Chapter XVI (7)

The usefulness of the Two Times is palpable from first to last—of the Short Time for maintaining the tension of the passion—of the long for a thousand general needs. Thus Bianca must be used for convincing Othello very potently, positively, unanswerably. But she cannot be used without supposing a protracted intercourse between her and Cassio. Iago’s dialogue with him falls to the ground, if the acquaintance began yesterday. But superincumbent over all is the _necessity of our not knowing_ that Iago begins the Temptation, and that Othello extinguishes the Light of his Life all in one day.

NORTH.

And observe, Talboys, how this concatenation of the passionate scenes operates. Marvellously! Let the Entrances of Othello be four—A, B, C, D. You feel the close connexion of A with B, of B with C, of C with D. You feel the coherence, the nextness; and all the force of the impetuous Action and Passion resulting. But the logically-consequent near connexion of A with C, and much more with D, as again of B with D, you _do not feel_. Why? When you are at C, and feeling the pressure of B upon C, you have lost sight of the pressure of A upon B. At each entrance you go back one step—you do not go back two. The suggested intervals continually keep displacing to distances in your memory the formerly felt connexions. This could not so well happen in real life, where the relations of time are strictly bound upon your memory. Though something of it happens when passion devours memory. But in fiction, the conception being loosely held, and shadowy, the feat becomes easily practicable. Thus the Short Time tells for the support of the Passion, along with the Long Time, by means of virtuous instillations from the hand or wing of Oblivion. From one to two you feel no intermission—from two to three you feel none—from three to four you feel none; but I defy any man to say that from one to four he has felt none. I defy any man to say honestly, that “sitting at the Play” he has kept count from one to four.

TALBOYS.

If you come to that, nobody keeps watch over the time in listening to Shakspeare. I much doubt if anybody knows at the theatre that Iago’s first suggestion of doubt occurs the day after the landing. I never knew it till you made me look for it—

NORTH.

For which boon I trust you are duly grateful.

TALBOYS.

’Tis folly to be wise.

NORTH.

Why, Heaven help us! if we did not go to bed, and did not dine, which of us could ever keep count from Monday to Saturday! As it is, we have some of us hard work to know what happened yesterday, and what the day before. On Tuesday I killed that Salmo Ferox?

TALBOYS.

No—but on Wednesday I did. You forget yourself, my dear sir, just like Shakspeare.

NORTH.

Ay, Willy forgets himself. He is not withheld by the chain of time he is linking, for he has lost sight of the previous links. Put yourself into the transport of composition, and answer. But besides, every past scene—or to speak more suitably to the technical distribution of the Scenes, in our Editions—every past _changed occupation of the Stage by one coming in or one going out_, (which different occupation, according to the technicality of the French Stage, of the Italian, of the Attic, of Plautus, of Terence, constitutes a Scene)—every such past marked moment in the progress of the Play has the effect for the Poet, as well as for you, of protracting the time in retrospect—throwing everything that has passed further back. As if, in travelling fifty miles, you passed fifty Castles, fifty Churches, fifty Villages, fifty Towns, fifty Mountains, fifty Valleys, and fifty Cataracts—fifty Camels, fifty Elephants, fifty Caravans, fifty Processions, and fifty Armies—the said fifty miles would seem a good stretch larger to your recollection, and the five hours of travelling a pretty considerable deal longer, than another fifty miles and another five hours in which you had passed only three Old Women.

TALBOYS.

My persuasion is, sir, that nobody alive knows—of the auditors—that the first suggestion of doubt and the conclusion to kill are in one Scene of the Play. I do, indeed, believe, with you, sir, that the goings-out and re-enterings of Othello have a strangely deluding effect—that they disconnect the time more than you can think—and that all the changes of persons on the stage—all shiftings of scenes and droppings of curtains, break and dislocate and dilate the time to your imagination, till you do not in the least know where you are. In this laxity of your conception, all hints of extended time sink in and spring up, like that fungus which, on an apt soil, in a night grows to a foot diameter.

NORTH.

You have hit it there, Talboys. Shakspeare, we have seen, in his calmer constructions, shows, in a score of ways, weeks, months; that is therefore the true time, or call it the historical time. Hurried himself, and hurrying you on the torrent of passion, he forgets time, and a false show of time, to the utmost contracted, arises. I do not know whether he did not perceive this false exhibition of time, or perceiving, he did not care. But we all must see a reason, and a cogent one, why he should not let in the markings of protraction upon his dialogues of the Seduced and the Seducer. You can conceive nothing better than that the Poet, in the moment of composition, seizes the views which at that moment offer themselves as effective—unconscious or regardless of incompatibility. He is whole to the present; and as all is feigned, he does not remember how the foregone makes the ongoing impracticable. Have you ever before, Talboys, examined time in a Play of Shakspeare? Much more, have you ever examined the treatment of time on the Stage to which Shakspeare came, upon which he lived, and which he left?

TALBOYS.

A good deal.

NORTH.

Not much, I suspect.

TALBOYS.

Why, not at all—except t’other day along with you—in Macbeth.

NORTH.

He came to a Stage which certainly had not cultivated the logic of time as a branch of the Dramatic Art. It appears to me that those old people, when they were enwrapt in the transport of their creative power, totally forgot all regard, lost all consciousness of time. Passion does not know the clock or the calendar. Intimations of time, now vague, now positive, will continually occur; but also the Scenes float, like the Cyclades in a Sea of Time, at distances utterly indeterminate—Most near? Most remote? That is a Stage of Power, and not of Rules—Dynamic, not Formal. I say again at last as at first, that the time of Othello, tried by the notions of time in _our Art_, or tried, if you will, by the type of prosaic and literal time, is—INSOLUBLE.

TALBOYS.

To the first question, therefore, being What is the truth of the matter? the answer stands, I conceive without a shadow of doubt or difficulty, “The time of Othello is—as real time—INSOLUBLE.”

NORTH.

By heavens, he echoes me!

TALBOYS.

Or, it is proposed incongruously, impossibly. Then arises the question, How stood the time in the mind of Shakspeare?

NORTH.

I answer, I do not know. The question splits itself into two—first, “How did he _project_ the time?” Second, “How did he conceive it in the progress of the Play?” My impression is, that he projected extended time. If so, did he or did he not know that in managing the Seduction he departed from that design by contracting into a Day? Did he deliberately entertain a double design? If he did, how did he excuse this to himself? Did he say, “A stage necessity, or a theatrical or dramatic necessity”—namely, that of sustaining at the utmost possible reach of altitude the tragical passion and interest—“requires the precipitation of the passion from the first breathing of suspicion—the ‘Ha! Ha! I like not that,’ of the suggesting Fiend to the consecrated ‘killing myself, to die upon a kiss!’—all in the course of fifteen hours—and this tragical vehemency, this impetuous energy, this torrent of power I will have; at the same time I have many reasons—amongst them the general probability of the action—for a dilated time; and I, being a magician of the first water, will so dazzle, blind, and bewilder my auditors, that they shall accept the double time with a double belief—shall feel the unstayed rushing on of action and passion, from the first suggestion to the cloud of deaths—and yet shall remain with a conviction that Othello was for months Governor of Cyprus—they being on the whole unreflective and uncritical persons?”

TALBOYS.

And, after all, who willingly criticises his dreams or his pleasures?

NORTH.

And the Audience of the Globe Theatre shall not—for “I hurl my dazzling spells into the spungy air,” and “the spell shall sit when the curtain has fallen.” Shakspeare might, in the consciousness of power, say this. For this is that which he has—knowingly or unknowingly—done. Unknowingly? Perhaps—himself borne on by the successively rising waves of his work. For you see, Talboys, with what prolonged and severe labour we two have arrived at knowing the reality of the case which now lies open to us in broad light. We have needed time and pains, and the slow settling of our understandings, to unwind the threads of delusion in which we were encoiled and entoiled. If a strange and unexplained power could undeniably so beguile us—a possibility of which, previously to this examination, we never have dreamt, how do we warrant that the same dark, nameless, mysterious power shall not equally blind the “Artificer of Fraud?” This is matter of proposed investigation and divination, which let whoever has will, wit, and time, presently undertake.

TALBOYS.

Why, we are doing it, sir. He will be a bold man who treats of Othello—after Us.

NORTH.

Another question is—What is the Censure of Art on the demonstrated inconsistency in Othello? I propose, but now deal not with it. Observe that we have laid open a new and startling inquiry. We have demonstrated the double time of Othello—the Chronological Fact. That is the first step set in light—the first required piece of the work—_done_. Beyond this, we have ploughed a furrow or two, to show and lead further direction of the work in the wide field. We have touched on the gain to the work by means of the duplicity—we have proposed to the self-consciousness of all hearers and readers the psychological fact of their own unconsciousness of the guile used towards them, or of the success of the fallacy; and we have asked the solution of the psychological fact. We have also asked the Criticism of Art on the government of the time in Othello—supposing the Poet in pride and audacity of power to have designed that which he has done. Was it High Art?

TALBOYS.

Ay—was it High Art?

NORTH.

I dare hardly opine. Effect of high and most defying art it has surely; but you ask again—did he know? I seem to see often that the spirit of the Scene possessed Shakspeare, and that he fairly forgot the logical ties which he had encoiled about him. We know the written Play, and we may, if we are capable, know its power upon ourselves. There _are_ the Two Times, the Long and the Short; and each exerts upon you its especial virtue. I can believe that Shakspeare unconsciously did what Necessity claimed—the impetuous motion on, on, on of the Passion—the long time asked by the successive events; the forces that swayed him, each in its turn, its own way.

TALBOYS.

Unconsciously?

NORTH.

Oh heavens! Yes—yes—no—no. Yes—no. No—yes. What you will.

“Willingly my jaws I close,
Leave! oh! leave me to repose.”

TALBOYS.

Consciously or unconsciously?

NORTH.

Talboys, Longfellow, Perpetual Præses of the Seven Feet Club, we want Troy, Priam, Achilles, Hector, to have been. Perhaps they were—perhaps they were not. We must be ready for two states of mind—simple belief, which, is the temper of childhood and youth—recognition of illusion with self-surrender, which is the attained state of criticism wise and childlike. At last we voluntarily take on the faith which was in the goldener age. The child believed; and the man believes. But the child believes _this_; and the man who perceives how _this_ is a shadow, believes _that_ beyond. _This_ he believes in play—_that_ in earnest. The child mixed the two—the tale of the fairies and the hope of hereafter. Union, my dear Boys, is the faculty of the young, but division of the old. I speak of Shakspeare at five years of age; not of Us, whom, ere we can polysyllable men’s names, dominies instruct how to do old men’s work and to distinguish.

TALBOYS.

My dear sir, I do so love to hear your talkee talkee; but be just ever so little a little more intelligible to ordinary mortals—

NORTH.

You ask what really happened? The Play bewilders you from answering—accept it as it rushes along through your soul, reading or sitting to hear and see. The main and strange fact is, that these questions of Time, which, reading the Play backwards, force themselves on us, never occur to us reading straight forwards. Two Necessities lie upon your soul.

TALBOYS.

Two Necessities, sir?

NORTH.

Two Necessities lie upon your soul. You cannot believe that Othello, suspecting his Wife, folds his arms night after night about her disrobed bosom. As little can you believe that in the course of twelve hours the spirit of infinite love has changed into a dagger-armed slayer. The Two Times—marvellous as it is to say—take you into alternate possession. The impetuous motion forwards, in the scenes and in the tenor of action, which belong to the same Day, you feel; and you ask no questions. When Othello and Iago speak together, you lose the knowledge of time. You see power and not form. You feel the aroused Spirit of Jealousy: you see, in the field of belief, a thought sown and sprung—a thought changed into a doubt—a doubt into a dread—a dread into the cloud of death. Evidences press, one after the other—the spirit endures change—you feel succession—as cause and effect must succeed—you do not compute hours, days, weeks, months;—yet confess I must, and confess you must, and confess all the world and his wife must, that the condition is altogether anomalous—that a time which is at once a day of the Calendar and a month of the Calendar, does not happen anywhere out of Cyprus.

TALBOYS.

It has arisen just as you say, sir—because Two Necessities pressed. The Passion must have its torrent, else _you_ will never endure that Othello shall kill Desdemona. Events must have their concatenation, else—but I stop at this the incredible anomaly, that for _Othello_ himself you require the double time! You cannot imagine him embracing his wife, misdoubted false; as little can you his Love measureless, between sunrise and sunset turned into Murder.

NORTH.

Even so.

TALBOYS.

My dear sir, what really happened?

NORTH.

Oh! Talboys, Talboys. Well then—_not_ that Othello killed her upon the first night after the arrival at Cyprus. The Cycle could not have been so run through.

TALBOYS.

How then in reality did the Weeks pass?

NORTH.

That’s a good one! Why, I was just about to ask you—and ’tis your indisputable duty to tell me and the anxious world—how.

TALBOYS.

I do not choose to commit myself in such a serious affair.

NORTH.

Suppose the framing of the tale into a Prose Romance. Surely, surely, surely, no human romancer, compounding the unhappy transactions into a prose narrative, could, could, could have put the first sowing of doubt, and the smothering under the pillows, for incidents of one day. He would have made Othello for a time laugh at the doubt, toss it to the winds. Iago would have wormed about him a deal slowlier. The course of the transactions in the Novel would have been much nearer the course of reality.

TALBOYS.

In Cinthio’s Novel—

NORTH.

Curse Cinthio.

TALBOYS.

My Lord, I bow to your superior politeness.

NORTH.

Confound Chesterfield. My dear friend, Reality has its own reasons—a Novel its own—and its own a Drama. Every work of art brings its own conditions, which divide you from the literal representation of human experience. Ask Painter, Sculptor, and Architect. Every fine art exercises its own sleights.

TALBOYS.

In the Novel, I guess or admit that they would have been a month at Cyprus ere Iago had stirred. What hurry? He would have watched his time—ever and anon would have thrown in a hundred suggestions of which we know nothing. Let any man, romancer or other, set himself to conceive the Prose Novel. He cannot, by any possibility, conceive that he should have been led to make but a day of it. Ergo, the Drama proceeds upon its own Laws. No representation in art is the literal transcript of experience.

NORTH.

The question is, what deviations—to what extent—does the particular Art need? And why? The talked Attic Unity of Time instructs us. But Sophocles and Shakspeare must have one view of the Stage, in essence. You must sit out your three or four hours. You must listen and see with expectation _intended_, like a bow drawn. To which intent Action and Passion must press on.

TALBOYS.

Compare, sir, the One Day of Othello to the Sixteen Years of Hermione! There, intensest Passion sustained; here, the unrolling of a romantic adventure. Each true to the temper imposed on the hearing spectator.

NORTH.

Good. The Novel is not a Transcript—the Play is not a Transcript. Ask not for a Transcript, for not one of those who could give it you, will. A _conditioned imitation we desire_ and demand—and we have it in Othello.

TALBOYS.

And put up we must with Two Times—one for your sympathy with his tempest of heart—one for the verisimilitude of the transaction.

NORTH.

Think on the facility with which, in the Novel, Iago could have strewn an atom of arsenic a day on Othello’s platter, to use him to the taste; and how, in the Play, this representation is impossible. Then, the original remaining the same, each manner of portraiture _leaves it_, and each, after _its own Laws_.

TALBOYS.

Did not Shakspeare know as much about the Time which he was himself making _as we do_, as much and more?

NORTH.

I doubt it. I see no necessity for believing it. We judge him as we judge ourselves. He came to his Art as it was, and created—improving it—from that point. An Art grows in all its constituents. The management of the Time is a constituent in the Art of “feigned history,” as Poetry is called by Lord Bacon. But I contend that on our Stage, to which Shakspeare came, the management of Time was in utter neglect—an undreamed entity; and I claim for the first foundation of any Canon respective to this matter, acute sifting of all Plays _previous_.

TALBOYS.

Not so very many—

NORTH.

Nor so very few. Shakspeare took up the sprawling, forlorn infant, dramatic Time. He cradled, rocked, and fed it. The bantling throve, and crawled vigorously about on all-fours. But since then, thou Tallometer, imagine the study that _we_ have made. Count not our Epic Poems—not our Metrical Romances—not our Tragedies. Count our Comedies, and count above all our Novels. I do not say that you can settle Time in these by the almanac. They are the less poetical when you can do so; but I say that we have with wonderful and immense diligence studied the working out of a Story. Time being here an essential constituent, it cannot be but that, in our more exact and critical layings-out of the chain of occurrences, we have arrived at a tutored and jealous respect of Time—to say nothing of our Aristotelian lessons—totally unlike anything that existed under Eliza and James, as a general proficiency of the Art—as a step gained in the National Criticism.

TALBOYS.

Ay, it must be difficult in the extreme for us so to divest ourselves of our own intellectual habits and proficiency as to take up, and into our own, the mind of that Age. But, unless we do so, we are unable to judge what might or might not happen to any one mind of that age; and when we affirm that Shakspeare must have known what he was doing in regard to the Time of Othello, we are suffering under the described difficulty or disability—

NORTH.

Why, Talboys, you are coming, day after day, to talk better and better sense—take care you do not get too sensible—

TALBOYS.

We must never forget, sir, that the management of the Time was on that Stage a slighted and trampled element—that what Willy gives us of it is gratuitous, and what we must be thankful for—and finally, that he did not distinctly scheme out, in his own conception, the Time of Othello—very far from it.

NORTH.

I verily believe that if you or I had shown him the Time, tied up as it is, he would have said, “Let it go hang. They won’t find it out; and, if they do, let them make the best, the worst, and the most of it. The Play is a good Play, and I shall spoil it with mending it.” Why, Talboys, if Queen Elizabeth had required that the Time should be set straight, it could not have been done. One—two—six changes would not have done it. The Time is an entangled skein that can only be disentangled by breaking it. For the fervour of action on the Stage, Iago could not have delayed the beginning beyond the next day. And yet think of the Moral Absurdity—to begin—really as if the day after Marriage, to sow Jealousy! The thing is out of nature the whole diameter of the globe. His project was “after a time t’ abuse Othello’s ear,” which is according to nature, and is _de facto_ the impression made—strange to say—from beginning to end. But the truth is, that the Stage three hours are so soon gone, that you submit yourself to everything to come within compass. Your Imagination is bound to the wheels of the Theatre Clock.

TALBOYS.

Yet, in our conversation on Macbeth, you called your discovery an “astounding discovery”—and it is so. The Duplicity of Time in Othello is a hundred times more astounding—

NORTH.

And the discovery of it will immortalise my name. I grieve to think that the Pensive Public is sadly deficient in Imagination. I remember or invent that she once resisted me, when I said that “Illusion” is one constituent of Poetry. Illusion, the Pensive Public must be made to know, is WHEN THE SAME THING IS, AND IS NOT. Pa—God bless him!—makes believe to be a Lion. He roars, and springs upon his prey. He at once believes himself to be a Lion, and knows himself to be Pa. Just so with the Shakspeare Club—many millions strong. The two times at Cyprus _are there_; the reason for the two times—to wit, probability of the Action, storm of the Passion—_is there_; and if any wiseacre should ask, “How do we manage to stand the _known_ together-proceeding of two times?” The wiseacre is answered—“We don’t stand it—for we know nothing about it. We are held in a confusion and a delusion about the time.” We have effect of both—distinct knowledge of neither. We have suggestions to our Understanding of extended time—we have movements of our Will by precipitated time.

TALBOYS.

We have—we have—we have. Oh! sir! sir! sir!

NORTH.

Does any man by possibility ask for a scheme and an exposition, by which it shall be made luminous to the smallest capacity, _how_ we are able distinctly all along to know, and bear in mind, that the preceding transactions are accomplished in a day, and at the same time and therewithal, distinctly all along to know and bear in mind that the same transactions proceeding before our eyes take about three months to accomplish? Then, I am obliged—like the musicians, when they are told that, if they have any music that may not be heard, Othello desires them to play it—to make answer, “Sir, we have none such.” It is to ask that a deception shall be not only seemingly but really a truth! Jedediah Buxton, and Blair the Chronologist, would, “sitting at _this_ play,” have broken their hearts. You need not. If you ask me—which judiciously you may—what or how much did the Swan of Avon intend and know of all this astonishing legerdemain, when he sang thus astonishingly? Was he the juggler juggled by aërial spirits—as Puck and Ariel? I put my finger to my lip, and nod on him to do the same; and if I am asked, “Shall a modern artificer of the Drama, having the same pressure from within and from without, adopt this resource of evasion?” I can answer, with great confidence, “He had better look before he leap.” If any spectator, upon the mere persuasion and power of the Representation, ends with believing that the seed sown and the harvest reaped are of one day, I believe that he may yet have the belief of extended time at Cyprus. I should say by _carrying the one day with him on forwards from day to day_! Or if you wish this more intelligibly said, that he shall continually _forget_ the past notices. Once for all, he shall _forget_ that the _first suggestion was on the day after the arrival_.

TALBOYS.

Inquire, sir, what intelligent auditors, who have not gone into the study, have thought; for that, after all, is the only testimony that means anything.

NORTH.

Well, Talboys, suppose that one of them should actually say, “Why, upon my word, if I am to tell the truth, I did take note that Iago began ‘abusing Othello’s ear’ the day after the arrival. I did, in the course of the Play, gather up an impression that some good space of time was passing at Cyprus—and I did, when the murder came, put it down upon the same day with the sowing of the suspicion, and I was not aware of the contradiction. In short, now that you put me upon it, I see that I did that which thousands of us do in thousands of subjects—keep in different corners of the brain two beliefs—of which, if they had come upon the same ground, the one must have annihilated the other. But I did not at the time bring the data together. _I suppose that I had something else to think of._”

TALBOYS.

Assume, sir, for simplicity’s sake, that Shakspeare knew what he was doing.

NORTH.

Then the Double Time is to be called—an Imposture.

TALBOYS.

Oh, my dear sir—oh, oh!

NORTH.

A good-natured Juggler, my dear Talboys, has cheated your eyes. You ask him to show you how he did it. He does the trick slowly—and you see. “Now, good Conjuror, _do it slowly, and cheat us_.” “I can’t. I cheat you by doing it quickly. To be cheated, you must _not_ see what I do; but you must _think_ that you see.” When we inspect the Play in our closets, the Juggler does his trick slowly. We sit at the Play, and he does it quick. When you see the trick again done the right way—that is quick—you cannot conceive how it is that you no longer see that which you saw when it was done slowly! Again the impression returns of a magical feat.

TALBOYS.

I doubt, if we saw Othello perfectly acted, whether all our study would preserve us from the returning imposture.

NORTH.

I will defy any one most skilful theatrical connoisseur, even at the tenth, or twentieth, or fiftieth Representation, so to have followed the comings-in and the goings-out, as to satisfy himself to demonstration, that interval into which a month or a week or a day can be dropped—_there is none_.

TALBOYS.

When do you purpose publishing this your “astounding Discovery?”

NORTH.

Not till after my death.

TALBOYS.

I shall attend to it.

NORTH.

In comparing Shakspeare and the Attic Three, we seem to ourselves, but really do not, to exhaust the Criticism of the Drama. Is Mr Sheriff Alison right, when he said that the method of Shakspeare is justified only by the genius of Shakspeare? That less genius needs the art of antiquity? Our own art inclines to a method between the two; and we should have to account for the theatrical success, during a century or more, of such Plays as the Fair Penitent, Jane Shore, &c.

TALBOYS.

Why, sir, does Tragedy displace often from our contemplation, Comedy? Not when we are contemplating Shakspeare. To me his method, in reading him, appears justified by the omnipotent Art, which, despite refractoriness, binds together the most refractory times, things, persons, events _in Unity_.

NORTH.

Most true. We feel, in reading, the self-compactness and self-completeness of each Play. Thus in Lear—

TALBOYS.

In Lear the ethical ground is the Relation of Parent to Child, specifically Father and Daughter. If the treatment of that Relation is full to your satisfaction, that may affect you as a Unity. Full is not exhaustive; but one part of treatment demands another. Thus the violated relation requires for its complement the consecrated relation.

NORTH.

In Hamlet?

TALBOYS.

The ethical ground in Hamlet, sir, is the relation of Father and Son, very peculiarly determined, or specialtied. Observe, sir, how the _like_ relation between Father and Daughter, the _same_ between Father and Son occurs in Polonius’s House. Here, too, a slain Father—a part of the specialty. Compare, particularly, the dilatory revenge of Hamlet, and the dispatchful of Laertes. Again, the relation of Gertrude the Mother and Hamlet the Son—so many differences! And the strange discords upon the same relation—my Uncle-Father and Aunt-Mother—the tragic grotesque.

NORTH.

Eh?

TALBOYS.

Then in Lear the House of Gloster counterparts Lear’s. And compare the ill-disposed Son-in-law Cornwall, and the well-disposed Son-in-law Albany. The very Fool has a sort of _filial_ relation to Lear—“Nuncle”—and “come on, my Boy.” At least the relation is in the same direction—old to young—protecting to dependent—spontaneous love to grateful, requiting love, and an intimate, fondling familiarity. Compare in Hamlet, Ophelia’s way of taking her father’s death—madness and unconscious suicide—the susceptible girl,—and the brother’s to kill the slayer, “to cut his throat i’ the church”—the energetic youthy man, _ferox juvenis_—fiery—full of exuberant strength;—all variations of the grounding thought—relation of Parent and Child.

NORTH.

Of Othello?

TALBOYS.

The moral Unity of Othello can be nothing but the Connubial Relation. How is this dealt with? Othello and Desdemona deserve one another—both are excellent—both impassioned, but very differently—both frank, simple, confiding—both unbounded in love. But they have married against the father’s wish—privily, and—he dies—so here is from another sacred quarter an influence thwarting—a law violated, and of which the violation shall be made good to the uttermost. So somebody remarks that Brabantio involves the fact in the Nemesis, “She has deceived her Father, and may thee.” Then the pretended corrupt love of her and Cassio is a reflection in divers ways of the prevailing relation—for a corrupt union of man and woman images _ex opposito_ the true union—and then it comes as the wounding to the death. Again, Rodrigo’s wicked pursuit of her is an imperfect, false reflection. And then there is the false relation—in Cassio and Bianca—woven in essentially when Iago, talking to Cassio of Bianca, makes Othello believe that they are speaking of Desdemona. Then the married estate of Iago and Emilia is another image—an actual marriage, and so far the same thing, but an inwardly unbound wedlock—between heart and heart no tie—and so far not the same thing—the same with a difference, exactly what Poetry requires. Note that this image is also participant in the Action, essentially, penetratively to the core; since hereby Iago gets the handkerchief, and hereby, too, the knot is resolved by Emilia’s final disclosures and asseverations sealed by her death. Observe that each husband kills, and indeed stabs his wife—motives a little different—as heaven and hell.

NORTH.

The method of Shakspeare makes his Drama the more absolute reflection of our own Life, wherein are to be considered two things——

TALBOYS.

First—if the innermost grounding feeling of all our other feelings is and must be that of Self—the next, or in close proximity, Sympathy with our life—then by the overpowering similitude of those Plays to our lives—of the method of the Plays to the method of our life—that Sympathy is by Shakspeare seized and possessed as by no other dramatist—the persuasion of reality being immense and stupendous. Elements of the method are, the mixture of comic and tragic—the crossing presentment of different interests—presentment of the same interests from divided places and times—multiplying of agents, that is number and variety—being of all ranks, ages, qualities, offices—coming in contact—immixt in Action and Passion. This frank, liberal, unreserved, spontaneous and natural method of imitation must ravish our sympathy—and we know that the Plays of Shakspeare are to us like another world of our own in its exuberant plenitude—a full second humanity.

NORTH.

Opposed to this is the severe method of the Greek Stage—selecting and simplifying.

TALBOYS.

Of the modern craftsmen, to my thinking Alfieri has carried the Attic severity to the utmost; and I am obliged to say, sir, that in them all—those Greeks and this Italian—the severity oppresses me—I feel the rule of art—not the free movement of human existence. That I feel overpoweringly, only in Shakspeare.

NORTH.

Ay.

TALBOYS.

Alfieri says that the constituent Element of Tragedy is Conflict—as of Duty and Passion—as of conscious Election in the breast of Man and Fate.

NORTH.

He does—does he?

TALBOYS.

There is Conflict—or Contrast—or Antithesis—the Jar of two Opposites—a Discord—a Rending—in Lear; between his misplaced confidence and its requital—between his misplaced displeasure and the true love that is working towards his weal. And, again, between the Desert and the Reward of Cordelia—with more in the same Play.

NORTH.

Schiller says of Tragic Fate,

“The great gigantic Destiny
That exalts Man in crushing him.”

Welcker has, I believe, written on the Fate of the Greek Tragedy, which I desire to see.

TALBOYS.

Are Waves breaking against a Rock the true image of Tragedy?

NORTH.

Hardly; any more than a man running his head against a post, or stone wall is. The two antagonistic Forces, Talboys, must each of them have, or seem to have, the possibility of yielding; the Conflict or Strife must have a certain play. Therefore I inquire—Is the Greek Fate the most excellent of Dramatic means? and is the Greek Fate inflexible? And, granting that the Hellenic Fate is thoroughly sublime and fitting to Greek Tragedy, and withal inflexible—does it follow that Modern Tragedy must have a like overhanging tyrannical Necessity?

TALBOYS.

No.

NORTH.

No. The Greek Tragedy representing a received religious Mythology, we may conceive the poetical, or esthetical _hardness_ of a Fate known for unalterable, to have been tempered by the inherent Awe—the Holiness. There is a certain swallowing-up of human interests, hopes, passions—this turmoiling, struggling life—in a revealed Infinitude. Our Stage is human—built on the Moral Nature of Man, and on his terrestrial Manner of Being. It stands _under_ the Heavens—_upon_ the Earth. In Hamlet, the Ghost, with his command of Revenge, represents the Impassive, Inflexible—with a breath freezing the movable human blood into stillness—everything else is in agitation.

TALBOYS.

Say it again, sir.

NORTH.

Beg my pardon and your own, fully and unconditionally, Talboys, this very instant, for talking slightingly of the Greek Drama.

TALBOYS.

Not guilty, my Lord. Of all Dramas that ever were dramatised on the Stage of this unintelligible world, the Greek Drama is the most dramatic, saving and excepting Shakspeare’s.

NORTH.

Ay, wonderful, my dear Talboys, to see the holy affections demonstrated mighty on the heathen Proscenium. Antigone! Daughter and Sister. Or in another House, Orestes, Electra.

TALBOYS.

Macbeth murders a King, who happens to be his kinsman; but Clytemnestra murders her husband, who happens to be a King—the profounder and more interior crime.

NORTH.

We see how grave are the undertakings of Poetry, which engages itself to please, that it may accomplish sublimer aims. By pleasure she wins you to your greater good—to Love and Intelligence. The heathen Legislator, the heathen Philosopher, the heathen Poet, looks upon Man with love and awe. He desires and conceives his welfare—his wellbeing—HIS HAPPINESS.

TALBOYS.

And the Poet, you believe, sir, with intenser love—with more solemn awe—with more penetrant intuition.

NORTH.

I do. And he has his way clearer before him.

TALBOYS.

The Legislator, sir, will alchemise the most refractory of all substances—Man. His materials are in truth the lowest and grossest, and most external relations of Man’s life.

NORTH.

They are.

TALBOYS.

And these he would, with instrumentality of low, gross, outward means, subjugate or subdue under his own most spiritual intuitions.

NORTH.

A vain task, my dear Talboys, for an impossible. He must lower his intuition—his aim—to his means and materials. The Philosopher walks in a more etherial region. Compared to the Legislator, he is at advantage. But he has his own difficulties. He must _think Feelings_!

TALBOYS.

He might as well try, sir, to trace outline, and measure capacity of a mist which varies its form momently, and, without determinate boundary loses itself in the contiguous air. His work is to define the indefinite.

NORTH.

And then he comes from the Schools, which in qualifying disqualify also—from the Schools of the Senses—of the Physical Arts—of Natural Philosophy—of Logical, Metaphysical, Mathematical Science. These have quickened, strengthened, and sharpened his wit; they have lifted him at last from emotions to notions; but—Love is understood by loving—Hate by hating—and only so! Sensations—notions—EMOTIONS! I say, Talboys, that in all these inferior schools you may understand a part by itself, and ascend by items to the Sum, the All. But in the Philosophy of the Will, you must from the centre look along the radii, and with a sweep command the circumference. You must know as it were Nothing, or All.

TALBOYS.

Ay, indeed, sir; looking at the Doctrines of the Moral Philosophers, you are always dissatisfied—and why?

NORTH.

Because they contradict your self-experience. Sometimes they speak as you feel. Your self-intelligence answers, and from time to time, acknowledges and avouches a strain or two; but then comes discord. The Sage stands on a radius. If he looks along the radius towards the circumference, he sees in the same direction with him who stands at the centre; but in every other direction, inversely or transversely. Every work of a Philosopher gives you the notion of glimpses caught, snatched in the midst of clouds and of rolling darknesses. The truth is, Talboys, that the Moral Philosopher is in the Moral Universe a schoolboy; he is gaining, from time to time, information by which, if he shall persevere and prosper, he shall at last understand. Hitherto he but prepares to understand. If he knows this, good; but if the schoolboy who has mastered his Greek Alphabet, will forthwith proceed to expound Homer and Plato, what sort of an _ex cathedrâ_ may we not expect? Rather, what expectation can approach the burlesque that is in store!

TALBOYS.

All are not such.

NORTH.

The Moral Sage may be the Schoolboy in the Magisterial Chair. With only this difference, that he of the beard has been installed in form, and the Doctor’s hat set on his head by the hand of authority. But the ground of confusion is the same. He will from initial glimpses of information expound the world. He will—and the worst of it is that—he must.

TALBOYS.

A Legislator, a Philosopher, a Poet, all know that the stability and welfare of a man—of a fellowship of men—is Virtue. But see how they deal with it.

NORTH.

Don’t look to me, Talboys; go on of yourself and for yourself—I am a pupil.

TALBOYS.

The Legislator, sir, can hardly do more than reward Valour in war; and punish overt crime. The Philosopher will have Good either tangible, like an ox, or a tree, or a tower, or a piece of land; or a rigorous and precise rational abstraction, like the quantities of a mathematician. For Good, _substantial and impalpable_, go to the Poet. For Good—for Virtue—_concrete_, go to the Poet.

NORTH.

The Philosopher separates Virtue from all other motions and states of the human will. The Poet loses or hides Virtue in the other motions and states of the human will. Orestes, obeying the Command of Apollo, avenges his Father, by slaying his Mother, and her murderous and adulterous Paramour. So awfully, solemnly, terribly—with such implication and involution in human affections and passions, works and interests and sufferings, the Poet demonstrates Virtue.

TALBOYS.

And we go along with Orestes, sir; the Greeks did—if our feebler soul cannot.

NORTH.

Yes, Talboys, we do go along with Orestes. He does that which he _must_ do—which he is under a moral obligation to do—under a moral necessity of doing. Necessity! ay, an Αναγκη—stern, strong, adamantine as that which links the Chain of Causes and Events in the natural universe—which compels the equable and unalterable celestial motions beheld by our eyes—such a bounden, irresistible agency sends on the son of the murdered, with hidden sword, against the bosom that has lulled, fed, _made_ him!—HE MUST.

TALBOYS.

Love, hate, horror—the furies of kinned shed blood ready to spring up from the black inscrutable earth wetted by the red drops, and to dog the heels of the new Slayer—of the divinely-appointed Parricide! So a Poet teaches Virtue.

NORTH.

Ay, even so; convulsing your soul—convulsing the worlds, he shows you LAW—the archaic, the primal, sprung, ere Time, from the bosom of Jupiter—LAW the bond of the worlds, LAW the inviolate violated, and avenging her Violation, vindicating her own everlasting stability, purity, divinity.

TALBOYS.

Divine Law and humble, faithful, acquiescent human Obedience! Obedience self-sacrificing, blind to the consequences, hearing the God, hearing the Ghost, deaf to all other Voices—deaf to fear, deaf to pity!

NORTH.

Now call in the Philosopher, and hear what he has to preach. Something exquisite and unintelligible about the Middle between two Extremes!

TALBOYS.

Shade of the Stagyrite!

NORTH.

The pure Earth shakes crime from herself, and the pure stars follow their eternal courses. The Mother slays the children of a brother for the father’s repast. And the sun, stopt in the heavens, veils his resplendent face. So a Poet inculcates Law—Law running through all things, and binding all things in Unity and in Sympathy—Law entwined in the primal relations of Man with Man. To reconcile Man with Law—to make him its “willing bondsman”—is the great Moral and Political Problem—the first Social need of the day—the innermost craving need of all time since the Fall. The Poet is its greatest teacher—a wily preceptor, who lessons you, unaware, unsuspecting of the supreme benefit purposed you—done you—by him, the Hierophant of Harmonia.

TALBOYS.

You ordered me, sir, some few or many hours ago—some Short or Long Time since—to swear that after this Morning’s Breakfast I would never more so much as confidentially whisper into a friend’s ear the words—Othello! Desdemona! And I swore it. I am now eager to swear it over again; but I begin, sir, to entertain the most serious apprehensions that that time will never arrive.

NORTH.

What time?

TALBOYS.

_After_ Breakfast. We have been sitting here, sir, _before_ Breakfast for ages, in the Wren’s Nest. During our incubation, what a succession of changes may there not have been in Europe! Revolution on Revolution—blood poured out like water——Hark, the Tocsin!

NORTH.

The Gong.

TALBOYS.

The _Breakfast_ Gong! The tremulous thunder meets an answering chord within me. Six o’Clock in the Morning—and no victuals have I gorged since Eleven Yestreen. Good-by to the Wren’s Nest—the very Cave of Famine. This is Turkey-egg—Goose-egg—Swan-egg—Ostrich-egg day. I see Buller eyeing open-mouthed, with premeditating mastication, my pile of muffins. Gormandising sans Grace. Take care you don’t trip, sir, over the precipice—’twould be an ugly fall—into the basin. Now we are out of danger. But don’t skip, sir—don’t skip—till we emerge—on the open ground—then we may dance among the daisies.

LETTER FROM MAJOR-GENERAL SIR WILLIAM NAPIER.

CLAPHAM, LONDON, _April 11, 1850_.

SIR,—The writer of the article headed “_The Ministerial Measures_,” in your Magazine, has been so complimentary to me that I feel ashamed of pointing out an error.

He says I wrote my History on _Whig principles_. Had he said _Radical principles_, I should not have winced, though I really endeavoured to write it on the principles of truth and knowledge of the subject. But for Whig principles! God save the mark!—I never thought of them save to censure; and really my History is throughout, by implication, and in many places directly, condemnatory of the Whigs’ policy, and of their extreme arrogance, and presumptuous, erroneous views of the Peninsular War.

I trust the writer will, therefore, acquit me of any such foolish, factious design as writing a history upon Whig principles.

I remain, Sir, your obedient Servant,

W. NAPIER, _Major-General_.

_To the Editor of Blackwood’s Magazine._

[We gladly give place to the gallant General’s communication. The
writer of the article in question meant simply to convey his
impression, that the able and eloquent History of Sir William Napier
was not constructed on _Tory_ principles; and consequently, that the
letter which he embodied in his paper was to be regarded as the
testimony of a political opponent.]

_Printed by William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh._

-----

Footnote 1:

_Correspondence respecting the demands made upon the Greek Government,
and respecting the Islands of Cervi and Sapienza._ Presented to both
Houses of Parliament, by command of Her Majesty. February 1850.

Footnote 2:

Protestant heresy.

Footnote 3:

This is now the case in Germany.

Footnote 4:

_Journal de la Campagne de Russie en 1812._ Par M. DE FEZENSAC,
Lieutenant-General. Librairie Militaire, Paris 1850.

Footnote 5:

_Essays; Political, Historical, and Miscellaneous._ By ARCHIBALD
ALISON, LL.D. Author of “The History of Europe,” &c. Three vols. 8vo.
William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh and London.

Footnote 6:

Vide the _Economist_ newspaper of January 19, 1850.

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

Page Changed from Changed to

600 declined only ½ per lb.; No. 40, declined only ½d. per lb.; No.
however, 40, however,

638 of doing. Necessity! ay, an of doing. Necessity! ay, an
Αναζκη—stern, strong, adamantine Αναγκη—stern, strong, adamantine
as that as that

● Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained. ● Used numbers for footnotes, placing them all at the end of the last chapter. ● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_. ● Enclosed blackletter font in =equals=.