began to work on it,[255] had not determined tomake Hamlet older; that, as he went on, he did so determine; and thatthis is the reason why the earlier part of the play makes (if it doesso) a different impression from the later. I see nothing very improbablein this idea, but I must point out that it is a mistake to appeal insupport of it to the passage in V. i. as found in Q1; for that passagedoes not in the least show that the author (if correctly reported)imagined Hamlet as a lad. I set out the statements in Q2 and Q1. Q2 says: (1) The grave-digger came to his business on the day when old Hamlet defeated Fortinbras: (2) On that day young Hamlet was born: (3) The grave-digger has, at the time of speaking, been sexton for thirty years: (4) Yorick's skull has been in the earth twenty-three years: (5) Yorick used to carry young Hamlet on his back. This is all explicit and connected, and yields the result that Hamlet isnow thirty. Q1 says: (1) Yorick's skull has been in the ground a dozen years: (2) It has been in the ground ever since old Hamlet overcame Fortinbras: (3) Yorick used to carry young Hamlet on his back. From this nothing whatever follows as to Hamlet's age, except that he ismore than twelve! [256] Evidently the writer (if correctly reported) hasno intention of telling us how old Hamlet is. That he did not imaginehim as very young appears from his making him say that he has noted'this seven year' (in Q2 'three years') that the toe of the peasantcomes near the heel of the courtier. The fact that the Player-King in Q1speaks of having been married forty years shows that here too the writerhas not any reference to Hamlet's age in his mind. [257]FOOTNOTES:[Footnote 255: Of course we do not know that he did work on it. ][Footnote 256: I find that I have been anticipated in this remark by H. Türck (_Jahrbuch_ for 1900, p. 267 ff. )][Footnote 257: I do not know if it has been observed that in the openingof the Player-King's speech, as given in Q2 and the Folio (it is quitedifferent in Q1), there seems to be a reminiscence of Greene's_Alphonsus King of Arragon_, Act IV. , lines 33 ff. (Dyce's _Greene andPeele_, p. 239): Thrice ten times Phoebus with his golden beams Hath compassed the circle of the sky, Thrice ten times Ceres hath her workmen hir'd, And fill'd her barns with fruitful crops of corn, Since first in priesthood I did lead my life. ]NOTE D. 'MY TABLES--MEET IT IS I SET IT DOWN. 'This passage has occasioned much difficulty, and to many readers seemseven absurd. And it has been suggested that it, with much thatimmediately follows it, was adopted by Shakespeare, with very littlechange, from the old play. It is surely in the highest degree improbable that, at such a criticalpoint, when he had to show the first effect on Hamlet of the disclosuresmade by the Ghost, Shakespeare would write slackly or be content withanything that did not satisfy his own imagination. But it is notsurprising that we should find some difficulty in following hisimagination at such a point. Let us look at the whole speech. The Ghost leaves Hamlet with the words,'Adieu, adieu! Hamlet, remember me'; and he breaks out: O all you host of heaven! O earth! what else? And shall I couple hell? O, fie! Hold, hold, my heart; And you, my sinews, grow not instant old, But bear me stiffly up. Remember thee! Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat In this distracted globe. Remember thee! Yea, from the table of my memory I'll wipe away all trivial fond records, All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past, That youth and observation copied there; And thy commandment all alone shall live Within the book and volume of my brain, Unmix'd with baser matter: yes, by heaven! O most pernicious woman! O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain! My tables--meet it is I set it down, That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain; At least I'm sure it may be so in Denmark: [_Writing_ So, uncle, there you are. Now to my word; It is 'Adieu, adieu! remember me. ' I have sworn 't. The man who speaks thus was, we must remember, already well-nighoverwhelmed with sorrow and disgust when the Ghost appeared to him. Hehas now suffered a tremendous shock. He has learned that his mother wasnot merely what he supposed but an adulteress, and that his father wasmurdered by her paramour. This knowledge too has come to him in such away as, quite apart from the _matter_ of the communication, might makeany human reason totter. And, finally, a terrible charge has been laidupon him. Is it strange, then, that he should say what is strange? Why,there would be nothing to wonder at if his mind collapsed on the spot. Now it is just this that he himself fears. In the midst of the firsttremendous outburst, he checks himself suddenly with the exclamation 'O,fie! ' (cf. the precisely similar use of this interjection, II. ii. 617). He must not let himself feel: he has to live. He must not let his heartbreak in pieces ('hold' means 'hold together'), his muscles turn intothose of a trembling old man, his brain dissolve--as they threaten in aninstant to do. For, if they do, how can he--_remember_? He goes onreiterating this 'remember' (the 'word' of the Ghost). He is, literally,afraid that he will _forget_--that his mind will lose the messageentrusted to it. Instinctively, then, he feels that, if he _is_ toremember, he must wipe from his memory everything it already contains;and the image of his past life rises before him, of all his joy inthought and observation and the stores they have accumulated in hismemory. All that is done with for ever: nothing is to remain for him onthe 'table' but the command, 'remember me. ' He swears it; 'yes, byheaven! ' That done, suddenly the repressed passion breaks out, and, mostcharacteristically, he thinks _first_ of his mother; then of his uncle,the smooth-spoken scoundrel who has just been smiling on him and callinghim 'son. ' And in bitter desperate irony he snatches his tables from hisbreast (they are suggested to him by the phrases he has just used,'table of my memory,' 'book and volume'). After all, he _will_ use themonce again; and, perhaps with a wild laugh, he writes with tremblingfingers his last observation: 'One may smile, and smile, and be avillain. 'But that, I believe, is not merely a desperate jest. It springs fromthat _fear of forgetting_. A time will come, he feels, when all thisappalling experience of the last half-hour will be incredible to him,will seem a mere nightmare, will even, conceivably, quite vanish fromhis mind. Let him have something in black and white that will bring itback and _force_ him to remember and believe. What is there so unnaturalin this, if you substitute a note-book or diary for the 'tables'? [258]But why should he write that particular note, and not rather his 'word,''Adieu, adieu! remember me'? I should answer, first, that a grotesquejest at such a moment is thoroughly characteristic of Hamlet (see p. 151), and that the jocose 'So, uncle, there you are! ' shows his state ofmind; and, secondly, that loathing of his uncle is vehement in histhought at this moment. Possibly, too, he might remember that 'tables'are stealable, and that if the appearance of the Ghost should bereported, a mere observation on the smiling of villains could not betrayanything of his communication with the Ghost. What follows shows thatthe instinct of secrecy is strong in him. It seems likely, I may add, that Shakespeare here was influenced,consciously or unconsciously, by recollection of a place in _TitusAndronicus_ (IV. i. ). In that horrible play Chiron and Demetrius, afteroutraging Lavinia, cut out her tongue and cut off her hands, in orderthat she may be unable to reveal the outrage. She reveals it, however,by taking a staff in her mouth, guiding it with her arms, and writing inthe sand, 'Stuprum. Chiron. Demetrius. ' Titus soon afterwards says: I will go get a leaf of brass, And with a gad of steel will write these words, And lay it by. The angry northern wind Will blow these sands, like Sibyl's leaves, abroad, And where's your lesson then? Perhaps in the old _Hamlet_, which may have been a play something like_Titus Andronicus_, Hamlet at this point did write something of theGhost's message in his tables. In any case Shakespeare, whether he wrote_Titus Andronicus_ or only revised an older play on the subject, mightwell recall this incident, as he frequently reproduces other things inthat drama. FOOTNOTES:[Footnote 258: The reader will observe that this suggestion of a_further_ reason for his making the note may be rejected without therest of the interpretation being affected. ]NOTE E. THE GHOST IN THE CELLARAGE. It has been thought that the whole of the last part of I. v. , from the entrance of Horatio and Marcellus, follows the old play closely, and that Shakespeare is condescending to the groundlings. Here again, whether or no he took a suggestion from the old play, I see no reason to think that he wrote down to his public. So far as Hamlet's state of mind is concerned, there is not a trace of this. Anyone who has a difficulty in understanding it should read Coleridge's note. What appears grotesque is the part taken by the Ghost, and Hamlet's consequent removal from one part of the stage to another. But, as to the former, should we feel anything grotesque in the four injunctions 'Swear! ' if it were not that they come from under the stage--a fact which to an Elizabethan audience, perfectly indifferent to what is absurdly called stage illusion, was probably not in the least grotesque? And as to the latter, if we knew the Ghost-lore of the time better than we do, perhaps we should see nothing odd in Hamlet's insisting on moving away and proposing the oath afresh when the Ghost intervenes. But, further, it is to be observed that he does not merely propose the oath afresh. He first makes Horatio and Marcellus swear never to make known what they have _seen_. Then, on shifting his ground, he makes them swear never to speak of what they have _heard_. Then, moving again, he makes them swear that, if he should think fit to play the antic, they will give no sign of knowing aught of him. The oath is now complete; and, when the Ghost commands them to swear the last time, Hamlet suddenly becomes perfectly serious and bids it rest. [In Fletcher's _Woman's Prize_, V. iii. , a passage pointed out to me by Mr. C. J. Wilkinson, a man taking an oath shifts his ground. ] NOTE F. THE PLAYER'S SPEECH IN _HAMLET_. There are two extreme views about this speech. According to one, Shakespeare quoted it from some play, or composed it for the occasion, simply and solely in order to ridicule, through it, the bombastic style of dramatists contemporary with himself or slightly older; just as he ridicules in _2 Henry IV. _ Tamburlaine's rant about the kings who draw his chariot, or puts fragments of similar bombast into the mouth of Pistol. According to Coleridge, on the other hand, this idea is 'below criticism. ' No sort of ridicule was intended. 'The lines, as epic narrative, are superb. ' It is true that the language is 'too poetical--the language of lyric vehemence and epic pomp, and not of the drama'; but this is due to the fact that Shakespeare had to distinguish the style of the speech from that of his own dramatic dialogue. In essentials I think that what Coleridge says[259] is true. He goes too far, it seems to me, when he describes the language of the speech as merely 'too poetical'; for with much that is fine there is intermingled a good deal that, in epic as in drama, must be called bombast. But I do not believe Shakespeare meant it for bombast. I will briefly put the arguments which point to this conclusion. Warburton long ago stated some of them fully and cogently, but he misinterpreted here and there, and some arguments have to be added to his. 1. If the speech was meant to be ridiculous, it follows either that Hamlet in praising it spoke ironically, or that Shakespeare, in making Hamlet praise it sincerely, himself wrote ironically. And both these consequences are almost incredible. Let us see what Hamlet says. He asks the player to recite 'a passionate speech'; and, being requested to choose one, he refers to a speech he once heard the player declaim. This speech, he says, was never 'acted' or was acted only once; for the play pleased not the million. But he, and others whose opinion was of more importance than his, thought it an excellent play, well constructed, and composed with equal skill and temperance. One of these other judges commended it because it contained neither piquant indecencies nor affectations of phrase, but showed 'an honest method, as wholesome as sweet, and by very much more handsome than fine. '[260] In this play Hamlet 'chiefly loved' one speech; and he asks for a part of it. Let the reader now refer to the passage I have just summarised; let him consider its tone and manner; and let him ask himself if Hamlet can possibly be speaking ironically. I am sure he will answer No. And then let him observe what follows. The speech is declaimed. Polonius interrupting it with an objection to its length, Hamlet snubs him, bids the player proceed, and adds, 'He's for a jig or a tale of bawdry: or he sleeps. ' 'He,' that is, 'shares the taste of the million for sallets in the lines to make the matter savoury, and is wearied by an honest method. '[261] Polonius later interrupts again, for he thinks the emotion of the player too absurd; but Hamlet respects it; and afterwards, when he is alone (and therefore can hardly be ironical), in contrasting this emotion with his own insensibility, he betrays no consciousness that there was anything unfitting in the speech that caused it. So far I have chiefly followed Warburton, but there is an important point which seems not to have been observed. All Hamlet's praise of the speech is in the closest agreement with his conduct and words elsewhere. His later advice to the player (III. ii. ) is on precisely the same lines. He is to play to the judicious, not to the crowd, whose opinion is worthless. He is to observe, like the author of Aeneas' speech, the 'modesty' of nature. He must not tear a 'passion' to tatters, to split the ears of the incompetent, but in the very tempest of passion is to keep a temperance and smoothness. The million, we gather from the first passage, cares nothing for construction; and so, we learn in the second passage, the barren spectators want to laugh at the clown instead of attending to some necessary question of the play. Hamlet's hatred of exaggeration is marked in both passages. And so (as already pointed out, p. 133) in the play-scene, when his own lines are going to be delivered, he impatiently calls out to the actor to leave his damnable faces and begin; and at the grave of Ophelia he is furious with what he thinks the exaggeration of Laertes, burlesques his language, and breaks off with the words, Nay, an thou'lt mouth, I'll rant as well as thou. Now if Hamlet's praise of the Aeneas and Dido play and speech isironical, his later advice to the player must surely be ironical too:and who will maintain that? And if in the one passage Hamlet is seriousbut Shakespeare ironical, then in the other passage all those famousremarks about drama and acting, which have been cherished asShakespeare's by all the world, express the opposite of Shakespeare'sopinion: and who will maintain that? And if Hamlet and Shakespeare areboth serious--and nothing else is credible--then, to Hamlet andShakespeare, the speeches of Laertes and Hamlet at Ophelia's grave arerant, but the speech of Aeneas to Dido is not rant. Is it not evidentthat he meant it for an exalted narrative speech of 'passion,' in astyle which, though he may not have adopted it, he still approved anddespised the million for not approving,--a speech to be delivered withtemperance or modesty, but not too tamely neither? Is he not aiming hereto do precisely what Marlowe aimed to do when he proposed to lead theaudience From jigging veins of rhyming mother-wits, And such conceits as clownage keeps in pay,to 'stately' themes which beget 'high astounding terms'? And is itstrange that, like Marlowe in _Tamburlaine_, he adopted a style marredin places by that which _we_ think bombast, but which the author meantto be more 'handsome than fine'? 2. If this is so, we can easily understand how it comes about that thespeech of Aeneas contains lines which are unquestionably grand and freefrom any suspicion of bombast, and others which, though not free fromthat suspicion, are nevertheless highly poetic. To the first classcertainly belongs the passage beginning, 'But as we often see. ' To thesecond belongs the description of Pyrrhus, covered with blood that was Baked and impasted with the parching streets, That lend a tyrannous and damned light To their lord's murder;and again the picture of Pyrrhus standing like a tyrant in a picture,with his uplifted arm arrested in act to strike by the crash of thefalling towers of Ilium. It is surely impossible to say that these linesare _merely_ absurd and not in the least grand; and with them I shouldjoin the passage about Fortune's wheel, and the concluding lines. But how can the insertion of these passages possibly be explained on thehypothesis that Shakespeare meant the speech to be ridiculous? 3. 'Still,' it may be answered, 'Shakespeare _must_ have been consciousof the bombast in some of these passages. How could he help seeing it? And, if he saw it, he cannot have meant seriously to praise the speech. 'But why must he have seen it? Did Marlowe know when he wrotebombastically? Or Marston? Or Heywood? Does not Shakespeare elsewherewrite bombast? The truth is that the two defects of style in the speechare the very defects we do find in his writings. When he wished to makehis style exceptionally high and passionate he always ran some risk ofbombast. And he was even more prone to the fault which in this speechseems to me the more marked, a use of metaphors which sound to our ears'conceited' or grotesque. To me at any rate the metaphors in 'now is hetotal gules' and 'mincing with his sword her husband's limbs' are moredisturbing than any of the bombast. But, as regards this second defect,there are many places in Shakespeare worse than the speech of Aeneas;and, as regards the first, though in his undoubtedly genuine works thereis no passage so faulty, there is also no passage of quite the samespecies (for his narrative poems do not aim at epic grandeur), and thereare many passages where bombast of the same kind, though not of the samedegree, occurs. Let the reader ask himself, for instance, how the following lines wouldstrike him if he came on them for the first time out of their context: Whip me, ye devils, From the possession of this heavenly sight! Blow me about in winds! Roast me in sulphur! Wash me in steep-down gulfs of liquid fire! Are Pyrrhus's 'total gules' any worse than Duncan's 'silver skin lacedwith his golden blood,' or so bad as the chamberlains' daggers'unmannerly breech'd with gore'? [262] If 'to bathe in reeking wounds,'and 'spongy officers,' and even 'alarum'd by his sentinel the wolf,Whose howl's his watch,' and other such phrases in _Macbeth_, hadoccurred in the speech of Aeneas, we should certainly have been toldthat they were meant for burlesque. I open _Troilus and Cressida_(because, like the speech of Aeneas, it has to do with the story ofTroy), and I read, in a perfectly serious context (IV. v. 6 f. ): Thou, trumpet, there's thy purse. Now crack thy lungs, and split thy brazen pipe: Blow, villain, till thy sphered bias cheek Outswell the colic of puff'd Aquilon: Come, stretch thy chest, and let thy eyes spout blood; Thou blow'st for Hector. 'Splendid! ' one cries. Yes, but if you are told it is also bombastic,can you deny it? I read again (V. v. 7): bastard Margarelon Hath Doreus prisoner, And stands colossus-wise, waving his beam, Upon the pashed corses of the kings. Or, to turn to earlier but still undoubted works, Shakespeare wrote in_Romeo and Juliet_, here will I remain With worms that are thy chamber-maids;and in _King John_, And pick strong matter of revolt and wrath Out of the bloody finger-ends of John;and in _Lucrece_, And, bubbling from her breast, it doth divide In two slow rivers, that the crimson blood Circles her body in on every side, Who, like a late-sack'd island, vastly stood Bare and unpeopled in this fearful flood. Some of her blood still pure and red remain'd, And some look'd black, and that false Tarquin stain'd. Is it so very unlikely that the poet who wrote thus might, aiming at apeculiarly heightened and passionate style, write the speech of Aeneas? 4. But, pursuing this line of argument, we must go further. There isreally scarcely one idea, and there is but little phraseology, in thespeech that cannot be paralleled from Shakespeare's own works. He merelyexaggerates a little here what he has done elsewhere. I will concludethis Note by showing that this is so as regards almost all the passagesmost objected to, as well as some others. (1) 'The Hyrcanian beast' isMacbeth's 'Hyrcan tiger' (III. iv. 101), who also occurs in _3 Hen. VI. _I. iv. 155. (2) With 'total gules' Steevens compared _Timon_ IV. iii. 59(an undoubtedly Shakespearean passage), With man's blood paint the ground, gules, gules. (3) With 'baked and impasted' cf. _John_ III. iii. 42, 'If that surlyspirit melancholy Had baked thy blood. ' In the questionable _Tit. And. _V. ii. 201 we have, 'in that paste let their vile heads be baked' (apaste made of blood and bones, _ib. _ 188), and in the undoubted _RichardII. _ III. ii. 154 (quoted by Caldecott) Richard refers to the ground Which serves as paste and cover to our bones. (4) 'O'er-sized with coagulate gore' finds an exact parallel in the'blood-siz'd field' of the _Two Noble Kinsmen_, I. i. 99, a scene which,whether written by Shakespeare (as I fully believe) or by another poet,was certainly written in all seriousness. (5) 'With eyes likecarbuncles' has been much ridiculed, but Milton (_P. L. _ ix. 500) gives'carbuncle eyes' to Satan turned into a serpent (Steevens), and why arethey more outrageous than ruby lips and cheeks (_J. C. _ III. i. 260,_Macb. _ III. iv. 115, _Cym. _ II. ii. 17)? (6) Priam falling with themere wind of Pyrrhus's sword is paralleled, not only in _Dido Queen ofCarthage_, but in _Tr. and Cr. |
_ V. iii. 40 (Warburton). (7) With Pyrrhusstanding like a painted tyrant cf. _Macb. _ V. viii. 25 (Delius). (8) Theforging of Mars's armour occurs again in _Tr. and Cr. _ IV. v. 255, whereHector swears by the forge that stithied Mars his helm, just as Hamlethimself alludes to Vulcan's stithy (III. ii. 89). (9) The idea of'strumpet Fortune' is common: _e. g. _ _Macb. _ I. ii. 15, 'Fortune . . . show'd like a rebel's whore. ' (10) With the 'rant' about her wheelWarburton compares _Ant. and Cl. _ IV. xv. 43, where Cleopatra would rail so high That the false huswife Fortune break her wheel. (11. ) Pyrrhus minces with his sword Priam's limbs, and Timon (IV. iii. 122) bids Alcibiades 'mince' the babe without remorse. '[263]FOOTNOTES:[Footnote 259: It is impossible to tell whether Coleridge formed hisview independently, or adopted it from Schlegel. For there is no recordof his having expressed his opinion prior to the time of his readingSchlegel's _Lectures_; and, whatever he said to the contrary, hisborrowings from Schlegel are demonstrable. ][Footnote 260: Clark and Wright well compare Polonius' antithesis of'rich, not gaudy': though I doubt if 'handsome' implies richness. ][Footnote 261: Is it not possible that 'mobled queen,' to which Hamletseems to object, and which Polonius praises, is meant for an example ofthe second fault of affected phraseology, from which the play was saidto be free, and an instance of which therefore surprises Hamlet? ][Footnote 262: The extravagance of these phrases is doubtlessintentional (for Macbeth in using them is trying to act a part), but the_absurdity_ of the second can hardly be so. ][Footnote 263: Steevens observes that Heywood uses the phrase 'guledwith slaughter,' and I find in his _Iron Age_ various passagesindicating that he knew the speech of Aeneas (cf. p. 140 for anothersign that he knew _Hamlet_). The two parts of the _Iron Age_ werepublished in 1632, but are said, in the preface to the Second, to have'been long since writ. ' I refer to the pages of vol. 3 of Pearson's_Heywood_ (1874). (1) p. 329, Troilus 'lyeth imbak'd In his cold blood. '(2) p. 341, of Achilles' armour: _Vulcan_ that wrought it out of gadds of Steele With his _Ciclopian_ hammers, never made Such noise upon his Anvile forging it, Than these my arm'd fists in _Ulisses_ wracke. (3) p. 357, 'till _Hecub's_ reverent lockes Be gul'd in slaughter. ' (4)p. 357, '_Scamander_ plaines Ore-spread with intrailes bak'd in bloodand dust. ' (5) p. 378, 'We'll rost them at the scorching flames of_Troy_. ' (6) p. 379, 'tragicke slaughter, clad in gules and sables'(cf. 'sable arms' in the speech in _Hamlet_). (7) p. 384, 'these lockes,now knotted all, As bak't in blood. ' Of these, all but (1) and (2) arein Part II. Part I. has many passages which recall _Troilus andCressida_. Mr. Fleay's speculation as to its date will be found in his_Chronicle History of the English Drama_, i. p. 285. For the same writer's ingenious theory (which is of course incapable ofproof) regarding the relation of the player's speech in _Hamlet_ toMarlowe and Nash's _Dido_, see Furness's Variorum _Hamlet_. ]NOTE G. HAMLET'S APOLOGY TO LAERTES. Johnson, in commenting on the passage (V. ii. 237-255), says: 'I wishHamlet had made some other defence; it is unsuitable to the character ofa good or a brave man to shelter himself in falsehood. ' And Seymour(according to Furness) thought the falsehood so ignoble that he rejectedlines 239-250 as an interpolation! I wish first to remark that we are mistaken when we suppose that Hamletis here apologising specially for his behaviour to Laertes at Ophelia'sgrave. We naturally suppose this because he has told Horatio that he issorry he 'forgot himself' on that occasion, and that he will courtLaertes' favours (V. ii. 75 ff. ). But what he says in that very passageshows that he is thinking chiefly of the greater wrong he has doneLaertes by depriving him of his father: For, by the image of my cause, I see The portraiture of his. And it is also evident in the last words of the apology itself that heis referring in it to the deaths of Polonius and Ophelia: Sir, in this audience, Let my disclaiming from a purposed evil Free me so far in your most generous thoughts, _That I have shot mine arrow o'er the house, And hurt my brother. _But now, as to the falsehood. The charge is not to be set aside lightly;and, for my part, I confess that, while rejecting of course Johnson'snotion that Shakespeare wanted to paint 'a good man,' I have momentarilyshared Johnson's wish that Hamlet had made 'some other defence' thanthat of madness. But I think the wish proceeds from failure to imaginethe situation. In the first place, _what_ other defence can we wish Hamlet to havemade? I can think of none. He cannot tell the truth. He cannot say toLaertes, 'I meant to stab the King, not your father. ' He cannot explainwhy he was unkind to Ophelia. Even on the false supposition that he isreferring simply to his behaviour at the grave, he can hardly say, Isuppose, 'You ranted so abominably that you put me into a toweringpassion. ' _Whatever_ he said, it would have to be more or less untrue. Next, what moral difference is there between feigning insanity andasserting it? If we are to blame Hamlet for the second, why not equallyfor the first? And, finally, even if he were referring simply to his behaviour at thegrave, his excuse, besides falling in with his whole plan of feigninginsanity, would be as near the truth as any he could devise. For we arenot to take the account he gives to Horatio, that he was put in apassion by the bravery of Laertes' grief, as the whole truth. His ravingover the grave is not _mere_ acting. On the contrary, that passage isthe best card that the believers in Hamlet's madness have to play. He isreally almost beside himself with grief as well as anger, half-maddenedby the impossibility of explaining to Laertes how he has come to do whathe has done, full of wild rage and then of sick despair at this wretchedworld which drives him to such deeds and such misery. It is the samerage and despair that mingle with other feelings in his outbreak toOphelia in the Nunnery-scene. But of all this, even if he were clearlyconscious of it, he cannot speak to Horatio; for his love to Ophelia isa subject on which he has never opened his lips to his friend. If we realise the situation, then, we shall, I think, repress the wishthat Hamlet had 'made some other defence' than that of madness. We shallfeel only tragic sympathy. * * * * *As I have referred to Hamlet's apology, I will add a remark on it from adifferent point of view. It forms another refutation of the theory thatHamlet has delayed his vengeance till he could publicly convict theKing, and that he has come back to Denmark because now, with theevidence of the commission in his pocket, he can safely accuse him. Ifthat were so, what better opportunity could he possibly find than thisoccasion, where he has to express his sorrow to Laertes for the grievouswrongs which he has unintentionally inflicted on him? NOTE H. THE EXCHANGE OF RAPIERS. I am not going to discuss the question how this exchange ought to bemanaged. I wish merely to point out that the stage-direction fails toshow the sequence of speeches and events. The passage is as follows(Globe text): _Ham. _ Come, for the third, Laertes: you but dally; I pray you, pass with your best violence; I am afeard you make a wanton of me. _Laer. _ Say you so? come on. [_They play. _ _Osr. _ Nothing, neither way. _Laer. _ Have at you now! [_Laertes wounds Hamlet; then, in scuffling, they change rapiers, and Hamlet wounds Laertes. _[264] _King. _ Part them; they are incensed. _Ham. _ Nay, come, again. _The Queen falls. _[265] _Osr. _ Look to the Queen there, ho! _Hor. _ They bleed on both sides. How is it, my lord? _Osr. _ How is't, Laertes? The words 'and Hamlet wounds Laertes' in Rowe's stage-direction destroythe point of the words given to the King in the text. If Laertes isalready wounded, why should the King care whether the fencers are partedor not? What makes him cry out is that, while he sees his purposeeffected as regards Hamlet, he also sees Laertes in danger through theexchange of foils in the scuffle. Now it is not to be supposed thatLaertes is particularly dear to him; but he sees instantaneously that,if Laertes escapes the poisoned foil, he will certainly hold his tongueabout the plot against Hamlet, while, if he is wounded, he may confessthe truth; for it is no doubt quite evident to the King that Laertes hasfenced tamely because his conscience is greatly troubled by thetreachery he is about to practise. The King therefore, as soon as hesees the exchange of foils, cries out, 'Part them; they are incensed. 'But Hamlet's blood is up. 'Nay, come, again,' he calls to Laertes, whocannot refuse to play, and _now_ is wounded by Hamlet. At the very samemoment the Queen falls to the ground; and ruin rushes on the King fromthe right hand and the left. The passage, therefore, should be printed thus: _Laer. _ Have at you now! [_Laertes wounds Hamlet; then, in scuffling, they change rapiers. _ _King. _ Part them; they are incensed. _Ham. _ Nay, come, again. [_They play, and Hamlet wounds Laertes. The Queen falls. _FOOTNOTES:[Footnote 264: So Rowe. The direction in Q1 is negligible, the textbeing different. Q2 etc. have nothing, Ff. simply 'In scuffling theychange rapiers. '][Footnote 265: Capell. The Quartos and Folios have no directions. ]NOTE I. THE DURATION OF THE ACTION IN _OTHELLO_. The quite unusual difficulties regarding this subject have led to muchdiscussion, a synopsis of which may be found in Furness's Variorumedition, pp. 358-72. Without detailing the facts I will briefly set outthe main difficulty, which is that, according to one set of indications(which I will call A), Desdemona was murdered within a day or two of herarrival in Cyprus, while, according to another set (which I will callB), some time elapsed between her arrival and the catastrophe. Let ustake A first, and run through the play. (A) Act I. opens on the night of Othello's marriage. On that night he isdespatched to Cyprus, leaving Desdemona to follow him. In Act II. Sc. i. , there arrive at Cyprus, first, in one ship, Cassio;then, in another, Desdemona, Iago, and Emilia; then, in another, Othello(Othello, Cassio, and Desdemona being in three different ships, it doesnot matter, for our purpose, how long the voyage lasted). On the nightfollowing these arrivals in Cyprus the marriage is consummated (II. iii. 9), Cassio is cashiered, and, on Iago's advice, he resolves to askDesdemona's intercession 'betimes in the morning' (II. iii. 335). In Act III. Sc. iii. (the Temptation scene), he does so: Desdemona doesintercede: Iago begins to poison Othello's mind: the handkerchief islost, found by Emilia, and given to Iago: he determines to leave it inCassio's room, and, renewing his attack on Othello, asserts that he hasseen the handkerchief in Cassio's hand: Othello bids him kill Cassiowithin three days, and resolves to kill Desdemona himself. All thisoccurs in one unbroken scene, and evidently on the day after the arrivalin Cyprus (see III. i. 33). In the scene (iv. ) following the Temptation scene Desdemona sends to bidCassio come, as she has interceded for him: Othello enters, tests herabout the handkerchief, and departs in anger: Cassio, arriving, is toldof the change in Othello, and, being left _solus_, is accosted byBianca, whom he requests to copy the work on the handkerchief which hehas just found in his room (ll. 188 f. ). All this is naturally taken tohappen in the later part of the day on which the events of III. i. -iii. took place, _i. e. _ the day after the arrival in Cyprus: but I shallreturn to this point. In IV. i. Iago tells Othello that Cassio has confessed, and, placingOthello where he can watch, he proceeds on Cassio's entrance to rallyhim about Bianca; and Othello, not being near enough to hear what issaid, believes that Cassio is laughing at his conquest of Desdemona. Cassio here says that Bianca haunts him and 'was here _even now_'; andBianca herself, coming in, reproaches him about the handkerchief 'yougave me _even now_. ' There is therefore no appreciable time between III. iv. and IV. i. In this same scene Bianca bids Cassio come to supper_to-night_; and Lodovico, arriving, is asked to sup with Othello_to-night_. In IV. ii. Iago persuades Roderigo to kill Cassio _thatnight_ as he comes from Bianca's. In IV. iii. Lodovico, after supper,takes his leave, and Othello bids Desdemona go to bed on the instant anddismiss her attendant. In Act V. , _that night_, the attempted assassination of Cassio, and themurder of Desdemona, take place. From all this, then, it seems clear that the time between the arrival inCyprus and the catastrophe is certainly not more than a few days, andmost probably only about a day and a half: or, to put it otherwise, thatmost probably Othello kills his wife about twenty-four hours after theconsummation of their marriage! The only _possible_ place, it will be seen, where time can elapse isbetween III. iii. and III. iv. And here Mr. Fleay would imagine a gap ofat least a week. The reader will find that this supposition involves thefollowing results, (_a_) Desdemona has allowed at least a week to elapsewithout telling Cassio that she has interceded for him. (_b_) Othello,after being convinced of her guilt, after resolving to kill her, andafter ordering Iago to kill Cassio within three days, has allowed atleast a week to elapse without even questioning her about thehandkerchief, and has so behaved during all this time that she istotally unconscious of any change in his feelings. (_c_) Desdemona, whoreserves the handkerchief evermore about her to kiss and talk to (III. iii. 295), has lost it for at least a week before she is conscious ofthe loss. (_d_) Iago has waited at least a week to leave thehandkerchief in Cassio's chamber; for Cassio has evidently only justfound it, and wants the work on it copied before the owner makesinquiries for it. These are all gross absurdities. It is certain thatonly a short time, most probable that not even a night, elapses betweenIII. iii. and III. iv. (B) Now this idea that Othello killed his wife, probably withintwenty-four hours, certainly within a few days, of the consummation ofhis marriage, contradicts the impression produced by the play on alluncritical readers and spectators. It is also in flat contradiction witha large number of time-indications in the play itself. It is needless tomention more than a few. (_a_) Bianca complains that Cassio has keptaway from her for a week (III. iv. 173). Cassio and the rest havetherefore been more than a week in Cyprus, and, we should naturallyinfer, considerably more. (_b_) The ground on which Iago buildsthroughout is the probability of Desdemona's having got tired of theMoor; she is accused of having repeatedly committed adultery with Cassio(_e. g. _ V. ii. 210); these facts and a great many others, such asOthello's language in III. iii. 338 ff. , are utterly absurd on thesupposition that he murders his wife within a day or two of the nightwhen he consummated his marriage. (_c_) Iago's account of Cassio's dreamimplies (and indeed states) that he had been sleeping with Cassio'lately,' _i. e. _ after arriving at Cyprus: yet, according to A, he hadonly spent one night in Cyprus, and we are expressly told that Cassionever went to bed on that night. Iago doubtless was a liar, but Othellowas not an absolute idiot. * * * * *Thus (1) one set of time-indications clearly shows that Othello murderedhis wife within a few days, probably a day and a half, of his arrival inCyprus and the consummation of his marriage; (2) another set oftime-indications implies quite as clearly that some little time musthave elapsed, probably a few weeks; and this last is certainly theimpression of a reader who has not closely examined the play. It is impossible to escape this result. The suggestion that the imputedintrigue of Cassio and Desdemona took place at Venice before themarriage, not at Cyprus after it, is quite futile. There is no positiveevidence whatever for it; if the reader will merely refer to thedifficulties mentioned under B above, he will see that it leaves almostall of them absolutely untouched; and Iago's accusation is uniformly oneof adultery. How then is this extraordinary contradiction to be explained? It canhardly be one of the casual inconsistencies, due to forgetfulness, whichare found in Shakespeare's other tragedies; for the scheme of timeindicated under A seems deliberate and self-consistent, and the schemeindicated under B seems, if less deliberate, equally self-consistent. This does not look as if a single scheme had been so vaguely imaginedthat inconsistencies arose in working it out; it points to some othersource of contradiction. 'Christopher North,' who dealt very fully with the question, elaborateda doctrine of Double Time, Short and Long. To do justice to this theoryin a few words is impossible, but its essence is the notion thatShakespeare, consciously or unconsciously, wanted to produce on thespectator (for he did not aim at readers) two impressions. He wanted thespectator to feel a passionate and vehement haste in the action; but healso wanted him to feel that the action was fairly probable. Consciouslyor unconsciously he used Short Time (the scheme of A) for the firstpurpose, and Long Time (the scheme of B) for the second. The spectatoris affected in the required manner by both, though without distinctlynoticing the indications of the two schemes. The notion underlying this theory is probably true, but the theoryitself can hardly stand. Passing minor matters by, I would ask thereader to consider the following remarks. (_a_) If, as seems to bemaintained, the spectator does not notice the indications of 'ShortTime' at all, how can they possibly affect him? The passion, vehemenceand haste of Othello affect him, because he perceives them; but if hedoes not perceive the hints which show the duration of the action fromthe arrival in Cyprus to the murder, these hints have simply noexistence for him and are perfectly useless. The theory, therefore, doesnot explain the existence of 'Short Time. ' (_b_) It is not the case that'Short Time' is wanted only to produce an impression of vehemence andhaste, and 'Long Time' for probability. The 'Short Time' is equallywanted for probability: for it is grossly improbable that Iago'sintrigue should not break down if Othello spends a week or weeks betweenthe successful temptation and his execution of justice. (_c_) And thisbrings me to the most important point, which appears to have escapednotice. The place where 'Long Time' is wanted is not _within_ Iago'sintrigue. 'Long Time' is required simply and solely because the intrigueand its circumstances presuppose a marriage consummated, and an adulterypossible, for (let us say) some weeks. But, granted that lapse betweenthe marriage and the temptation, there is no reason whatever why morethan a few days or even one day should elapse between this temptationand the murder. The whole trouble arises because the temptation beginson the morning after the consummated marriage. Let some three weekselapse between the first night at Cyprus and the temptation; let thebrawl which ends in the disgrace of Cassio occur not on that night butthree weeks later; or again let it occur that night, but let three weekselapse before the intercession of Desdemona and the temptation of Iagobegin. All will then be clear. Cassio has time to make acquaintance withBianca, and to neglect her: the Senate has time to hear of the perditionof the Turkish fleet and to recall Othello: the accusations of Iagocease to be ridiculous; and the headlong speed of the action after thetemptation has begun is quite in place. Now, too, there is no reason whywe should not be affected by the hints of time ('to-day,' 'to-night,''even now'), which we _do_ perceive (though we do not calculate themout). And, lastly, this supposition corresponds with our naturalimpression, which is that the temptation and what follows it take placesome little while after the marriage, but occupy, themselves, a veryshort time. Now, of course, the supposition just described is no fact. As the playstands, it is quite certain that there is no space of three weeks, oranything like it, either between the arrival in Cyprus and the brawl, orbetween the brawl and the temptation. And I draw attention to thesupposition chiefly to show that quite a small change would remove thedifficulties, and to insist that there is nothing wrong at all in regardto the time from the temptation onward. How to account for the existingcontradictions I do not at all profess to know, and I will merelymention two possibilities. Possibly, as Mr. Daniel observes, the play has been tampered with. Wehave no text earlier than 1622, six years after Shakespeare's death. Itmay be suggested, then, that in the play, as Shakespeare wrote it, therewas a gap of some weeks between the arrival in Cyprus and Cassio'sbrawl, or (less probably) between the brawl and the temptation. Perhapsthere was a scene indicating the lapse of time. Perhaps it was dull, orthe play was a little too long, or devotees of the unity of time madesport of a second breach of that unity coming just after the breachcaused by the voyage. Perhaps accordingly the owners of the playaltered, or hired a dramatist to alter, the arrangement at this point,and this was unwittingly done in such a way as to produce thecontradictions we are engaged on. There is nothing intrinsicallyunlikely in this idea; and certainly, I think, the amount of suchcorruption of Shakespeare's texts by the players is usually ratherunderrated than otherwise. But I cannot say I see any signs of foreignalteration in the text, though it is somewhat odd that Roderigo, whomakes no complaint on the day of the arrival in Cyprus when he is beingpersuaded to draw Cassio into a quarrel that night, should, directlyafter the quarrel (II. iii. 370), complain that he is making no advancein his pursuit of Desdemona, and should speak as though he had been inCyprus long enough to have spent nearly all the money he brought fromVenice. Or, possibly, Shakespeare's original plan was to allow some time toelapse after the arrival at Cyprus, but when he reached the point hefound it troublesome to indicate this lapse in an interesting way, andconvenient to produce Cassio's fall by means of the rejoicings on thenight of the arrival, and then almost necessary to let the request forintercession, and the temptation, follow on the next day. And perhaps hesaid to himself, No one in the theatre will notice that all this makesan impossible position: and I can make all safe by using language thatimplies that Othello has after all been married for some time. If so,probably he was right. I do not think anyone does notice theimpossibilities either in the theatre or in a casual reading of theplay. Either of these suppositions is possible: neither is, to me, probable. The first seems the less unlikely. If the second is true, Shakespearedid in _Othello_ what he seems to do in no other play. I can believethat he may have done so; but I find it very hard to believe that heproduced this impossible situation without knowing it. It is one thingto read a drama or see it, quite another to construct and compose it,and he appears to have imagined the action in _Othello_ with even morethan his usual intensity. NOTE J. THE 'ADDITIONS' TO _OTHELLO_ IN THE FIRST FOLIO. THE PONTIC SEA. The first printed _Othello_ is the first Quarto (Q1), 1622; the secondis the first Folio (F1), 1623. These two texts are two distinct versionsof the play. Q1 contains many oaths and expletives where less'objectionable' expressions occur in F1. Partly for this reason it isbelieved to represent the _earlier_ text, perhaps the text as it stoodbefore the Act of 1605 against profanity on the stage. Its readings arefrequently superior to those of F1, but it wants many lines that appearin F1, which probably represents the acting version in 1623. I give alist of the longer passages absent from Q1: (_a_) I. i. 122-138. 'If't' . . . 'yourself:' (_b_) I. ii 72-77. 'Judge' . . . 'thee' (_c_) I. iii. 24-30. 'For' . . . 'profitless. ' (_d_) III. iii. 383-390. '_Oth. _ By' . . . 'satisfied! _Iago. _' (_e_) III. iii. 453-460. 'Iago. ' . . . 'heaven,' (_f_) IV. i. 38-44. 'To confess' . . . 'devil! ' (_g_) IV. ii. 73-76, 'Committed! ' . . . 'committed! ' (_h_) IV. ii. 151-164. 'Here' . . . 'make me. ' (_i_) IV. iii. 31-53. 'I have' . . . 'not next' and 55-57. '_Des. _ [_Singing_]' . . . 'men. ' (_j_) IV. iii. 60-63. 'I have' . . . 'question. ' (_k_) IV. iii. 87-104. 'But I' . . . 'us so. ' (_l_) V. ii. 151-154. 'O mistress' . . . 'Iago. ' (_m_) V. ii. 185-193. 'My mistress' . . . 'villany! ' (_n_) V. ii. 266-272. 'Be not' . . . 'wench! 'Were these passages after-thoughts, composed after the versionrepresented by Q1 was written? Or were they in the version representedby Q1, and only omitted in printing, whether accidentally or becausethey were also omitted in the theatre? Or were some of themafter-thoughts, and others in the original version? I will take them in order. (_a_) can hardly be an after-thought. Up tothat point Roderigo had hardly said anything, for Iago had alwaysinterposed; and it is very unlikely that Roderigo would now deliver butfour lines, and speak at once of 'she' instead of 'your daughter. 'Probably this 'omission' represents a 'cut' in stage performance. (_b_)This may also be the case here. In our texts the omission of the passagewould make nonsense, but in Q1 the 'cut' (if a cut) has been mended,awkwardly enough, by the substitution of 'Such' for 'For' in line 78. Inany case, the lines cannot be an addition. (_c_) cannot be anafter-thought, for the sentence is unfinished without it; and that itwas not meant to be interrupted is clear, because in Q1 line 31 begins'And,' not 'Nay'; the Duke might say 'Nay' if he were cutting theprevious speaker short, but not 'And. ' (_d_) is surely no addition. Ifthe lines are cut out, not only is the metre spoilt, but the obviousreason for Iago's words, 'I see, Sir, you are eaten up with passion,'disappears, and so does the reference of his word 'satisfied' in 393 toOthello's 'satisfied' in 390. (_e_) is the famous passage about thePontic Sea, and I reserve it for the present. (_f_) As Pope observes,'no hint of this trash in the first edition,' the 'trash' including thewords 'Nature would not invest herself in such shadowing passion withoutsome instruction. It is not words that shake me thus'! There is nothingto prove these lines to be original or an after-thought. The omission of(_g_) is clearly a printer's error, due to the fact that lines 72 and 76both end with the word 'committed. ' No conclusion can be formed as to(_h_), nor perhaps (_i_), which includes the whole of Desdemona's song;but if (_j_) is removed the reference in 'such a deed' in 64 isdestroyed. (_k_) is Emilia's long speech about husbands. It cannot wellbe an after-thought, for 105-6 evidently refer to 103-4 (even the word'uses' in 105 refers to 'use' in 103). (_l_) is no after-thought, for'if he says so' in 155 must point back to 'my husband say that she wasfalse! ' in 152. (_m_) might be an after-thought, but, if so, in thefirst version the ending 'to speak' occurred twice within three lines,and the reason for Iago's sudden alarm in 193 is much less obvious. If(_n_) is an addition the original collocation was: but O vain boast! Who can control his fate? 'Tis not so now. Pale as thy smock! which does not sound probable. Thus, as it seems to me, in the great majority of cases there is more orless reason to think that the passages wanting in Q1 were neverthelessparts of the original play, and I cannot in any one case see anypositive ground for supposing a subsequent addition. I think that mostof the gaps in Q1 were accidents of printing (like many other smallergaps in Q1), but that probably one or two were 'cuts'--_e. g. _ Emilia'slong speech (_k_). The omission of (_i_) might be due to the state ofthe MS. : the words of the song may have been left out of the dialogue,as appearing on a separate page with the musical notes, or may have beeninserted in such an illegible way as to baffle the printer. I come now to (_e_), the famous passage about the Pontic Sea. Popesupposed that it formed part of the original version, but approved ofits omission, as he considered it 'an unnatural excursion in thisplace. ' Mr. Swinburne thinks it an after-thought, but defends it. 'Inother lips indeed than Othello's, at the crowning minute of culminantagony, the rush of imaginative reminiscence which brings back upon hiseyes and ears the lightning foam and tideless thunder of the Pontic Seamight seem a thing less natural than sublime. But Othello has thepassion of a poet closed in as it were and shut up behind the passion ofa hero' (_Study of Shakespeare_, p. 184). I quote these words all themore gladly because they will remind the reader of my lectures of mydebt to Mr. Swinburne here; and I will only add that the reminiscencehere is of _precisely the same character_ as the reminiscences of theArabian trees and the base Indian in Othello's final speech. But I findit almost impossible to believe that Shakespeare _ever_ wrote thepassage without the words about the Pontic Sea. It seems to me almost animperative demand of imagination that Iago's set speech, if I may usethe phrase, should be preceded by a speech of somewhat the samedimensions, the contrast of which should heighten the horror of itshypocrisy; it seems to me that Shakespeare must have felt this; and itis difficult to me to think that he ever made the lines, In the due reverence of a sacred vow I here engage my words,follow directly on the one word 'Never' (however impressive that word inits isolation might be). And as I can find no _other_ 'omission' in Q1which appears to point to a subsequent addition, I conclude that this'omission' _was_ an omission, probably accidental, conceivably due to astupid 'cut. ' Indeed it is nothing but Mr. Swinburne's opinion thatprevents my feeling certainty on the point. Finally, I may draw attention to certain facts which may be mereaccidents, but may possibly be significant. Passages (_b_) and (_c_)consist respectively of six and seven lines; that is, they are almost ofthe same length, and in a MS. might well fill exactly the same amount ofspace. Passage (_d_) is eight lines long; so is passage (_e_). Now,taking at random two editions of Shakespeare, the Globe and that ofDelius, I find that (_b_) and (_c_) are 6-1/4 inches apart in the Globe,8 in Delius; and that (_d_) and (_e_) are separated by 7-3/8 inches inthe Globe, by 8-3/4 in Delius. In other words, there is about the samedistance in each case between two passages of about equal dimensions. The idea suggested by these facts is that the MS. from which Q1 wasprinted was mutilated in various places; that (_b_) and (_c_) occupiedthe bottom inches of two successive pages, and that these inches weretorn away; and that this was also the case with (_d_) and (_e_). This speculation has amused me and may amuse some reader. I do not knowenough of Elizabethan manuscripts to judge of its plausibility. NOTE K. OTHELLO'S COURTSHIP. It is curious that in the First Act two impressions are produced whichhave afterwards to be corrected. 1. |
We must not suppose that Othello's account of his courtship in hisfamous speech before the Senate is intended to be exhaustive. He isaccused of having used drugs or charms in order to win Desdemona; andtherefore his purpose in his defence is merely to show that hiswitchcraft was the story of his life. It is no part of his business totrouble the Senators with the details of his courtship, and he socondenses his narrative of it that it almost appears as though there wasno courtship at all, and as though Desdemona never imagined that he wasin love with her until she had practically confessed her love for him. Hence she has been praised by some for her courage, and blamed by othersfor her forwardness. But at III. iii. 70 f. matters are presented in quite a new light. Therewe find the following words of hers: What! Michael Cassio, That came a-wooing with you, and so many a time, When I have spoke of you dispraisingly, Hath ta'en your part. It seems, then, she understood why Othello came so often to her father'shouse, and was perfectly secure of his love before she gave him thatvery broad 'hint to speak. ' I may add that those who find fault with herforget that it was necessary for her to take the first open step. Shewas the daughter of a Venetian grandee, and Othello was a black soldierof fortune. 2. We learn from the lines just quoted that Cassio used to accompanyOthello in his visits to the house; and from III. iii. 93 f. we learnthat he knew of Othello's love from first to last and 'went between' thelovers 'very oft. ' Yet in Act I. it appears that, while Iago on thenight of the marriage knows about it and knows where to find Othello (I. i. 158 f. ), Cassio, even if he knows where to find Othello (which isdoubtful: see I. ii. 44), seems to know nothing about the marriage. SeeI. ii. 49: _Cas. _ Ancient, what makes he here? _Iago. _ 'Faith, he to-night hath boarded a land carack: If it prove lawful prize, he's made for ever. _Cas. _ I do not understand. _Iago. _ He's married. _Cas. _ To who? It is possible that Cassio does know, and only pretends ignorancebecause he has not been informed by Othello that Iago also knows. Andthis idea is consistent with Iago's apparent ignorance of Cassio's partin the courtship (III. iii. 93). And of course, if this were so, a wordfrom Shakespeare to the actor who played Cassio would enable him to makeall clear to the audience. The alternative, and perhaps more probable,explanation would be that, in writing Act I. , Shakespeare had not yetthought of making Cassio Othello's confidant, and that, after writingAct III. , he neglected to alter the passage in Act I. In that case thefurther information which Act III. gives regarding Othello's courtshipwould probably also be an after-thought. NOTE L. OTHELLO IN THE TEMPTATION SCENE. One reason why some readers think Othello 'easily jealous' is that theycompletely misinterpret him in the early part of this scene. They fancythat he is alarmed and suspicious the moment he hears Iago mutter 'Ha! Ilike not that,' as he sees Cassio leaving Desdemona (III. iii. 35). But,in fact, it takes a long time for Iago to excite surprise, curiosity,and then grave concern--by no means yet jealousy--even about Cassio; andit is still longer before Othello understands that Iago is suggestingdoubts about Desdemona too. ('Wronged' in 143 certainly does not referto her, as 154 and 162 show. ) Nor, even at 171, is the exclamation 'Omisery' meant for an expression of Othello's own present feelings; ashis next speech clearly shows, it expresses an _imagined_ feeling, asalso the speech which elicits it professes to do (for Iago would nothave dared here to apply the term 'cuckold' to Othello). In fact it isnot until Iago hints that Othello, as a foreigner, might easily bedeceived, that he is seriously disturbed about Desdemona. Salvini played this passage, as might be expected, with entireunderstanding. Nor have I ever seen it seriously misinterpreted on thestage. I gather from the Furness Variorum that Fechter and Edwin Boothtook the same view as Salvini. Actors have to ask themselves what wasthe precise state of mind expressed by the words they have to repeat. But many readers never think of asking such a question. The lines which probably do most to lead hasty or unimaginative readersastray are those at 90, where, on Desdemona's departure, Othelloexclaims to himself: Excellent wretch! Perdition catch my soul But I do love thee! and when I love thee not, Chaos is come again. He is supposed to mean by the last words that his love is _now_suspended by suspicion, whereas in fact, in his bliss, he has so totallyforgotten Iago's 'Ha! I like not that,' that the tempter has to beginall over again. The meaning is, 'If ever I love thee not, Chaos willhave come again. ' The feeling of insecurity is due to the excess of_joy_, as in the wonderful words after he rejoins Desdemona at Cyprus(II. i. 191): If it were now to die, 'Twere now to be most happy: for, I fear My soul hath her content so absolute That not another comfort like to this Succeeds in unknown fate. If any reader boggles at the use of the present in 'Chaos _is_ comeagain,' let him observe 'succeeds' in the lines just quoted, or let himlook at the parallel passage in _Venus and Adonis_, 1019: For, he being dead, with him is beauty slain; And, beauty dead, black Chaos comes again. Venus does not know that Adonis is dead when she speaks thus. NOTE M. QUESTIONS AS TO _OTHELLO_, ACT IV. SCENE I. (1) The first part of the scene is hard to understand, and thecommentators give little help. I take the idea to be as follows. Iagosees that he must renew his attack on Othello; for, on the one hand,Othello, in spite of the resolution he had arrived at to put Desdemonato death, has taken the step, without consulting Iago, of testing her inthe matter of Iago's report about the handkerchief; and, on the otherhand, he now seems to have fallen into a dazed lethargic state, and mustbe stimulated to action. Iago's plan seems to be to remind Othello ofeverything that would madden him again, but to do so by professing tomake light of the whole affair, and by urging Othello to put the bestconstruction on the facts, or at any rate to acquiesce. So he says, ineffect: 'After all, if she did kiss Cassio, that might mean little. Nay,she might even go much further without meaning any harm. [266] Of coursethere is the handkerchief (10); but then why should she _not_ give itaway? ' Then, affecting to renounce this hopeless attempt to disguise histrue opinion, he goes on: 'However, _I_ cannot, as your friend, pretendthat I really regard her as innocent: the fact is, Cassio boasted to mein so many words of his conquest. [Here he is interrupted by Othello'sswoon. ] But, after all, why make such a fuss? You share the fate of mostmarried men, and you have the advantage of not being deceived in thematter. ' It must have been a great pleasure to Iago to express his realcynicism thus, with the certainty that he would not be taken seriouslyand would advance his plot by it. At 208-210 he recurs to the same planof maddening Othello by suggesting that, if he is so fond of Desdemona,he had better let the matter be, for it concerns no one but him. Thisspeech follows Othello's exclamation 'O Iago, the pity of it,' and thisis perhaps the moment when we most of all long to destroy Iago. (2) At 216 Othello tells Iago to get him some poison, that he may killDesdemona that night. Iago objects: 'Do it not with poison: strangle herin her bed, even the bed she hath contaminated? ' Why does he object topoison? Because through the sale of the poison he himself would beinvolved? Possibly. Perhaps his idea was that, Desdemona being killed byOthello, and Cassio killed by Roderigo, he would then admit that he hadinformed Othello of the adultery, and perhaps even that he hadundertaken Cassio's death; but he would declare that he never meant tofulfil his promise as to Cassio, and that he had nothing to do withDesdemona's death (he seems to be preparing for this at 285). His buyingpoison might wreck this plan. But it may be that his objection to poisonsprings merely from contempt for Othello's intellect. He can trust himto use violence, but thinks he may bungle anything that requiresadroitness. (3) When the conversation breaks off here (225) Iago has brought Othelloback to the position reached at the end of the Temptation scene (III. iii. ). Cassio and Desdemona are to be killed; and, in addition, the timeis hastened; it is to be 'to-night,' not 'within three days. 'The constructional idea clearly is that, after the Temptation scene,Othello tends to relapse and wait, which is terribly dangerous to Iago,who therefore in this scene quickens his purpose. Yet Othello relapsesagain. He has declared that he will not expostulate with her (IV. i. 217). But he cannot keep his word, and there follows the scene ofaccusation. Its _dramatic_ purposes are obvious, but Othello seems tohave no purpose in it. He asks no questions, or, rather, none that showsthe least glimpse of doubt or hope. He is merely torturing himself. FOOTNOTES:[Footnote 266: The reader who is puzzled by this passage should refer tothe conversation at the end of the thirtieth tale in the _Heptameron_. ]NOTE N. TWO PASSAGES IN THE LAST SCENE OF _OTHELLO_. (1) V. ii. 71 f. Desdemona demands that Cassio be sent for to 'confess'the truth that she never gave him the handkerchief. Othello answers thatCassio _has_ confessed the truth--has confessed the adultery. Thedialogue goes on: _Des. _ He will not say so. _Oth. _ No, his mouth is stopp'd: Honest Iago hath ta'en order for 't. _Des. _ O! my fear interprets: what, is he dead? _Oth. _ Had all his hairs been lives, my great revenge Had stomach for them all. _Des. _ Alas! he is _betray'd_ and _I_ undone. It is a ghastly idea, but I believe Shakespeare means that, at themention of Iago's name, Desdemona suddenly sees that _he_ is the villainwhose existence he had declared to be impossible when, an hour before,Emilia had suggested that someone had poisoned Othello's mind. But herwords rouse Othello to such furious indignation ('Out, strumpet! Weep'stthou for him to my face? ') that 'it is too late. '(2) V. ii. 286 f. _Oth. _ I look down towards his feet; but that's a fable. If that thou be'st a devil, I cannot kill thee. [_Wounds Iago. _ _Lod. _ Wrench his sword from him. _Iago. _ I bleed, sir, but not killed. Are Iago's strange words meant to show his absorption of interest inhimself amidst so much anguish? I think rather he is meant to bealluding to Othello's words, and saying, with a cold contemptuous smile,'You see he is right; I _am_ a devil. 'NOTE O. OTHELLO ON DESDEMONA'S LAST WORDS. I have said that the last scene of _Othello_, though terribly painful,contains almost nothing to diminish the admiration and love whichheighten our pity for the hero (p. 198). I said 'almost' in view of thefollowing passage (V. ii. 123 ff. ): _Emil. _ O, who hath done this deed? _Des. _ Nobody; I myself. Farewell: Commend me to my kind lord: O, farewell! [_Dies. _ _Oth. _ Why, how should she be murdered? [267] _Emil. _ Alas, who knows? _Oth. _ You heard her say herself, it was not I. _Emil. _ She said so: I must needs report the truth. _Oth. _ She's, like a liar, gone to burning hell: 'Twas I that kill'd her. _Emil. _ O, the more angel she, And you the blacker devil! _Oth. _ She turn'd to folly, and she was a whore. This is a strange passage. What did Shakespeare mean us to feel? One isastonished that Othello should not be startled, nay thunder-struck, whenhe hears such dying words coming from the lips of an obdurateadulteress. One is shocked by the moral blindness or obliquity whichtakes them only as a further sign of her worthlessness. Here alone, Ithink, in the scene sympathy with Othello quite disappears. DidShakespeare mean us to feel thus, and to realise how completely confusedand perverted Othello's mind has become? I suppose so: and yet Othello'swords continue to strike me as very strange, and also as not _like_Othello,--especially as at this point he was not in anger, much lessenraged. It has sometimes occurred to me that there is a touch ofpersonal animus in the passage. One remembers the place in _Hamlet_(written but a little while before) where Hamlet thinks he is unwillingto kill the King at his prayers, for fear they may take him to heaven;and one remembers Shakespeare's irony, how he shows that those prayersdo _not_ go to heaven, and that the soul of this praying murderer is atthat moment as murderous as ever (see p. 171), just as here the soul ofthe lying Desdemona is angelic _in_ its lie. Is it conceivable that inboth passages he was intentionally striking at conventional 'religious'ideas; and, in particular, that the belief that a man's everlasting fateis decided by the occupation of his last moment excited in himindignation as well as contempt? I admit that this fancy seemsun-Shakespearean, and yet it comes back on me whenever I read thispassage. [The words 'I suppose so' (l. 3 above) gave my conclusion; butI wish to withdraw the whole Note]FOOTNOTES:[Footnote 267: He alludes to her cry, 'O falsely, falsely murder'd! ']NOTE P. DID EMILIA SUSPECT IAGO? I have answered No (p. 216), and have no doubt about the matter; but atone time I was puzzled, as perhaps others have been, by a single phraseof Emilia's. It occurs in the conversation between her and Iago andDesdemona (IV. ii. 130 f. ): I will be hang'd if some eternal villain, Some busy and insinuating rogue, Some cogging, cozening slave, _to get some office_, Have not devised this slander; I'll be hang'd else. Emilia, it may be said, knew that Cassio was the suspected man, so thatshe must be thinking of _his_ office, and must mean that Iago haspoisoned Othello's mind in order to prevent his reinstatement and to getthe lieutenancy for himself. And, it may be said, she speaksindefinitely so that Iago alone may understand her (for Desdemona doesnot know that Cassio is the suspected man). Hence too, it may be said,when, at V. ii. 190, she exclaims, Villany, villany, villany! I think upon't, I think: I smell't: O villany! _I thought so then:_--I'll kill myself for grief;she refers in the words italicised to the occasion of the passage in IV. ii. , and is reproaching herself for not having taken steps on hersuspicion of Iago. I have explained in the text why I think it impossible to suppose thatEmilia suspected her husband; and I do not think anyone who follows herspeeches in V. ii. , and who realises that, if she did suspect him, shemust have been simply _pretending_ surprise when Othello told her thatIago was his informant, will feel any doubt. Her idea in the lines atIV. ii. 130 is, I believe, merely that someone is trying to establish aground for asking a favour from Othello in return for information whichnearly concerns him. It does not follow that, because she knew Cassiowas suspected, she must have been referring to Cassio's office. She wasa stupid woman, and, even if she had not been, she would not put two andtwo together so easily as the reader of the play. In the line, I thought so then: I'll kill myself for grief,I think she certainly refers to IV. ii. 130 f. and also IV. ii. 15(Steevens's idea that she is thinking of the time when she let Iago takethe handkerchief is absurd). If 'I'll kill myself for grief' is to betaken in close connection with the preceding words (which is notcertain), she may mean that she reproaches herself for not having actedon her general suspicion, or (less probably) that she reproaches herselffor not having suspected that Iago was the rogue. With regard to my view that she failed to think of the handkerchief whenshe saw how angry Othello was, those who believe that she did think ofit will of course also believe that she suspected Iago. But in additionto other difficulties, they will have to suppose that her astonishment,when Othello at last mentioned the handkerchief, was mere acting. Andanyone who can believe this seems to me beyond argument. [I regret thatI cannot now discuss some suggestions made to me in regard to thesubjects of Notes O and P. ]NOTE Q. IAGO'S SUSPICION REGARDING CASSIO AND EMILIA. The one expression of this suspicion appears in a very curious manner. Iago, soliloquising, says (II. i. 311): Which thing to do, If this poor trash of Venice, whom I trash For his quick hunting, stand the putting on, I'll have our Michael Cassio on the hip, Abuse him to the Moor in the rank [F. right] garb-- For I fear Cassio with my night-cap too-- Make the Moor thank me, etc. Why '_For_ I fear Cassio,' etc. ? He can hardly be giving himself anadditional reason for involving Cassio; the parenthesis must beexplanatory of the preceding line or some part of it. I think itexplains 'rank garb' or 'right garb,' and the meaning is, 'For Cassio_is_ what I shall accuse him of being, a seducer of wives. ' He isreturning to the thought with which the soliloquy begins, 'That Cassioloves her, I do well believe it. ' In saying this he is unconsciouslytrying to believe that Cassio would at any rate _like_ to be anadulterer, so that it is not so very abominable to say that he _is_ one. And the idea 'I suspect him with Emilia' is a second and strongerattempt of the same kind. The idea probably was born and died in onemoment. It is a curious example of Iago's secret subjection to morality. NOTE R. REMINISCENCES OF _OTHELLO_ IN _KING LEAR_. The following is a list, made without any special search, and doubtlessincomplete, of words and phrases in _King Lear_ which recall words andphrases in _Othello_, and many of which occur only in these two plays: 'waterish,' I. i. 261, appears only here and in _O. _ III. iii. 15. 'fortune's alms,' I. i. 281, appears only here and in _O. _ III. iv. 122. 'decline' seems to be used of the advance of age only in I. ii. 78 and _O. _ III. iii. 265. 'slack' in 'if when they chanced to slack you,' II. iv. 248, has no exact parallel in Shakespeare, but recalls 'they slack their duties,' _O. _ IV. iii. 88. 'allowance' (=authorisation), I. iv. 228, is used thus only in _K. L. _, _O. _ I. i. 128, and two places in _Hamlet_ and _Hen. VIII. _ 'besort,' vb. , I. iv. 272, does not occur elsewhere, but 'besort,' sb. , occurs in _O. _ I. iii. 239 and nowhere else. Edmund's 'Look, sir, I bleed,' II. i. 43, sounds like an echo of Iago's 'I bleed, sir, but not killed,' _O. _ V. ii. 288. 'potential,' II. i. 78, appears only here, in _O. _ I. ii. 13, and in the _Lover's Complaint_ (which, I think, is certainly not an early poem). 'poise' in 'occasions of some poise,' II. i. 122, is exactly like 'poise' in 'full of poise and difficult weight,' _O. _ III. iii. 82, and not exactly like 'poise' in the three other places where it occurs. 'conjunct,' used only in II. ii. 125 (Q), V. i. 12, recalls 'conjunctive,' used only in _H_. IV. vii. 14, _O. _ I. iii. 374 (F). 'grime,' vb. , used only in II. iii. 9, recalls 'begrime,' used only in _O. _ III. iii. 387 and _Lucrece_. 'unbonneted,' III. i. 14, appears only here and in _O. _ I. ii. 23. 'delicate,' III. iv. 12, IV. iii. 15, IV. vi. 188, is not a rare word with Shakespeare; he uses it about thirty times in his plays. But it is worth notice that it occurs six times in _O. _ 'commit,' used intr. for 'commit adultery,' appears only in III. iv. 83, but cf. the famous iteration in _O. _ IV. ii. 72 f. 'stand in hard cure,' III. vi. 107, seems to have no parallel except _O. _ II. i. 51, 'stand in bold cure. ' 'secure'=make careless, IV. i. 22, appears only here and in _O. _ I. iii. 10 and (not quite the same sense) _Tim. _ II. ii. 185. Albany's 'perforce must wither,' IV. ii. 35, recalls Othello's 'It must needs wither,' V. ii. 15. 'deficient,' IV. vi. 23, occurs only here and in _O. _ I. iii. 63. 'the safer sense,' IV. vi. 81, recalls 'my blood begins my safer guides to rules,' _O. _ II. iii. 205. 'fitchew,' IV. vi. 124, is used only here, in _O. _ IV. i. 150, and in _T. C. _ V. i. 67 (where it has not the same significance). Lear's 'I have seen the day, with my good biting falchion I would have made them skip,' V. iii. 276, recalls Othello's 'I have seen the day, That with this little arm and this good sword,' etc. , V. ii. 261. The fact that more than half of the above occur in the first two Acts of_King Lear_ may possibly be significant: for the farther removedShakespeare was from the time of the composition of _Othello_, the lesslikely would be the recurrence of ideas or words used in that play. NOTE S. _KING LEAR_ AND _TIMON OF ATHENS_. That these two plays are near akin in character, and probably in date,is recognised by many critics now; and I will merely add here a fewreferences to the points of resemblance mentioned in the text (p. 246),and a few notes on other points. (1) The likeness between Timon's curses and some of the speeches of Learin his madness is, in one respect, curious. It is natural that Timon,speaking to Alcibiades and two courtezans, should inveigh in particularagainst sexual vices and corruption, as he does in the terrific passageIV. iii. 82-166; but why should Lear refer at length, and with the sameloathing, to this particular subject (IV. vi. 112-132)? It almost looksas if Shakespeare were expressing feelings which oppressed him at thisperiod of his life. The idea may be a mere fancy, but it has seemed to me that thispre-occupation, and sometimes this oppression, are traceable in otherplays of the period from about 1602 to 1605 (_Hamlet_, _Measure forMeasure_, _Troilus and Cressida_, _All's Well_, _Othello_); while inearlier plays the subject is handled less, and without disgust, and inlater plays (e. g. _Antony and Cleopatra_, _The Winter's Tale_,_Cymbeline_) it is also handled, however freely, without this air ofrepulsion (I omit _Pericles_ because the authorship of thebrothel-scenes is doubtful). (2) For references to the lower animals, similar to those in _KingLear_, see especially _Timon_, I. i. 259; II. ii. 180; III. vi. 103 f. ;IV. i. 2, 36; IV. iii. 49 f. , 177 ff. , 325 ff. (surely a passage writtenor, at the least, rewritten by Shakespeare), 392, 426 f. I ignore theconstant abuse of the dog in the conversations where Apemantus appears. (3) Further points of resemblance are noted in the text at pp. 246, 247,310, 326, 327, and many likenesses in word, phrase and idea might beadded, of the type of the parallel 'Thine Do comfort and not burn,'_Lear_, II. iv. 176, and 'Thou sun, that comfort'st, burn! ' _Timon_, V. i. 134. (4) The likeness in style and versification (so far as the purelyShakespearean parts of _Timon_ are concerned) is surely unmistakable,but some readers may like to see an example. Lear speaks here (IV. vi. 164 ff. ): Thou rascal beadle, hold thy bloody hand! Why dost thou lash that whore? Strip thine own back; Thou hotly lust'st to use her in that kind For which thou whipp'st her. The usurer hangs the cozener. Through tatter'd clothes small vices do appear; Robes and furr'd gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold, And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks; Arm it in rags, a pigmy's straw does pierce it. None does offend, none, I say, none; I'll able 'em: Take that of me, my friend, who have the power To seal the accuser's lips. Get thee glass eyes; And, like a scurvy politician, seem To see the things thou dost not. And Timon speaks here (IV. iii. 1 ff. ): O blessed breeding sun, draw from the earth Rotten humidity; below thy sister's orb Infect the air! Twinn'd brothers of one womb, Whose procreation, residence, and birth, Scarce is dividant, touch them with several fortunes, The greater scorns the lesser: not nature, To whom all sores lay siege, can bear great fortune, But by contempt of nature. Raise me this beggar, and deny't that lord: The senator shall bear contempt hereditary, The beggar native honour. It is the pasture lards the rother's sides, The want that makes him lean. Who dares, who dares. In purity of manhood stand upright And say 'This man's a flatterer'? if one be, So are they all: for every grise of fortune Is smooth'd by that below: the learned pate Ducks to the golden fool: all is oblique; There's nothing level in our cursed natures, But direct villany. The reader may wish to know whether metrical tests throw any light onthe chronological position of _Timon_; and he will find such informationas I can give in Note BB. But he will bear in mind that results arrivedat by applying these tests to the whole play can have little value,since it is practically certain that Shakespeare did not write the wholeplay. It seems to consist (1) of parts that are purely Shakespearean(the text, however, being here, as elsewhere, very corrupt); (2) ofparts untouched or very slightly touched by him; (3) of parts where agood deal is Shakespeare's but not all (_e. g. _, in my opinion, III. v. ,which I cannot believe, with Mr. Fleay, to be wholly, or almost wholly,by another writer). The tests ought to be applied not only to the wholeplay but separately to (1), about which there is little difference ofopinion. This has not been done: but Dr. Ingram has applied one test,and I have applied another, to the parts assigned by Mr. Fleay toShakespeare (see Note BB. ). [268] The result is to place _Timon_ between_King Lear_ and _Macbeth_ (a result which happens to coincide with thatof the application of the main tests to the whole play): and this resultcorresponds, I believe, with the general impression which we derive fromthe three dramas in regard to versification. FOOTNOTES:[Footnote 268: These are I. i. ; II. i. |
; II. ii. , except 194-204; in III. vi. Timon's verse speech; IV. i. ; IV. ii. 1-28; IV. iii. , except292-362, 399-413, 454-543; V. i. , except 1-50; V. ii. ; V. iv. I am notto be taken as accepting this division throughout. ]NOTE T. DID SHAKESPEARE SHORTEN _KING LEAR_? I have remarked in the text (pp. 256 ff. ) on the unusual number ofimprobabilities, inconsistencies, etc. , in _King Lear_. The list ofexamples given might easily be lengthened. Thus (_a_) in IV. iii. Kentrefers to a letter which he confided to the Gentleman for Cordelia; butin III. i. he had given to the Gentleman not a letter but a message. (_b_) In III. i. again he says Cordelia will inform the Gentleman whothe sender of the message was; but from IV. iii. it is evident that shehas done no such thing, nor does the Gentleman show any curiosity on thesubject. (_c_) In the same scene (III. i. ) Kent and the Gentlemanarrange that whichever finds the King first shall halloo to the other;but when Kent finds the King he does not halloo. These are all examplesof mere carelessness as to matters which would escape attention in thetheatre,--matters introduced not because they are essential to the plot,but in order to give an air of verisimilitude to the conversation. Andhere is perhaps another instance. When Lear determines to leave Goneriland go to Regan he says, 'call my train together' (I. iv. 275). When hearrives at Gloster's house Kent asks why he comes with so small a train,and the Fool gives a reply which intimates that the rest have desertedhim (II. iv. 63 ff. ). He and his daughters, however, seem unaware of anydiminution; and, when Lear 'calls to horse' and leaves Gloster's house,the doors are shut against him partly on the excuse that he is 'attendedwith a desperate train' (308). Nevertheless in the storm he has noknights with him, and in III. vii. 15 ff. we hear that 'some five or sixand thirty of his knights'[269] are 'hot questrists after him,' asthough the real reason of his leaving Goneril with so small a train wasthat he had hurried away so quickly that many of his knights wereunaware of his departure. This prevalence of vagueness or inconsistency is probably due tocarelessness; but it may possibly be due to another cause. There are, ithas sometimes struck me, slight indications that the details of the plotwere originally more full and more clearly imagined than one wouldsuppose from the play as we have it; and some of the defects to which Ihave drawn attention might have arisen if Shakespeare, finding hismatter too bulky, had (_a_) omitted to write some things originallyintended, and (_b_), after finishing his play, had reduced it byexcision, and had not, in these omissions and excisions, takensufficient pains to remove the obscurities and inconsistenciesoccasioned by them. Thus, to take examples of (_b_), Lear's 'What, fifty of my followers ata clap! ' (I. iv. 315) is very easily explained if we suppose that in thepreceding conversation, as originally written, Goneril had mentioned thenumber. Again the curious absence of any indication why Burgundy shouldhave the first choice of Cordelia's hand might easily be due to the samecause. So might the ignorance in which we are left as to the fate of theFool, and several more of the defects noticed in the text. To illustrate the other point (_a_), that Shakespeare may have omittedto write some things which he had originally intended, the play wouldobviously gain something if it appeared that, at a time shortly beforethat of the action, Gloster had encouraged the King in his idea ofdividing the kingdom, while Kent had tried to dissuade him. And thereare one or two passages which suggest that this is what Shakespeareimagined. If it were so, there would be additional point in the Fool'sreference to the lord who counselled Lear to give away his land (I. iv. 154), and in Gloster's reflection (III. iv. 168), His daughters seek his death: ah, that good Kent! He said it would be thus:('said,' of course, not to the King but to Gloster and perhaps others ofthe council). Thus too the plots would be still more closely joined. Then also we should at once understand the opening of the play. ToKent's words, 'I thought the King had more affected the Duke of Albanythan Cornwall,' Gloster answers, 'It did always seem so to us. ' Who arethe 'us' from whom Kent is excluded? I do not know, for there is no signthat Kent has been absent. But if Kent, in consequence of hisopposition, had fallen out of favour and absented himself from thecouncil, it would be clear. So, besides, would be the strange suddennesswith which, after Gloster's answer, Kent changes the subject; he wouldbe avoiding, in presence of Gloster's son, any further reference to asubject on which he and Gloster had differed. That Kent, I may add, hadalready the strongest opinion about Goneril and Regan is clear from hisextremely bold words (I. i. 165), Kill thy physician, and the fee bestow Upon thy foul disease. Did Lear remember this phrase when he called Goneril 'a disease that'sin my flesh' (II. iv. 225)? Again, the observant reader may have noticed that Goneril is not onlyrepresented as the fiercer and more determined of the two sisters butalso strikes one as the more sensual. And with this may be connected oneor two somewhat curious points: Kent's comparison of Goneril to thefigure of Vanity in the Morality plays (II. ii. 38); the Fool'sapparently quite irrelevant remark (though his remarks are scarcely everso), 'For there was never yet fair woman but she made mouths in a glass'(III. ii. 35); Kent's reference to Oswald (long before there is any signof Goneril's intrigue with Edmund) as 'one that would be a bawd in wayof good service' (II. ii. 20); and Edgar's words to the corpse of Oswald(IV. vi. 257), also spoken before he knew anything of the intrigue withEdmund, I know thee well: a serviceable villain; As duteous to the vices of thy mistress As badness would desire. Perhaps Shakespeare had conceived Goneril as a woman who before hermarriage had shown signs of sensual vice; but the distinct indicationsof this idea were crowded out of his exposition when he came to writeit, or, being inserted, were afterwards excised. I will not go on tohint that Edgar had Oswald in his mind when (III. iv. 87) he describedthe serving-man who 'served the lust of his mistress' heart, and did theact of darkness with her'; and still less that Lear can have had Gonerilin his mind in the declamation against lechery referred to in Note S. I do not mean to imply, by writing this note, that I believe in thehypotheses suggested in it. On the contrary I think it more probablethat the defects referred to arose from carelessness and other causes. But this is not, to me, certain; and the reader who rejects thehypotheses may be glad to have his attention called to the points whichsuggested them. FOOTNOTES:[Footnote 269: It has been suggested that 'his' means 'Gloster's'; but'him' all through the speech evidently means Lear. ]NOTE U. MOVEMENTS OF THE DRAMATIS PERSONÆ IN ACT II. OF _KING LEAR_. I have referred in the text to the obscurity of the play on thissubject, and I will set out the movements here. When Lear is ill-treated by Goneril his first thought is to seek refugewith Regan (I. iv. 274 f. , 327 f. ). Goneril, accordingly, who hadforeseen this, and, even before the quarrel, had determined to write toRegan (I. iii. 25), now sends Oswald off to her, telling her not toreceive Lear and his hundred knights (I. iv. 354 f. ). In consequence ofthis letter Regan and Cornwall immediately leave their home and ride bynight to Gloster's house, sending word on that they are coming (II. i. 1ff. , 81, 120 ff. ). Lear, on his part, just before leaving Goneril'shouse, sends Kent with a letter to Regan, and tells him to be quick, orLear will be there before him. And we find that Kent reaches Regan anddelivers his letter before Oswald, Goneril's messenger. Both themessengers are taken on by Cornwall and Regan to Gloster's house. In II. iv. Lear arrives at Gloster's house, having, it would seem,failed to find Regan at her own home. And, later, Goneril arrives atGloster's house, in accordance with an intimation which she had sent inher letter to Regan (II. iv. 186 f. ). Thus all the principal persons except Cordelia and Albany are broughttogether; and the crises of the double action--the expulsion of Lear andthe blinding and expulsion of Gloster--are reached in Act III. And thisis what was required. But it needs the closest attention to follow these movements. And, apartfrom this, difficulties remain. 1. Goneril, in despatching Oswald with the letter to Regan, tells him tohasten his return (I. iv. 363). Lear again is surprised to find that_his_ messenger has not been sent back (II. iv. 1 f. , 36 f. ). Yetapparently both Goneril and Lear themselves start at once, so that theirmessengers _could_ not return in time. It may be said that they expectedto meet them coming back, but there is no indication of this in thetext. 2. Lear, in despatching Kent, says (I. v. 1): Go you before to Gloster with these letters. Acquaint my daughter no further with anything you know than comes from her demand out of the letter. This would seem to imply that Lear knew that Regan and Cornwall were atGloster's house, and meant either to go there (so Koppel) or to summonher back to her own home to receive him. Yet this is clearly not so, forKent goes straight to Regan's house (II. i. 124, II. iv. 1, 27 ff. , 114ff. ). Hence it is generally supposed that by 'Gloster,' in the passage justquoted, Lear means not the Earl but the _place_; that Regan's home wasthere; and that Gloster's castle was somewhere not very far off. This isto some extent confirmed by the fact that Cornwall is the 'arch' orpatron of Gloster (II. i. 60 f. , 112 ff. ). But Gloster's home or housemust not be imagined quite close to Cornwall's, for it takes a night toride from the one to the other, and Gloster's house is in the middle ofa solitary heath with scarce a bush for many miles about (II. iv. 304). The plural 'these letters' in the passage quoted need give no trouble,for the plural is often used by Shakespeare for a single letter; and thenatural conjecture that Lear sent one letter to Regan and another toGloster is not confirmed by anything in the text. The only difficulty is that, as Koppel points out, 'Gloster' is nowhereelse used in the play for the place (except in the phrase 'Earl ofGloster' or 'my lord of Gloster'); and--what is more important--that itwould unquestionably be taken by the audience to stand in this passagefor the Earl, especially as there has been no previous indication thatCornwall lived at Gloster. One can only suppose that Shakespeare forgotthat he had given no such indication, and so wrote what was sure to bemisunderstood,--unless we suppose that 'Gloster' is a mere slip of thepen, or even a misprint, for 'Regan. ' But, apart from otherconsiderations, Lear would hardly have spoken to a servant of 'Regan,'and, if he had, the next words would have run 'Acquaint her,' not'Acquaint my daughter. 'NOTE V. SUSPECTED INTERPOLATIONS IN _KING LEAR_. There are three passages in _King Lear_ which have been held to beadditions made by 'the players. 'The first consists of the two lines of indecent doggerel spoken by theFool at the end of Act I. ; the second, of the Fool's prophecy in rhymeat the end of III. ii. ; the third, of Edgar's soliloquy at the end ofIII. vi. It is suspicious (1) that all three passages occur at the ends ofscenes, the place where an addition is most easily made; and (2) that ineach case the speaker remains behind alone to utter the words after theother persons have gone off. I postpone discussion of the several passages until I have calledattention to the fact that, if these passages are genuine, the number ofscenes which end with a soliloquy is larger in _King Lear_ than in anyother undoubted tragedy. Thus, taking the tragedies in their probablechronological order (and ignoring the very short scenes into which abattle is sometimes divided),[270] I find that there are in _Romeo andJuliet_ four such scenes, in _Julius Cæsar_ two, in _Hamlet_ six, in_Othello_ four,[271] in _King Lear_ seven,[272] in _Macbeth_ two,[273]in _Antony and Cleopatra_ three, in _Coriolanus_ one. The differencebetween _King Lear_ and the plays that come nearest to it is really muchgreater than it appears from this list, for in _Hamlet_ four of the sixsoliloquies, and in _Othello_ three of the four, are long speeches,while most of those in _King Lear_ are quite short. Of course I do not attach any great importance to the fact just noticed,but it should not be left entirely out of account in forming an opinionas to the genuineness of the three doubted passages. (_a_) The first of these, I. v. 54-5, I decidedly believe to bespurious. (1) The scene ends quite in Shakespeare's manner without it. (2) It does not seem likely that at the _end_ of the scene Shakespearewould have introduced anything _violently_ incongruous with theimmediately preceding words, Oh let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven! Keep me in temper: I would not be mad! (3) Even if he had done so, it is very unlikely that the incongruouswords would have been grossly indecent. (4) Even if they had been,surely they would not have been _irrelevantly_ indecent and evidentlyaddressed to the audience, two faults which are not in Shakespeare'sway. (5) The lines are doggerel. Doggerel is not uncommon in theearliest plays; there are a few lines even in the _Merchant of Venice_,a line and a half, perhaps, in _As You Like It_; but I do not think itoccurs later, not even where, in an early play, it would certainly havebeen found, _e. g. _ in the mouth of the Clown in _All's Well_. The bestthat can be said for these lines is that they appear in the Quartos,_i. e. _ in reports, however vile, of the play as performed within two orthree years of its composition. (_b_) I believe, almost as decidedly, that the second passage, III. ii. 79 ff. , is spurious. (1) The scene ends characteristically without thelines. (2) They are addressed directly to the audience. (3) They destroythe pathetic and beautiful effect of the immediately preceding words ofthe Fool, and also of Lear's solicitude for him. (4) They involve theabsurdity that the shivering timid Fool would allow his master andprotector, Lear and Kent, to go away into the storm and darkness,leaving him alone. (5) It is also somewhat against them that they do notappear in the Quartos. At the same time I do not think one wouldhesitate to accept them if they occurred at any natural place _within_the dialogue. (_c_) On the other hand I see no sufficient reason for doubting thegenuineness of Edgar's soliloquy at the end of III. vi. (1) Those whodoubt it appear not to perceive that _some_ words of soliloquy arewanted; for it is evidently intended that, when Kent and Gloster bearthe King away, they should leave the Bedlam behind. Naturally they doso. He is only accidentally connected with the King; he was taken toshelter with him merely to gratify his whim, and as the King is nowasleep there is no occasion to retain the Bedlam; Kent, we know, shrankfrom him, 'shunn'd [his] abhorr'd society' (V. iii. 210). So he is leftto return to the hovel where he was first found. When the others depart,then, he must be left behind, and surely would not go off without aword. (2) If his speech is spurious, therefore, it has been substitutedfor some genuine speech; and surely that is a supposition not to beentertained except under compulsion. (3) There is no such compulsion inthe speech. It is not very good, no doubt; but the use of rhymed andsomewhat antithetic lines in a gnomic passage is quite in Shakespeare'smanner, _more_ in his manner than, for example, the rhymed passages inI. i. 183-190, 257-269, 281-4, which nobody doubts; quite like manyplaces in _All's Well_, or the concluding lines of _King Lear_ itself. (4) The lines are in spirit of one kind with Edgar's fine lines at thebeginning of Act IV. (5) Some of them, as Delius observes, emphasize theparallelism between the stories of Lear and Gloster. (6) The fact thatthe Folio omits the lines is, of course, nothing against them. FOOTNOTES:[Footnote 270: I ignore them partly because they are not significant forthe present purpose, but mainly because it is impossible to accept thedivision of battle-scenes in our modern texts, while to depart from itis to introduce intolerable inconvenience in reference. The only properplan in Elizabethan drama is to consider a scene ended as soon as noperson is left on the stage, and to pay no regard to the question oflocality,--a question theatrically insignificant and undetermined inmost scenes of an Elizabethan play, in consequence of the absence ofmovable scenery. In dealing with battles the modern editors seem to havegone on the principle (which they could not possibly apply generally)that, so long as the place is not changed, you have only one scene. Hence in _Macbeth_, Act V. , they have included in their Scene vii. threedistinct scenes; yet in _Antony and Cleopatra_, Act III. , following theright division for a wrong reason, they have two scenes (viii. and ix. ),each less than four lines long. ][Footnote 271: One of these (V. i. ) is not marked as such, but it isevident that the last line and a half form a soliloquy of one remainingcharacter, just as much as some of the soliloquies marked as such inother plays. ][Footnote 272: According to modern editions, eight, Act II. , scene ii. ,being an instance. But it is quite ridiculous to reckon as three sceneswhat are marked as scenes ii. , iii. , iv. Kent is on the lower stage thewhole time, Edgar in the so-called scene iii. being on the upper stageor balcony. The editors were misled by their ignorance of the stagearrangements. ][Footnote 273: Perhaps three, for V. iii. is perhaps an instance, thoughnot so marked. ]NOTE W. THE STAGING OF THE SCENE OF LEAR'S REUNION WITH CORDELIA. As Koppel has shown, the usual modern stage-directions[274] for thisscene (IV. vii. ) are utterly wrong and do what they can to defeat thepoet's purpose. It is evident from the text that the scene shows the _first_ meeting ofCordelia and Kent, and _first_ meeting of Cordelia and Lear, since theyparted in I. i. Kent and Cordelia indeed are doubtless supposed to haveexchanged a few words before they come on the stage; but Cordelia hasnot seen her father at all until the moment before she begins (line 26),'O my dear father! ' Hence the tone of the first part of the scene, thatbetween Cordelia and Kent, is kept low, in order that the latter part,between Cordelia and Lear, may have its full effect. The modern stage-direction at the beginning of the scene, as found, forexample, in the Cambridge and Globe editions, is as follows: 'SCENE vii. --A tent in the French camp. LEAR on a bed asleep, soft music playing; _Gentleman_, and others attending. Enter CORDELIA, KENT, and _Doctor_. 'At line 25, where the Doctor says 'Please you, draw near,' Cordelia issupposed to approach the bed, which is imagined by some editors visiblethroughout at the back of the stage, by others as behind a curtain atthe back, this curtain being drawn open at line 25. Now, to pass by the fact that these arrangements are in flatcontradiction with the stage-directions of the Quartos and the Folio,consider their effect upon the scene. In the first place, the reader atonce assumes that Cordelia has already seen her father; for otherwise itis inconceivable that she would quietly talk with Kent while he waswithin a few yards of her. The edge of the later passage where sheaddresses him is therefore blunted. In the second place, through Lear'spresence the reader's interest in Lear and his meeting with Cordelia isat once excited so strongly that he hardly attends at all to theconversation of Cordelia and Kent; and so this effect is blunted too. Thirdly, at line 57, where Cordelia says, O, look upon me, sir, And hold your hands in benediction o'er me! No, sir, you must not kneel,the poor old King must be supposed either to try to get out of bed, oractually to do so, or to kneel, or to try to kneel, on the bed. Fourthly, consider what happens at line 81. _Doctor. _ Desire him to _go in_; trouble him no more Till further settling. _Cor. _ Will't please your highness _walk? _ _Lear. _ You must bear with me; Pray you now, forget and forgive; I am old and foolish. [_Exeunt all but Kent and Gentleman_. If Lear is in a tent containing his bed, why in the world, when thedoctor thinks he can bear no more emotion, is he made to walk out of thetent? A pretty doctor! But turn now to the original texts. Of course they say nothing about theplace. The stage-direction at the beginning runs, in the Quartos, 'EnterCordelia, Kent, and Doctor;' in the Folio, 'Enter Cordelia, Kent, andGentleman. ' They differ about the Gentleman and the Doctor, and theFolio later wrongly gives to the Gentleman the Doctor's speeches as wellas his own. This is a minor matter. But they agree in _making no mentionof Lear_. He is not on the stage at all. Thus Cordelia, and the reader,can give their whole attention to Kent. Her conversation with Kent finished, she turns (line 12) to the Doctorand asks 'How does the King? '[275] The Doctor tells her that Lear isstill asleep, and asks leave to wake him. Cordelia assents and asks ifhe is 'arrayed,' which does not mean whether he has a night-gown on, butwhether they have taken away his crown of furrow-weeds, and tended himduly after his mad wanderings in the fields. The Gentleman says that inhis sleep 'fresh garments' (not a night-gown) have been put on him. TheDoctor then asks Cordelia to be present when her father is waked. Sheassents, and the Doctor says, 'Please you, draw near. Louder the musicthere. ' The next words are Cordelia's, 'O my dear father! 'What has happened? At the words 'is he arrayed? ' according to the Folio,'_Enter Lear in a chair carried by Servants. _' The moment of thisentrance, as so often in the original editions, is doubtless too soon. It should probably come at the words 'Please you, draw near,' which_may_, as Koppel suggests, be addressed to the bearers. But that thestage-direction is otherwise right there cannot be a doubt (and that theQuartos omit it is no argument against it, seeing that, according totheir directions, Lear never enters at all). This arrangement (1) allows Kent his proper place in the scene, (2)makes it clear that Cordelia has not seen her father before, (3) makesher first sight of him a theatrical crisis in the best sense, (4) makesit quite natural that he should kneel, (5) makes it obvious why heshould leave the stage again when he shows signs of exhaustion, and (6)is the only arrangement which has the slightest authority, for 'Lear ona bed asleep' was never heard of till Capell proposed it. The ruinouschange of the staging was probably suggested by the version of thatunhappy Tate. Of course the chair arrangement is primitive, but the Elizabethans didnot care about such things. What they cared for was dramatic effect. FOOTNOTES:[Footnote 274: There are exceptions: _e. g. _, in the editions of Deliusand Mr. W. J. Craig. ][Footnote 275: And it is possible that, as Koppel suggests, the Doctorshould properly enter at this point; for if Kent, as he says, wishes toremain unknown, it seems strange that he and Cordelia should talk asthey do before a third person. This change however is not necessary, forthe Doctor might naturally stand out of hearing till he was addressed;and it is better not to go against the stage-direction withoutnecessity. ]NOTE X. THE BATTLE IN _KING LEAR_. I found my impression of the extraordinary ineffectiveness of thisbattle (p. 255) confirmed by a paper of James Spedding (_New ShakspereSociety Transactions_, 1877, or Furness's _King Lear_, p. 312 f. ); buthis opinion that this is the one technical defect in _King Lear_ seemscertainly incorrect, and his view that this defect is not due toShakespeare himself will not, I think, bear scrutiny. To make Spedding's view quite clear I may remind the reader that in thepreceding scene the two British armies, that of Edmund and Regan, andthat of Albany and Goneril, have entered with drum and colours, and havedeparted. Scene ii. is as follows (Globe): SCENE II. --_A field between the two camps. Alarum within. Enter, with drum and colours_, LEAR, CORDELIA, _and_ Soldiers, _over the stage; and exeunt. _ _Enter_ EDGAR _and_ GLOSTER. _Edg. _ Here, father, take the shadow of this tree For your good host; pray that the right may thrive: If ever I return to you again, I'll bring you comfort. _Glo. _ Grace go with you, sir! [_Exit_ Edgar _Alarum and retreat within. _ _Re-enter_ EDGAR. _Edg. _ Away, old man; give me thy hand; away! King Lear hath lost, he and his daughter ta'en: Give me thy hand; come on. _Glo. _ No farther, sir; a man may rot even here. _Edg. _ What, in ill thoughts again? Men must endure Their going hence, even as their coming hither: Ripeness is all: come on. _Glo. _ And that's true too. [_Exeunt_. The battle, it will be seen, is represented only by military musicwithin the tiring-house, which formed the back of the stage. 'Thescene,' says Spedding, 'does not change; but 'alarums' are heard, andafterwards a 'retreat,' and on the same field over which that great armyhas this moment passed, fresh and full of hope, re-appears, with tidingsthat all is lost, the same man who last left the stage to follow andfight in it. [276] That Shakespeare meant the scene to stand thus, no onewho has the true faith will believe. 'Spedding's suggestion is that things are here run together whichShakespeare meant to keep apart. Shakespeare, he thinks, continued ActIV. to the '_exit_ Edgar' after l. 4 of the above passage. Thus, justbefore the close of the Act, the two British armies and the French armyhad passed across the stage, and the interest of the audience in thebattle about to be fought was raised to a high pitch. Then, after ashort interval, Act V. opened with the noise of battle in the distance,followed by the entrance of Edgar to announce the defeat of Cordelia'sarmy. The battle, thus, though not fought on the stage, was shown andfelt to be an event of the greatest importance. Apart from the main objection of the entire want of evidence of so greata change having been made, there are other objections to this idea andto the reasoning on which it is based. (1) The pause at the end of thepresent Fourth Act is far from 'faulty,' as Spedding alleges it to be;that Act ends with the most melting scene Shakespeare ever wrote; and apause after it, and before the business of the battle, was perfectlyright. (2) The Fourth Act is already much longer than the Fifth (aboutfourteen columns of the Globe edition against about eight and a half),and Spedding's change would give the Fourth nearly sixteen columns, andthe Fifth less than seven. (3) Spedding's proposal requires a muchgreater alteration in the existing text than he supposed. It does notsimply shift the division of the two Acts, it requires the disappearanceand re-entrance of the blind Gloster. Gloster, as the text stands, isalone on the stage while the battle is being fought at a distance, andthe reference to the tree shows that he was on the main or lower stage. The main stage had no front curtain; and therefore, if Act IV. is to endwhere Spedding wished it to end, Gloster must go off unaided at itsclose, and come on again unaided for Act V. And this means that the_whole_ arrangement of the present Act V. Sc. ii. must be changed. IfSpedding had been aware of this it is not likely that he would havebroached his theory. [277]It is curious that he does not allude to the one circumstance whichthrows some little suspicion on the existing text. I mean thecontradiction between Edgar's statement that, if ever he returns to hisfather again, he will bring him comfort, and the fact that immediatelyafterwards he returns to bring him discomfort. It is possible to explainthis psychologically, of course, but the passage is not one in which weshould expect psychological subtlety. FOOTNOTES:[Footnote 276: Where did Spedding find this? I find no trace of it, andsurely Edgar would not have risked his life in the battle, when he had,in case of defeat, to appear and fight Edmund. He does not appear'armed,' according to the Folio, till V. iii. 117. ][Footnote 277: Spedding supposed that there was a front curtain, andthis idea, coming down from Malone and Collier, is still found inEnglish works of authority. But it may be stated without hesitation thatthere is no positive evidence at all for the existence of such acurtain, and abundant evidence against it. ]NOTE Y. SOME DIFFICULT PASSAGES IN _KING LEAR_. The following are notes on some passages where I have not been able toaccept any of the current interpretations, or on which I wish to expressan opinion or represent a little-known view. 1. _Kent's soliloquy at the end of_ II. ii. (_a_) In this speech the application of the words 'Nothing, almost seesmiracles but misery' seems not to have been understood. The 'misery' issurely not that of Kent but that of Lear, who has come 'out of heaven'sbenediction to the warm sun,' _i. e. _ to misery. This, says Kent, is justthe situation where something like miraculous help may be looked for;and he finds the sign of it in the fact that a letter from Cordelia hasjust reached him; for his course since his banishment has been soobscured that it is only by the rarest good fortune (something like amiracle) that Cordelia has got intelligence of it. We may suppose thatthis intelligence came from one of Albany's or Cornwall's servants, someof whom are, he says (III. i. 23), to France the spies and speculations Intelligent of our state. (_b_) The words 'and shall find time,' etc. , have been much discussed. Some have thought that they are detached phrases from the letter whichKent is reading: but Kent has just implied by his address to the sunthat he has no light to read the letter by. [278] It has also beensuggested that the anacoluthon is meant to represent Kent's sleepiness,which prevents him from finishing the sentence, and induces him todismiss his thoughts and yield to his drowsiness. But I remember nothinglike this elsewhere in Shakespeare, and it seems much more probable thatthe passage is corrupt, perhaps from the loss of a line containing wordslike 'to rescue us' before 'From this enormous state' (with 'state' cf. 'our state' in the lines quoted above). When we reach III. i. we find that Kent has now read the letter; heknows that a force is coming from France and indeed has already 'secretfeet' in some of the harbours. So he sends the Gentleman to Dover. 2. _The Fool's Song in_ II. iv. At II. iv. 62 Kent asks why the King comes with so small a train. TheFool answers, in effect, that most of his followers have deserted himbecause they see that his fortunes are sinking. He proceeds to adviseKent ironically to follow their example, though he confesses he does notintend to follow it himself. 'Let go thy hold when a great wheel runsdown a hill, lest it break thy neck with following it: but the great onethat goes up the hill, let him draw thee after. When a wise man givesthee better counsel, give me mine again: I would have none but knavesfollow it, since a fool gives it. That sir which serves and seeks for gain, And follows but for form, Will pack when it begins to rain, And leave thee in the storm. But I will tarry; the fool will stay, And let the wise man fly: The knave turns fool that runs away; The fool no knave, perdy. The last two lines have caused difficulty. Johnson wanted to read, The fool turns knave that runs away, The knave no fool, perdy;_i. e. _ if I ran away, I should prove myself to be a knave and a wiseman, but, being a fool, I stay, as no knave or wise man would. Those whorightly defend the existing reading misunderstand it, I think. Shakespeare is not pointing out, in 'The knave turns fool that runsaway,' that the wise knave who runs away is really a 'fool with acircumbendibus,' 'moral miscalculator as well as moral coward. ' The Foolis referring to his own words, 'I would have none but knaves follow [myadvice to desert the King], since a fool gives it'; and the last twolines of his song mean, 'The knave who runs away follows the advicegiven by a fool; but I, the fool, shall not follow my own advice byturning knave. 'For the ideas compare the striking passage in _Timon_, I. i. 64 ff. 3. '_Decline your head. _'At IV. ii. 18 Goneril, dismissing Edmund in the presence of Oswald,says: This trusty servant Shall pass between us: ere long you are like to hear, If you dare venture in your own behalf, A mistress's command. Wear this; spare speech; Decline your head: this kiss, if it durst speak, Would stretch thy spirits up into the air. I copy Furness's note on 'Decline': 'STEEVENS thinks that Goneril bidsEdmund decline his head that she might, while giving him a kiss, appearto Oswald merely to be whispering to him. But this, WRIGHT says, isgiving Goneril credit for too much delicacy, and Oswald was a"serviceable villain. " DELIUS suggests that perhaps she wishes to put achain around his neck. 'Surely 'Decline your head' is connected, not with 'Wear this' (whatever'this' may be), but with 'this kiss,' etc. Edmund is a good deal tallerthan Goneril, and must stoop to be kissed. 4. _Self-cover'd_. At IV. ii. 59 Albany, horrified at the passions of anger, hate, andcontempt expressed in his wife's face, breaks out: See thyself, devil! Proper deformity seems not in the fiend So horrid as in woman. _Gon. _ O vain fool! _Alb. _ Thou changed and self-cover'd thing, for shame, Be-monster not thy feature. Were't my fitness To let these hands obey my blood, They are apt enough to dislocate and tear Thy flesh and bones: howe'er thou art a fiend, A woman's shape doth shield thee. The passage has been much discussed, mainly because of the strangeexpression 'self-cover'd,' for which of course emendations have beenproposed. The general meaning is clear. Albany tells his wife that sheis a devil in a woman's shape, and warns her not to cast off that shapeby be-monstering her feature (appearance), since it is this shape alonethat protects her from his wrath. Almost all commentators go astraybecause they imagine that, in the words 'thou changed and self-cover'dthing,' Albany is speaking to Goneril as a _woman_ who has been changedinto a fiend. Really he is addressing her as a fiend which has changedits own shape and assumed that of a woman; and I suggest that'self-cover'd' means either 'which hast covered or concealed thyself,'or 'whose self is covered' [so Craig in Arden edition], not (what ofcourse it ought to mean) 'which hast been covered _by_ thyself. 'Possibly the last lines of this passage (which does not appear in theFolios) should be arranged thus: To let these hands obey my blood, they're apt enough To dislocate and tear thy flesh and bones: Howe'er thou art a fiend, a woman's shape Doth shield thee. _Gon. _ Marry, your manhood now-- _Alb. _ What news? 5. _The stage-directions at_ V. i. 37, 39. In V. i. there first enter Edmund, Regan, and their army or soldiers:then, at line 18, Albany, Goneril, and their army or soldiers. Edmundand Albany speak very stiffly to one another, and Goneril bids themdefer their private quarrels and attend to business. Then follows thispassage (according to the modern texts): _Alb. _ Let's then determine With the ancient of war on our proceedings. _Edm. _ I shall attend you presently at your tent. _Reg. _ Sister, you'll go with us? _Gon. _ No. _Reg. |
_ 'Tis most convenient: pray you, go with us. _Gon. _ [_Aside_] O, ho, I know the riddle. --I will go. _As they are going out, enter_ EDGAR _disguised. _ _Edg. _ If e'er your grace had speech with man so poor, Hear me one word. _Alb. _ I'll overtake you. Speak. [_Exeunt all but_ ALBANY _and_ EDGAR. It would appear from this that all the leading persons are to go to aCouncil of War with the ancient (plural) in Albany's tent; and they aregoing out, followed by their armies, when Edgar comes in. Why in theworld, then, should Goneril propose (as she apparently does) to absentherself from the Council; and why, still more, should Regan object toher doing so? This is a question which always perplexed me, and I couldnot believe in the only answers I ever found suggested, viz. , that Reganwanted to keep Edmund and Goneril together in order that she mightobserve them (Moberly, quoted in Furness), or that she could not bear tolose sight of Goneril, for fear Goneril should effect a meeting withEdmund after the Council (Delius, if I understand him). But I find in Koppel what seems to be the solution(Verbesserungsvorschläge, p. 127 f. ). He points out that the modernstage-directions are wrong. For the modern direction 'As they are goingout, enter Edgar disguised,' the Ff. read, 'Exeunt both the armies. Enter Edgar. ' For 'Exeunt all but Albany and Edgar' the Ff. havenothing, but Q1 has 'exeunt' after 'word. ' For the first directionKoppel would read, 'Exeunt Regan, Goneril, Gentlemen, and Soldiers': forthe second he would read, after 'overtake you,' 'Exit Edmund. 'This makes all clear. Albany proposes a Council of War. Edmund assents,and says he will come at once to Albany's tent for that purpose. TheCouncil will consist of Albany, Edmund, and the ancient of war. Regan,accordingly, is going away with her soldiers; but she observes thatGoneril shows no sign of moving with _her_ soldiers; and she at oncesuspects that Goneril means to attend the Council in order to be withEdmund. Full of jealousy, she invites Goneril to go with _her_. Gonerilrefuses, but then, seeing Regan's motive, contemptuously and ironicallyconsents (I doubt if 'O ho, I know the riddle' should be 'aside,' as inmodern editions, following Capell). Accordingly the two sisters go out,followed by their soldiers; and Edmund and Albany are just going out, ina different direction, to Albany's tent when Edgar enters. His wordscause Albany to stay; Albany says to Edmund, as Edmund leaves, 'I'llovertake you'; and then, turning to Edgar, bids him 'speak. '6. V. iii. 151 ff. When Edmund falls in combat with the disguised Edgar, Albany producesthe letter from Goneril to Edmund, which Edgar had found in Oswald'spocket and had handed over to Albany. This letter suggested to Edmundthe murder of Albany. The passage in the Globe edition is as follows: _Gon. _ This is practice, Gloucester: By the law of arms thou wast not bound to answer An unknown opposite: thou art not vanquish'd, But cozen'd and beguiled. _Alb. _ Shut your mouth, dame, Or with this paper shall I stop it: Hold, sir; Thou worse than any name, read thy own evil: No tearing, lady; I perceive you know it. [_Gives the letter to Edmund. _ _Gon. _ Say, if I do, the laws are mine, not thine: Who can arraign me for't? _Alb. _ Most monstrous! oh! Know'st thou this paper? _Gon. _ Ask me not what I know. [_Exit. _ _Alb. _ Go after her: she's desperate: govern her. _Edm. _ What you have charged me with, that have I done; And more, much more; the time will bring it out. 'Tis past, and so am I. But what art thou That hast this fortune on me? The first of the stage-directions is not in the Qq. or Ff. : it wasinserted by Johnson. The second ('Exit') is both in the Qq. and in theFf. , but the latter place it after the words 'arraign me for't. ' Andthey give the words 'Ask me not what I know' to Edmund, not to Goneril,as in the Qq. (followed by the Globe). I will not go into the various views of these lines, but will simply saywhat seems to me most probable. It does not matter much where preciselyGoneril's 'exit' comes; but I believe the Folios are right in giving thewords 'Ask me not what I know' to Edmund. It has been pointed out byKnight that the question 'Know'st thou this paper? ' cannot very well beaddressed to Goneril, for Albany has already said to her, 'I perceiveyou know it. ' It is possible to get over this difficulty by saying thatAlbany wants her confession: but there is another fact which seems tohave passed unnoticed. When Albany is undoubtedly speaking to his wife,he uses the plural pronoun, 'Shut _your_ mouth, dame,' 'No tearing,lady; I perceive _you_ know it. ' When then he asks 'Know'st _thou_ thispaper? ' he is probably _not_ speaking to her. I should take the passage thus. At 'Hold, sir,' [omitted in Qq. ] Albanyholds the letter out towards Edmund for him to see, or possibly gives itto him. [279] The next line, with its 'thou,' is addressed to Edmund,whose 'reciprocal vows' are mentioned in the letter. Goneril snatches atit to tear it up: and Albany, who does not know whether Edmund ever sawthe letter or not, says to her 'I perceive _you_ know it,' the 'you'being emphatic (her very wish to tear it showed she knew what was init). She practically admits her knowledge, defies him, and goes out tokill herself. He exclaims in horror at her, and, turning again toEdmund, asks if _he_ knows it. Edmund, who of course does not know it,refuses to answer (like Iago), not (like Iago) out of defiance, but fromchivalry towards Goneril; and, having refused to answer _this_ charge,he goes on to admit the charges brought against himself previously byAlbany (82 f. ) and Edgar (130 f. ). I should explain the change from'you' to 'thou' in his speech by supposing that at first he is speakingto Albany and Edgar together. 7. V. iii. 278. Lear, looking at Kent, asks, Who are you? Mine eyes are not o' the best: I'll tell you straight. _Kent. _ If fortune brag of two she loved _and_ hated (Qq. _or_), One of them we behold. Kent is not answering Lear, nor is he speaking of himself. He isspeaking of Lear. The best interpretation is probably that of Malone,according to which Kent means, 'We see the man most hated by Fortune,whoever may be the man she has loved best'; and perhaps it is supportedby the variation of the text in the Qq. , though their texts are so badin this scene that their support is worth little. But it occurs to me aspossible that the meaning is rather: 'Did Fortune ever show the extremes_both_ of her love _and_ of her hatred to any other man as she has shownthem to this man? '8. _The last lines. _ _Alb. _ Bear them from hence. Our present business Is general woe. [_To Kent and Edgar_] Friends of my soul, you twain Rule in this realm, and the gored state sustain. _Kent. _ I have a journey, sir, shortly to go; My master calls me, I must not say no. _Alb. _ The weight of this sad time we must obey; Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say. The oldest hath borne most: we that are young Shall never see so much, nor live so long. So the Globe. The stage-direction (right, of course) is Johnson's. Thelast four lines are given by the Ff. to Edgar, by the Qq. to Albany. TheQq. read '_have_ borne most. 'To whom ought the last four lines to be given, and what do they mean? Itis proper that the principal person should speak last, and this is infavour of Albany. But in this scene at any rate the Ff. , which give thespeech to Edgar, have the better text (though Ff. 2, 3, 4, make Kent dieafter his two lines! ); Kent has answered Albany, but Edgar has not; andthe lines seem to be rather more appropriate to Edgar. For the 'gentlereproof' of Kent's despondency (if this phrase of Halliwell's is right)is like Edgar; and, although we have no reason to suppose that Albanywas not young, there is nothing to prove his youth. As to the meaning of the last two lines (a poor conclusion to such aplay) I should suppose that 'the oldest' is not Lear, but 'the oldest ofus,' viz. , Kent, the one survivor of the old generation: and this is themore probable if there _is_ a reference to him in the preceding lines. The last words seem to mean, 'We that are young shall never see so much_and yet_ live so long'; _i. e. _ if we suffer so much, we shall not bearit as he has. If the Qq. 'have' is right, the reference is to Lear,Gloster and Kent. FOOTNOTES:[Footnote 278: The 'beacon' which he bids approach is not the moon, asPope supposed. The moon was up and shining some time ago (II. ii. 35),and lines 1 and 141-2 imply that not much of the night is left. ][Footnote 279: 'Hold' can mean 'take'; but the word 'this' in line 160('Know'st thou this paper? ') favours the idea that the paper is still inAlbany's hand. ]NOTE Z. SUSPECTED INTERPOLATIONS IN _MACBETH_. I have assumed in the text that almost the whole of _Macbeth_ isgenuine; and, to avoid the repetition of arguments to be found in otherbooks,[280] I shall leave this opinion unsupported. But among thepassages that have been questioned or rejected there are two which seemto me open to serious doubt. They are those in which Hecate appears:viz. the whole of III. v. ; and IV. i. 39-43. These passages have been suspected (1) because they containstage-directions for two songs which have been found in Middleton's_Witch_; (2) because they can be excised without leaving the least traceof their excision; and (3) because they contain lines incongruous withthe spirit and atmosphere of the rest of the Witch-scenes: _e. g. _ III. v. 10 f. : all you have done Hath been but for a wayward son, Spiteful and wrathful, who, as others do, Loves for his own ends, not for you;and IV. i. 41, 2: And now about the cauldron sing, Like elves and fairies in a ring. The idea of sexual relation in the first passage, and the trivialdaintiness of the second (with which cf. III. v. 34, Hark! I am call'd; my little spirit, see, Sits in a foggy cloud, and stays for me)suit Middleton's Witches quite well, but Shakespeare's not at all; andit is difficult to believe that, if Shakespeare had meant to introduce apersonage supreme over the Witches, he would have made her sounimpressive as this Hecate. (It may be added that the originalstage-direction at IV. i. 39, 'Enter Hecat and the other three Witches,'is suspicious. )I doubt if the second and third of these arguments, taken alone, wouldjustify a very serious suspicion of interpolation; but the fact,mentioned under (1), that the play has here been meddled with, treblestheir weight. And it gives some weight to the further fact that thesepassages resemble one another, and differ from the bulk of the otherWitch passages, in being iambic in rhythm. (It must, however, beremembered that, supposing Shakespeare _did_ mean to introduce Hecate,he might naturally use a special rhythm for the parts where sheappeared. )The same rhythm appears in a third passage which has been doubted: IV. i. 125-132. But this is not _quite_ on a level with the other two; for(1), though it is possible to suppose the Witches, as well as theApparitions, to vanish at 124, and Macbeth's speech to run straight onto 133, the cut is not so clean as in the other cases; (2) it is not atall clear that Hecate (the most suspicious element) is supposed to bepresent. The original stage-direction at 133 is merely 'The WitchesDance, and vanish'; and even if Hecate had been present before, shemight have vanished at 43, as Dyce makes her do. FOOTNOTES:[Footnote 280: _E. g. _ Mr. Chambers's excellent little edition in theWarwick series. ]NOTE AA. HAS _MACBETH_ BEEN ABRIDGED? _Macbeth_ is a very short play, the shortest of all Shakespeare's exceptthe _Comedy of Errors_. It contains only 1993 lines, while _King Lear_contains 3298, _Othello_ 3324, and _Hamlet_ 3924. The next shortest ofthe tragedies is _Julius Caesar_, which has 2440 lines. (The figures areMr. Fleay's. I may remark that for our present purpose we want thenumber of the lines in the first Folio, not those in modern compositetexts. )Is there any reason to think that the play has been shortened? I willbriefly consider this question, so far as it can be considered apartfrom the wider one whether Shakespeare's play was re-handled byMiddleton or some one else. That the play, as we have it, is _slightly_ shorter than the playShakespeare wrote seems not improbable. (1) We have no Quarto of_Macbeth_; and generally, where we have a Quarto or Quartos of a play,we find them longer than the Folio text. (2) There are perhaps a fewsigns of omission in our text (over and above the plentiful signs ofcorruption). I will give one example (I. iv. 33-43). Macbeth and Banquo,returning from their victories, enter the presence of Duncan (14), whoreceives them with compliments and thanks, which they acknowledge. Hethen speaks as follows: My plenteous joys, Wanton in fulness, seek to hide themselves In drops of sorrow. Sons, kinsmen, thanes, And you whose places are the nearest, know, We will establish our estate upon Our eldest, Malcolm, whom we name hereafter The Prince of Cumberland; which honour must Not unaccompanied invest him only, But signs of nobleness, like stars, shall shine On all deservers. From hence to Inverness, And bind us further to you. Here the transition to the naming of Malcolm, for which there has beenno preparation, is extremely sudden; and the matter, considering itsimportance, is disposed of very briefly. But the abruptness and brevityof the sentence in which Duncan invites himself to Macbeth's castle arestill more striking. For not a word has yet been said on the subject;nor is it possible to suppose that Duncan had conveyed his intention bymessage, for in that case Macbeth would of course have informed his wifeof it in his letter (written in the interval between scenes iii. andiv. ). It is difficult not to suspect some omission or curtailment here. On the other hand Shakespeare may have determined to sacrificeeverything possible to the effect of rapidity in the First Act; and hemay also have wished, by the suddenness and brevity of Duncan'sself-invitation, to startle both Macbeth and the audience, and to makethe latter feel that Fate is hurrying the King and the murderer to theirdoom. And that any _extensive_ omissions have been made seems not likely. (1)There is no internal evidence of the omission of anything essential tothe plot. (2) Forman, who saw the play in 1610, mentions nothing whichwe do not find in our play; for his statement that Macbeth was made Dukeof Northumberland is obviously due to a confused recollection ofMalcolm's being made Duke of Cumberland. (3) Whereabouts could suchomissions occur? Only in the first part, for the rest is full enough. And surely anyone who wanted to cut the play down would have operated,say, on Macbeth's talk with Banquo's murderers, or on III. vi. , or onthe very long dialogue of Malcolm and Macduff, instead of reducing themost exciting part of the drama. We might indeed suppose thatShakespeare himself originally wrote the first part more at length, andmade the murder of Duncan come in the Third Act, and then _himself_reduced his matter so as to bring the murder back to its present place,perceiving in a flash of genius the extraordinary effect that might thusbe produced. But, even if this idea suited those who believe in arehandling of the play, what probability is there in it? Thus it seems most likely that the play always was an extremely shortone. Can we, then, at all account for its shortness? It is possible, inthe first place, that it was not composed originally for the publicstage, but for some private, perhaps royal, occasion, when time waslimited. And the presence of the passage about touching for the evil(IV. iii. 140 ff. ) supports this idea. We must remember, secondly, thatsome of the scenes would take longer to perform than ordinary scenes ofmere dialogue and action; _e. g. _ the Witch-scenes, and the Battle-scenesin the last Act, for a broad-sword combat was an occasion for anexhibition of skill. [281] And, lastly, Shakespeare may well have feltthat a play constructed and written like _Macbeth_, a play in which akind of fever-heat is felt almost from beginning to end, and whichoffers very little relief by means of humorous or pathetic scenes, oughtto be short, and would be unbearable if it lasted so long as _Hamlet_ oreven _King Lear_. And in fact I do not think that, in reading, we _feelMacbeth_ to be short: certainly we are astonished when we hear that itis about half as long as _Hamlet_. Perhaps in the Shakespearean theatretoo it appeared to occupy a longer time than the clock recorded. FOOTNOTES:[Footnote 281: These two considerations should also be borne in mind inregard to the exceptional shortness of the _Midsummer Night's Dream_ andthe _Tempest_. Both contain scenes which, even on the Elizabethan stage,would take an unusual time to perform. And it has been supposed of eachthat it was composed to grace some wedding. ]NOTE BB. THE DATE OF _MACBETH_. METRICAL TESTS. Dr. Forman saw _Macbeth_ performed at the Globe in 1610. The question ishow much earlier its composition or first appearance is to be put. It is agreed that the date is not earlier than that of the accession ofJames I. in 1603. The style and versification would make an earlier datealmost impossible. And we have the allusions to 'two-fold balls andtreble sceptres' and to the descent of Scottish kings from Banquo; theundramatic description of touching for the King's Evil (James performedthis ceremony); and the dramatic use of witchcraft, a matter on whichJames considered himself an authority. Some of these references would have their fullest effect early inJames's reign. And on this ground, and on account both of resemblancesin the characters of Hamlet and Macbeth, and of the use of thesupernatural in the two plays, it has been held that _Macbeth_ was thetragedy that came next after _Hamlet_, or, at any rate, next after_Othello_. These arguments seem to me to have no force when set against those thatpoint to a later date (about 1606) and place _Macbeth_ after _KingLear_. [282] And, as I have already observed, the probability is that italso comes after Shakespeare's part of _Timon_, and immediately before_Antony and Cleopatra_ and _Coriolanus_. I will first refer briefly to some of the older arguments in favour ofthis later date, and then more at length to those based onversification. (1) In II. iii. 4-5, 'Here's a farmer that hang'd himself on theexpectation of plenty,' Malone found a reference to the exceptionallylow price of wheat in 1606. (2) In the reference in the same speech to the equivocator who couldswear in both scales and committed treason enough for God's sake, hefound an allusion to the trial of the Jesuit Garnet, in the spring of1606, for complicity in the Gunpowder Treason and Plot. Garnet protestedon his soul and salvation that he had not held a certain conversation,then was obliged to confess that he had, and thereupon 'fell into alarge discourse defending equivocation. ' This argument, which I havebarely sketched, seems to me much weightier than the first; and itsweight is increased by the further references to perjury and treasonpointed out on p. 397. (3) Halliwell observed what appears to be an allusion to _Macbeth_ inthe comedy of the _Puritan_, 4to, 1607: 'we'll ha' the ghost i' th'white sheet sit at upper end o' th' table'; and Malone had referred to aless striking parallel in _Caesar and Pompey_, also pub. 1607: Why, think you, lords, that 'tis _ambition's spur_ That _pricketh_ Caesar to these high attempts? He also found a significance in the references in _Macbeth_ to thegenius of Mark Antony being rebuked by Caesar, and to the insane rootthat takes the reason prisoner, as showing that Shakespeare, whilewriting _Macbeth_, was reading Plutarch's _Lives_, with a view to hisnext play _Antony and Cleopatra_ (S. R. 1608). (4) To these last arguments, which by themselves would be of littleweight, I may add another, of which the same may be said. Marston'sreminiscences of Shakespeare are only too obvious. In his _DutchCourtezan_, 1605, I have noticed passages which recall _Othello_ and_King Lear_, but nothing that even faintly recalls _Macbeth_. But inreading _Sophonisba_, 1606, I was several times reminded of _Macbeth_(as well as, more decidedly, of _Othello_). I note the parallels forwhat they are worth. With _Sophonisba_, Act I. Sc. ii. : Upon whose tops the Roman eagles stretch'd Their large spread wings, which fann'd the evening aire To us cold breath,cf. _Macbeth_ I. ii. 49: Where the Norweyan banners flout the sky And fan our people cold. Cf. _Sophonisba_, a page later: 'yet doubtful stood the fight,' with_Macbeth_, I. ii. 7, 'Doubtful it stood' ['Doubtful long it stood'? ] Inthe same scene of _Macbeth_ the hero in fight is compared to an eagle,and his foes to sparrows; and in _Soph. _ III. ii. Massinissa in fight iscompared to a falcon, and his foes to fowls and lesser birds. I shouldnot note this were it not that all these reminiscences (if they aresuch) recall one and the same scene. In _Sophonisba_ also there is atremendous description of the witch Erictho (IV. i. ), who says to theperson consulting her, 'I know thy thoughts,' as the Witch says toMacbeth, of the Armed Head, 'He knows thy thought. '(5) The resemblances between _Othello_ and _King Lear_ pointed out onpp. 244-5 and in Note R. form, when taken in conjunction with otherindications, an argument of some strength in favour of the idea that_King Lear_ followed directly on _Othello_. (6) There remains the evidence of style and especially of metre. I willnot add to what has been said in the text concerning the former; but Iwish to refer more fully to the latter, in so far as it can berepresented by the application of metrical tests. It is impossible toargue here the whole question of these tests. I will only say that,while I am aware, and quite admit the force, of what can be said againstthe independent, rash, or incompetent use of them, I am fully convincedof their value when they are properly used. Of these tests, that of rhyme and that of feminine endings, discreetlyemployed, are of use in broadly distinguishing Shakespeare's plays intotwo groups, earlier and later, and also in marking out the very latestdramas; and the feminine-ending test is of service in distinguishingShakespeare's part in _Henry VIII. _ and the _Two Noble Kinsmen_. Butneither of these tests has any power to separate plays composed within afew years of one another. There is significance in the fact that the_Winter's Tale_, the _Tempest_, _Henry VIII. _, contain hardly any rhymedfive-foot lines; but none, probably, in the fact that _Macbeth_ shows ahigher percentage of such lines than _King Lear_, _Othello_, or_Hamlet_. The percentages of feminine endings, again, in the fourtragedies, are almost conclusive against their being early plays, andwould tend to show that they were not among the latest; but thedifferences in their respective percentages, which would place them inthe chronological order _Hamlet_, _Macbeth_, _Othello_, _King Lear_(König), or _Macbeth_, _Hamlet_, _Othello_, _King Lear_ (Hertzberg), areof scarcely any account. [283] Nearly all scholars, I think, would acceptthese statements. The really useful tests, in regard to plays which admittedly are notwidely separated, are three which concern the endings of speeches andlines. It is practically certain that Shakespeare made his verseprogressively less formal, by making the speeches end more and moreoften within a line and not at the close of it; by making the senseoverflow more and more often from one line into another; and, at last,by sometimes placing at the end of a line a word on which scarcely anystress can be laid. The corresponding tests may be called theSpeech-ending test, the Overflow test, and the Light and Weak Endingtest. I. The Speech-ending test has been used by König,[284] and I will firstgive some of his results. But I regret to say that I am unable todiscover certainly the rule he has gone by. He omits speeches which arerhymed throughout, or which end with a rhymed couplet. And he countsonly speeches which are 'mehrzeilig. ' I suppose this means that hecounts any speech consisting of two lines or more, but omits not onlyone-line speeches, but speeches containing more than one line but lessthan two; but I am not sure. In the plays admitted by everyone to be early the percentage of speechesending with an incomplete line is quite small. In the _Comedy ofErrors_, for example, it is only 0. 6. It advances to 12. 1 in _KingJohn_, 18. 3 in _Henry V. _, and 21. 6 in _As You Like It_. It risesquickly soon after, and in no play written (according to general belief)after about 1600 or 1601 is it less than 30. In the admittedly latestplays it rises much higher, the figures being as follows:--_Antony_77. 5, _Cor. _ 79, _Temp. _ 84. 5, _Cym. _ 85, _Win. Tale_ 87. 6, _HenryVIII. _ (parts assigned to Shakespeare by Spedding) 89. Going back, now,to the four tragedies, we find the following figures: _Othello_ 41. 4,_Hamlet_ 51. 6, _Lear_ 60. 9, _Macbeth_ 77. 2. These figures place_Macbeth_ decidedly last, with a percentage practically equal to that of_Antony_, the first of the final group. I will now give my own figures for these tragedies, as they differsomewhat from König's, probably because my method differs. (1) I haveincluded speeches rhymed or ending with rhymes, mainly because I findthat Shakespeare will sometimes (in later plays) end a speech which ispartly rhymed with an incomplete line (_e. g. Ham. _ III. ii. 187, and thelast words of the play: or _Macb. _ V. i. 87, V. ii. 31). And if suchspeeches are reckoned, as they surely must be (for they may be, and are,highly significant), those speeches which end with complete rhymed linesmust also be reckoned. (2) I have counted any speech exceeding a line inlength, however little the excess may be; _e. g. _ I'll fight till from my bones my flesh be hacked. Give me my armour:considering that the incomplete line here may be just as significant asan incomplete line ending a longer speech. If a speech begins within aline and ends brokenly, of course I have not counted it when it isequivalent to a five-foot line; _e. g. _ Wife, children, servants, all That could be found:but I do count such a speech (they are very rare) as My lord, I do not know: But truly I do fear it:for the same reason that I count You know not Whether it was his wisdom or his fear. Of the speeches thus counted, those which end somewhere within the lineI find to be in _Othello_ about 54 per cent. ; in _Hamlet_ about 57; in_King Lear_ about 69; in _Macbeth_ about 75. [285] The order is the sameas König's, but the figures differ a good deal. I presume in the lastthree cases this comes from the difference in method; but I thinkKönig's figures for _Othello_ cannot be right, for I have tried severalmethods and find that the result is in no case far from the result of myown, and I am almost inclined to conjecture that König's 41. 4 is reallythe percentage of speeches ending with the close of a line, which wouldgive 58. 6 for the percentage of the broken-ended speeches. [286]We shall find that other tests also would put _Othello_ before _Hamlet_,though close to it. This may be due to 'accident'--_i. e. _ a cause orcauses unknown to us; but I have sometimes wondered whether the lastrevision of _Hamlet_ may not have succeeded the composition of_Othello_. In this connection the following fact may be worth notice. Itis well known that the differences of the Second Quarto of _Hamlet_ fromthe First are much greater in the last three Acts than in the firsttwo--so much so that the editors of the Cambridge Shakespeare suggestedthat Q1 represents an old play, of which Shakespeare's rehandling hadnot then proceeded much beyond the Second Act, while Q2 represents hislater completed rehandling. If that were so, the composition of the lastthree Acts would be a good deal later than that of the first two (thoughof course the first two would be revised at the time of the compositionof the last three). Now I find that the percentage of speeches endingwith a broken line is about 50 for the first two Acts, but about 62 forthe last three. It is lowest in the first Act, and in the first twoscenes of it is less than 32. The percentage for the last two Acts isabout 65. II. The Enjambement or Overflow test is also known as the End-stoppedand Run-on line test. A line may be called 'end-stopped' when the sense,as well as the metre, would naturally make one pause at its close;'run-on' when the mere sense would lead one to pass to the next linewithout any pause. [287] This distinction is in a great majority of casesquite easy to draw: in others it is difficult. The reader cannot judgeby rules of grammar, or by marks of punctuation (for there is a distinctpause at the end of many a line where most editors print no stop): hemust trust his ear. And readers will differ, one making a distinct pausewhere another does not. This, however, does not matter greatly, so longas the reader is consistent; for the important point is not the precisenumber of run-on lines in a play, but the difference in this matterbetween one play and another. Thus one may disagree with König in hisestimate of many instances, but one can see that he is consistent. In Shakespeare's early plays, 'overflows' are rare. In the _Comedy ofErrors_, for example, their percentage is 12. 9 according to König[288](who excludes rhymed lines and some others). In the generally admittedlast plays they are comparatively frequent. Thus, according to König,the percentage in the _Winter's Tale_ is 37. 5, in the _Tempest_ 41. 5, in_Antony_ 43. 3, in _Coriolanus_ 45. 9, in _Cymbeline_ 46, in the parts of_Henry VIII. _ assigned by Spedding to Shakespeare 53. 18. König's resultsfor the four tragedies are as follows: _Othello_, 19. 5; _Hamlet_, 23. 1;_King Lear_, 29. 3; _Macbeth_, 36. 6; (_Timon_, the whole play, 32. 5). _Macbeth_ here again, therefore, stands decidedly last: indeed it standsnear the first of the latest plays. And no one who has ever attended to the versification of _Macbeth_ willbe surprised at these figures. It is almost obvious, I should say, thatShakespeare is passing from one system to another. Some passages showlittle change, but in others the change is almost complete. If thereader will compare two somewhat similar soliloquies, 'To be or not tobe' and 'If it were done when 'tis done,' he will recognise this atonce. Or let him search the previous plays, even _King Lear_, for twelveconsecutive lines like these: If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well It were done quickly: if the assassination Could trammel up the consequence, and catch With his surcease success; that but this blow Might be the be-all and the end-all here, But here, upon this bank and shoal of time, We 'ld jump the life to come. But in these cases We still have judgement here; that we but teach Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return To plague the inventor: this even-handed justice Commends the ingredients of our poison'd chalice To our own lips. Or let him try to parallel the following (III. vi. 37 f. ): and this report Hath so exasperate the king that he Prepares for some attempt of war. _Len. _ Sent he to Macduff? _Lord. _ He did: and with an absolute 'Sir, not I,' The cloudy messenger turns me his back And hums, as who should say 'You'll rue the time That clogs me with this answer. ' _Len. _ And that well might Advise him to a caution, to hold what distance His wisdom can provide. Some holy angel Fly to the court of England, and unfold His message ere he come, that a swift blessing May soon return to this our suffering country Under a hand accurs'd! or this (IV. iii. 118 f. ): Macduff, this noble passion, Child of integrity, hath from my soul Wiped the black scruples, reconciled my thoughts To thy good truth and honour. Devilish Macbeth By many of these trains hath sought to win me Into his power, and modest wisdom plucks me From over-credulous haste: but God above Deal between thee and me! for even now I put myself to thy direction, and Unspeak mine own detraction, here abjure The taints and blames I laid upon myself, For strangers to my nature. I pass to another point. In the last illustration the reader willobserve not only that 'overflows' abound, but that they follow oneanother in an unbroken series of nine lines. So long a series could not,probably, be found outside _Macbeth_ and the last plays. A series of twoor three is not uncommon; but a series of more than three is rare in theearly plays, and far from common in the plays of the second period(König). I thought it might be useful for our present purpose, to count theseries of four and upwards in the four tragedies, in the parts of_Timon_ attributed by Mr. Fleay to Shakespeare, and in _Coriolanus_, aplay of the last period. I have not excluded rhymed lines in the twoplaces where they occur, and perhaps I may say that my idea of an'overflow' is more exacting than König's. The reader will understand thefollowing table at once if I say that, according to it, _Othello_contains three passages where a series of four successive overflowinglines occurs, and two passages where a series of five such lines occurs:----------------------------------------------------------------- 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 No. of Lines (Fleay). -----------------------------------------------------------------Othello, 3 2 -- -- -- -- -- 2,758Hamlet, 7 -- -- -- -- -- -- 2,571Lear, 6 2 -- -- -- -- -- 2,312Timon, 7 2 1 1 -- -- -- 1,031 (? )Macbeth, 7 5 1 1 -- 1 -- 1,706Coriolanus, 16 14 7 1 2 -- 1 2,563-----------------------------------------------------------------(The figures for _Macbeth_ and _Timon_ in the last column must be bornein mind. I observed nothing in the non-Shakespeare part of _Timon_ thatwould come into the table, but I did not make a careful search. I feltsome doubt as to two of the four series in _Othello_ and again in_Hamlet_, and also whether the ten-series in _Coriolanus_ should not beput in column 7). III. _The light and weak ending test. _We have just seen that in some cases a doubt is felt whether there is an'overflow' or not. The fact is that the 'overflow' has many degrees ofintensity. If we take, for example, the passage last quoted, and if withKönig we consider the line The taints and blames I laid upon myselfto be run-on (as I do not), we shall at least consider the overflow tobe much less distinct than those in the lines but God above Deal between thee and me! for even now I put myself to thy direction, and Unspeak my own detraction, here abjureAnd of these four lines the third runs on into its successor at much thegreatest speed. 'Above,' 'now,' 'abjure,' are not light or weak endings: 'and' is a weakending. Prof. Ingram gave the name weak ending to certain words on whichit is scarcely possible to dwell at all, and which, therefore,precipitate the line which they close into the following. Light endingsare certain words which have the same effect in a slighter degree. Forexample, _and_, _from_, _in_, _of_, are weak endings; _am_, _are_, _I_,_he_, are light endings. The test founded on this distinction is, within its limits, the mostsatisfactory of all, partly because the work of its author can beabsolutely trusted. The result of its application is briefly as follows. Until quite a late date light and weak endings occur in Shakespeare'sworks in such small numbers as hardly to be worth consideration. [289]But in the well-defined group of last plays the numbers both of lightand of weak endings increase greatly, and, on the whole, the increaseapparently is progressive (I say apparently, because the order in whichthe last plays are generally placed depends to some extent on the testitself). I give Prof. Ingram's table of these plays, premising that in_Pericles_, _Two Noble Kinsmen_, and _Henry VIII. _ he uses only thoseparts of the plays which are attributed by certain authorities toShakespeare (_New Shakspere Soc. Trans. _, 1874). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ | Light | | Percentage | Percentage | Percentage |endings. | Weak. | of light in | of weak in | of | | | verse lines. | verse lines. | both. ------------------------------------------------------------------------Antony & | | | | | Cleopatra, | 71 | 28 | 2. 53 | 1. | 3. 53Coriolanus, | 60 | 44 | 2. 34 | 1. 71 | 4. 05Pericles, | 20 | 10 | 2. 78 | 1. 39 | 4. 17Tempest, | 42 | 25 | 2. 88 | 1. 71 | 4. 59Cymbeline, | 78 | 52 | 2. 90 | 1. 93 | 4. 83Winter's Tale, | 57 | 43 | 3. 12 | 2. 36 | 5. 48Two Noble | | | | | Kinsmen, | 50 | 34 | 3. |
63 | 2. 47 | 6. 10Henry VIII. , | 45 | 37 | 3. 93 | 3. 23 | 7. 16------------------------------------------------------------------------Now, let us turn to our four tragedies (with _Timon_). Here again wehave one doubtful play, and I give the figures for the whole of _Timon_,and again for the parts of _Timon_ assigned to Shakespeare by Mr. Fleay,both as they appear in his amended text and as they appear in the Globe(perhaps the better text). ----------------------------------------- | Light. | Weak. -----------------------------------------Hamlet, | 8 | 0Othello, | 2 | 0Lear, | 5 | 1Timon (whole), | 16 | 5 (Sh. in Fleay), | 14 | 7 (Sh. in Globe), | 13 | 2Macbeth, | 21 | 2-----------------------------------------Now here the figures for the first three plays tell us practicallynothing. The tendency to a freer use of these endings is not visible. Asto _Timon_, the number of weak endings, I think, tells us little, forprobably only two or three are Shakespeare's; but the rise in the numberof light endings is so marked as to be significant. And most significantis this rise in the case of _Macbeth_, which, like Shakespeare's part of_Timon_, is much shorter than the preceding plays. It strongly confirmsthe impression that in _Macbeth_ we have the transition to Shakespeare'slast style, and that the play is the latest of the five tragedies. [290]FOOTNOTES:[Footnote 282: The fact that _King Lear_ was performed at Court onDecember 26, 1606, is of course very far from showing that it had neverbeen performed before. ][Footnote 283: I have not tried to discover the source of the differencebetween these two reckonings. ][Footnote 284: _Der Vers in Shakspere's Dramen_, 1888. ][Footnote 285: In the parts of _Timon_ (Globe text) assigned by Mr. Fleay to Shakespeare, I find the percentage to be about 74. 5. Königgives 62. 8 as the percentage in the whole of the play. ][Footnote 286: I have noted also what must be a mistake in the case ofPericles. König gives 17. 1 as the percentage of the speeches with brokenends. I was astounded to see the figure, considering the style in theundoubtedly Shakespearean parts; and I find that, on my method, in ActsIII. , IV. , V. the percentage is about 71, in the first two Acts (whichshow very slight, if any, traces of Shakespeare's hand) about 19. Icannot imagine the origin of the mistake here. ][Footnote 287: I put the matter thus, instead of saying that, with arun-on line, one does pass to the next line without any pause, because,in common with many others, I should not in any case whatever _wholly_ignore the fact that one line ends and another begins. ][Footnote 288: These overflows are what König calls 'schroffeEnjambements,' which he considers to correspond with Furnivall's 'run-onlines. '][Footnote 289: The number of light endings, however, in _Julius Caesar_(10) and _All's Well_ (12) is worth notice. ][Footnote 290: The Editors of the Cambridge Shakespeare might appeal insupport of their view, that parts of Act V. are not Shakespeare's, tothe fact that the last of the light endings occurs at IV. iii. 165. ]NOTE CC. WHEN WAS THE MURDER OF DUNCAN FIRST PLOTTED? A good many readers probably think that, when Macbeth first met theWitches, he was perfectly innocent; but a much larger number would saythat he had already harboured a vaguely guilty ambition, though he hadnot faced the idea of murder. And I think there can be no doubt thatthis is the obvious and natural interpretation of the scene. Only it isalmost necessary to go rather further, and to suppose that his guiltyambition, whatever its precise form, was known to his wife and shared byher. Otherwise, surely, she would not, on reading his letter, soinstantaneously assume that the King must be murdered in their castle;nor would Macbeth, as soon as he meets her, be aware (as he evidentlyis) that this thought is in her mind. But there is a famous passage in _Macbeth_ which, closely considered,seems to require us to go further still, and to suppose that, at sometime before the action of the play begins, the husband and wife hadexplicitly discussed the idea of murdering Duncan at some favourableopportunity, and had agreed to execute this idea. Attention seems tohave been first drawn to this passage by Koester in vol. I. of the_Jahrbücher d. deutschen Shakespeare-gesellschaft_, and on it is basedthe interpretation of the play in Werder's very able _Vorlesungen überMacbeth_. The passage occurs in I. vii. , where Lady Macbeth is urging her husbandto the deed: _Macb. _ Prithee, peace: I dare do all that may become a man; Who dares do more is none. _Lady M. _ What beast was't, then, That made you break this enterprise to me? When you durst do it, then you were a man; And, to be more than what you were, you would Be so much more the man. Nor time nor place Did then adhere, and yet you would make both: They have made themselves, and that their fitness now Does unmake you. I have given suck, and know How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me: I would, while it was smiling in my face, Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums, And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn as you Have done to this. Here Lady Macbeth asserts (1) that Macbeth proposed the murder to her:(2) that he did so at a time when there was no opportunity to attackDuncan, no 'adherence' of 'time' and 'place': (3) that he declared hewou'd _make_ an opportunity, and swore to carry out the murder. Now it is possible that Macbeth's 'swearing' might have occurred in aninterview off the stage between scenes v. and vi. , or scenes vi. andvii. ; and, if in that interview Lady Macbeth had with difficulty workedher husband up to a resolution, her irritation at his relapse, in sc. vii. , would be very natural. But, as for Macbeth's first proposal ofmurder, it certainly does not occur in our play, nor could it possiblyoccur in any interview off the stage; for when Macbeth and his wifefirst meet, 'time' and 'place' _do_ adhere; 'they have made themselves. 'The conclusion would seem to be, either that the proposal of the murder,and probably the oath, occurred in a scene at the very beginning of theplay, which scene has been lost or cut out; or else that Macbethproposed, and swore to execute, the murder at some time prior to theaction of the play. [291] The first of these hypotheses is mostimprobable, and we seem driven to adopt the second, unless we consent toburden Shakespeare with a careless mistake in a very critical passage. And, apart from unwillingness to do this, we can find a good deal to sayin favour of the idea of a plan formed at a past time. It would explainMacbeth's start of fear at the prophecy of the kingdom. It would explainwhy Lady Macbeth, on receiving his letter, immediately resolves onaction; and why, on their meeting, each knows that murder is in the mindof the other. And it is in harmony with her remarks on his probableshrinking from the act, to which, _ex hypothesi_, she had alreadythought it necessary to make him pledge himself by an oath. Yet I find it very difficult to believe in this interpretation. It isnot merely that the interest of Macbeth's struggle with himself and withhis wife would be seriously diminished if we felt he had been throughall this before. I think this would be so; but there are two moreimportant objections. In the first place the violent agitation describedin the words, If good, why do I yield to that suggestion Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair And make my seated heart knock at my ribs,would surely not be natural, even in Macbeth, if the idea of murder werealready quite familiar to him through conversation with his wife, and ifhe had already done more than 'yield' to it. It is not as if the Witcheshad told him that Duncan was coming to his house. In that case theperception that the moment had come to execute a merely general designmight well appal him. But all that he hears is that he will one day beKing--a statement which, supposing this general design, would not pointto any immediate action. [292] And, in the second place, it is hard tobelieve that, if Shakespeare really had imagined the murder planned andsworn to before the action of the play, he would have written the firstsix scenes in such a manner that practically all readers imagine quiteanother state of affairs, and _continue to imagine it_ even after theyhave read in scene vii. the passage which is troubling us. Is it likely,to put it otherwise, that his idea was one which nobody seems to havedivined till late in the nineteenth century? And for what possiblereason could he refrain from making this idea clear to his audience, ashe might so easily have done in the third scene? [293] It seems very muchmore likely that he himself imagined the matter as nearly all hisreaders do. But, in that case, what are we to say of this passage? I will answerfirst by explaining the way in which I understood it before I was awarethat it had caused so much difficulty. I supposed that an interview hadtaken place after scene v. , a scene which shows Macbeth shrinking, andin which his last words were 'we will speak further. ' In this interview,I supposed, his wife had so wrought upon him that he had at last yieldedand pledged himself by oath to do the murder. As for her statement thathe had 'broken the enterprise' to her, I took it to refer to his letterto her,--a letter written when time and place did not adhere, for he didnot yet know that Duncan was coming to visit him. In the letter he doesnot, of course, openly 'break the enterprise' to her, and it is notlikely that he would do such a thing in a letter; but if they had hadambitious conversations, in which each felt that some half-formed guiltyidea was floating in the mind of the other, she might naturally take thewords of the letter as indicating much more than they said; and then inher passionate contempt at his hesitation, and her passionate eagernessto overcome it, she might easily accuse him, doubtless withexaggeration, and probably with conscious exaggeration, of havingactually proposed the murder. And Macbeth, knowing that when he wrotethe letter he really had been thinking of murder, and indifferent toanything except the question whether murder should be done, would easilylet her statement pass unchallenged. This interpretation still seems to me not unnatural. The alternative(unless we adopt the idea of an agreement prior to the action of theplay) is to suppose that Lady Macbeth refers throughout the passage tosome interview subsequent to her husband's return, and that, in makingher do so, Shakespeare simply forgot her speeches on welcoming Macbethhome, and also forgot that at any such interview 'time' and 'place' did'adhere. ' It is easy to understand such forgetfulness in a spectator andeven in a reader; but it is less easy to imagine it in a poet whoseconception of the two characters throughout these scenes was evidentlyso burningly vivid. FOOTNOTES:[Footnote 291: The 'swearing' _might_ of course, on this view, occur offthe stage within the play; but there is no occasion to suppose this ifwe are obliged to put the proposal outside the play. ][Footnote 292: To this it might be answered that the effect of theprediction was to make him feel, 'Then I shall succeed if I carry outthe plan of murder,' and so make him yield to the idea over again. Towhich I can only reply, anticipating the next argument, 'How is it thatShakespeare wrote the speech in such a way that practically everybodysupposes the idea of murder to be occurring to Macbeth for the firsttime? '][Footnote 293: It might be answered here again that the actor,instructed by Shakespeare, could act the start of fear so as to conveyquite clearly the idea of definite guilt. And this is true; but we oughtto do our best to interpret the text before we have recourse to thiskind of suggestion. ]NOTE DD. DID LADY MACBETH REALLY FAINT? In the scene of confusion where the murder of Duncan is discovered,Macbeth and Lennox return from the royal chamber; Lennox describes thegrooms who, as it seemed, had done the deed: Their hands and faces were all badged with blood; So were their daggers, which unwiped we found Upon their pillows: They stared, and were distracted; no man's life Was to be trusted with them. _Macb. _ O, yet I do repent me of my fury That I did kill them. _Macd. _ Wherefore did you so? _Macb. _ Who can be wise, amazed, temperate and furious, Loyal and neutral, in a moment? No man: The expedition of my violent love Outrun the pauser, reason. Here lay Duncan, His silver skin laced with his golden blood; And his gash'd stabs look'd like a breach in nature For ruin's wasteful entrance: there, the murderers, Steep'd in the colours of their trade, their daggers Unmannerly breech'd with gore: who could refrain, That had a heart to love, and in that heart Courage to make's love known? At this point Lady Macbeth exclaims, 'Help me hence, ho! ' Her husbandtakes no notice, but Macduff calls out 'Look to the lady. ' This, after afew words 'aside' between Malcolm and Donalbain, is repeated by Banquo,and, very shortly after, all except Duncan's sons _exeunt_. (Thestage-direction 'Lady Macbeth is carried out,' after Banquo'sexclamation 'Look to the lady,' is not in the Ff. and was introduced byRowe. If the Ff. are right, she can hardly have fainted _away_. But thepoint has no importance here. )Does Lady Macbeth really turn faint, or does she pretend? The latterseems to have been the general view, and Whately pointed out thatMacbeth's indifference betrays his consciousness that the faint was notreal. But to this it may be answered that, if he believed it to be real,he would equally show indifference, in order to display his horror atthe murder. And Miss Helen Faucit and others have held that there was nopretence. In favour of the pretence it may be said (1) that Lady Macbeth, whoherself took back the daggers, saw the old King in his blood, andsmeared the grooms, was not the woman to faint at a mere description;(2) that she saw her husband over-acting his part, and saw the faces ofthe lords, and wished to end the scene,--which she succeeded in doing. But to the last argument it may be replied that she would not willinglyhave run the risk of leaving her husband to act his part alone. And forother reasons (indicated above, p. 373 f. ) I decidedly believe that sheis meant really to faint. She was no Goneril. She knew that she couldnot kill the King herself; and she never expected to have to carry backthe daggers, see the bloody corpse, and smear the faces and hands of thegrooms. But Macbeth's agony greatly alarmed her, and she was driven tothe scene of horror to complete his task; and what an impression it madeon her we know from that sentence uttered in her sleep, 'Yet who wouldhave thought the old man to have had so much blood in him? ' She had now,further, gone through the ordeal of the discovery. Is it not quitenatural that the reaction should come, and that it should come just whenMacbeth's description recalls the scene which had cost her the greatesteffort? Is it not likely, besides, that the expression on the faces ofthe lords would force her to realise, what before the murder she hadrefused to consider, the horror and the suspicion it must excite? It isnoticeable, also, that she is far from carrying out her intention ofbearing a part in making their 'griefs and clamours roar upon his death'(I. vii. 78). She has left it all to her husband, and, after utteringbut two sentences, the second of which is answered very curtly byBanquo, for some time (an interval of 33 lines) she has said nothing. Ibelieve Shakespeare means this interval to be occupied in desperateefforts on her part to prevent herself from giving way, as she sees forthe first time something of the truth to which she was formerly soblind, and which will destroy her in the end. It should be observed that at the close of the Banquet scene, where shehas gone through much less, she is evidently exhausted. Shakespeare, of course, knew whether he meant the faint to be real: butI am not aware if an actor of the part could show the audience whetherit was real or pretended. If he could, he would doubtless receiveinstructions from the author. NOTE EE. DURATION OF THE ACTION IN _MACBETH_. MACBETH'S AGE. 'HE HAS NOCHILDREN. '1. The duration of the action cannot well be more than a few months. Onthe day following the murder of Duncan his sons fly and Macbeth goes toScone to be invested (II. iv. ). Between this scene and Act III. aninterval must be supposed, sufficient for news to arrive of Malcolmbeing in England and Donalbain in Ireland, and for Banquo to have shownhimself a good counsellor. But the interval is evidently not long:_e. g. _ Banquo's first words are 'Thou hast it now' (III. i. 1). Banquois murdered on the day when he speaks these words. Macbeth's visit tothe Witches takes place the next day (III. iv. 132). At the end of thisvisit (IV. i. ) he hears of Macduff's flight to England, and determinesto have Macduff's wife and children slaughtered without delay; and thisis the subject of the next scene (IV. ii. ). No great interval, then, canbe supposed between this scene and the next, where Macduff, arrived atthe English court, hears what has happened at his castle. At the end ofthat scene (IV. iii. 237) Malcolm says that 'Macbeth is ripe forshaking, and the powers above put on their instruments': and the eventsof Act V. evidently follow with little delay, and occupy but a shorttime. Holinshed's Macbeth appears to have reigned seventeen years:Shakespeare's may perhaps be allowed as many weeks. But, naturally, Shakespeare creates some difficulties through wishing toproduce different impressions in different parts of the play. The maineffect is that of fiery speed, and it would be impossible to imagine thetorment of Macbeth's mind lasting through a number of years, even ifShakespeare had been willing to allow him years of outward success. Hence the brevity of the action. On the other hand time is wanted forthe degeneration of his character hinted at in IV. iii. 57 f. , for thedevelopment of his tyranny, for his attempts to entrap Malcolm (_ib. _117 f. ), and perhaps for the deepening of his feeling that his life hadpassed into the sere and yellow leaf. Shakespeare, as we have seen,scarcely provides time for all this, but at certain points he producesan impression that a longer time has elapsed than he has provided for,and he puts most of the indications of this longer time into a scene(IV. iii. ) which by its quietness contrasts strongly with almost all therest of the play. 2. There is no unmistakable indication of the ages of the two principalcharacters; but the question, though of no great importance, has aninterest. I believe most readers imagine Macbeth as a man between fortyand fifty, and his wife as younger but not young. In many cases thisimpression is doubtless due to the custom of the theatre (which, if itcan be shown to go back far, should have much weight), but it is sharedby readers who have never seen the play performed, and is thenpresumably due to a number of slight influences probably incapable ofcomplete analysis. Such readers would say, 'The hero and heroine do notspeak like young people, nor like old ones'; but, though I think this isso, it can hardly be demonstrated. Perhaps however the following smallindications, mostly of a different kind, tend to the same result. (1) There is no positive sign of youth. (2) A young man would not belikely to lead the army. (3) Macbeth is 'cousin' to an old man. [294] (4)Macbeth calls Malcolm 'young,' and speaks of him scornfully as 'the boyMalcolm. ' He is probably therefore considerably his senior. But Malcolmis evidently not really a boy (see I. ii. 3 f. as well as the laterActs). (5) One gets the impression (possibly without reason) thatMacbeth and Banquo are of about the same age; and Banquo's son, the boyFleance, is evidently not a mere child. (On the other hand the childrenof Macduff, who is clearly a good deal older than Malcolm, are allyoung; and I do not think there is any sign that Macbeth is older thanMacduff. ) (6) When Lady Macbeth, in the banquet scene, says, Sit, worthy friends: my lord is often thus, And hath been from his youth,we naturally imagine him some way removed from his youth. (7) LadyMacbeth saw a resemblance to her father in the aged king. (8) Macbethsays, I have lived long enough: my way[295] of life Is fall'n into the sere, the yellow leaf: And that which should accompany old age, As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends, I may not look to have. It is, surely, of the old age of the soul that he speaks in the secondline, but still the lines would hardly be spoken under any circumstancesby a man less than middle-aged. On the other hand I suppose no one ever imagined Macbeth, or onconsideration could imagine him, as _more_ than middle-aged when theaction begins. And in addition the reader may observe, if he finds itnecessary, that Macbeth looks forward to having children (I. vii. 72),and that his terms of endearment ('dearest love,' 'dearest chuck') andhis language in public ('sweet remembrancer') do not suggest that hiswife and he are old; they even suggest that she at least is scarcelymiddle-aged. But this discussion tends to grow ludicrous. For Shakespeare's audience these mysteries were revealed by a glance atthe actors, like the fact that Duncan was an old man, which the text, Ithink, does not disclose till V. i. 44. 3. Whether Macbeth had children or (as seems usually to be supposed) hadnone, is quite immaterial. But it is material that, if he had none, helooked forward to having one; for otherwise there would be no point inthe following words in his soliloquy about Banquo (III. i. 58 f. ): Then prophet-like They hail'd him father to a line of kings: Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown, And put a barren sceptre in my gripe, Thence to be wrench'd with an unlineal hand, No son of mine succeeding. If't be so, For Banquo's issue have I filed my mind. And he is determined that it shall not 'be so': Rather than so, come, fate, into the list And champion me to the utterance! Obviously he contemplates a son of his succeeding, if only he can getrid of Banquo and Fleance. What he fears is that Banquo will kill him;in which case, supposing he has a son, that son will not be allowed tosucceed him, and, supposing he has none, he will be unable to beget one. I hope this is clear; and nothing else matters. Lady Macbeth's child (I. vii. 54) may be alive or may be dead. It may even be, or have been, herchild by a former husband; though, if Shakespeare had followed historyin making Macbeth marry a widow (as some writers gravely assume) hewould probably have told us so. It may be that Macbeth had many childrenor that he had none. We cannot say, and it does not concern the play. But the interpretation of a statement on which some critics build, 'Hehas no children,' has an interest of another kind, and I proceed toconsider it. These words occur at IV. iii. 216. Malcolm and Macduff are talking atthe English Court, and Ross, arriving from Scotland, brings news toMacduff of Macbeth's revenge on him. It is necessary to quote a goodmany lines: _Ross. _ Your castle is surprised; your wife and babes Savagely slaughter'd: to relate the manner, Were, on the quarry of these murder'd deer, To add the death of you. _Mal. _ Merciful heaven! What, man! ne'er pull your hat upon your brows; Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak Whispers the o'er-fraught heart and bids it break. _Macd. _ My children too? _Ross. _ Wife, children, servants, all That could be found. _Macd. _ And I must be from thence! My wife kill'd too? _Ross. _ I have said. _Mal. _ Be comforted: Let's makes us medicines of our great revenge, To cure this deadly grief. _Macd. _ He has no children. All my pretty ones? Did you say all? O hell-kite! All? What, all my pretty chickens and their dam At one fell swoop? _Mal_. Dispute it like a man. _Macd. _ I shall do so; But I must also feel it as a man: I cannot but remember such things were, That were most precious to me. --Three interpretations have been offered of the words 'He has nochildren. '(_a_) They refer to Malcolm, who, if he had children of his own, wouldnot at such a moment suggest revenge, or talk of curing such a grief. Cf. _King John_, III. iv. 91, where Pandulph says to Constance, You hold too heinous a respect of grief,and Constance answers, He talks to me that never had a son. (_b_) They refer to Macbeth, who has no children, and on whom thereforeMacduff cannot take an adequate revenge. (_c_) They refer to Macbeth, who, if he himself had children, couldnever have ordered the slaughter of children. Cf. _3 Henry VI. _ V. v. 63, where Margaret says to the murderers of Prince Edward, You have no children, butchers! if you had, The thought of them would have stirred up remorse. I cannot think interpretation (_b_) the most natural. The whole idea ofthe passage is that Macduff must feel _grief_ first and before he canfeel anything else, _e. g. _ the desire for vengeance. As he says directlyafter, he cannot at once 'dispute' it like a man, but must 'feel' it asa man; and it is not till ten lines later that he is able to pass to thethought of revenge. Macduff is not the man to conceive at any time theidea of killing children in retaliation; and that he contemplates it_here_, even as a suggestion, I find it hard to believe. For the same main reason interpretation (_a_) seems to me far moreprobable than (_c_). What could be more consonant with the naturalcourse of the thought, as developed in the lines which follow, than thatMacduff, being told to think of revenge, not grief, should answer, 'Noone who was himself a father would ask that of me in the very firstmoment of loss'? But the thought supposed by interpretation (_c_) hasnot this natural connection. It has been objected to interpretation (_a_) that, according to it,Macduff would naturally say 'You have no children,' not 'He has nochildren. ' But what Macduff does is precisely what Constance does in theline quoted from _King John_. And it should be noted that, all throughthe passage down to this point, and indeed in the fifteen lines whichprecede our quotation, Macduff listens only to Ross. His questions 'Mychildren too? ' 'My wife killed too? ' show that he cannot fully realisewhat he is told. When Malcolm interrupts, therefore, he puts aside hissuggestion with four words spoken to himself, or (less probably) to Ross(his relative, who knew his wife and children), and continues hisagonised questions and exclamations. Surely it is not likely that atthat moment the idea of (_c_), an idea which there is nothing tosuggest, would occur to him. In favour of (_c_) as against (_a_) I see no argument except that thewords of Macduff almost repeat those of Margaret; and this fact does notseem to me to have much weight. It shows only that Shakespeare mighteasily use the words in the sense of (_c_) if that sense were suitableto the occasion. It is not unlikely, again, I think, that the words cameto him here because he had used them many years before;[296] but it doesnot follow that he knew he was repeating them; or that, if he did, heremembered the sense they had previously borne; or that, if he didremember it, he might not use them now in another sense. FOOTNOTES:[Footnote 294: So in Holinshed, as well as in the play, where however'cousin' need not have its specific meaning. ][Footnote 295: 'May,' Johnson conjectured, without necessity. ][Footnote 296: As this point occurs here, I may observe thatShakespeare's later tragedies contain many such reminiscences of thetragic plays of his young days. For instance, cf. _Titus Andronicus_, I. i. 150 f. : In peace and honour rest you here, my sons, * * * * * Secure from worldly chances and mishaps! Here lurks no treason, here no envy swells, Here grow no damned drugs: here are no storms, No noise, but silence and eternal sleep,with _Macbeth_, III. ii. 22 f. : Duncan is in his grave; After life's fitful fever he sleeps well; Treason has done his worst: nor steel, nor poison, Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing, Can touch him further. In writing IV. i. Shakespeare can hardly have failed to remember theconjuring of the Spirit, and the ambiguous oracles, in _2 Henry VI. _ I. iv. The 'Hyrcan tiger' of _Macbeth_ III. iv. 101, which is also alludedto in _Hamlet_, appears first in _3 Henry VI. _ I. iv. 155. Cf. _RichardIII. _ II. i. 92, 'Nearer in bloody thoughts, but not in blood,' with_Macbeth_ II. iii. 146, 'the near in blood, the nearer bloody'; _RichardIII. _ IV. ii. 64, 'But I am in So far in blood that sin will pluck onsin,' with _Macbeth_ III. iv. 136, 'I am in blood stepp'd in so far,'etc. These are but a few instances. (It makes no difference whetherShakespeare was author or reviser of _Titus_ and _Henry VI. _). ]NOTE FF. THE GHOST OF BANQUO. I do not think the suggestions that the Ghost on its first appearance isBanquo's, and on its second Duncan's, or _vice versâ_, are worthdiscussion. But the question whether Shakespeare meant the Ghost to bereal or a mere hallucination, has some interest, and I have not seen itfully examined. The following reasons may be given for the hallucination view:(1) We remember that Macbeth has already seen one hallucination, that ofthe dagger; and if we failed to remember it Lady Macbeth would remind usof it here: This is the very painting of your fear; This is the air-drawn dagger which, you said, Led you to Duncan. (2) The Ghost seems to be created by Macbeth's imagination; for hiswords, now they rise again With twenty mortal murders on their crowns,describe it, and they echo what the murderer had said to him a littlebefore, Safe in a ditch he bides With twenty trenched gashes on his head. (3) It vanishes the second time on his making a violent effort andasserting its unreality: Hence, horrible shadow! Unreal mockery, hence! This is not quite so the first time, but then too its disappearancefollows on his defying it: Why what care I? If thou canst nod, speak too. So, apparently, the dagger vanishes when he exclaims, 'There's no suchthing! '(4) At the end of the scene Macbeth himself seems to regard it as anillusion: My strange and self-abuse Is the initiate fear that wants hard use. (5) It does not speak, like the Ghost in _Hamlet_ even on its lastappearance, and like the Ghost in _Julius Caesar_. (6) It is visible only to Macbeth. I should attach no weight to (6) taken alone (see p. 140). Of (3) it maybe remarked that Brutus himself seems to attribute the vanishing ofCaesar's Ghost to his taking courage: 'now I have taken heart thouvanishest:' yet he certainly holds it to be real. It may also beremarked on (5) that Caesar's Ghost says nothing that Brutus' ownforebodings might not have conjured up. And further it may be asked why,if the Ghost of Banquo was meant for an illusion, it was represented onthe stage, as the stage-directions and Forman's account show it to havebeen. On the whole, and with some doubt, I think that Shakespeare (1) meantthe judicious to take the Ghost for an hallucination, but (2) knew thatthe bulk of the audience would take it for a reality. And I am more sureof (2) than of (1). INDEXThe titles of plays are in italics. So are the numbers of the pagescontaining the main discussion of a character. The titles of the Notesare not repeated in the Index. Aaron, 200, 211. Abnormal mental conditions, 13, 398. Accident, in tragedy, 7, 14-16, 26, 28; in _Hamlet_, 143, 173; in _Othello_, 181-2; in _King Lear_, 253, 325. Act, difficulty in Fourth, 57-8; the five Acts, 49. Action, tragic, 11, 12, 31; and character, 12, 19; a conflict, 16-19. Adversity and prosperity in _King Lear_, 326-7. Albany, _297-8_. Antonio, 110, 404. _Antony and Cleopatra_, 3, 7, 45, 80; conflict, 17-8; crisis, 53, 55, 66; humour in catastrophe, 62, 395-6; battle-scenes, 62-3; extended catastrophe, 64; faulty construction, 71, 260; passion in, 82; evil in, 83-4; versification, 87, Note BB. Antony, 22, 29, 63, 83-4. _Arden of Feversham_, 9. Ariel, 264. Aristotle, 16, 22. Art, Shakespeare's, conscious, 68-9; defects in, 71-78. Arthur, 294. _As You Like It_, 71, 267, 390. Atmosphere in tragedy, 333. Banquo, 343, _379-86_. Barbara, the maid, 175. Battle-scene, 62, 451, 469; in _King Lear_, 255, Note X. Beast and man, in _King Lear_, 266-8; in _Timon_, 453. Bernhardt, Mme. , 379. Biblical ideas, in _King Lear_, 328. Bombast, 73, 75-6, 389, Note F. Brandes, G. , 379, 393. Brutus, 7, 14, 22, 27, 32, 81-2, 101, 364. Caliban, 264. Cassio, 211-3, _238-9_, 433-4. Catastrophe, humour before, 61-2; battle-scenes in, 62; false hope before, 63; extended, 62; in _Antony_ and _Coriolanus_, 83-4. See _Hamlet_, etc. Character, and plot, 12; is destiny, 13; tragic, 19-23. Chaucer, 8, 346. Children, in the plays, 293-5. Cleopatra, 7, 20, 84, 178, 208. Coleridge, 104-5, 107, 109, 127, 165, 200, 201, 209, 223, 226, 228, 249, 343, 353, 362, 389, 391, 392, 397, 412, 413. Comedy, 15, 41. Conflict, tragic, 16-9; originates in evil, 34; oscillating movement in, 50; crisis in, 51-5; descending movement of, 55-62. Conscience. See Hamlet. Cordelia, 29, 32, 203-6, 250, 290, 314, _315-26_, Note W. _Coriolanus_, 3, 9, 43, 394-5; crisis, 53; hero off stage, 57; counter-stroke, 58; humour, 61; passion, 82; catastrophe, 83-4; versification, Note BB. Coriolanus, 20, 29, 83-4, 196. Cornwall, 298-9. Crisis. See Conflict. Curtain, no front, in Shakespeare's theatre, 185, 458. _Cymbeline_, 7, 21, 72, 80, Note BB; Queen in, 300. Desdemona, 32, 165, 179, 193, 197, _201-6_, 323, 433, 437-9. Disillusionment, in tragedies, 175. Dog, the, Shakespeare and, 268. Don John, 110, 210. Double action in _King Lear_, 255-6, 262. Dowden, E. , 82, 105, 330, 408. Dragging, 57-8, 64. Drunkenness, invective against, 238. Edgar, _305-7_, 453, 465. Edmund, 210, 245, 253, _300-3_, Notes P, Q. See Iago. Emilia, 214-6, 237, _239-42_, Note P. Emotional tension, variations of, 48-9. Evil, origin of conflict, 34; negative, 35; in earlier and later tragedies, 82-3; poetic portrayal of, 207-8; aspects of, specially impressive to Shakespeare, 232-3; in _King Lear_, 298, 303-4, 327; in _Tempest_, 328-30; in _Macbeth_, 331, 386. Exposition, 41-7. Fate, Fatality, 10, 26-30, 45, 59, 177, 181, 287, 340-6. Fleay, F. G. , 419, 424, 445, 467, 479. Fool in _King Lear_, the, 258, _311-5_, 322, 447, Note V. Fools, Shakespeare's, 310. Forman, Dr. , 468, 493. Fortinbras, 90. Fortune, 9, 10. Freytag, G. , 40, 63. Furness, H. H. , 199, 200. Garnet and equivocation, 397, 470-1. Ghost, Banquo's, 332, 335, 338, 361, Note FF. Ghost, Caesar's, Note FF. Ghost in _Hamlet_, 97, 100, 118, 120, 125, 126, 134, 136, 138-40, _173-4_. Ghosts, not hallucinations because appearing only to one in a company, 140. Gloster, 272, _293-6_, 447. Gnomic speeches, 74, 453. Goethe, 101, 127, 165, 208. Goneril, 245, _299-300_, 331, 370, 447-8. Greek tragedy, 7, 16, 30, 33, 182, 276-9, 282. Greene, 409. Hales, J. W. , 397. _Hamlet_, exposition, 43-7; conflict, 17, 47, 50-1; crisis and counter-stroke, 52, 58-60, 136-7; dragging, 57; humour, and false hope, before catastrophe, 61, 63; obscurities, 73; undramatic passages, 72, 74; place among tragedies, 80-8; position of hero, 89-92; not simply tragedy of thought, 82, 113, 127; in the Romantic Revival, 92, 127-8; lapse of time in, 129, 141; accident, 15, 143, 173; religious ideas, 144-5, 147-8, 172-4; player's speech, 389-90, Note F; grave-digger, 395-6; last scene, 256. See Notes A to H, and BB. Hamlet, only tragic character in play, 90; contrasted with Laertes and Fortinbras, 90, 106; failure of early criticism of, 91; supposed unintelligible, 93-4; external view, 94-7; 'conscience' view, 97-101; sentimental view, 101-4; Schlegel-Coleridge view, 104-8, 116, 123, 126-7; temperament, 109-10; moral idealism, 110-3; reflective genius, 113-5; connection of this with inaction, 115-7; origin of melancholy, 117-20; its nature and effects, 120-7, 103, 158; its diminution, 143-4; his 'insanity,' 121-2, 421; in Act II. 129-31, 155-6; in III. i. 131-3, 157, 421; in play-scene, 133-4; spares King, 134-6, 100, 439; with Queen, 136-8; kills Polonius, 136-7, 104; with Ghost, 138-40; leaving Denmark, 140-1; state after return, 143-5, 421; in grave-yard, 145-6, 153, 158, 421-2; in catastrophe, 102, 146-8, 151, 420-1; and Ophelia, 103, 112, 119, 145-6, 152-9, 402, 420-1; letter to Ophelia, 150, 403; trick of repetition, 148-9; word-play and humour, 149-52, 411; aesthetic feeling, 133, 415; and Iago, 208, 217, 222, 226; other references, 9, 14, 20, 22, 28, 316, 353, Notes A to H. Hanmer, 91. Hazlitt, 209, 223, 228, 231, 243, 248. Hecate, 342, Note Z. Hegel, 16, 348. _2 Henry VI. _, 492. |
_3 Henry VI. _, 222, 418, 490, 492. _Henry VIII. _, 80, 472, 479. Heredity, 30, 266, 303. Hero, tragic, 7; of 'high degree,' 9-11; contributes to catastrophe, 12; nature of, 19-23, 37; error of, 21, 34; unlucky, 28; place of, in construction, 53-55; absence of, from stage, 57; in earlier and later plays, 81-2, 176; in _King Lear_, 280; feeling at death of, 147-8, 174, 198, 324. Heywood, 140, 419. Historical tragedies, 3, 53, 71. Homer, 348. Horatio, 99, 112, 310, Notes A, B, C. Humour, constructional use of, 61; Hamlet's, 149-52; in _Othello_, 177; in _Macbeth_, 395. Hunter, J. , 199, 338. Iachimo, 21, 210. Iago, and evil, 207, 232-3; false views of, 208-11, 223-7; danger of accepting his own evidence, 211-2, 222-5; how he appeared to others, 213-5; and to Emilia, 215-6, 439-40; inferences hence, 217-8; further analysis, 218-22; source of his action, 222-31; his tragedy, 218, 222, 232; not merely evil, 233-5; nor of supreme intellect, 236; cause of failure, 236-7; and Edmund, 245, 300-1, 464; and Hamlet, 208, 217, 222, 226; other references, 21, 28, 32, 192, 193, 196, 364, Notes L, M, P, Q. Improbability, not always a defect, 69; in _King Lear_, 249, 256-7. Inconsistencies, 73; real or supposed, in _Hamlet_, 408; in _Othello_, Note I; in _King Lear_, 256, Note T; in _Macbeth_, Notes CC, EE. Ingram, Prof. , 478. Insanity in tragedy, 13; Ophelia's, 164-5, 399; Lear's, 288-90. Intrigue in tragedy, 12, 67, 179. Irony, 182, 338. Isabella, 316, 317, 321. Jameson, Mrs. , 165, 204, 379. Jealousy in Othello, 178, 194, Note L. Job, 11. Johnson, 31, 91, 294, 298, 304, 377, 420. Jonson, 69, 282, 389. Juliet, 7, 204, 210. _Julius Caesar_, 3, 7, 9, 33, 34, 479; conflict, 17-8; exposition, 43-5; crisis, 52; dragging, 57; counter-stroke, 58; quarrel-scene, 60-1; battle-scenes, 62; and _Hamlet_, 80-2; style, 85-6. Justice in tragedy, idea of, 31-33, 279, 318. Kean, 99, 243-4. Kent, _307-10_, 314, 321, 447, Note W. King Claudius, 28, 102, 133, 137, 142, _168-72_, 402, 422. _King John_, 394, 490-1. _King Lear_, exposition, 44, 46-7; conflict, 17, 53-4; scenes of high and low tension, 49; dragging, 57; false hope before catastrophe, 63; battle-scene, 62, 456-8; soliloquy in, 72, 222; place among tragedies, 82, 88, see Tate; Tate's, 243-4; two-fold character, 244-6; not wholly dramatic, 247; opening scene, 71, 249-51, 258, 319-21, 447; blinding of Gloster, 185, 251; catastrophe, 250-4, 271, 290-3, 309, 322-6; structural defects, 254-6; improbabilities, etc. , 256-8; vagueness of locality, 259-60; poetic value of defects, 261; double action, 262; characterisation, 263; tendency to symbolism, 264-5; idea of monstrosity, 265-6; beast and man, 266-8; storm-scenes, 269-70, 286-7, 315; question of government of world, in, 271-3; supposed pessimism, 273-9, 284-5, 303-4, 322-30; accident and fatality, 15, 250-4, 287-8; intrigue in, 179; evil in, 298, 303-4; preaching patience, 330; and _Othello_, 176-7, 179, 181, 244-5, 441-3; and _Timon_, 245-7, 310, 326-7, 443-5; other references, 8, 10, 61, 181, Notes R to Y, and BB. König, G. , Note BB. Koppel, R. , 306, 450, 453, 462. Laertes, 90, 111, 142, 422. Lamb, 202, 243, 248, 253, 255, 269, 343. Language, Shakespeare's, defects of, 73, 75, 416. Lear, 13, 14, 20, 28, 29, 32, 249-51, _280-93_, 293-5, Note W. Leontes, 21, 194. _Macbeth_, exposition, 43, 45-6; conflict, 17-9, 48, 52; crisis, 59, 60; pathos and humour, 61, 391, 395-7; battle-scenes, 62; extended catastrophe, 64; defects in construction, 57, 71; place among tragedies, 82, 87-8, Note BB; religious ideas, 172-4; atmosphere of, 333; effects of darkness, 333-4, colour, 334-6, storm, 336-7, supernatural, etc. , 337-8, irony, 338-40; Witches, 340-9, 362, 379-86; imagery, 336, 357; minor characters, 387; simplicity, 388; Senecan effect, 389-90; bombast, 389, 417; prose, 388, 397-400; relief-scenes, 391; sleep-walking scene, 378, 398, 400; references to Gunpowder Plot, 397, 470-1; all genuine? 388, 391, 395-7, Note Z; and _Hamlet_, 331-2; and _Richard III. _, 338, 390, 395, 492; other references, 7, 8, 386, and Notes Z to FF. Macbeth, 13, 14, 20, 22, 28, 32, 63, 172, 343-5, _349-65_, 380, 383, 386, Notes CC, EE. Macbeth, Lady, 13, 28, 32, 349-50, 358, 364, _366-79_, 398-400, Notes CC, DD. Macduff, 387, 391-2, 490-1. Macduff, Lady, 61, 387, 391-2. Macduff, little, 393-5. Mackenzie, 91. Marlowe, 211, 415-6. Marston's possible reminiscences of Shakespeare's plays, 471-2. _Measure for Measure_, 76, 78, 275, 397. Mediaeval idea of tragedy, 8, 9. Melancholy, Shakespeare's representations of, 110, 121. See Hamlet. Mephistopheles, 208. _Merchant of Venice_, 21, 200. Metrical tests, Notes S, BB. Middleton, 466. _Midsummer Night's Dream_, 390, 469. Milton, 207, 362, 418. Monstrosity, idea of, in _King Lear_, 265-6. Moral order in tragedy, idea of, 26, 31-9. Moulton, R. G. , 40. Negro? Othello a, 198-202. Opening scene in tragedy, 43-4. Ophelia, 14, 61, 112, _160-5_, 204, 399. See Hamlet. Oswald, 298, 448. _Othello_, exposition, 44-5; conflict, 17, 18, 48; peculiar construction, 54-5, 64-7, 177; inconsistencies, 73; place among tragedies, 82, 83, 88; and _Hamlet_, 175-6; and _King Lear_, 176-7, 179, 181, 244-5, 441-3; distinctive effect, and its causes, 176-80; accident in, 15, 181-2; objections to, considered, 183-5; point of inferiority to other three tragedies, 185-6; elements of reconciliation in catastrophe, 198, 242; other references, 9, 61, Notes I to R, and BB. Othello, 9, 20, 21, 22, 28, 29, 32, 176, 178, 179, _186-98_, 198-202, 211, 212, Notes K to O. Pathos, and tragedy, 14, 103, 160, 203, 281-2; constructional use of, 60-1. Peele, 200. _Pericles_, 474. Period, Shakespeare's tragic, 79-89, 275-6. Pessimism, supposed, in _King Lear_, 275-9, 327; in _Macbeth_, 359, 393. Plays, Shakespeare's, list of, in periods, 79. Plot, 12. See Action, Intrigue. 'Poetic justice,' 31-2. Poor, goodness of the, in _King Lear_ and _Timon_, 326. Posthumus, 21. Problems, probably non-existent for original audience, 73, 157, 159, 315, 393, 483, 486, 488. Prose, in the tragedies, 388, 397-400. Queen Gertrude, 104, 118, 134, 136-8, 161, 164, _166-8_. Reconciliation, feeling of, in tragedy, 31, 36, 84, 147-8, 174, 198, 242, 322-6. Regan, _299-300_. Religion, in Edgar, 306, Horatio, 310, Banquo, 387. _Richard II. _, 3, 10, 17, 18, 42. Richard II. , 20, 22, 150, 152. _Richard III. _, 3, 18, 42, 62, 82; and _Macbeth_, 338, 390, 395, 492. Richard III. , 14, 20, 22, 32, 63, 152, 207, 210, 217, 218, 233, 301. _Romeo and Juliet_, 3, 7, 9, 15; conflict, 17, 18, 34; exposition, 41-5; crisis, 52; counter-stroke, 58. Romeo, 22, 29, 150, 210. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, 137, 405-6. Rules of drama, Shakespeare's supposed ignorance of, 69. Salvini, 434. Satan, Milton's, 207, 362. Scenery, no, in Shakespeare's theatre, 49, 71, 451. Scenes, their number, length, tone, 49; wrong divisions of, 451. Schlegel, 82, 104, 105, 116, 123, 127, 254, 262, 344, 345, 413. Scot on Witch-craft, 341. Seneca, 389-90. Shakespeare the man, 6, 81, 83, 185-6, 246, 275-6, 282, 285, 327-30, 359, 393, 414-5. Shylock, 21. Siddons, Mrs. , 371, 379. Soliloquy, 72; of villains, 222; scenes ending with, 451. Sonnets, Shakespeare's, 264, 364. Spedding, J. , 255, 476, Note X. Stage-directions, wrong modern, 260, 285, 422, 453-6, 462. Style in the tragedies, 85-9, 332, 336, 357. Suffering, tragic, 7, 8, 11. Supernatural, the, in tragedy, 14, 181, 295-6, 331-2. See Ghost, Witch. Swinburne, A. C. , 80, 179, 191, 209, 218, 223, 228, 231, 276-8, 431. Symonds, J. A. , 10. Tate's version of _King Lear_, 243, 251-3, 313. Temperament, 110, 282, 306. _Tempest_, 42, 80, 185, 264, 328-30, 469; Note BB. Theological ideas in tragedy, 25, 144, 147, 279; in _Hamlet_ and _Macbeth_, 171-4, 439; not in _Othello_, 181, 439; in _King Lear_, 271-3, 296. Time, short and long, theory of, 426-7. _Timon of Athens_, 4, 9, 81-3, 88, 245-7, 266, 270, 275, 310, 326-7, 443-5, 460; Note BB. Timon, 9, 82, 112. _Titus Andronicus_, 4, 200, 211, 411, 491. Tourgénief, 11, 295. Toussaint, 198. Tragedy, Shakespearean; parts, 41, 51; earlier and later, 18, 176; pure and historical, 3, 71. See Accident, Action, Hero, Period, Reconciliation, etc. Transmigration of souls, 267. _Troilus and Cressida_, 7, 185-6, 268, 275-6, 302, 417, 419. _Twelfth Night_, 70, 267. _Two Noble Kinsmen_, 418, 472, 479. Ultimate power in tragedy, 24-39, 171-4, 271-9. See Fate, Moral Order, Reconciliation, Theological. Undramatic speeches, 74, 106. Versification. See Style and Metrical tests. Virgilia, 387. Waste, tragic, 23, 37. Werder, K. , 94, 172, 480. _Winter's Tale_, 21, Note BB. Witches, the, and Macbeth, _340-9_, 362; and Banquo, 379-87. Wittenberg, Hamlet at, 403-6. Wordsworth, 30, 198. _Yorkshire Tragedy_, 10. GLASGOW: PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO. LTD. _8vo. 12s. 6d. net. _Oxford Lectures on PoetryBYA. C. BRADLEY, LL. D. , Litt. D. _ATHENÆUM. _--"A remarkable achievement. . . . It is probable that thisvolume will attain a permanence for which critical literature generallycannot hope. Very many of the things that are said here are finallysaid; they exhaust their subject. Of one thing we are certain--thatthere is no work in English devoted to the interpretation of poeticexperience which can claim the delicacy and sureness of Mr. Bradley's. "_SPECTATOR. _--"In reviewing Professor Bradley's previous book on_Shakespearean Tragedy_ we declared our opinion that it was probably thebest Shakespearean criticism since Coleridge. The new volume shows thesame complete sanity of judgment, the same subtlety, the same persuasiveand eloquent exposition. "_TIMES. _--"Nothing higher need be said of the present volume than it isnot unworthy to be the sequel to _Shakespearean Tragedy_. "_DAILY TELEGRAPH. _--"This is not a book to be written about in a hastyreview of a thousand words. It is one to be perused and appreciated atleisure--to be returned to again and again, partly because of itssupreme interest, partly because it provokes, as all good books shoulddo, a certain antagonism, partly because it is itself the product of acareful, scholarly mind, basing conclusions on a scrupulous perusal ofdocuments and authorities. . . . The whole book is so full of good thingsthat it is impossible to make any adequate selection. In an age which isnot supposed to be very much interested in literary criticism, a booklike Mr. Bradley's is of no little significance and importance. "_SATURDAY REVIEW. _--"The writer of these admirable lectures may claimwhat is rare even in this age of criticism--a note of his own. In typehe belongs to those critics of the best order, whose view of literatureis part and parcel of their view of life. His lectures on poetry aretherefore what they profess to be: not scraps of textual comment, norstudies in the craft of verse-making, but broad considerations of poetryas a mode of spiritual revelation. An accomplished style and signs ofcareful reading we may justly demand from any professor who sets out tolecture in literature. Mr. Bradley has them in full measure. But he hasalso not a little of that priceless quality so seldom found in theprofessional or professorial critic--the capacity of naïve vision andadmiration. Here he is in a line with the really stimulating essayists,the artists in criticism. "MACMILLAN AND CO. LTD. , LONDON. _Second Edition. Crown 8vo. 5s. 6d. net. _A Commentary on Tennyson's 'In Memoriam'BYA. C. BRADLEY, LL. D. , Litt. D. _THE SATURDAY REVIEW. _--"Here we find a model of what a commentary on agreat work should be, every page instinct with thoughtfulness; completesympathy and appreciation; the most reverent care shown in the attemptedinterpretation of passages whose meaning to a large degree evades, andwill always evade, readers of 'In Memoriam. ' It is clear to us that Mr. Bradley has devoted long time and thought to his work, and that he haspublished the result of his labours simply to help those who, likehimself, have been and are in difficulties as to the drift of variouspassages. He is not of course the first who has addressed himself to theinterpretation of 'In Memoriam'--in this spirit . . . but Mr. Bradley'scommentary is sure to take rank as the most searching and scholarly ofany. "_THE PILOT. _--"In re-studying 'In Memoriam' with Dr. Bradley's aid, wehave found his interpretation helpful in numerous passages. The notesare prefaced by a long introduction dealing with the origin,composition, and structure of the poem, the ideas used in it, the metreand the debt to other poems. All of these are good, but more interestingthan any of them is a section entitled, 'The Way of the Soul,' reviewingthe spiritual experience which 'In Memoriam' records. This is quiteadmirable throughout, and proves conclusively that Dr. Bradley's keendesire to fathom the exact meaning of every phrase has only quickenedhis appreciation of the poem as a whole. "MACMILLAN AND CO. LTD. , LONDON. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Shakespearean Tragedy, by A. C. Bradley*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY ******** This file should be named 16966-8. txt or 16966-8. zip *****This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: https://www. gutenberg. org/1/6/9/6/16966/Produced by Suzanne Shell, Lisa Reigel and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www. pgdp. netUpdated editions will replace the previous one--the old editionswill be renamed. Creating the works from public domain print editions means that noone owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation(and you! ) can copy and distribute it in the United States withoutpermission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules,set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply tocopying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works toprotect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. ProjectGutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if youcharge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If youdo not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with therules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purposesuch as creation of derivative works, reports, performances andresearch. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may dopractically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution issubject to the trademark license, especially commercialredistribution. *** START: FULL LICENSE ***THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSEPLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORKTo protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the freedistribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "ProjectGutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full ProjectGutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online athttps://gutenberg. org/license). Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tmelectronic works1. A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tmelectronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree toand accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by allthe terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroyall copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a ProjectGutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by theterms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person orentity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1. E. 8. 1. B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only beused on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people whoagree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a fewthings that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic workseven without complying with the full terms of this agreement. Seeparagraph 1. C below. There are a lot of things you can do with ProjectGutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreementand help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronicworks. See paragraph 1. E below. 1. C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of ProjectGutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in thecollection are in the public domain in the United States. If anindividual work is in the public domain in the United States and you arelocated in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you fromcopying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivativeworks based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenbergare removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the ProjectGutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works byfreely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms ofthis agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated withthe work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement bykeeping this work in the same format with its attached full ProjectGutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. 1. D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also governwhat you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are ina constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, checkthe laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreementbefore downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing orcreating derivative works based on this work or any other ProjectGutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerningthe copyright status of any work in any country outside the UnitedStates. 1. E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:1. E. 1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediateaccess to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominentlywhenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which thephrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "ProjectGutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,copied or distributed:This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and withalmost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away orre-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License includedwith this eBook or online at www. gutenberg. org1. E. 2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derivedfrom the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it isposted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copiedand distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any feesor charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a workwith the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on thework, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1. E. 1through 1. E. 7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and theProject Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1. E. 8 or1. E. 9. 1. E. 3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is postedwith the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distributionmust comply with both paragraphs 1. E. 1 through 1. E. 7 and any additionalterms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linkedto the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with thepermission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. 1. E. 4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tmLicense terms from this work, or any files containing a part of thiswork or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. 1. E. 5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute thiselectronic work, or any part of this electronic work, withoutprominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1. E. 1 withactive links or immediate access to the full terms of the ProjectGutenberg-tm License. 1. E. 6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including anyword processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to ordistribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official versionposted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www. gutenberg. org),you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide acopy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy uponrequest, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or otherform. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tmLicense as specified in paragraph 1. E. 1. 1. E. 7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm worksunless you comply with paragraph 1. E. 8 or 1. E. 9. 1. E. 8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providingaccess to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works providedthat- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. "- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg-tm works. - You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1. F. 3, a full refund of any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of receipt of the work. - You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. 1. E. 9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tmelectronic work or group of works on different terms than are setforth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing fromboth the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and MichaelHart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact theFoundation as set forth in Section 3 below. 1. F. 1. F. 1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerableeffort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofreadpublic domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tmcollection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronicworks, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate orcorrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectualproperty infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, acomputer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read byyour equipment. 1. F. 2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Rightof Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1. F. 3, the ProjectGutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the ProjectGutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a ProjectGutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim allliability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legalfees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICTLIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSEPROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THETRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BELIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE ORINCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCHDAMAGE. 1. F. 3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover adefect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you canreceive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending awritten explanation to the person you received the work from. If youreceived the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium withyour written explanation. The person or entity that provided you withthe defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of arefund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entityproviding it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity toreceive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copyis also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without furtheropportunities to fix the problem. 1. F. 4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forthin paragraph 1. F. 3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHERWARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TOWARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. 1. F. 5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain impliedwarranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates thelaw of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall beinterpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted bythe applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of anyprovision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. 1. F. 6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, thetrademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyoneproviding copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordancewith this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you door cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tmwork, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to anyProject Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tmProject Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution ofelectronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computersincluding obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It existsbecause of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations frompeople in all walks of life. Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with theassistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm'sgoals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection willremain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the ProjectGutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secureand permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundationand how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4and the Foundation web page at https://www. pglaf. org. Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary ArchiveFoundationThe Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of thestate of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the InternalRevenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identificationnumber is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted athttps://pglaf. org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project GutenbergLiterary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extentpermitted by U. S. federal laws and your state's laws. The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. Fairbanks, AK, 99712. , but its volunteers and employees are scatteredthroughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, emailbusiness@pglaf. org. Email contact links and up to date contactinformation can be found at the Foundation's web site and officialpage at https://pglaf. orgFor additional contact information: Dr. Gregory B. Newby Chief Executive and Director gbnewby@pglaf. orgSection 4. Information about Donations to the Project GutenbergLiterary Archive FoundationProject Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without widespread public support and donations to carry out its mission ofincreasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can befreely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widestarray of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exemptstatus with the IRS. The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulatingcharities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the UnitedStates. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes aconsiderable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep upwith these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locationswhere we have not received written confirmation of compliance. ToSEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for anyparticular state visit https://pglaf. orgWhile we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where wehave not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibitionagainst accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states whoapproach us with offers to donate. International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot makeany statements concerning tax treatment of donations received fromoutside the United States. U. S. laws alone swamp our small staff. Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donationmethods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of otherways including including checks, online payments and credit carddonations. To donate, please visit: https://pglaf. org/donateSection 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronicworks. Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tmconcept of a library of electronic works that could be freely sharedwith anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed ProjectGutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printededitions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U. S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarilykeep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: https://www. gutenberg. orgThis Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg LiteraryArchive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how tosubscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. |
The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Sonnets, by William ShakespeareThis eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States andmost other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictionswhatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the termsof the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online atwww. gutenberg. org. If you are not located in the United States, youwill have to check the laws of the country where you are located beforeusing this eBook. Title: The SonnetsAuthor: William ShakespeareRelease Date: September, 1997 [eBook #1041][Most recently updated: December 3, 2022]Language: EnglishProduced by: the Project Gutenberg Shakespeare Team*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SONNETS ***THE SONNETSby William ShakespeareIFrom fairest creatures we desire increase,That thereby beauty’s rose might never die,But as the riper should by time decease,His tender heir might bear his memory:But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,Feed’st thy light’s flame with self-substantial fuel,Making a famine where abundance lies,Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel:Thou that art now the world’s fresh ornament,And only herald to the gaudy spring,Within thine own bud buriest thy content,And tender churl mak’st waste in niggarding: Pity the world, or else this glutton be, To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee. IIWhen forty winters shall besiege thy brow,And dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field,Thy youth’s proud livery so gazed on now,Will be a tatter’d weed of small worth held:Then being asked, where all thy beauty lies,Where all the treasure of thy lusty days;To say, within thine own deep sunken eyes,Were an all-eating shame, and thriftless praise. How much more praise deserv’d thy beauty’s use,If thou couldst answer ‘This fair child of mineShall sum my count, and make my old excuse,’Proving his beauty by succession thine! This were to be new made when thou art old, And see thy blood warm when thou feel’st it cold. IIILook in thy glass and tell the face thou viewestNow is the time that face should form another;Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother. For where is she so fair whose unear’d wombDisdains the tillage of thy husbandry? Or who is he so fond will be the tomb,Of his self-love to stop posterity? Thou art thy mother’s glass and she in theeCalls back the lovely April of her prime;So thou through windows of thine age shalt see,Despite of wrinkles this thy golden time. But if thou live, remember’d not to be, Die single and thine image dies with thee. IVUnthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spendUpon thyself thy beauty’s legacy? Nature’s bequest gives nothing, but doth lend,And being frank she lends to those are free:Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuseThe bounteous largess given thee to give? Profitless usurer, why dost thou useSo great a sum of sums, yet canst not live? For having traffic with thyself alone,Thou of thyself thy sweet self dost deceive:Then how when nature calls thee to be gone,What acceptable audit canst thou leave? Thy unused beauty must be tombed with thee, Which, used, lives th’ executor to be. VThose hours, that with gentle work did frameThe lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell,Will play the tyrants to the very sameAnd that unfair which fairly doth excel;For never-resting time leads summer onTo hideous winter, and confounds him there;Sap checked with frost, and lusty leaves quite gone,Beauty o’er-snowed and bareness every where:Then were not summer’s distillation left,A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,Beauty’s effect with beauty were bereft,Nor it, nor no remembrance what it was: But flowers distill’d, though they with winter meet, Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet. VIThen let not winter’s ragged hand deface,In thee thy summer, ere thou be distill’d:Make sweet some vial; treasure thou some placeWith beauty’s treasure ere it be self-kill’d. That use is not forbidden usury,Which happies those that pay the willing loan;That’s for thyself to breed another thee,Or ten times happier, be it ten for one;Ten times thyself were happier than thou art,If ten of thine ten times refigur’d thee:Then what could death do if thou shouldst depart,Leaving thee living in posterity? Be not self-will’d, for thou art much too fair To be death’s conquest and make worms thine heir. VIILo! in the orient when the gracious lightLifts up his burning head, each under eyeDoth homage to his new-appearing sight,Serving with looks his sacred majesty;And having climb’d the steep-up heavenly hill,Resembling strong youth in his middle age,Yet mortal looks adore his beauty still,Attending on his golden pilgrimage:But when from highmost pitch, with weary car,Like feeble age, he reeleth from the day,The eyes, ’fore duteous, now converted areFrom his low tract, and look another way: So thou, thyself outgoing in thy noon: Unlook’d, on diest unless thou get a son. VIIIMusic to hear, why hear’st thou music sadly? Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy:Why lov’st thou that which thou receiv’st not gladly,Or else receiv’st with pleasure thine annoy? If the true concord of well-tuned sounds,By unions married, do offend thine ear,They do but sweetly chide thee, who confoundsIn singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear. Mark how one string, sweet husband to another,Strikes each in each by mutual ordering;Resembling sire and child and happy mother,Who, all in one, one pleasing note do sing: Whose speechless song being many, seeming one, Sings this to thee: ‘Thou single wilt prove none. ’IXIs it for fear to wet a widow’s eye,That thou consum’st thyself in single life? Ah! if thou issueless shalt hap to die,The world will wail thee like a makeless wife;The world will be thy widow and still weepThat thou no form of thee hast left behind,When every private widow well may keepBy children’s eyes, her husband’s shape in mind:Look! what an unthrift in the world doth spendShifts but his place, for still the world enjoys it;But beauty’s waste hath in the world an end,And kept unused the user so destroys it. No love toward others in that bosom sits That on himself such murd’rous shame commits. XFor shame! deny that thou bear’st love to any,Who for thyself art so unprovident. Grant, if thou wilt, thou art belov’d of many,But that thou none lov’st is most evident:For thou art so possess’d with murderous hate,That ’gainst thyself thou stick’st not to conspire,Seeking that beauteous roof to ruinateWhich to repair should be thy chief desire. O! change thy thought, that I may change my mind:Shall hate be fairer lodg’d than gentle love? |
Be, as thy presence is, gracious and kind,Or to thyself at least kind-hearted prove: Make thee another self for love of me, That beauty still may live in thine or thee. XIAs fast as thou shalt wane, so fast thou grow’st,In one of thine, from that which thou departest;And that fresh blood which youngly thou bestow’st,Thou mayst call thine when thou from youth convertest,Herein lives wisdom, beauty, and increase;Without this folly, age, and cold decay:If all were minded so, the times should ceaseAnd threescore year would make the world away. Let those whom nature hath not made for store,Harsh, featureless, and rude, barrenly perish:Look, whom she best endow’d, she gave thee more;Which bounteous gift thou shouldst in bounty cherish: She carv’d thee for her seal, and meant thereby, Thou shouldst print more, not let that copy die. XIIWhen I do count the clock that tells the time,And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;When I behold the violet past prime,And sable curls, all silvered o’er with white;When lofty trees I see barren of leaves,Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,And summer’s green all girded up in sheaves,Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard,Then of thy beauty do I question make,That thou among the wastes of time must go,Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsakeAnd die as fast as they see others grow; And nothing ’gainst Time’s scythe can make defence Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence. XIIIO! that you were your self; but, love you areNo longer yours, than you yourself here live:Against this coming end you should prepare,And your sweet semblance to some other give:So should that beauty which you hold in leaseFind no determination; then you wereYourself again, after yourself’s decease,When your sweet issue your sweet form should bear. Who lets so fair a house fall to decay,Which husbandry in honour might uphold,Against the stormy gusts of winter’s dayAnd barren rage of death’s eternal cold? O! none but unthrifts. Dear my love, you know, You had a father: let your son say so. XIVNot from the stars do I my judgement pluck;And yet methinks I have astronomy,But not to tell of good or evil luck,Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons’ quality;Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell,Pointing to each his thunder, rain and wind,Or say with princes if it shall go wellBy oft predict that I in heaven find:But from thine eyes my knowledge I derive,And constant stars in them I read such artAs ‘Truth and beauty shall together thrive,If from thyself, to store thou wouldst convert’; Or else of thee this I prognosticate: ‘Thy end is truth’s and beauty’s doom and date. ’XVWhen I consider everything that growsHolds in perfection but a little moment,That this huge stage presenteth nought but showsWhereon the stars in secret influence comment;When I perceive that men as plants increase,Cheered and checked even by the self-same sky,Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease,And wear their brave state out of memory;Then the conceit of this inconstant staySets you most rich in youth before my sight,Where wasteful Time debateth with DecayTo change your day of youth to sullied night, And all in war with Time for love of you, As he takes from you, I engraft you new. XVIBut wherefore do not you a mightier wayMake war upon this bloody tyrant, Time? And fortify yourself in your decayWith means more blessed than my barren rhyme? Now stand you on the top of happy hours,And many maiden gardens, yet unset,With virtuous wish would bear you living flowers,Much liker than your painted counterfeit:So should the lines of life that life repair,Which this, Time’s pencil, or my pupil pen,Neither in inward worth nor outward fair,Can make you live yourself in eyes of men. To give away yourself, keeps yourself still, And you must live, drawn by your own sweet skill. XVIIWho will believe my verse in time to come,If it were fill’d with your most high deserts? Though yet heaven knows it is but as a tombWhich hides your life, and shows not half your parts. If I could write the beauty of your eyes,And in fresh numbers number all your graces,The age to come would say ‘This poet lies;Such heavenly touches ne’er touch’d earthly faces. ’So should my papers, yellow’d with their age,Be scorn’d, like old men of less truth than tongue,And your true rights be term’d a poet’s rageAnd stretched metre of an antique song: But were some child of yours alive that time, You should live twice,—in it, and in my rhyme. XVIIIShall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate:Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,And often is his gold complexion dimm’d,And every fair from fair sometime declines,By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimm’d:But thy eternal summer shall not fade,Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st, So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. XIXDevouring Time, blunt thou the lion’s paws,And make the earth devour her own sweet brood;Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger’s jaws,And burn the long-liv’d phoenix, in her blood;Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleets,And do whate’er thou wilt, swift-footed Time,To the wide world and all her fading sweets;But I forbid thee one most heinous crime:O! carve not with thy hours my love’s fair brow,Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen;Him in thy course untainted do allowFor beauty’s pattern to succeeding men. Yet do thy worst, old Time; despite thy wrong, My love shall in my verse ever live young. XXA woman’s face with nature’s own hand painted,Hast thou, the master mistress of my passion;A woman’s gentle heart, but not acquaintedWith shifting change, as is false women’s fashion:An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;A man in hue all ‘hues’ in his controlling,Which steals men’s eyes and women’s souls amazeth. And for a woman wert thou first created;Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting,And by addition me of thee defeated,By adding one thing to my purpose nothing. But since she prick’d thee out for women’s pleasure, Mine be thy love and thy love’s use their treasure. XXISo is it not with me as with that Muse,Stirr’d by a painted beauty to his verse,Who heaven itself for ornament doth useAnd every fair with his fair doth rehearse,Making a couplement of proud compare. With sun and moon, with earth and sea’s rich gems,With April’s first-born flowers, and all things rare,That heaven’s air in this huge rondure hems. O! let me, true in love, but truly write,And then believe me, my love is as fairAs any mother’s child, though not so brightAs those gold candles fix’d in heaven’s air: Let them say more that like of hearsay well; I will not praise that purpose not to sell. XXIIMy glass shall not persuade me I am old,So long as youth and thou are of one date;But when in thee time’s furrows I behold,Then look I death my days should expiate. For all that beauty that doth cover thee,Is but the seemly raiment of my heart,Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me:How can I then be elder than thou art? O! therefore love, be of thyself so waryAs I, not for myself, but for thee will;Bearing thy heart, which I will keep so charyAs tender nurse her babe from faring ill. Presume not on thy heart when mine is slain, Thou gav’st me thine not to give back again. XXIIIAs an unperfect actor on the stage,Who with his fear is put beside his part,Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage,Whose strength’s abundance weakens his own heart;So I, for fear of trust, forget to sayThe perfect ceremony of love’s rite,And in mine own love’s strength seem to decay,O’ercharg’d with burthen of mine own love’s might. O! |
let my looks be then the eloquenceAnd dumb presagers of my speaking breast,Who plead for love, and look for recompense,More than that tongue that more hath more express’d. O! learn to read what silent love hath writ: To hear with eyes belongs to love’s fine wit. XXIVMine eye hath play’d the painter and hath stell’d,Thy beauty’s form in table of my heart;My body is the frame wherein ’tis held,And perspective it is best painter’s art. For through the painter must you see his skill,To find where your true image pictur’d lies,Which in my bosom’s shop is hanging still,That hath his windows glazed with thine eyes. Now see what good turns eyes for eyes have done:Mine eyes have drawn thy shape, and thine for meAre windows to my breast, where-through the sunDelights to peep, to gaze therein on thee; Yet eyes this cunning want to grace their art, They draw but what they see, know not the heart. XXVLet those who are in favour with their starsOf public honour and proud titles boast,Whilst I, whom fortune of such triumph barsUnlook’d for joy in that I honour most. Great princes’ favourites their fair leaves spreadBut as the marigold at the sun’s eye,And in themselves their pride lies buried,For at a frown they in their glory die. The painful warrior famoused for fight,After a thousand victories once foil’d,Is from the book of honour razed quite,And all the rest forgot for which he toil’d: Then happy I, that love and am belov’d, Where I may not remove nor be remov’d. XXVILord of my love, to whom in vassalageThy merit hath my duty strongly knit,To thee I send this written embassage,To witness duty, not to show my wit:Duty so great, which wit so poor as mineMay make seem bare, in wanting words to show it,But that I hope some good conceit of thineIn thy soul’s thought, all naked, will bestow it:Till whatsoever star that guides my moving,Points on me graciously with fair aspect,And puts apparel on my tatter’d loving,To show me worthy of thy sweet respect: Then may I dare to boast how I do love thee; Till then, not show my head where thou mayst prove me. XXVIIWeary with toil, I haste me to my bed,The dear respose for limbs with travel tir’d;But then begins a journey in my headTo work my mind, when body’s work’s expired:For then my thoughts, from far where I abide,Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,Looking on darkness which the blind do see:Save that my soul’s imaginary sightPresents thy shadow to my sightless view,Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night,Makes black night beauteous, and her old face new. Lo! thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind, For thee, and for myself, no quiet find. XXVIIIHow can I then return in happy plight,That am debarre’d the benefit of rest? When day’s oppression is not eas’d by night,But day by night and night by day oppress’d,And each, though enemies to either’s reign,Do in consent shake hands to torture me,The one by toil, the other to complainHow far I toil, still farther off from thee. I tell the day, to please him thou art bright,And dost him grace when clouds do blot the heaven:So flatter I the swart-complexion’d night,When sparkling stars twire not thou gild’st the even. But day doth daily draw my sorrows longer, And night doth nightly make grief’s length seem stronger. XXIXWhen in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyesI all alone beweep my outcast state,And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,And look upon myself, and curse my fate,Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,Featur’d like him, like him with friends possess’d,Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope,With what I most enjoy contented least;Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising,Haply I think on thee, and then my state,Like to the lark at break of day arisingFrom sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate; For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth brings That then I scorn to change my state with kings. XXXWhen to the sessions of sweet silent thoughtI summon up remembrance of things past,I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste:Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night,And weep afresh love’s long since cancell’d woe,And moan the expense of many a vanish’d sight:Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,And heavily from woe to woe tell o’erThe sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,Which I new pay as if not paid before. But if the while I think on thee, dear friend, All losses are restor’d and sorrows end. XXXIThy bosom is endeared with all hearts,Which I by lacking have supposed dead;And there reigns Love, and all Love’s loving parts,And all those friends which I thought buried. How many a holy and obsequious tearHath dear religious love stol’n from mine eye,As interest of the dead, which now appearBut things remov’d that hidden in thee lie! Thou art the grave where buried love doth live,Hung with the trophies of my lovers gone,Who all their parts of me to thee did give,That due of many now is thine alone: Their images I lov’d, I view in thee, And thou, all they, hast all the all of me. XXXIIIf thou survive my well-contented day,When that churl Death my bones with dust shall coverAnd shalt by fortune once more re-surveyThese poor rude lines of thy deceased lover,Compare them with the bett’ring of the time,And though they be outstripp’d by every pen,Reserve them for my love, not for their rhyme,Exceeded by the height of happier men. O! then vouchsafe me but this loving thought:‘Had my friend’s Muse grown with this growing age,A dearer birth than this his love had brought,To march in ranks of better equipage: But since he died and poets better prove, Theirs for their style I’ll read, his for his love’. XXXIIIFull many a glorious morning have I seenFlatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye,Kissing with golden face the meadows green,Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy;Anon permit the basest clouds to rideWith ugly rack on his celestial face,And from the forlorn world his visage hide,Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace:Even so my sun one early morn did shine,With all triumphant splendour on my brow;But out! alack! he was but one hour mine,The region cloud hath mask’d him from me now. Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth; Suns of the world may stain when heaven’s sun staineth. XXXIVWhy didst thou promise such a beauteous day,And make me travel forth without my cloak,To let base clouds o’ertake me in my way,Hiding thy bravery in their rotten smoke? ’Tis not enough that through the cloud thou break,To dry the rain on my storm-beaten face,For no man well of such a salve can speak,That heals the wound, and cures not the disgrace:Nor can thy shame give physic to my grief;Though thou repent, yet I have still the loss:The offender’s sorrow lends but weak reliefTo him that bears the strong offence’s cross. Ah! but those tears are pearl which thy love sheds, And they are rich and ransom all ill deeds. XXXVNo more be griev’d at that which thou hast done:Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud:Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun,And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud. All men make faults, and even I in this,Authorizing thy trespass with compare,Myself corrupting, salving thy amiss,Excusing thy sins more than thy sins are;For to thy sensual fault I bring in sense;Thy adverse party is thy advocate,And ’gainst myself a lawful plea commence:Such civil war is in my love and hate, That I an accessary needs must be, To that sweet thief which sourly robs from me. XXXVILet me confess that we two must be twain,Although our undivided loves are one:So shall those blots that do with me remain,Without thy help, by me be borne alone. In our two loves there is but one respect,Though in our lives a separable spite,Which though it alter not love’s sole effect,Yet doth it steal sweet hours from love’s delight. I may not evermore acknowledge thee,Lest my bewailed guilt should do thee shame,Nor thou with public kindness honour me,Unless thou take that honour from thy name: But do not so, I love thee in such sort, As thou being mine, mine is thy good report. |
XXXVIIAs a decrepit father takes delightTo see his active child do deeds of youth,So I, made lame by Fortune’s dearest spite,Take all my comfort of thy worth and truth;For whether beauty, birth, or wealth, or wit,Or any of these all, or all, or more,Entitled in thy parts, do crowned sit,I make my love engrafted, to this store:So then I am not lame, poor, nor despis’d,Whilst that this shadow doth such substance giveThat I in thy abundance am suffic’d,And by a part of all thy glory live. Look what is best, that best I wish in thee: This wish I have; then ten times happy me! XXXVIIIHow can my muse want subject to invent,While thou dost breathe, that pour’st into my verseThine own sweet argument, too excellentFor every vulgar paper to rehearse? O! give thyself the thanks, if aught in meWorthy perusal stand against thy sight;For who’s so dumb that cannot write to thee,When thou thyself dost give invention light? Be thou the tenth Muse, ten times more in worthThan those old nine which rhymers invocate;And he that calls on thee, let him bring forthEternal numbers to outlive long date. If my slight muse do please these curious days, The pain be mine, but thine shall be the praise. XXXIXO! how thy worth with manners may I sing,When thou art all the better part of me? What can mine own praise to mine own self bring? And what is’t but mine own when I praise thee? Even for this, let us divided live,And our dear love lose name of single one,That by this separation I may giveThat due to thee which thou deserv’st alone. O absence! what a torment wouldst thou prove,Were it not thy sour leisure gave sweet leave,To entertain the time with thoughts of love,Which time and thoughts so sweetly doth deceive, And that thou teachest how to make one twain, By praising him here who doth hence remain. XLTake all my loves, my love, yea take them all;What hast thou then more than thou hadst before? No love, my love, that thou mayst true love call;All mine was thine, before thou hadst this more. Then, if for my love, thou my love receivest,I cannot blame thee, for my love thou usest;But yet be blam’d, if thou thyself deceivestBy wilful taste of what thyself refusest. I do forgive thy robbery, gentle thief,Although thou steal thee all my poverty:And yet, love knows it is a greater griefTo bear love’s wrong, than hate’s known injury. Lascivious grace, in whom all ill well shows, Kill me with spites yet we must not be foes. XLIThose pretty wrongs that liberty commits,When I am sometime absent from thy heart,Thy beauty, and thy years full well befits,For still temptation follows where thou art. Gentle thou art, and therefore to be won,Beauteous thou art, therefore to be assail’d;And when a woman woos, what woman’s sonWill sourly leave her till he have prevail’d? Ay me! but yet thou mightst my seat forbear,And chide thy beauty and thy straying youth,Who lead thee in their riot even thereWhere thou art forced to break a twofold truth: Hers by thy beauty tempting her to thee, Thine by thy beauty being false to me. XLIIThat thou hast her it is not all my grief,And yet it may be said I loved her dearly;That she hath thee is of my wailing chief,A loss in love that touches me more nearly. Loving offenders thus I will excuse ye:Thou dost love her, because thou know’st I love her;And for my sake even so doth she abuse me,Suffering my friend for my sake to approve her. If I lose thee, my loss is my love’s gain,And losing her, my friend hath found that loss;Both find each other, and I lose both twain,And both for my sake lay on me this cross: But here’s the joy; my friend and I are one; Sweet flattery! then she loves but me alone. XLIIIWhen most I wink, then do mine eyes best see,For all the day they view things unrespected;But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee,And darkly bright, are bright in dark directed. Then thou, whose shadow shadows doth make bright,How would thy shadow’s form form happy showTo the clear day with thy much clearer light,When to unseeing eyes thy shade shines so! How would, I say, mine eyes be blessed madeBy looking on thee in the living day,When in dead night thy fair imperfect shadeThrough heavy sleep on sightless eyes doth stay! All days are nights to see till I see thee, And nights bright days when dreams do show thee me. XLIVIf the dull substance of my flesh were thought,Injurious distance should not stop my way;For then despite of space I would be brought,From limits far remote, where thou dost stay. No matter then although my foot did standUpon the farthest earth remov’d from thee;For nimble thought can jump both sea and land,As soon as think the place where he would be. But, ah! thought kills me that I am not thought,To leap large lengths of miles when thou art gone,But that so much of earth and water wrought,I must attend time’s leisure with my moan; Receiving nought by elements so slow But heavy tears, badges of either’s woe. XLVThe other two, slight air, and purging fireAre both with thee, wherever I abide;The first my thought, the other my desire,These present-absent with swift motion slide. For when these quicker elements are goneIn tender embassy of love to thee,My life, being made of four, with two aloneSinks down to death, oppress’d with melancholy;Until life’s composition be recur’dBy those swift messengers return’d from thee,Who even but now come back again, assur’d,Of thy fair health, recounting it to me: This told, I joy; but then no longer glad, I send them back again, and straight grow sad. XLVIMine eye and heart are at a mortal war,How to divide the conquest of thy sight;Mine eye my heart thy picture’s sight would bar,My heart mine eye the freedom of that right. My heart doth plead that thou in him dost lie,A closet never pierced with crystal eyes;But the defendant doth that plea deny,And says in him thy fair appearance lies. |
To side this title is impannelledA quest of thoughts, all tenants to the heart;And by their verdict is determinedThe clear eye’s moiety, and the dear heart’s part: As thus; mine eye’s due is thy outward part, And my heart’s right, thy inward love of heart. XLVIIBetwixt mine eye and heart a league is took,And each doth good turns now unto the other:When that mine eye is famish’d for a look,Or heart in love with sighs himself doth smother,With my love’s picture then my eye doth feast,And to the painted banquet bids my heart;Another time mine eye is my heart’s guest,And in his thoughts of love doth share a part:So, either by thy picture or my love,Thyself away, art present still with me;For thou not farther than my thoughts canst move,And I am still with them, and they with thee; Or, if they sleep, thy picture in my sight Awakes my heart, to heart’s and eye’s delight. XLVIIIHow careful was I when I took my way,Each trifle under truest bars to thrust,That to my use it might unused stayFrom hands of falsehood, in sure wards of trust! But thou, to whom my jewels trifles are,Most worthy comfort, now my greatest grief,Thou best of dearest, and mine only care,Art left the prey of every vulgar thief. Thee have I not lock’d up in any chest,Save where thou art not, though I feel thou art,Within the gentle closure of my breast,From whence at pleasure thou mayst come and part; And even thence thou wilt be stol’n I fear, For truth proves thievish for a prize so dear. XLIXAgainst that time, if ever that time come,When I shall see thee frown on my defects,When as thy love hath cast his utmost sum,Call’d to that audit by advis’d respects;Against that time when thou shalt strangely pass,And scarcely greet me with that sun, thine eye,When love, converted from the thing it was,Shall reasons find of settled gravity;Against that time do I ensconce me here,Within the knowledge of mine own desert,And this my hand, against my self uprear,To guard the lawful reasons on thy part: To leave poor me thou hast the strength of laws, Since why to love I can allege no cause. LHow heavy do I journey on the way,When what I seek, my weary travel’s end,Doth teach that ease and that repose to say,‘Thus far the miles are measured from thy friend! ’The beast that bears me, tired with my woe,Plods dully on, to bear that weight in me,As if by some instinct the wretch did knowHis rider lov’d not speed, being made from thee:The bloody spur cannot provoke him on,That sometimes anger thrusts into his hide,Which heavily he answers with a groan,More sharp to me than spurring to his side; For that same groan doth put this in my mind, My grief lies onward, and my joy behind. LIThus can my love excuse the slow offenceOf my dull bearer when from thee I speed:From where thou art why should I haste me thence? Till I return, of posting is no need. O! what excuse will my poor beast then find,When swift extremity can seem but slow? Then should I spur, though mounted on the wind,In winged speed no motion shall I know,Then can no horse with my desire keep pace;Therefore desire, of perfect’st love being made,Shall neigh no dull flesh in his fiery race,But love, for love, thus shall excuse my jade: ‘Since from thee going, he went wilful-slow, Towards thee I’ll run, and give him leave to go. ’LIISo am I as the rich, whose blessed key,Can bring him to his sweet up-locked treasure,The which he will not every hour survey,For blunting the fine point of seldom pleasure. Therefore are feasts so solemn and so rare,Since, seldom coming in that long year set,Like stones of worth they thinly placed are,Or captain jewels in the carcanet. So is the time that keeps you as my chest,Or as the wardrobe which the robe doth hide,To make some special instant special-blest,By new unfolding his imprison’d pride. Blessed are you whose worthiness gives scope, Being had, to triumph; being lacked, to hope. LIIIWhat is your substance, whereof are you made,That millions of strange shadows on you tend? Since every one, hath every one, one shade,And you but one, can every shadow lend. Describe Adonis, and the counterfeitIs poorly imitated after you;On Helen’s cheek all art of beauty set,And you in Grecian tires are painted new:Speak of the spring, and foison of the year,The one doth shadow of your beauty show,The other as your bounty doth appear;And you in every blessed shape we know. In all external grace you have some part, But you like none, none you, for constant heart. LIVO! how much more doth beauty beauteous seemBy that sweet ornament which truth doth give. The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deemFor that sweet odour, which doth in it live. The canker blooms have full as deep a dyeAs the perfumed tincture of the roses. Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonlyWhen summer’s breath their masked buds discloses:But, for their virtue only is their show,They live unwoo’d, and unrespected fade;Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so;Of their sweet deaths, are sweetest odours made: And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth, When that shall vade, by verse distills your truth. LVNot marble, nor the gilded monumentsOf princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;But you shall shine more bright in these contentsThan unswept stone, besmear’d with sluttish time. When wasteful war shall statues overturn,And broils root out the work of masonry,Nor Mars his sword, nor war’s quick fire shall burnThe living record of your memory. ’Gainst death, and all-oblivious enmityShall you pace forth; your praise shall still find roomEven in the eyes of all posterityThat wear this world out to the ending doom. So, till the judgment that yourself arise, You live in this, and dwell in lovers’ eyes. LVISweet love, renew thy force; be it not saidThy edge should blunter be than appetite,Which but to-day by feeding is allay’d,To-morrow sharpened in his former might:So, love, be thou, although to-day thou fillThy hungry eyes, even till they wink with fulness,To-morrow see again, and do not killThe spirit of love, with a perpetual dulness. Let this sad interim like the ocean beWhich parts the shore, where two contracted newCome daily to the banks, that when they seeReturn of love, more blest may be the view; Or call it winter, which being full of care, Makes summer’s welcome, thrice more wished, more rare. LVIIBeing your slave what should I do but tend,Upon the hours, and times of your desire? I have no precious time at all to spend;Nor services to do, till you require. Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour,Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you,Nor think the bitterness of absence sour,When you have bid your servant once adieu;Nor dare I question with my jealous thoughtWhere you may be, or your affairs suppose,But, like a sad slave, stay and think of noughtSave, where you are, how happy you make those. So true a fool is love, that in your will, Though you do anything, he thinks no ill. LVIIIThat god forbid, that made me first your slave,I should in thought control your times of pleasure,Or at your hand the account of hours to crave,Being your vassal, bound to stay your leisure! O! |
let me suffer, being at your beck,The imprison’d absence of your liberty;And patience, tame to sufferance, bide each check,Without accusing you of injury. Be where you list, your charter is so strongThat you yourself may privilage your timeTo what you will; to you it doth belongYourself to pardon of self-doing crime. I am to wait, though waiting so be hell, Not blame your pleasure be it ill or well. LIXIf there be nothing new, but that which isHath been before, how are our brains beguil’d,Which labouring for invention bear amissThe second burthen of a former child! O! that record could with a backward look,Even of five hundred courses of the sun,Show me your image in some antique book,Since mind at first in character was done! That I might see what the old world could sayTo this composed wonder of your frame;Wh’r we are mended, or wh’r better they,Or whether revolution be the same. O! sure I am the wits of former days, To subjects worse have given admiring praise. LXLike as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,So do our minutes hasten to their end;Each changing place with that which goes before,In sequent toil all forwards do contend. Nativity, once in the main of light,Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown’d,Crooked eclipses ’gainst his glory fight,And Time that gave doth now his gift confound. Time doth transfix the flourish set on youthAnd delves the parallels in beauty’s brow,Feeds on the rarities of nature’s truth,And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow: And yet to times in hope, my verse shall stand. Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand. LXIIs it thy will, thy image should keep openMy heavy eyelids to the weary night? Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken,While shadows like to thee do mock my sight? Is it thy spirit that thou send’st from theeSo far from home into my deeds to pry,To find out shames and idle hours in me,The scope and tenure of thy jealousy? O, no! thy love, though much, is not so great:It is my love that keeps mine eye awake:Mine own true love that doth my rest defeat,To play the watchman ever for thy sake: For thee watch I, whilst thou dost wake elsewhere, From me far off, with others all too near. LXIISin of self-love possesseth all mine eyeAnd all my soul, and all my every part;And for this sin there is no remedy,It is so grounded inward in my heart. Methinks no face so gracious is as mine,No shape so true, no truth of such account;And for myself mine own worth do define,As I all other in all worths surmount. But when my glass shows me myself indeedBeated and chopp’d with tanned antiquity,Mine own self-love quite contrary I read;Self so self-loving were iniquity. ’Tis thee, myself, that for myself I praise, Painting my age with beauty of thy days. LXIIIAgainst my love shall be as I am now,With Time’s injurious hand crush’d and o’erworn;When hours have drain’d his blood and fill’d his browWith lines and wrinkles; when his youthful mornHath travell’d on to age’s steepy night;And all those beauties whereof now he’s kingAre vanishing, or vanished out of sight,Stealing away the treasure of his spring;For such a time do I now fortifyAgainst confounding age’s cruel knife,That he shall never cut from memoryMy sweet love’s beauty, though my lover’s life: His beauty shall in these black lines be seen, And they shall live, and he in them still green. LXIVWhen I have seen by Time’s fell hand defac’dThe rich-proud cost of outworn buried age;When sometime lofty towers I see down-raz’d,And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;When I have seen the hungry ocean gainAdvantage on the kingdom of the shore,And the firm soil win of the watery main,Increasing store with loss, and loss with store;When I have seen such interchange of state,Or state itself confounded, to decay;Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate:That Time will come and take my love away. This thought is as a death which cannot choose But weep to have, that which it fears to lose. LXVSince brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,But sad mortality o’ersways their power,How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,Whose action is no stronger than a flower? O! how shall summer’s honey breath hold out,Against the wrackful siege of battering days,When rocks impregnable are not so stout,Nor gates of steel so strong but Time decays? O fearful meditation! where, alack,Shall Time’s best jewel from Time’s chest lie hid? Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back? Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid? O! none, unless this miracle have might, That in black ink my love may still shine bright. LXVITired with all these, for restful death I cry:As to behold desert a beggar born,And needy nothing trimm’d in jollity,And purest faith unhappily forsworn,And gilded honour shamefully misplac’d,And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,And right perfection wrongfully disgrac’d,And strength by limping sway disabledAnd art made tongue-tied by authority,And folly, doctor-like, controlling skill,And simple truth miscall’d simplicity,And captive good attending captain ill: Tir’d with all these, from these would I be gone, Save that, to die, I leave my love alone. LXVIIAh! wherefore with infection should he live,And with his presence grace impiety,That sin by him advantage should achieve,And lace itself with his society? Why should false painting imitate his cheek,And steel dead seeming of his living hue? Why should poor beauty indirectly seekRoses of shadow, since his rose is true? |
Why should he live, now Nature bankrupt is,Beggar’d of blood to blush through lively veins? For she hath no exchequer now but his,And proud of many, lives upon his gains. O! him she stores, to show what wealth she had In days long since, before these last so bad. LXVIIIThus is his cheek the map of days outworn,When beauty lived and died as flowers do now,Before these bastard signs of fair were born,Or durst inhabit on a living brow;Before the golden tresses of the dead,The right of sepulchres, were shorn away,To live a second life on second head;Ere beauty’s dead fleece made another gay:In him those holy antique hours are seen,Without all ornament, itself and true,Making no summer of another’s green,Robbing no old to dress his beauty new; And him as for a map doth Nature store, To show false Art what beauty was of yore. LXIXThose parts of thee that the world’s eye doth viewWant nothing that the thought of hearts can mend;All tongues, the voice of souls, give thee that due,Uttering bare truth, even so as foes commend. Thy outward thus with outward praise is crown’d;But those same tongues, that give thee so thine own,In other accents do this praise confoundBy seeing farther than the eye hath shown. They look into the beauty of thy mind,And that in guess they measure by thy deeds;Then churls their thoughts, although their eyes were kind,To thy fair flower add the rank smell of weeds: But why thy odour matcheth not thy show, The soil is this, that thou dost common grow. LXXThat thou art blam’d shall not be thy defect,For slander’s mark was ever yet the fair;The ornament of beauty is suspect,A crow that flies in heaven’s sweetest air. So thou be good, slander doth but approveThy worth the greater being woo’d of time;For canker vice the sweetest buds doth love,And thou present’st a pure unstained prime. Thou hast passed by the ambush of young daysEither not assail’d, or victor being charg’d;Yet this thy praise cannot be so thy praise,To tie up envy, evermore enlarg’d, If some suspect of ill mask’d not thy show, Then thou alone kingdoms of hearts shouldst owe. LXXINo longer mourn for me when I am deadThan you shall hear the surly sullen bellGive warning to the world that I am fledFrom this vile world with vilest worms to dwell:Nay, if you read this line, remember notThe hand that writ it, for I love you so,That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,If thinking on me then should make you woe. O if, I say, you look upon this verse,When I perhaps compounded am with clay,Do not so much as my poor name rehearse;But let your love even with my life decay; Lest the wise world should look into your moan, And mock you with me after I am gone. LXXIIO! lest the world should task you to reciteWhat merit lived in me, that you should loveAfter my death, dear love, forget me quite,For you in me can nothing worthy prove;Unless you would devise some virtuous lie,To do more for me than mine own desert,And hang more praise upon deceased IThan niggard truth would willingly impart:O! lest your true love may seem false in thisThat you for love speak well of me untrue,My name be buried where my body is,And live no more to shame nor me nor you. For I am shamed by that which I bring forth, And so should you, to love things nothing worth. LXXIIIThat time of year thou mayst in me beholdWhen yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hangUpon those boughs which shake against the cold,Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. In me thou see’st the twilight of such dayAs after sunset fadeth in the west;Which by and by black night doth take away,Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest. In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire,That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,As the death-bed, whereon it must expire,Consum’d with that which it was nourish’d by. This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong, To love that well, which thou must leave ere long. LXXIVBut be contented: when that fell arrestWithout all bail shall carry me away,My life hath in this line some interest,Which for memorial still with thee shall stay. When thou reviewest this, thou dost reviewThe very part was consecrate to thee:The earth can have but earth, which is his due;My spirit is thine, the better part of me:So then thou hast but lost the dregs of life,The prey of worms, my body being dead;The coward conquest of a wretch’s knife,Too base of thee to be remembered. The worth of that is that which it contains, And that is this, and this with thee remains. LXXVSo are you to my thoughts as food to life,Or as sweet-season’d showers are to the ground;And for the peace of you I hold such strifeAs ’twixt a miser and his wealth is found. Now proud as an enjoyer, and anonDoubting the filching age will steal his treasure;Now counting best to be with you alone,Then better’d that the world may see my pleasure:Sometime all full with feasting on your sight,And by and by clean starved for a look;Possessing or pursuing no delight,Save what is had, or must from you be took. Thus do I pine and surfeit day by day, Or gluttoning on all, or all away. LXXVIWhy is my verse so barren of new pride,So far from variation or quick change? Why with the time do I not glance asideTo new-found methods, and to compounds strange? Why write I still all one, ever the same,And keep invention in a noted weed,That every word doth almost tell my name,Showing their birth, and where they did proceed? O! know sweet love I always write of you,And you and love are still my argument;So all my best is dressing old words new,Spending again what is already spent: For as the sun is daily new and old, So is my love still telling what is told. LXXVIIThy glass will show thee how thy beauties wear,Thy dial how thy precious minutes waste;These vacant leaves thy mind’s imprint will bear,And of this book, this learning mayst thou taste. The wrinkles which thy glass will truly showOf mouthed graves will give thee memory;Thou by thy dial’s shady stealth mayst knowTime’s thievish progress to eternity. Look! what thy memory cannot contain,Commit to these waste blanks, and thou shalt findThose children nursed, deliver’d from thy brain,To take a new acquaintance of thy mind. These offices, so oft as thou wilt look, Shall profit thee and much enrich thy book. LXXVIIISo oft have I invoked thee for my Muse,And found such fair assistance in my verseAs every alien pen hath got my useAnd under thee their poesy disperse. Thine eyes, that taught the dumb on high to singAnd heavy ignorance aloft to fly,Have added feathers to the learned’s wingAnd given grace a double majesty. |
Yet be most proud of that which I compile,Whose influence is thine, and born of thee:In others’ works thou dost but mend the style,And arts with thy sweet graces graced be; But thou art all my art, and dost advance As high as learning, my rude ignorance. LXXIXWhilst I alone did call upon thy aid,My verse alone had all thy gentle grace;But now my gracious numbers are decay’d,And my sick Muse doth give an other place. I grant, sweet love, thy lovely argumentDeserves the travail of a worthier pen;Yet what of thee thy poet doth inventHe robs thee of, and pays it thee again. He lends thee virtue, and he stole that wordFrom thy behaviour; beauty doth he give,And found it in thy cheek: he can affordNo praise to thee, but what in thee doth live. Then thank him not for that which he doth say, Since what he owes thee, thou thyself dost pay. LXXXO! how I faint when I of you do write,Knowing a better spirit doth use your name,And in the praise thereof spends all his might,To make me tongue-tied speaking of your fame! But since your wort, wide as the ocean is,The humble as the proudest sail doth bear,My saucy bark, inferior far to his,On your broad main doth wilfully appear. Your shallowest help will hold me up afloat,Whilst he upon your soundless deep doth ride;Or, being wrack’d, I am a worthless boat,He of tall building, and of goodly pride: Then if he thrive and I be cast away, The worst was this: my love was my decay. LXXXIOr I shall live your epitaph to make,Or you survive when I in earth am rotten;From hence your memory death cannot take,Although in me each part will be forgotten. Your name from hence immortal life shall have,Though I, once gone, to all the world must die:The earth can yield me but a common grave,When you entombed in men’s eyes shall lie. Your monument shall be my gentle verse,Which eyes not yet created shall o’er-read;And tongues to be, your being shall rehearse,When all the breathers of this world are dead; You still shall live, such virtue hath my pen, Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men. LXXXIII grant thou wert not married to my Muse,And therefore mayst without attaint o’erlookThe dedicated words which writers useOf their fair subject, blessing every book. Thou art as fair in knowledge as in hue,Finding thy worth a limit past my praise;And therefore art enforced to seek anewSome fresher stamp of the time-bettering days. And do so, love; yet when they have devis’d,What strained touches rhetoric can lend,Thou truly fair, wert truly sympathiz’dIn true plain words, by thy true-telling friend; And their gross painting might be better us’d Where cheeks need blood; in thee it is abus’d. LXXXIIII never saw that you did painting need,And therefore to your fair no painting set;I found, or thought I found, you did exceedThat barren tender of a poet’s debt:And therefore have I slept in your report,That you yourself, being extant, well might showHow far a modern quill doth come too short,Speaking of worth, what worth in you doth grow. This silence for my sin you did impute,Which shall be most my glory being dumb;For I impair not beauty being mute,When others would give life, and bring a tomb. There lives more life in one of your fair eyes Than both your poets can in praise devise. LXXXIVWho is it that says most, which can say more,Than this rich praise: that you alone are you,In whose confine immured is the storeWhich should example where your equal grew. Lean penury within that pen doth dwellThat to his subject lends not some small glory;But he that writes of you, if he can tellThat you are you, so dignifies his story,Let him but copy what in you is writ,Not making worse what nature made so clear,And such a counterpart shall fame his wit,Making his style admired every where. You to your beauteous blessings add a curse, Being fond on praise, which makes your praises worse. LXXXVMy tongue-tied Muse in manners holds her still,While comments of your praise richly compil’d,Reserve their character with golden quill,And precious phrase by all the Muses fil’d. I think good thoughts, whilst others write good words,And like unlettered clerk still cry ‘Amen’To every hymn that able spirit affords,In polish’d form of well-refined pen. Hearing you praised, I say ‘’tis so, ’tis true,’And to the most of praise add something more;But that is in my thought, whose love to you,Though words come hindmost, holds his rank before. Then others, for the breath of words respect, Me for my dumb thoughts, speaking in effect. LXXXVIWas it the proud full sail of his great verse,Bound for the prize of all too precious you,That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse,Making their tomb the womb wherein they grew? Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write,Above a mortal pitch, that struck me dead? No, neither he, nor his compeers by nightGiving him aid, my verse astonished. He, nor that affable familiar ghostWhich nightly gulls him with intelligence,As victors of my silence cannot boast;I was not sick of any fear from thence: But when your countenance fill’d up his line, Then lacked I matter; that enfeebled mine. LXXXVIIFarewell! thou art too dear for my possessing,And like enough thou know’st thy estimate,The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing;My bonds in thee are all determinate. For how do I hold thee but by thy granting? And for that riches where is my deserving? The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting,And so my patent back again is swerving. Thyself thou gav’st, thy own worth then not knowing,Or me to whom thou gav’st it, else mistaking;So thy great gift, upon misprision growing,Comes home again, on better judgement making. Thus have I had thee, as a dream doth flatter, In sleep a king, but waking no such matter. LXXXVIIIWhen thou shalt be dispos’d to set me light,And place my merit in the eye of scorn,Upon thy side, against myself I’ll fight,And prove thee virtuous, though thou art forsworn. With mine own weakness, being best acquainted,Upon thy part I can set down a storyOf faults conceal’d, wherein I am attainted;That thou in losing me shalt win much glory:And I by this will be a gainer too;For bending all my loving thoughts on thee,The injuries that to myself I do,Doing thee vantage, double-vantage me. Such is my love, to thee I so belong, That for thy right, myself will bear all wrong. |
LXXXIXSay that thou didst forsake me for some fault,And I will comment upon that offence:Speak of my lameness, and I straight will halt,Against thy reasons making no defence. Thou canst not love disgrace me half so ill,To set a form upon desired change,As I’ll myself disgrace; knowing thy will,I will acquaintance strangle, and look strange;Be absent from thy walks; and in my tongueThy sweet beloved name no more shall dwell,Lest I, too much profane, should do it wrong,And haply of our old acquaintance tell. For thee, against my self I’ll vow debate, For I must ne’er love him whom thou dost hate. XCThen hate me when thou wilt; if ever, now;Now, while the world is bent my deeds to cross,Join with the spite of fortune, make me bow,And do not drop in for an after-loss:Ah! do not, when my heart hath ’scap’d this sorrow,Come in the rearward of a conquer’d woe;Give not a windy night a rainy morrow,To linger out a purpos’d overthrow. If thou wilt leave me, do not leave me last,When other petty griefs have done their spite,But in the onset come: so shall I tasteAt first the very worst of fortune’s might; And other strains of woe, which now seem woe, Compar’d with loss of thee, will not seem so. XCISome glory in their birth, some in their skill,Some in their wealth, some in their body’s force,Some in their garments though new-fangled ill;Some in their hawks and hounds, some in their horse;And every humour hath his adjunct pleasure,Wherein it finds a joy above the rest:But these particulars are not my measure,All these I better in one general best. Thy love is better than high birth to me,Richer than wealth, prouder than garments’ costs,Of more delight than hawks and horses be;And having thee, of all men’s pride I boast: Wretched in this alone, that thou mayst take All this away, and me most wretchcd make. XCIIBut do thy worst to steal thyself away,For term of life thou art assured mine;And life no longer than thy love will stay,For it depends upon that love of thine. Then need I not to fear the worst of wrongs,When in the least of them my life hath end. I see a better state to me belongsThan that which on thy humour doth depend:Thou canst not vex me with inconstant mind,Since that my life on thy revolt doth lie. O! what a happy title do I find,Happy to have thy love, happy to die! But what’s so blessed-fair that fears no blot? Thou mayst be false, and yet I know it not. XCIIISo shall I live, supposing thou art true,Like a deceived husband; so love’s faceMay still seem love to me, though alter’d new;Thy looks with me, thy heart in other place:For there can live no hatred in thine eye,Therefore in that I cannot know thy change. In many’s looks, the false heart’s historyIs writ in moods, and frowns, and wrinkles strange. But heaven in thy creation did decreeThat in thy face sweet love should ever dwell;Whate’er thy thoughts, or thy heart’s workings be,Thy looks should nothing thence, but sweetness tell. How like Eve’s apple doth thy beauty grow, If thy sweet virtue answer not thy show! XCIVThey that have power to hurt, and will do none,That do not do the thing they most do show,Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow;They rightly do inherit heaven’s graces,And husband nature’s riches from expense;They are the lords and owners of their faces,Others, but stewards of their excellence. The summer’s flower is to the summer sweet,Though to itself, it only live and die,But if that flower with base infection meet,The basest weed outbraves his dignity: For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds; Lilies that fester, smell far worse than weeds. XCVHow sweet and lovely dost thou make the shameWhich, like a canker in the fragrant rose,Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name! O! in what sweets dost thou thy sins enclose. That tongue that tells the story of thy days,Making lascivious comments on thy sport,Cannot dispraise, but in a kind of praise;Naming thy name, blesses an ill report. O! what a mansion have those vices gotWhich for their habitation chose out thee,Where beauty’s veil doth cover every blotAnd all things turns to fair that eyes can see! Take heed, dear heart, of this large privilege; The hardest knife ill-us’d doth lose his edge. XCVISome say thy fault is youth, some wantonness;Some say thy grace is youth and gentle sport;Both grace and faults are lov’d of more and less:Thou mak’st faults graces that to thee resort. As on the finger of a throned queenThe basest jewel will be well esteem’d,So are those errors that in thee are seenTo truths translated, and for true things deem’d. How many lambs might the stern wolf betray,If like a lamb he could his looks translate! How many gazers mightst thou lead away,if thou wouldst use the strength of all thy state! But do not so; I love thee in such sort, As, thou being mine, mine is thy good report. XCVIIHow like a winter hath my absence beenFrom thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year! What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen! What old December’s bareness everywhere! And yet this time removed was summer’s time;The teeming autumn, big with rich increase,Bearing the wanton burden of the prime,Like widow’d wombs after their lords’ decease:Yet this abundant issue seem’d to meBut hope of orphans, and unfather’d fruit;For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,And, thou away, the very birds are mute: Or, if they sing, ’tis with so dull a cheer, That leaves look pale, dreading the winter’s near. XCVIIIFrom you have I been absent in the spring,When proud-pied April, dress’d in all his trim,Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing,That heavy Saturn laugh’d and leap’d with him. Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smellOf different flowers in odour and in hue,Could make me any summer’s story tell,Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew:Nor did I wonder at the lily’s white,Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;They were but sweet, but figures of delight,Drawn after you, you pattern of all those. |
Yet seem’d it winter still, and you away, As with your shadow I with these did play. XCIXThe forward violet thus did I chide:Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells,If not from my love’s breath? The purple prideWhich on thy soft cheek for complexion dwellsIn my love’s veins thou hast too grossly dy’d. The lily I condemned for thy hand,And buds of marjoram had stol’n thy hair;The roses fearfully on thorns did stand,One blushing shame, another white despair;A third, nor red nor white, had stol’n of both,And to his robbery had annex’d thy breath;But, for his theft, in pride of all his growthA vengeful canker eat him up to death. More flowers I noted, yet I none could see, But sweet, or colour it had stol’n from thee. CWhere art thou Muse that thou forget’st so long,To speak of that which gives thee all thy might? Spend’st thou thy fury on some worthless song,Darkening thy power to lend base subjects light? Return forgetful Muse, and straight redeem,In gentle numbers time so idly spent;Sing to the ear that doth thy lays esteemAnd gives thy pen both skill and argument. Rise, resty Muse, my love’s sweet face survey,If Time have any wrinkle graven there;If any, be a satire to decay,And make time’s spoils despised every where. Give my love fame faster than Time wastes life, So thou prevent’st his scythe and crooked knife. CIO truant Muse what shall be thy amendsFor thy neglect of truth in beauty dy’d? Both truth and beauty on my love depends;So dost thou too, and therein dignified. Make answer Muse: wilt thou not haply say,‘Truth needs no colour, with his colour fix’d;Beauty no pencil, beauty’s truth to lay;But best is best, if never intermix’d’? Because he needs no praise, wilt thou be dumb? Excuse not silence so, for’t lies in theeTo make him much outlive a gilded tombAnd to be prais’d of ages yet to be. Then do thy office, Muse; I teach thee how To make him seem long hence as he shows now. CIIMy love is strengthen’d, though more weak in seeming;I love not less, though less the show appear;That love is merchandiz’d, whose rich esteeming,The owner’s tongue doth publish every where. Our love was new, and then but in the spring,When I was wont to greet it with my lays;As Philomel in summer’s front doth sing,And stops her pipe in growth of riper days:Not that the summer is less pleasant nowThan when her mournful hymns did hush the night,But that wild music burthens every bough,And sweets grown common lose their dear delight. Therefore like her, I sometime hold my tongue: Because I would not dull you with my song. CIIIAlack! what poverty my Muse brings forth,That having such a scope to show her pride,The argument, all bare, is of more worthThan when it hath my added praise beside! O! blame me not, if I no more can write! Look in your glass, and there appears a faceThat over-goes my blunt invention quite,Dulling my lines, and doing me disgrace. Were it not sinful then, striving to mend,To mar the subject that before was well? For to no other pass my verses tendThan of your graces and your gifts to tell; And more, much more, than in my verse can sit, Your own glass shows you when you look in it. CIVTo me, fair friend, you never can be old,For as you were when first your eye I ey’d,Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold,Have from the forests shook three summers’ pride,Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turn’d,In process of the seasons have I seen,Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn’d,Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green. Ah! yet doth beauty like a dial-hand,Steal from his figure, and no pace perceiv’d;So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceiv’d: For fear of which, hear this thou age unbred: Ere you were born was beauty’s summer dead. CVLet not my love be call’d idolatry,Nor my beloved as an idol show,Since all alike my songs and praises beTo one, of one, still such, and ever so. Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind,Still constant in a wondrous excellence;Therefore my verse to constancy confin’d,One thing expressing, leaves out difference. ‘Fair, kind, and true,’ is all my argument,‘Fair, kind, and true,’ varying to other words;And in this change is my invention spent,Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords. Fair, kind, and true, have often liv’d alone, Which three till now, never kept seat in one. CVIWhen in the chronicle of wasted timeI see descriptions of the fairest wights,And beauty making beautiful old rime,In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights,Then, in the blazon of sweet beauty’s best,Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,I see their antique pen would have express’dEven such a beauty as you master now. So all their praises are but propheciesOf this our time, all you prefiguring;And for they looked but with divining eyes,They had not skill enough your worth to sing: For we, which now behold these present days, Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise. CVIINot mine own fears, nor the prophetic soulOf the wide world dreaming on things to come,Can yet the lease of my true love control,Supposed as forfeit to a confin’d doom. The mortal moon hath her eclipse endur’d,And the sad augurs mock their own presage;Incertainties now crown themselves assur’d,And peace proclaims olives of endless age. Now with the drops of this most balmy time,My love looks fresh, and Death to me subscribes,Since, spite of him, I’ll live in this poor rime,While he insults o’er dull and speechless tribes: And thou in this shalt find thy monument, When tyrants’ crests and tombs of brass are spent. |
CVIIIWhat’s in the brain, that ink may character,Which hath not figur’d to thee my true spirit? What’s new to speak, what now to register,That may express my love, or thy dear merit? Nothing, sweet boy; but yet, like prayers divine,I must each day say o’er the very same;Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine,Even as when first I hallow’d thy fair name. So that eternal love in love’s fresh case,Weighs not the dust and injury of age,Nor gives to necessary wrinkles place,But makes antiquity for aye his page; Finding the first conceit of love there bred, Where time and outward form would show it dead. CIXO! never say that I was false of heart,Though absence seem’d my flame to qualify,As easy might I from my self departAs from my soul which in thy breast doth lie:That is my home of love: if I have rang’d,Like him that travels, I return again;Just to the time, not with the time exchang’d,So that myself bring water for my stain. Never believe though in my nature reign’d,All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood,That it could so preposterously be stain’d,To leave for nothing all thy sum of good; For nothing this wide universe I call, Save thou, my rose, in it thou art my all. CXAlas! ’tis true, I have gone here and there,And made my self a motley to the view,Gor’d mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear,Made old offences of affections new;Most true it is, that I have look’d on truthAskance and strangely; but, by all above,These blenches gave my heart another youth,And worse essays prov’d thee my best of love. Now all is done, save what shall have no end:Mine appetite I never more will grindOn newer proof, to try an older friend,A god in love, to whom I am confin’d. Then give me welcome, next my heaven the best, Even to thy pure and most most loving breast. CXIO! for my sake do you with Fortune chide,The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,That did not better for my life provideThan public means which public manners breeds. Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,And almost thence my nature is subdu’dTo what it works in, like the dyer’s hand:Pity me, then, and wish I were renew’d;Whilst, like a willing patient, I will drink,Potions of eisel ’gainst my strong infection;No bitterness that I will bitter think,Nor double penance, to correct correction. Pity me then, dear friend, and I assure ye, Even that your pity is enough to cure me. CXIIYour love and pity doth the impression fill,Which vulgar scandal stamp’d upon my brow;For what care I who calls me well or ill,So you o’er-green my bad, my good allow? You are my all-the-world, and I must striveTo know my shames and praises from your tongue;None else to me, nor I to none alive,That my steel’d sense or changes right or wrong. In so profound abysm I throw all careOf others’ voices, that my adder’s senseTo critic and to flatterer stopped are. Mark how with my neglect I do dispense: You are so strongly in my purpose bred, That all the world besides methinks are dead. CXIIISince I left you, mine eye is in my mind;And that which governs me to go aboutDoth part his function and is partly blind,Seems seeing, but effectually is out;For it no form delivers to the heartOf bird, of flower, or shape which it doth latch:Of his quick objects hath the mind no part,Nor his own vision holds what it doth catch;For if it see the rud’st or gentlest sight,The most sweet favour or deformed’st creature,The mountain or the sea, the day or night:The crow, or dove, it shapes them to your feature. Incapable of more, replete with you, My most true mind thus maketh mine untrue. CXIVOr whether doth my mind, being crown’d with you,Drink up the monarch’s plague, this flattery? Or whether shall I say, mine eye saith true,And that your love taught it this alchemy,To make of monsters and things indigestSuch cherubins as your sweet self resemble,Creating every bad a perfect best,As fast as objects to his beams assemble? O! ’tis the first, ’tis flattery in my seeing,And my great mind most kingly drinks it up:Mine eye well knows what with his gust is ’greeing,And to his palate doth prepare the cup: If it be poison’d, ’tis the lesser sin That mine eye loves it and doth first begin. CXVThose lines that I before have writ do lie,Even those that said I could not love you dearer:Yet then my judgment knew no reason whyMy most full flame should afterwards burn clearer. But reckoning Time, whose million’d accidentsCreep in ’twixt vows, and change decrees of kings,Tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharp’st intents,Divert strong minds to the course of altering things;Alas! why fearing of Time’s tyranny,Might I not then say, ‘Now I love you best,’When I was certain o’er incertainty,Crowning the present, doubting of the rest? Love is a babe, then might I not say so, To give full growth to that which still doth grow? CXVILet me not to the marriage of true mindsAdmit impediments. Love is not loveWhich alters when it alteration finds,Or bends with the remover to remove:O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,That looks on tempests and is never shaken;It is the star to every wandering bark,Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken. Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeksWithin his bending sickle’s compass come;Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,But bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error and upon me prov’d, I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d. CXVIIAccuse me thus: that I have scanted all,Wherein I should your great deserts repay,Forgot upon your dearest love to call,Whereto all bonds do tie me day by day;That I have frequent been with unknown minds,And given to time your own dear-purchas’d right;That I have hoisted sail to all the windsWhich should transport me farthest from your sight. Book both my wilfulness and errors down,And on just proof surmise, accumulate;Bring me within the level of your frown,But shoot not at me in your waken’d hate; Since my appeal says I did strive to prove The constancy and virtue of your love. CXVIIILike as, to make our appetite more keen,With eager compounds we our palate urge;As, to prevent our maladies unseen,We sicken to shun sickness when we purge;Even so, being full of your ne’er-cloying sweetness,To bitter sauces did I frame my feeding;And, sick of welfare, found a kind of meetnessTo be diseas’d, ere that there was true needing. Thus policy in love, to anticipateThe ills that were not, grew to faults assur’d,And brought to medicine a healthful stateWhich, rank of goodness, would by ill be cur’d; But thence I learn and find the lesson true, Drugs poison him that so fell sick of you. CXIXWhat potions have I drunk of Siren tears,Distill’d from limbecks foul as hell within,Applying fears to hopes, and hopes to fears,Still losing when I saw myself to win! |
What wretched errors hath my heart committed,Whilst it hath thought itself so blessed never! How have mine eyes out of their spheres been fitted,In the distraction of this madding fever! O benefit of ill! now I find trueThat better is, by evil still made better;And ruin’d love, when it is built anew,Grows fairer than at first, more strong, far greater. So I return rebuk’d to my content, And gain by ill thrice more than I have spent. CXXThat you were once unkind befriends me now,And for that sorrow, which I then did feel,Needs must I under my transgression bow,Unless my nerves were brass or hammer’d steel. For if you were by my unkindness shaken,As I by yours, you’ve pass’d a hell of time;And I, a tyrant, have no leisure takenTo weigh how once I suffer’d in your crime. O! that our night of woe might have remember’dMy deepest sense, how hard true sorrow hits,And soon to you, as you to me, then tender’dThe humble salve, which wounded bosoms fits! But that your trespass now becomes a fee; Mine ransoms yours, and yours must ransom me. CXXI’Tis better to be vile than vile esteem’d,When not to be receives reproach of being;And the just pleasure lost, which is so deem’dNot by our feeling, but by others’ seeing:For why should others’ false adulterate eyesGive salutation to my sportive blood? Or on my frailties why are frailer spies,Which in their wills count bad what I think good? No, I am that I am, and they that levelAt my abuses reckon up their own:I may be straight though they themselves be bevel;By their rank thoughts, my deeds must not be shown; Unless this general evil they maintain, All men are bad and in their badness reign. CXXIIThy gift, thy tables, are within my brainFull character’d with lasting memory,Which shall above that idle rank remain,Beyond all date; even to eternity:Or, at the least, so long as brain and heartHave faculty by nature to subsist;Till each to raz’d oblivion yield his partOf thee, thy record never can be miss’d. That poor retention could not so much hold,Nor need I tallies thy dear love to score;Therefore to give them from me was I bold,To trust those tables that receive thee more: To keep an adjunct to remember thee Were to import forgetfulness in me. CXXIIINo, Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change:Thy pyramids built up with newer mightTo me are nothing novel, nothing strange;They are but dressings of a former sight. Our dates are brief, and therefore we admireWhat thou dost foist upon us that is old;And rather make them born to our desireThan think that we before have heard them told. Thy registers and thee I both defy,Not wondering at the present nor the past,For thy records and what we see doth lie,Made more or less by thy continual haste. This I do vow and this shall ever be; I will be true despite thy scythe and thee. CXXIVIf my dear love were but the child of state,It might for Fortune’s bastard be unfather’d,As subject to Time’s love or to Time’s hate,Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gather’d. No, it was builded far from accident;It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor fallsUnder the blow of thralled discontent,Whereto th’ inviting time our fashion calls:It fears not policy, that heretic,Which works on leases of short-number’d hours,But all alone stands hugely politic,That it nor grows with heat, nor drowns with showers. To this I witness call the fools of time, Which die for goodness, who have lived for crime. CXXVWere’t aught to me I bore the canopy,With my extern the outward honouring,Or laid great bases for eternity,Which proves more short than waste or ruining? Have I not seen dwellers on form and favourLose all and more by paying too much rentFor compound sweet; forgoing simple savour,Pitiful thrivers, in their gazing spent? No; let me be obsequious in thy heart,And take thou my oblation, poor but free,Which is not mix’d with seconds, knows no art,But mutual render, only me for thee. Hence, thou suborned informer! a true soul When most impeach’d, stands least in thy control. CXXVIO thou, my lovely boy, who in thy powerDost hold Time’s fickle glass, his fickle hour;Who hast by waning grown, and therein show’stThy lovers withering, as thy sweet self grow’st. If Nature, sovereign mistress over wrack,As thou goest onwards, still will pluck thee back,She keeps thee to this purpose, that her skillMay time disgrace and wretched minutes kill. Yet fear her, O thou minion of her pleasure! She may detain, but not still keep, her treasure: Her audit (though delayed) answered must be, And her quietus is to render thee. CXXVIIIn the old age black was not counted fair,Or if it were, it bore not beauty’s name;But now is black beauty’s successive heir,And beauty slander’d with a bastard shame:For since each hand hath put on Nature’s power,Fairing the foul with Art’s false borrowed face,Sweet beauty hath no name, no holy bower,But is profan’d, if not lives in disgrace. Therefore my mistress’ eyes are raven black,Her eyes so suited, and they mourners seemAt such who, not born fair, no beauty lack,Sland’ring creation with a false esteem: Yet so they mourn becoming of their woe, That every tongue says beauty should look so. CXXVIIIHow oft when thou, my music, music play’st,Upon that blessed wood whose motion soundsWith thy sweet fingers when thou gently sway’stThe wiry concord that mine ear confounds,Do I envy those jacks that nimble leap,To kiss the tender inward of thy hand,Whilst my poor lips which should that harvest reap,At the wood’s boldness by thee blushing stand! To be so tickled, they would change their stateAnd situation with those dancing chips,O’er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait,Making dead wood more bless’d than living lips. Since saucy jacks so happy are in this, Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss. CXXIXThe expense of spirit in a waste of shameIs lust in action: and till action, lustIs perjur’d, murderous, bloody, full of blame,Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;Enjoy’d no sooner but despised straight;Past reason hunted; and no sooner had,Past reason hated, as a swallow’d bait,On purpose laid to make the taker mad:Mad in pursuit and in possession so;Had, having, and in quest, to have extreme;A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe;Before, a joy propos’d; behind a dream. All this the world well knows; yet none knows well To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell. CXXXMy mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;Coral is far more red, than her lips red:If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. |
I have seen roses damask’d, red and white,But no such roses see I in her cheeks;And in some perfumes is there more delightThan in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak, yet well I knowThat music hath a far more pleasing sound:I grant I never saw a goddess go;My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground: And yet by heaven, I think my love as rare, As any she belied with false compare. CXXXIThou art as tyrannous, so as thou art,As those whose beauties proudly make them cruel;For well thou know’st to my dear doting heartThou art the fairest and most precious jewel. Yet, in good faith, some say that thee behold,Thy face hath not the power to make love groan;To say they err I dare not be so bold,Although I swear it to myself alone. And to be sure that is not false I swear,A thousand groans, but thinking on thy face,One on another’s neck, do witness bearThy black is fairest in my judgment’s place. In nothing art thou black save in thy deeds, And thence this slander, as I think, proceeds. CXXXIIThine eyes I love, and they, as pitying me,Knowing thy heart torment me with disdain,Have put on black and loving mourners be,Looking with pretty ruth upon my pain. And truly not the morning sun of heavenBetter becomes the grey cheeks of the east,Nor that full star that ushers in the even,Doth half that glory to the sober west,As those two mourning eyes become thy face:O! let it then as well beseem thy heartTo mourn for me since mourning doth thee grace,And suit thy pity like in every part. Then will I swear beauty herself is black, And all they foul that thy complexion lack. CXXXIIIBeshrew that heart that makes my heart to groanFor that deep wound it gives my friend and me! Is’t not enough to torture me alone,But slave to slavery my sweet’st friend must be? Me from myself thy cruel eye hath taken,And my next self thou harder hast engross’d:Of him, myself, and thee I am forsaken;A torment thrice three-fold thus to be cross’d:Prison my heart in thy steel bosom’s ward,But then my friend’s heart let my poor heart bail;Whoe’er keeps me, let my heart be his guard;Thou canst not then use rigour in my jail: And yet thou wilt; for I, being pent in thee, Perforce am thine, and all that is in me. CXXXIVSo, now I have confess’d that he is thine,And I my self am mortgag’d to thy will,Myself I’ll forfeit, so that other mineThou wilt restore to be my comfort still:But thou wilt not, nor he will not be free,For thou art covetous, and he is kind;He learn’d but surety-like to write for me,Under that bond that him as fast doth bind. The statute of thy beauty thou wilt take,Thou usurer, that putt’st forth all to use,And sue a friend came debtor for my sake;So him I lose through my unkind abuse. Him have I lost; thou hast both him and me: He pays the whole, and yet am I not free. CXXXVWhoever hath her wish, thou hast thy ‘Will,’And ‘Will’ to boot, and ‘Will’ in over-plus;More than enough am I that vex’d thee still,To thy sweet will making addition thus. Wilt thou, whose will is large and spacious,Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine? Shall will in others seem right gracious,And in my will no fair acceptance shine? The sea, all water, yet receives rain still,And in abundance addeth to his store;So thou, being rich in ‘Will,’ add to thy ‘Will’One will of mine, to make thy large will more. Let no unkind ‘No’ fair beseechers kill; Think all but one, and me in that one ‘Will. ’CXXXVIIf thy soul check thee that I come so near,Swear to thy blind soul that I was thy ‘Will’,And will, thy soul knows, is admitted there;Thus far for love, my love-suit, sweet, fulfil. ‘Will’, will fulfil the treasure of thy love,Ay, fill it full with wills, and my will one. In things of great receipt with ease we proveAmong a number one is reckon’d none:Then in the number let me pass untold,Though in thy store’s account I one must be;For nothing hold me, so it please thee holdThat nothing me, a something sweet to thee: Make but my name thy love, and love that still, And then thou lov’st me for my name is ‘Will. ’CXXXVIIThou blind fool, Love, what dost thou to mine eyes,That they behold, and see not what they see? They know what beauty is, see where it lies,Yet what the best is take the worst to be. If eyes, corrupt by over-partial looks,Be anchor’d in the bay where all men ride,Why of eyes’ falsehood hast thou forged hooks,Whereto the judgment of my heart is tied? Why should my heart think that a several plot,Which my heart knows the wide world’s common place? Or mine eyes, seeing this, say this is not,To put fair truth upon so foul a face? In things right true my heart and eyes have err’d, And to this false plague are they now transferr’d. CXXXVIIIWhen my love swears that she is made of truth,I do believe her though I know she lies,That she might think me some untutor’d youth,Unlearned in the world’s false subtleties. Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,Although she knows my days are past the best,Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue:On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed:But wherefore says she not she is unjust? And wherefore say not I that I am old? O! love’s best habit is in seeming trust,And age in love, loves not to have years told: Therefore I lie with her, and she with me, And in our faults by lies we flatter’d be. CXXXIXO! call not me to justify the wrongThat thy unkindness lays upon my heart;Wound me not with thine eye, but with thy tongue:Use power with power, and slay me not by art,Tell me thou lov’st elsewhere; but in my sight,Dear heart, forbear to glance thine eye aside:What need’st thou wound with cunning, when thy mightIs more than my o’erpress’d defence can bide? Let me excuse thee: ah! my love well knowsHer pretty looks have been mine enemies;And therefore from my face she turns my foes,That they elsewhere might dart their injuries: Yet do not so; but since I am near slain, Kill me outright with looks, and rid my pain. |
CXLBe wise as thou art cruel; do not pressMy tongue-tied patience with too much disdain;Lest sorrow lend me words, and words expressThe manner of my pity-wanting pain. If I might teach thee wit, better it were,Though not to love, yet love to tell me so,As testy sick men, when their deaths be near,No news but health from their physicians know. For, if I should despair, I should grow mad,And in my madness might speak ill of thee;Now this ill-wresting world is grown so bad,Mad slanderers by mad ears believed be. That I may not be so, nor thou belied, Bear thine eyes straight, though thy proud heart go wide. CXLIIn faith I do not love thee with mine eyes,For they in thee a thousand errors note;But ’tis my heart that loves what they despise,Who, in despite of view, is pleased to dote. Nor are mine ears with thy tongue’s tune delighted;Nor tender feeling, to base touches prone,Nor taste, nor smell, desire to be invitedTo any sensual feast with thee alone:But my five wits nor my five senses canDissuade one foolish heart from serving thee,Who leaves unsway’d the likeness of a man,Thy proud heart’s slave and vassal wretch to be: Only my plague thus far I count my gain, That she that makes me sin awards me pain. CXLIILove is my sin, and thy dear virtue hate,Hate of my sin, grounded on sinful loving:O! but with mine compare thou thine own state,And thou shalt find it merits not reproving;Or, if it do, not from those lips of thine,That have profan’d their scarlet ornamentsAnd seal’d false bonds of love as oft as mine,Robb’d others’ beds’ revenues of their rents. Be it lawful I love thee, as thou lov’st thoseWhom thine eyes woo as mine importune thee:Root pity in thy heart, that, when it grows,Thy pity may deserve to pitied be. If thou dost seek to have what thou dost hide, By self-example mayst thou be denied! CXLIIILo, as a careful housewife runs to catchOne of her feather’d creatures broke away,Sets down her babe, and makes all swift dispatchIn pursuit of the thing she would have stay;Whilst her neglected child holds her in chase,Cries to catch her whose busy care is bentTo follow that which flies before her face,Not prizing her poor infant’s discontent;So runn’st thou after that which flies from thee,Whilst I thy babe chase thee afar behind;But if thou catch thy hope, turn back to me,And play the mother’s part, kiss me, be kind; So will I pray that thou mayst have thy ‘Will,’ If thou turn back and my loud crying still. CXLIVTwo loves I have of comfort and despair,Which like two spirits do suggest me still:The better angel is a man right fair,The worser spirit a woman colour’d ill. To win me soon to hell, my female evil,Tempteth my better angel from my side,And would corrupt my saint to be a devil,Wooing his purity with her foul pride. And whether that my angel be turn’d fiend,Suspect I may, yet not directly tell;But being both from me, both to each friend,I guess one angel in another’s hell: Yet this shall I ne’er know, but live in doubt, Till my bad angel fire my good one out. CXLVThose lips that Love’s own hand did make,Breathed forth the sound that said ‘I hate’,To me that languish’d for her sake:But when she saw my woeful state,Straight in her heart did mercy come,Chiding that tongue that ever sweetWas us’d in giving gentle doom;And taught it thus anew to greet;‘I hate’ she alter’d with an end,That followed it as gentle day,Doth follow night, who like a fiendFrom heaven to hell is flown away. ‘I hate’, from hate away she threw, And sav’d my life, saying ‘not you’. CXLVIPoor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,My sinful earth these rebel powers array,Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth,Painting thy outward walls so costly gay? Why so large cost, having so short a lease,Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend? Shall worms, inheritors of this excess,Eat up thy charge? Is this thy body’s end? Then soul, live thou upon thy servant’s loss,And let that pine to aggravate thy store;Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross;Within be fed, without be rich no more: So shall thou feed on Death, that feeds on men, And Death once dead, there’s no more dying then. CXLVIIMy love is as a fever longing still,For that which longer nurseth the disease;Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,The uncertain sickly appetite to please. My reason, the physician to my love,Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,Hath left me, and I desperate now approveDesire is death, which physic did except. Past cure I am, now Reason is past care,And frantic-mad with evermore unrest;My thoughts and my discourse as madmen’s are,At random from the truth vainly express’d; For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright, Who art as black as hell, as dark as night. CXLVIIIO me! what eyes hath Love put in my head,Which have no correspondence with true sight;Or, if they have, where is my judgment fled,That censures falsely what they see aright? If that be fair whereon my false eyes dote,What means the world to say it is not so? If it be not, then love doth well denoteLove’s eye is not so true as all men’s: no,How can it? O! how can Love’s eye be true,That is so vexed with watching and with tears? No marvel then, though I mistake my view;The sun itself sees not, till heaven clears. O cunning Love! with tears thou keep’st me blind, Lest eyes well-seeing thy foul faults should find. CXLIXCanst thou, O cruel! say I love thee not,When I against myself with thee partake? Do I not think on thee, when I forgotAm of my self, all tyrant, for thy sake? Who hateth thee that I do call my friend,On whom frown’st thou that I do fawn upon,Nay, if thou lour’st on me, do I not spendRevenge upon myself with present moan? What merit do I in my self respect,That is so proud thy service to despise,When all my best doth worship thy defect,Commanded by the motion of thine eyes? But, love, hate on, for now I know thy mind; Those that can see thou lov’st, and I am blind. |
CLO! from what power hast thou this powerful might,With insufficiency my heart to sway? To make me give the lie to my true sight,And swear that brightness doth not grace the day? Whence hast thou this becoming of things ill,That in the very refuse of thy deedsThere is such strength and warrantise of skill,That, in my mind, thy worst all best exceeds? Who taught thee how to make me love thee more,The more I hear and see just cause of hate? O! though I love what others do abhor,With others thou shouldst not abhor my state: If thy unworthiness rais’d love in me, More worthy I to be belov’d of thee. CLILove is too young to know what conscience is,Yet who knows not conscience is born of love? Then, gentle cheater, urge not my amiss,Lest guilty of my faults thy sweet self prove:For, thou betraying me, I do betrayMy nobler part to my gross body’s treason;My soul doth tell my body that he mayTriumph in love; flesh stays no farther reason,But rising at thy name doth point out thee,As his triumphant prize. Proud of this pride,He is contented thy poor drudge to be,To stand in thy affairs, fall by thy side. No want of conscience hold it that I call Her ‘love,’ for whose dear love I rise and fall. CLIIIn loving thee thou know’st I am forsworn,But thou art twice forsworn, to me love swearing;In act thy bed-vow broke, and new faith torn,In vowing new hate after new love bearing:But why of two oaths’ breach do I accuse thee,When I break twenty? I am perjur’d most;For all my vows are oaths but to misuse thee,And all my honest faith in thee is lost:For I have sworn deep oaths of thy deep kindness,Oaths of thy love, thy truth, thy constancy;And, to enlighten thee, gave eyes to blindness,Or made them swear against the thing they see; For I have sworn thee fair; more perjured I, To swear against the truth so foul a lie. CLIIICupid laid by his brand and fell asleep:A maid of Dian’s this advantage found,And his love-kindling fire did quickly steepIn a cold valley-fountain of that ground;Which borrow’d from this holy fire of Love,A dateless lively heat, still to endure,And grew a seeting bath, which yet men proveAgainst strange maladies a sovereign cure. But at my mistress’ eye Love’s brand new-fired,The boy for trial needs would touch my breast;I, sick withal, the help of bath desired,And thither hied, a sad distemper’d guest, But found no cure, the bath for my help lies Where Cupid got new fire; my mistress’ eyes. CLIVThe little Love-god lying once asleep,Laid by his side his heart-inflaming brand,Whilst many nymphs that vow’d chaste life to keepCame tripping by; but in her maiden handThe fairest votary took up that fireWhich many legions of true hearts had warm’d;And so the general of hot desireWas, sleeping, by a virgin hand disarm’d. This brand she quenched in a cool well by,Which from Love’s fire took heat perpetual,Growing a bath and healthful remedy,For men diseas’d; but I, my mistress’ thrall, Came there for cure and this by that I prove, Love’s fire heats water, water cools not love. *** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SONNETS ***Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions willbe renamed. Creating the works from print editions not protected by U. S. copyrightlaw means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works,so the Foundation (and you! ) can copy and distribute it in theUnited States without permission and without paying copyrightroyalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use partof this license, apply to copying and distributing ProjectGutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tmconcept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark,and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by followingthe terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for useof the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything forcopies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is veryeasy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creationof derivative works, reports, performances and research. ProjectGutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away--you maydo practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protectedby U. S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademarklicense, especially commercial redistribution. START: FULL LICENSETHE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSEPLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORKTo protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the freedistribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "ProjectGutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the FullProject Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online atwww. gutenberg. org/license. Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing ProjectGutenberg-tm electronic works1. A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tmelectronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree toand accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by allthe terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return ordestroy all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in yourpossession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to aProject Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be boundby the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from theperson or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph1. |
E. 8. 1. B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only beused on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people whoagree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a fewthings that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic workseven without complying with the full terms of this agreement. Seeparagraph 1. C below. There are a lot of things you can do with ProjectGutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of thisagreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tmelectronic works. See paragraph 1. E below. 1. C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("theFoundation" or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collectionof Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individualworks in the collection are in the public domain in the UnitedStates. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in theUnited States and you are located in the United States, we do notclaim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing,displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long asall references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hopethat you will support the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promotingfree access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tmworks in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping theProject Gutenberg-tm name associated with the work. You can easilycomply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in thesame format with its attached full Project Gutenberg-tm License whenyou share it without charge with others. 1. D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also governwhat you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries arein a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States,check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of thisagreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing,distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or anyother Project Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes norepresentations concerning the copyright status of any work in anycountry other than the United States. 1. E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:1. E. 1. The following sentence, with active links to, or otherimmediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appearprominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any workon which the phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which thephrase "Project Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed,performed, viewed, copied or distributed: This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www. gutenberg. org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook. 1. E. 2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work isderived from texts not protected by U. |
S. copyright law (does notcontain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of thecopyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone inthe United States without paying any fees or charges. If you areredistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase "ProjectGutenberg" associated with or appearing on the work, you must complyeither with the requirements of paragraphs 1. E. 1 through 1. E. 7 orobtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg-tmtrademark as set forth in paragraphs 1. E. 8 or 1. E. 9. 1. E. 3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is postedwith the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distributionmust comply with both paragraphs 1. E. 1 through 1. E. 7 and anyadditional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional termswill be linked to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all worksposted with the permission of the copyright holder found at thebeginning of this work. 1. E. 4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tmLicense terms from this work, or any files containing a part of thiswork or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. 1. E. 5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute thiselectronic work, or any part of this electronic work, withoutprominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1. E. 1 withactive links or immediate access to the full terms of the ProjectGutenberg-tm License. 1. E. 6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, includingany word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide accessto or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a formatother than "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the officialversion posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm website(www. gutenberg. org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expenseto the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a meansof obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original "PlainVanilla ASCII" or other form. Any alternate format must include thefull Project Gutenberg-tm License as specified in paragraph 1. E. |
1. 1. E. 7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm worksunless you comply with paragraph 1. E. 8 or 1. E. 9. 1. E. 8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providingaccess to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic worksprovided that:* You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. "* You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg-tm works. * You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1. F. 3, a full refund of any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of receipt of the work. * You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. 1. E. 9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a ProjectGutenberg-tm electronic work or group of works on different terms thanare set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writingfrom the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager ofthe Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the Foundation as setforth in Section 3 below. 1. F. 1. F. 1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerableeffort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofreadworks not protected by U. S. copyright law in creating the ProjectGutenberg-tm collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tmelectronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, maycontain "Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurateor corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or otherintellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk orother medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage orcannot be read by your equipment. 1. F. 2. |
LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Rightof Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1. F. 3, the ProjectGutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the ProjectGutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a ProjectGutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim allliability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legalfees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICTLIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSEPROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1. F. 3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THETRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BELIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE ORINCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCHDAMAGE. 1. F. 3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover adefect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you canreceive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending awritten explanation to the person you received the work from. If youreceived the work on a physical medium, you must return the mediumwith your written explanation. The person or entity that provided youwith the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy inlieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the personor entity providing it to you may choose to give you a secondopportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. Ifthe second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writingwithout further opportunities to fix the problem. 1. F. 4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forthin paragraph 1. F. 3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NOOTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOTLIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. 1. F. 5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain impliedwarranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types ofdamages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreementviolates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, theagreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer orlimitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity orunenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void theremaining provisions. 1. F. 6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, thetrademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyoneproviding copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works inaccordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with theproduction, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tmelectronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses,including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any ofthe following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of thisor any Project Gutenberg-tm work, (b) alteration, modification, oradditions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) anyDefect you cause. Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tmProject Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution ofelectronic works in formats readable by the widest variety ofcomputers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. Itexists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donationsfrom people in all walks of life. Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with theassistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm'sgoals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection willremain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the ProjectGutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secureand permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and futuregenerations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg LiteraryArchive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, seeSections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page atwww. gutenberg. orgSection 3. |
Information about the Project Gutenberg LiteraryArchive FoundationThe Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of thestate of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the InternalRevenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identificationnumber is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg LiteraryArchive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted byU. S. federal laws and your state's laws. The Foundation's business office is located at 809 North 1500 West,Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and upto date contact information can be found at the Foundation's websiteand official page at www. gutenberg. org/contactSection 4. Information about Donations to the Project GutenbergLiterary Archive FoundationProject Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive withoutwidespread public support and donations to carry out its mission ofincreasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can befreely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widestarray of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exemptstatus with the IRS. The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulatingcharities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the UnitedStates. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes aconsiderable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep upwith these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locationswhere we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SENDDONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particularstate visit www. gutenberg. org/donateWhile we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where wehave not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibitionagainst accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states whoapproach us with offers to donate. International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot makeany statements concerning tax treatment of donations received fromoutside the United States. U. S. laws alone swamp our small staff. Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donationmethods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of otherways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. Todonate, please visit: www. gutenberg. org/donateSection 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic worksProfessor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the ProjectGutenberg-tm concept of a library of electronic works that could befreely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced anddistributed Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network ofvolunteer support. Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printededitions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright inthe U. S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do notnecessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paperedition. Most people start at our website which has the main PG searchfacility: www. gutenberg. orgThis website includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg LiteraryArchive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how tosubscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. |