Chapter XXXIX: Section V: His Merit as a Dramatist

But let us pause a moment longer to inquire whether, amid so many abortive and distorted branches, the old theatrical stock, abandoned by chance to itself, will not produce at some point a sound and living shoot. When a man like Dryden, so gifted, so well informed and experienced, works with a will, there is hope that he will some time succeed; and once, in part at least, Dryden did succeed. It would be treating him unjustly to be always comparing him with Shakespeare; but even on Shakespeare's ground, with the same materials, it is possible to create a fine work; only the reader must forget for a while the great inventor, the inexhaustible creator of vehement and original souls, and to consider the imitator on his own merits, without forcing an overwhelming comparison.

There is vigor and art in this tragedy of Dryden, "All for Love. He has informed us, that this was the only play written to please himself."[412] And he had really composed it learnedly, according to history and logic. And what is better still, he wrote it in a manly style. In the preface he says: "The fabric of the play is regular enough, as to the inferior parts of it; and the unities of time, place, and action, more exactly observed, than perhaps the English theatre requires. Particularly, the action is so much one, that it is the only of the kind without episode, or underplot; every scene in the tragedy conducing to the main design, and every act concluding with a turn of it."[413] He did more; he abandoned the French ornaments, and returned to national tradition: "In my style I have professed to imitate the divine Shakespeare; which that I might perform more freely, I have disincumbered myself from rhyme.... Yet, I hope, I may affirm, and without vanity, that by imitating him, I have excelled myself throughout the play; and particularly, that I prefer the scene betwixt Antony and Ventidius in the first act, to anything which I have written in this kind."[414] Dryden was right; if Cleopatra is weak, if this feebleness of conception takes away the interest and mars the general effect, if the new rhetoric and the old emphasis at times suspend the emotion and destroy the likelihood, yet on the whole the drama stands erect, and what is more, moves on. The poet is skilful; he has planned, he knows how to construct a scene, to represent the internal struggle by which two passions contend for a human heart. We perceive the tragical vicissitude of the strife, the progress of a sentiment, the overthrow of obstacles, the slow growth of desire or wrath, to the very instant when the resolution, rising up of itself or seduced from without, rushes suddenly in one groove. There are natural words; the poet thinks and writes too genuinely not to discover them at need. There are manly characters: he himself is a man; and beneath his courtier's pliability, his affectations as a fashionable poet, he has retained his stern and energetic character. Except for one scene of recrimination, his Octavia is a Roman matron; and when, even in Alexandria, in Cleopatra's palace, she comes to look for Antony, she does it with a simplicity and nobility, not to be surpassed. "Cæsar's sister," cries out Antony, accosting her. Octavia answers:

"That's unkind. Had I been nothing more than Cæsar's sister, Know, I had still remain'd in Cæsar's camp: But your Octavia, your much injured wife, Though banish'd from your bed, driven from your house, In spite of Cæsar's sister, still is yours. 'Tis true, I have a heart disdains your coldness, And prompts me not to seek what you should offer; But a wife's virtue still surmounts that pride. I come to claim you as my own; to show My duty first, to ask, nay beg, your kindness: Your hand, my lord; 'tis mine, and I will have it."[415]

Antony humiliated, refuses the pardon Octavia has brought him and tells her:

"I fear, Octavia, you have begg'd my life,... Poorly and basely begg'd it of your brother. _Octavia._ Poorly and basely I could never beg, Nor could my brother grant.... My hard fortune Subjects me still to your unkind mistakes. But the conditions I have brought are such, You need not blush to take: I love your honour, Because 'tis mine; it never shall be said Octavia's husband was her brother's slave. Sir, you are free; free, even from her you loath; For, though my brother bargains for your love, Makes me the price and cement of your peace, I have a soul like yours; I cannot take Your love as alms, nor beg what I deserve. I'll tell my brother we are reconciled; He shall draw back his troops, and you shall march To rule the East: I may be dropt at Athens; No matter where. I never will complain, But only keep the barren name of wife, And rid you of the trouble."[416]

This is lofty; this woman has a proud heart, and also a wife's heart: she knows how to give and how to bear; and better, she knows how to sacrifice herself without self-assertion, and calmly; no vulgar mind conceived such a soul as this. And Ventidius, the old general, who with her and previous to her, comes to rescue Antony from his illusion and servitude, is worthy to speak in behalf of honor, as she had spoken for duty. Doubtless he was a plebeian, a rude and plain-speaking soldier, with the frankness and jests of his profession, sometimes clumsy, such as a clever eunuch can dupe, "a thick-skulled hero," who, out of simplicity of soul, from the coarseness of his training, unsuspectingly brings Antony back to the meshes, which he seemed to be breaking through. Falling into a trap, he tells Antony that he has seen Cleopatra unfaithful with Dolabella:

"_Antony._ My Cleopatra? _Ventidius._ Your Cleopatra. Dolabella's Cleopatra. Every man's Cleopatra. _Antony._ Thou best. _Ventidius._ I do not lie, my lord. Is this so strange? Should mistresses be left, And not provide against a time of change? You know she's not much used to lonely nights."[417]

It was just the way to make Antony jealous and bring him back furious to Cleopatra. But what a noble heart has this Ventidius, and how we catch, when he is alone with Antony, the manly voice, the deep tones which had been heard on the battlefield! He loves his general like a good and honest dog, and asks no better than to die, so it be at his master's feet. He growls stealthily on seeing him cast down, crouches round him, and suddenly weeps:

"_Ventidius._ Look, emperor, this is no common dew. [_Weeping._] I have not wept this forty years; but now My mother comes afresh into my eyes, I cannot help her softness. _Antony._ By Heaven, he weeps! poor, good old man, he weeps! The big round drops course one another down The furrows of his cheeks.--Stop them, Ventidius, Or I shall blush to death: they set my shame, That caused them full before me. _Ventidius._ I'll do my best. _Antony._ Sure there's contagion in the tears of friends: See, I have caught it too. Believe me, 'tis not For my own grief, but thine. Nay, Father!"[418]

As we hear these terrible sobs, we think of Tacitus's veterans, who escaping from the marshes of Germany, with scarred breasts, white heads, limbs stiff with service, kissed the hands of Drusus, carried his fingers to their gums, that he might feel their worn and loosened teeth, incapable to bite the wretched bread which was given to them:

"No; 'tis you dream; you sleep away your hours In desperate sloth, miscall'd philosophy. Up, up, for honour's sake; twelve legions wait you, And long to call you chief: By painful journies, I led them, patient both of heat and hunger, Down from the Parthian marshes to the Nile. 'Twill do you good to see their sun-burnt faces, Their scarred cheeks, and chopt hands; there's virtue in them. They'll sell those mangled limbs at dearer rates Than yon trim bands can buy."[419]

And when all is lost, when the Egyptians have turned traitors and there is nothing left but to die well, Ventidius says:

"There yet remain Three legions in the town. The last assault Lopt off the rest: if death be your design-- As I must wish it now--these are sufficient To make a heap about us of dead foes, An honest pile for burial.... Chuse your death; For, I have seen in him such various shapes, I care not which I take: I'm only troubled. The life I bear is worn to such a rag, 'Tis scarce worth giving. I could wish, indeed. We threw it from us with a better grace; That, like two lions taken in the toils, We might at least thrust out our paws, and wound The hunters that inclose us."[420]...

Antony begs him to go, but he refuses; and then he entreats Ventidius to kill him:

"_Antony._ Do not deny me twice. _Ventidius._ By Heaven I will not. Let it not be to outlive you. _Antony._ Kill me first, And then die thou; for 'tis but just thou serve Thy friend, before thyself. _Ventidius._ Give me your hand. We soon shall meet again. Now, farewell, emperor! [_Embraces._] ... I will not make a business of a trifle: And yet I cannot look on you, and kill you. Pray, turn your face. _Antony._ I do: strike home, be sure. _Ventidius._ Home, as my sword will reach."[421]

And with one blow he kills himself. These are the tragic, stoical manners of a military monarchy, the great profusion of murders and sacrifices wherewith the men of this overturned and shattered society killed and died. This Antony, for whom so much has been done, is not undeserving of their love: he has been one of Cæsar's heroes, the first soldier of the van; kindness and generosity breathe from him to the last; if he is weak against a woman, he is strong against men; he has the muscles and heart, the wrath and passions of a soldier; it is this fever-heat of blood, this too quick sentiment of honor, which has caused him ruin; he cannot forgive his own crime; he possesses not that lofty genius which, dwelling in a region superior to ordinary rules, emancipates a man from hesitation, from discouragement and remorse; he is only a soldier, he cannot forget that he has not executed the orders given to him:

"_Ventidius._ Emperor! _Antony._ Emperor? Why, that's the style of victory; The conquering soldier, red with unfelt wounds, Salutes his general so; but never more Shall that sound reach my ears. _Ventidius._ I warrant you. _Antony._ Actium, Actium! Oh---- _Ventidius._ It sits too near you. _Antony._ Here, here it lies; a lump of lead by day; And in my short, distracted, nightly slumbers, The hag that rides my dreams...."

"_Ventidius._ That's my royal master; And, shall we fight? _Antony._ I warrant thee, old soldier. Thou shalt behold me once again in iron; And at the head of our old troops, that beat The Parthians, cry aloud, 'Come, follow me.'"[422]

He fancies himself on the battlefield, and already his impetuosity carries him away. Such a man is not fit to govern men; we cannot master fortune until we have mastered ourselves; this man is only made to belie and destroy himself, and to be veered round alternately by every passion. As soon as he believes Cleopatra faithful, honor, reputation, empire, everything vanishes:

"_Ventidius._ And what's this toy, In balance with your fortune, honour, fame? _Antony._ What is't, Ventidius? it outweighs them all. Why, we have more than conquer'd Cæsar now. My queen's not only innocent, but loves me.... Down on thy knees, blasphemer as thou art, And ask forgiveness of wrong'd innocence! _Ventidius._ I'll rather die than take it. Will you go? _Antony._ Go! Whither? Go from all that's excellent! ... Give, you gods, Give to your boy, your Cæsar, This rattle of a globe to play withal, This gewgaw world; and put him cheaply off: I'll not be pleased with less than Cleopatra."[423]

Dejection follows excess; these souls are only tempered against fear; their courage is but that of the bull and the lion; to be fully themselves, they need bodily action, visible danger; their temperament sustains them; before great moral sufferings they give away. When Antony thinks himself deceived, he despairs, and has nothing left but to die:

"Let him (Cæsar) walk Alone upon't. I'm weary of my part. My torch is out; and the world stands before me, Like a black desert at the approach of night; I'll lay me down, and stray no farther on."[424]

Such verses remind us of Othello's gloomy dreams, of Macbeth's, of Hamlet's even; beyond the pile of swelling tirades and characters of painted cardboard, it is as though the poet had touched the ancient drama, and brought its emotion away with him.

By his side another also has felt it, a young man, a poor adventurer, by turns a student, actor, officer, always wild and always poor, who lived madly and sadly in excess and misery, like the old dramatists, with their inspiration, their fire, and who died at the age of thirty-four, according to some of a fever caused by fatigue, according to others of a prolonged fast, at the end of which he swallowed too quickly a morsel of bread bestowed on him in charity. Through the pompous cloak of the new rhetoric, Thomas Otway now and then reached the passions of the other age. It is plain that the times he lived in marred him, that he blunted himself the harshness and truth of the emotion he felt, that he no longer mastered the bold words he needed, that the oratorical style, the literary phrases, the classical declamation, the well-poised antitheses, buzzed about him, and drowned his note in their sustained and monotonous hum. Had he but been born a hundred years earlier! In his "Orphan" and "Venice Preserved" we encounter the sombre imaginations of Webster, Ford, and Shakespeare, their gloomy idea of life, their atrocities, murders, pictures of irresistible passions, which riot blindly like a herd of savage beasts, and make a chaos of the battlefield, with their yells and tumult, leaving behind them but devastation and heaps of dead. Like Shakespeare, he represents on the stage human transports and rages--a brother violating his brother's wife, a husband perjuring himself for his wife; Polydore, Chamont, Jaffier, weak and violent souls, the sport of chance, the prey of temptation, with whom transport or crime, like poison poured into the veins, gradually ascends, envenoms the whole man, is communicated to all whom he touches, and contorts and casts them down together in a convulsive delirium. Like Shakespeare, he has found poignant and living words,[425] which lay bare the depths of humanity, the strange creaking of a machine which is getting out of order, the tension of the will stretched to breaking-point,[426] the simplicity of real sacrifice, the humility of exasperated and craving passion, which begs to the end, and against all hope, for its fuel and its gratification.[427] Like Shakespeare, he has conceived genuine women[428]--Monima, above all, Belvidera, who, like Imogen, has given herself wholly, and is lost as in an abyss of adoration for him whom she has chosen, who can but love, obey, weep, suffer, and who dies like a flower plucked from the stalk, when her arms are torn from the neck around which she has locked them. Like Shakespeare again, he has found, at least once, the grand bitter buffoonery, the harsh sentiment of human baseness; and he has introduced into his most painful tragedy, an impure caricature, an old senator, who unbends from his official gravity in order to play at his mistress's house the clown or the valet. How bitter! how true was his conception, in making the busy man eager to leave his robes and his ceremonies! how ready the man is to abase himself, when, escaped from his part, he comes to his real self! how the ape and the dog crop up in him! The senator Antonio comes to his Aquilina, who insults him; he is amused; hard words are a relief to compliments; he speaks in a shrill voice, runs into a falsetto like a zany at a country fair:

"_Antonio._ Nacky, Nacky, Nacky--how dost do, Nacky? Hurry, durry. I am come, little Nacky. Past eleven o'clock, a late hour; time in all conscience to go to bed, Nacky.--Nacky did I say? Ay, Nacky, Aquilina, lina, lina, quilina; Aquilina, Naquilina, Acky, Nacky, queen Nacky.--Come, let's to bed.--You fubbs, you pug you--You little puss.--Purree tuzzy--I am a senator. _Aquilina._ You are a fool, I am sure. _Antonio._ May be so too, sweet-heart. Never the worse senator for all that. Come, Nacky, Nacky; let's have a game at romp, Nacky! ... You won't sit down? Then look you now; suppose me a bull, a Basan-bull, the bull of bulls, or any bull. Thus up I get, and with my brows thus bent--I broo; I say I broo, I broo, I broo. You won't sit down, will you---I broo.... Now, I'll be a senator again, and thy lover, little Nicky, Nacky. Ah, toad, toad, toad, toad, spit in my face a little, Nacky; spit in my face, pry'thee, spit in my face, never so little; spit but a little bit--spit, spit, spit, spit when you are bid, I say; do pry'thee, spit.--Now, now spit. What, you won't spit, will you? Then I'll be a dog. _Aquilina._ A dog, my lord! _Antonio._ Ay a dog, and I'll give thee this t'other purse to let me be a dog--and to use me like a dog a little. Hurry durry, I will--here 'tis. (Gives the purse.)... Now bough waugh waugh, bough, waugh. _Aquilina._ Hold, hold, sir. If curs bite, they must be kicked, sir. Do you see, kicked thus? _Antonio._ Ay, with all my heart. Do, kick, kick on, now I am under the table, kick again--kick harder--harder yet--bough, waugh, waugh, bough.--Odd, I'll have a snap at thy shins.--Bough, waugh, waugh, waugh, bough--odd, she kicks bravely."[429]

At last she takes a whip, thrashes him soundly, and turns him out of the house. He will return, we may be sure of that; he has spent a pleasant evening; he rubs his back, but he was amused. In short, he was but a clown who had missed his vocation, whom chance has given an embroidered silk gown, and who turns out at so much an hour political harlequinades. He feels more natural, more at his ease, playing Punch than aping a statesman.

These are but gleams: for the most part Otway is a poet of his time, dull and forced in color; buried, like the rest, in the heavy, gray, clouded atmosphere, half English and half French, in which the bright lights brought over from France, are snuffed out by the insular fogs. He is a man of his time; dike the rest, he writes obscene comedies, "The Soldier's Fortune, The Atheist, Friendship in Fashion." He depicts coarse and vicious cavaliers, rogues on principle, as harsh and corrupt as those of Wycherley, Beaugard, who vaunts and practises the maxims of Hobbes; the father, an old, corrupt rascal, who brags of his morality, and whom his son coldly sends to the dogs with a bag of crowns: Sir Jolly Jumble, a kind of base Falstaff, a pander by profession, whom the courtesans call "papa, daddy," who, "if he sits but at the table with one, he'll be making nasty figures in the napkins:"[430] Sir Davy Dunce, a disgusting animal, "who has such a breath, one kiss of him were enough to cure the fits of the mother; 'tis worse than assafœtida. Clean linen, he says, is unwholesome...; he is continually eating of garlic, and chewing tobacco";[431] Polydore, who, enamored of his father's ward, tries to force her in the first scene, envies the brutes, and makes up his mind to imitate them on the next occasion.[432] Otway defiles even his heroines.[433] Truly this society sickens us. They thought to cover all their filth with fine correct metaphors, neatly ended poetical periods, a garment of harmonious phrases and noble expressions. They thought to equal Racine by counterfeiting his style. They did not know that in this style the outward elegance conceals an admirable propriety of thought; that if it is a masterpiece of art, it is also a picture of manners; that the most refined and accomplished in society alone could speak and understand it; that it paints a civilization, as Shakespeare's does; that each of these lines, which appear so stiff, has its inflection and artifice; that all passions, and every shade of passions, are expressed in them--not, it is true, wild and entire, as in Shakespeare, but pared down and refined by courtly life; that this is a spectacle as unique as the other; that nature perfectly polished is as complex and as difficult to understand as nature perfectly intact; that as for the dramatists we speak of, they were as far below the one as below the other; and that, in short, their characters are as much like Racine's as the porter of M. de Beauvilliers or the cook of Mme de Sévigné were like Mme de Sévigné or M. de Beauvilliers.[434]