Chapter IV: Part 4

Shall we say here, that Shakespeare has unnecessarily made his loveliest character utter a lie?—Or shall we dare think that, where to deceive was necessary, he thought a pretended verbal verity a double crime, equally with the other a lie to the hearer, and at the same time an attempt to lie to one’s own conscience?

“Merry Wives Of Windsor.”

Act i. sc. 1.—

“_Shal._ The luce is the fresh fish, the salt fish is an old coat.”

I cannot understand this. Perhaps there is a corruption both of words and speakers. Shallow no sooner corrects one mistake of Sir Hugh’s, namely, “louse” for “luce,” a pike, but the honest Welchman falls into another, namely, “cod” (_baccalà_). _Cambrice_—“cot” for coat.

“_Shal._ The luce is the fresh fish—

_Evans._ The salt fish is an old cot.”

“Luce is a fresh fish, and not a louse;” says Shallow. “Aye, aye,” quoth Sir Hugh; “the _fresh_ fish is the luce; it is an old cod that is the salt fish.” At all events, as the text stands, there is no sense at all in the words.

_Ib._ sc. 3—

“_Fal._ Now, the report goes, she has all the rule of her husband’s purse; He hath a legion of angels.

_Pist._ As many devils entertain; and _To her, boy_, say I.”

Perhaps it is—

“As many devils enter (or enter’d) swine; and _to her, boy_, say I:”—

a somewhat profane, but not un-Shakespearian, allusion to the “legion” in St. Luke’s “gospel.”

“Measure For Measure.”

This play, which is Shakespeare’s throughout, is to me the most painful—say rather, the only painful—part of his genuine works. The comic and tragic parts equally border on the μισητὸν,—the one being disgusting, the other horrible; and the pardon and marriage of Angelo not merely baffles the strong indignant claim of justice—(for cruelty, with lust and damnable baseness, cannot be forgiven, because we cannot conceive them as being morally repented of); but it is likewise degrading to the character of woman. Beaumont and Fletcher, who can follow Shakespeare in his errors only, have presented a still worse, because more loathsome and contradictory, instance of the same kind in the _Night-Walker_, in the marriage of Alathe to Algripe. Of the counter-balancing beauties of _Measure for Measure_, I need say nothing; for I have already remarked that the play is Shakespeare’s throughout.

Act iii. sc. 1.—

“Ay, but to die, and go we know not where,” &c.

“This natural fear of Claudio, from the antipathy we have to
death, seems very little varied from that infamous wish of
Mæcenas, recorded in the 101st epistle of Seneca:—

“_Debilem facito manu,_
_Debilem pede, coxa_” &c.—Warburton’s note.

I cannot but think this rather a heroic resolve, than an infamous wish. It appears to me to be the grandest symptom of an immortal spirit, when even that bedimmed and overwhelmed spirit recked not of its own immortality, still to seek to be,—to be a mind, a will.

As fame is to reputation, so heaven is to an estate, or immediate advantage. The difference is, that the self-love of the former cannot exist but by a complete suppression and habitual supplantation of immediate selfishness. In one point of view, the miser is more estimable than the spendthrift;—only that the miser’s present feelings are as much of the present as the spendthrift’s. But _cæteris paribus_, that is, upon the supposition that whatever is good or lovely in the one coexists equally in the other, then, doubtless, the master of the present is less a selfish being, an animal, than he who lives for the moment with no inheritance in the future. Whatever can degrade man, is supposed in the latter case; whatever can elevate him, in the former. And as to self;—strange and generous self! that can only be such a self by a complete divestment of all that men call self,—of all that can make it either practically to others, or consciously to the individual himself, different from the human race in its ideal. Such self is but a perpetual religion, an inalienable acknowledgment of God, the sole basis and ground of being. In this sense, how can I love God, and not love myself, as far as it is of God?

_Ib._ sc. 2.—

“Pattern in himself to know, Grace to stand, and virtue go.”

Worse metre, indeed, but better English would be,—

“Grace to stand, virtue to go.”

“Cymbeline.”

Act i. sc. 1.—

“You do not meet a man, but frowns: our bloods No more obey the heavens, than our courtiers’ Still seem, as does the king’s.”

There can be little doubt of Mr. Tyrwhitt’s emendations of “courtiers” and “king,” as to the sense;—only it is not impossible that Shakespeare’s dramatic language may allow of the word “brows” or “faces” being understood after the word “courtiers’,” which might then remain in the genitive case plural. But the nominative plural makes excellent sense, and is sufficiently elegant, and sounds to my ear Shakespearian. What, however, is meant by “our bloods no more obey the heavens?”—Dr. Johnson’s assertion that “bloods” signify “countenances,” is, I think, mistaken both in the thought conveyed—(for it was never a popular belief that the stars governed men’s countenances)—and in the usage, which requires an antithesis of the blood,—or the temperament of the four humours, choler, melancholy, phlegm, and the red globules, or the sanguine portion, which was supposed not to be in our own power, but to be dependent on the influences of the heavenly bodies,—and the countenances which are in our power really, though from flattery we bring them into a no less apparent dependence on the sovereign, than the former are in actual dependence on the constellations.

I have sometimes thought that the word “courtiers” was a misprint for “countenances,” arising from an anticipation, by foreglance of the compositor’s eye, of the word “courtier” a few lines below. The written _r_ is easily and often confounded with, the written _n_. The compositor read the first syllable _court_, and—his eye at the same time catching the word “courtier” lower down—he completed the word without reconsulting the copy. It is not unlikely that Shakespeare intended first to express, generally, the same thought, which a little afterwards he repeats with a particular application to the persons meant;—a common usage of the pronominal “our,” where the speaker does not really mean to include himself; and the word “you” is an additional confirmation of the “our,” being used in this place for “men” generally and indefinitely,—just as “you do not meet” is the same as “one does not meet.”

Act i. sc. 1 Imogen’s speech:—

... “My dearest husband, I something fear my father’s wrath; but nothing (Always reserved my holy duty) what His rage can do on me;”

Place the emphasis on “me”; for “rage” is a mere repetition of “wrath.”

“_Cym._ O disloyal thing; That should’st repair my youth; thou heapest A year’s age on me!”

How is it that the commentators take no notice of the un-Shakespearian defect in the metre of the second line, and what in Shakespeare is the same, in the harmony with the sense and feeling? Some word or words must have slipped out after “youth,”—possibly “and see”:—

“That should’st repair my youth!—and see, thou heap’st,” &c.

_Ib._ sc. 3. Pisanio’s speech:—

... “For so long As he could make me with _this_ eye or ear Distinguish him from others,” &c.

But “_this_ eye,” in spite of the supposition of its being used δεικτικῶς, is very awkward. I should think that either “or” or “the” was Shakespeare’s word;—

“As he could make me or with eye or ear.”

_Ib._ sc. 6. Iachimo’s speech:—

... “Hath nature given them eyes To see this vaulted arch, and the rich crop Of sea and land, which can distinguish ’twixt The fiery orbs above, and the twinn’d stones Upon the number’d beach.”

I would suggest “cope” for “crop.” As to “twinn’d stones”—may it not be a bold _catachresis_ for muscles, cockles, and other empty shells with hinges, which are truly twinned? I would take Dr. Farmer’s “umber’d,” which I had proposed before I ever heard of its having been already offered by him: but I do not adopt his interpretation of the word, which I think is not derived from _umbra_, a shade, but from _umber_, a dingy yellow-brown soil, which most commonly forms the mass of the sludge on the sea-shore, and on the banks of tide-rivers at low water. One other possible interpretation of this sentence has occurred to me, just barely worth mentioning;—that the “twinn’d stones” are the _augrim_ stones upon the number’d beech,—that is, the astronomical tables of beech-wood.

Act v. sc. 5.—

“_Sooth._ When, as a lion’s whelp,” &c.

It is not easy to conjecture why Shakespeare should have introduced this ludicrous scroll, which answers no one purpose, either propulsive, or explicatory, unless as a joke on etymology.

“Titus Andronicus.”

Act i. sc. 1. Theobald’s note:—

“I never heard it so much as intimated, that he (Shakespeare) had
turned his genius to stage-writing, before he associated with the
players, and became one of their body.”

That Shakespeare never “turned his genius to stage-writing,” as Theobald most _Theobaldice_ phrases it, before he became an actor, is an assertion of about as much authority as the precious story that he left Stratford for deer-stealing, and that he lived by holding gentlemen’s horses at the doors of the theatre, and other trash of that arch-gossip, old Aubrey. The metre is an argument against _Titus Andronicus_ being Shakespeare’s, worth a score such chronological surmises. Yet I incline to think that both in this play and in _Jeronymo_, Shakespeare wrote some passages, and that they are the earliest of his compositions.

Act v. sc. 2. I think it not improbable that the lines from—

“I am not mad; I know thee well enough;

to

So thou destroy Rapine, and Murder there”—

were written by Shakespeare in his earliest period. But instead of the text—

“Revenge, _which makes the foul offenders quake._
_Tit. Art thou_ Revenge? and art thou sent to me?”—

the words in italics ought to be omitted.

“Troilus And Cressida.”

“Mr. Pope (after Dryden) informs us that the story of _Troilus and
Cressida_ was originally the work of one Lollius, a Lombard: but
Dryden goes yet further; he declares it to have been written in
Latin verse, and that Chaucer translated it. _Lollius was a
historiographer of Urbino in Italy._”—Note in Stockdale’s edition,
1807.

“Lollius was a historiographer of Urbino in Italy.” So affirms the notary to whom the Sieur Stockdale committed the _disfaciménto_ of Ayscough’s excellent edition of Shakespeare. Pity that the researchful notary has not either told us in what century, and of what history, he was a writer, or been simply content to depose, that Lollius, if a writer of that name existed at all, was a somewhat somewhere. The notary speaks of the _Troy Boke_ of Lydgate, printed in 1513. I have never seen it; but I deeply regret that Chalmers did not substitute the whole of Lydgate’s works from the MSS. extant, for the almost worthless Gower.

The _Troilus and Cressida_ of Shakespeare can scarcely be classed with his dramas of Greek and Roman history; but it forms an intermediate link between the fictitious Greek and Roman histories, which we may call legendary dramas, and the proper ancient histories,—that is, between the _Pericles_ or _Titus Andronicus_, and the _Coriolanus_ or _Julius Cæsar_. _Cymbeline_ is a _congener_ with _Pericles_, and distinguished from _Lear_ by not having any declared prominent object. But where shall we class the _Timon of Athens_? Perhaps immediately below _Lear_. It is a _Lear_ of the satirical drama; a _Lear_ of domestic or ordinary life;—a local eddy of passion on the high road of society, while all around is the week-day goings on of wind and weather; a _Lear_, therefore, without its soul-searching flashes, its ear-cleaving thunder-claps, its meteoric splendours,—without the contagion and the fearful sympathies of nature, the fates, the furies, the frenzied elements, dancing in and out, now breaking through and scattering,—now hand in hand with,—the fierce or fantastic group of human passions, crimes, and anguishes, reeling on the unsteady ground, in a wild harmony to the shock and the swell of an earthquake. But my present subject was _Troilus and Cressida_; and I suppose that, scarcely knowing what to say of it, I by a cunning of instinct ran off to subjects on which I should find it difficult not to say too much, though certain after all that I should still leave the better part unsaid, and the gleaning for others richer than my own harvest.

Indeed, there is no one of Shakespeare’s plays harder to characterise. The name and the remembrances connected with it, prepare us for the representation of attachment no less faithful than fervent on the side of the youth, and of sudden and shameless inconstancy on the part of the lady. And this is, indeed, as the gold thread on which the scenes are strung, though often kept out of sight and out of mind by gems of greater value than itself. But as Shakespeare calls forth nothing from the mausoleum of history, or the catacombs of tradition, without giving, or eliciting, some permanent and general interest, and brings forward no subject which he does not moralise or intellectualise,—so here he has drawn in Cressida the portrait of a vehement passion, that, having its true origin and proper cause in warmth of temperament, fastens on, rather than fixes to, some one object by liking and temporary preference.

“There’s language in her eye, her cheek, her lip, Nay, her foot speaks; her wanton spirit looks out At every joint and motive of her body.”

This Shakespeare has contrasted with the profound affection represented in Troilus, and alone worthy the name of love;—affection, passionate indeed,—swoln with the confluence of youthful instincts and youthful fancy, and growing in the radiance of hope newly risen, in short, enlarged by the collective sympathies of nature;—but still having a depth of calmer element in a will stronger than desire, more entire than choice, and which gives permanence to its own act by converting it into faith and duty. Hence, with excellent judgment, and with an excellence higher than mere judgment can give, at the close of the play, when Cressida has sunk into infamy below retrieval and beneath hope, the same will, which had been the substance and the basis of his love, while the restless pleasures and passionate longings, like sea-waves, had tossed but on its surface,—this same moral energy is represented as snatching him aloof from all neighbourhood with her dishonour, from all lingering fondness and languishing regrets, whilst it rushes with him into other and nobler duties, and deepens the channel, which his heroic brother’s death had left empty for its collected flood. Yet another secondary and subordinate purpose Shakespeare has inwoven with his delineation of these two characters,—that of opposing the inferior civilisation, but purer morals, of the Trojans to the refinements, deep policy, but duplicity and sensual corruptions of the Greeks.

To all this, however, so little comparative projection is given,—nay, the masterly group of Agamemnon, Nestor, and Ulysses, and, still more in advance, that of Achilles, Ajax, and Thersites, so manifestly occupying the fore-ground, that the subservience and vassalage of strength and animal courage to intellect and policy seems to be the lesson most often in our poet’s view, and which he has taken little pains to connect with the former more interesting moral impersonated in the titular hero and heroine of the drama. But I am half inclined to believe, that Shakespeare’s main object, or shall I rather say his ruling impulse, was to translate the poetic heroes of paganism into the not less rude, but more intellectually vigorous, and more _featurely_, warriors of Christian chivalry,—and to substantiate the distinct and graceful profiles or outlines of the Homeric epic into the flesh and blood of the romantic drama;—in short, to give a grand history-piece in the robust style of Albert Durer.

The character of Thersites, in particular, well deserves a more careful examination, as the Caliban of demagogic life;—the admirable portrait of intellectual power deserted by all grace, all moral principle, all not momentary impulse;—just wise enough to detect the weak head, and fool enough to provoke the armed fist of his betters;—one whom malcontent Achilles can inveigle from malcontent Ajax, under the one condition, that he shall be called on to do nothing but abuse and slander, and that he shall be allowed to abuse as much and as purulently as he likes, that is, as he can;—in short, a mule,—quarrelsome by the original discord of his nature;—a slave by tenure of his own baseness,—made to bray and be brayed at, to despise and be despicable. “Aye, Sir, but say what you will, he is a very clever fellow, though the best friends will fall out. There was a time when Ajax thought he deserved to have a statue of gold erected to him and handsome Achilles, at the head of the Myrmidons, gave no little credit to his _friend Thersites_!”

Act iv. sc. 5. Speech of Ulysses:—

“O, these encounterers, so glib of tongue, That give a _coasting_ welcome ere it comes”—

Should it be “accosting?” “Accost her, knight, accost!” in the _Twelfth Night_. Yet there sounds a something so Shakespearian in the phrase—“give a coasting welcome” (“coasting” being taken as the epithet and adjective of “welcome”), that had the following words been, “ere _they land_,” instead of “ere it comes,” I should have preferred the interpretation. The sense now is, “that give welcome to a salute ere it comes.”

“Coriolanus.”

This play illustrates the wonderfully philosophic impartiality of Shakespeare’s politics. His own country’s history furnished him with no matter but what was too recent to be devoted to patriotism. Besides, he knew that the instruction of ancient history would seem more dispassionate. In _Coriolanus_ and _Julius Cæsar_, you see Shakespeare’s good-natured laugh at mobs. Compare this with Sir Thomas Brown’s aristocracy of spirit.

Act i. sc. 1. Marcius’ speech:—

... “He that depends Upon your favours, swims with fins of lead, And hews down oaks with rushes. Hang ye! Trust ye?”

I suspect that Shakespeare wrote it transposed!

“Trust ye? Hang ye!”

_Ib._ sc. 10. Speech of Aufidius:—

... “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.— ... My valour (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 sacrifices, Embankments all of fury, shall lift up Their rotten privilege and custom ’gainst My hate to Marcius.”

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 sentiment as this. However, I perceive that in this speech is meant to be contained a prevention of shock at the after-change in Aufidius’s character.

Act ii. sc. 1. Speech of Menenius:—

“The most sovereign prescription in _Galen_,” &c.

Was it without, or in contempt of, historical information that Shakespeare made the contemporaries of Coriolanus quote Cato and Galen? I cannot decide to my own satisfaction.

_Ib._ sc. 3. Speech of Coriolanus:—

“Why in this wolvish toge should I stand hero”

That the gown of the candidate was of whitened wool, we know. Does “wolvish” or “woolvish” mean “made of wool?” If it means “wolfish,” what is the sense?

Act iv. sc. 7. Speech of Aufidius:—

“All places yield to him ere he sits down,” &c.

I have always thought this, in itself so beautiful speech, the least explicable from the mood and full intention of the speaker of any in the whole works of Shakespeare. I cherish the hope that I am mistaken, and that, becoming wiser, I shall discover some profound excellence in that, in which I now appear to detect an imperfection.

“Julius Cæsar.”

Act i. sc. 1.—

“_Mar._ What meanest _thou_ by that? Mend me, thou saucy fellow!”

The speeches of Flavius and Marullus are in blank verse. Wherever regular metre can be rendered truly imitative of character, passion, or personal rank, Shakespeare seldom, if ever, neglects it. Hence this line should be read:—

“What mean’st by that? mend me, thou saucy fellow!”

I say regular metre: for even the prose has in the highest and lowest dramatic personage, a Cobbler or a Hamlet, a rhythm so felicitous and so severally appropriate, as to be a virtual metre.

_Ib._ sc. 2.—

“_Bru._ A soothsayer bids you beware the Ides of March.”

If my ear does not deceive me, the metre of this line was meant to express that sort of mild philosophic contempt, characterising Brutus even in his first casual speech. The line is a trimeter,—each _dipodia_ containing two accented and two unaccented syllables, but variously arranged, as thus:—

u - - u | - u u - | u - u - A soothsayer | bids you beware | the Ides of March.

_Ib._ Speech of Brutus:—

“Set honour in one eye, and death i’ the other, And I will look on _both_ indifferently.”

Warburton would read “death” for “both;” but I prefer the old text. There are here three things, the public good, the individual Brutus’ honour, and his death. The latter two so balanced each other, that he could decide for the first by equipoise; nay—the thought growing—that honour had more weight than death. That Cassius understood it as Warburton, is the beauty of Cassius as contrasted with Brutus.

_Ib._ Cæsar’s speech:—

... “He loves no plays
As thou dost, Antony; he hears no music,” &c.

“This is not a trivial observation, nor does our poet mean barely
by it, that Cassius was not a merry, sprightly man; but that he
had not a due temperament of harmony in his
disposition.”—Theobald’s note.

O Theobald! what a commentator wast thou, when thou would’st affect to understand Shakespeare, instead of contenting thyself with collating the text! The meaning here is too deep for a line ten-fold the length of thine to fathom.

_Ib._ sc. 3. Cæsar’s speech:—

“Be _factious_ for redress of all these griefs; And I will set this foot of mine as far, As who goes farthest.”

I understand it thus: “You have spoken as a conspirator; be so in _fact_, and I will join you. Act on your principles, and realize them in a fact.”

Act ii. sc. 1. Speech of Brutus:—

“It must be by his death; and, for my part, I know no personal cause to spurn at him, But for the general. He would be crown’d: How that might change his nature, there’s the question. ... And, to speak truth of Cæsar, I have not known when his affections sway’d More than his reason. ... So Cæsar may; Then, lest he may, prevent.”

This speech is singular;—at least, I do not at present see into Shakespeare’s motive, his _rationale_, or in what point of view he meant Brutus’ character to appear. For surely—(this, I mean, is what I say to myself, with my present _quantum_ of insight, only modified by my experience in how many instances I have ripened into a perception of beauties, where I had before descried faults;) surely, nothing can seem more discordant with our historical preconceptions of Brutus, or more lowering to the intellect of the Stoico-Platonic tyrannicide, than the tenets here attributed to him—to him, the stern Roman republican; namely,—that he would have no objection to a king, or to Cæsar, a monarch in Rome, would Cæsar but be as good a monarch as he now seems disposed to be! How, too, could Brutus say that he found no personal cause—none in Cæsar’s past conduct as a man? Had he not passed the Rubicon? Had he not entered Rome as a conqueror? Had he not placed his Gauls in the Senate?—Shakespeare, it may be said, has not brought these things forward—True;—and this is just the ground of my perplexity. What character did Shakespeare mean his Brutus to be?

_Ib._ Speech of Brutus:—

“For if thou _path_, thy native semblance on.”

Surely, there need be no scruple in treating this “path” as a mere misprint or mis-script for “put.” In what place does Shakespeare—where does any other writer of the same age—use “path” as a verb for “walk?”

_Ib._ sc. 2. Cæsar’s speech:—

“She dreamt to-night, she saw my _statue_.”

No doubt, it should be _statua_, as in the same age, they more often pronounced “heroes” as a trisyllable than dissyllable. A modern tragic poet would have written,—

“Last night she dreamt that she my statue saw.”

But Shakespeare never avails himself of the supposed license of transposition, merely for the metre. There is always some logic either of thought or passion to justify it.

Act iii. sc. 1. Antony’s speech:—

“Pardon me, Julius—here wast thou bay’d, brave hart: Here didst thou fall; and here thy hunters stand Sign’d in thy spoil, and crimson’d in thy lethe. _O world! thou wast the forest to this hart,_ _And this, indeed, O world! the heart of thee._”

I doubt the genuineness of the last two lines;—not because they are vile; but first, on account of the rhythm, which is not Shakespearian, but just the very tune of some old play, from which the actor might have interpolated them;—and secondly, because they interrupt, not only the sense and connection, but likewise the flow both of the passion, and (what is with me still more decisive) of the Shakespearian link of association. As with many another parenthesis or gloss slipt into the text, we have only to read the passage without it, to see that it never was in it. I venture to say there is no instance in Shakespeare fairly like this. Conceits he has; but they not only rise out of some word in the lines before, but also lead to the thought in the lines following. Here the conceit is a mere alien: Antony forgets an image, when he is even touching it, and then recollects it, when the thought last in his mind must have led him away from it.

Act iv. sc. 3. Speech of Brutus:—

... “What, shall one of us, That struck the foremost man of all this world, But for _supporting robbers_.”

This seemingly strange assertion of Brutus is unhappily verified in the present day. What is an immense army, in which the lust of plunder has quenched all the duties of the citizen, other than a horde of robbers, or differenced only as fiends are from ordinarily reprobate men? Cæsar supported, and was supported by, such as these;—and even so Buonaparte in our days.

I know no part of Shakespeare that more impresses on me the belief of his genius being superhuman, than this scene between Brutus and Cassius. In the Gnostic heresy it might have been credited with less absurdity than most of their dogmas, that the Supreme had employed him to create, previously to his function of representing, characters.

“Antony And Cleopatra.”

Shakespeare can be complimented only by comparison with himself: all other eulogies are either heterogeneous, as when they are in reference to Spenser or Milton; or they are flat truisms, as when he is gravely preferred to Corneille, Racine, or even his own immediate successors, Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger and the rest. The highest praise, or rather form of praise, of this play, which I can offer in my own mind, is the doubt which the perusal always occasions in me, whether the _Antony and Cleopatra_ is not, in all exhibitions of a giant power in its strength and vigour of maturity, a formidable rival of _Macbeth_, _Lear_, _Hamlet_, and _Othello_. _Feliciter audax_ is the motto for its style comparatively with that of Shakespeare’s other works, even as it is the general motto of all his works compared with those of other poets. Be it remembered, too, that this happy valiancy of style is but the representative and result of all the material excellencies so expressed.

This play should be perused in mental contrast with _Romeo and Juliet_;—as the love of passion and appetite opposed to the love of affection and instinct. But the art displayed in the character of Cleopatra is profound; in this, especially, that the sense of criminality in her passion is lessened by our insight into its depth and energy, at the very moment that we cannot but perceive that the passion itself springs out of the habitual craving of a licentious nature, and that it is supported and reinforced by voluntary stimulus and sought-for associations, instead of blossoming out of spontaneous emotion.

Of all Shakespeare’s historical plays, _Antony and Cleopatra_ is by far the most wonderful. There is not one in which he has followed history so minutely, and yet there are few in which he impresses the notion of angelic strength so much;—perhaps none in which he impresses it more strongly. This is greatly owing to the manner in which the fiery force is sustained throughout, and to the numerous momentary flashes of nature counteracting the historic abstraction. As a wonderful specimen of the way in which Shakespeare lives up to the very end of this play, read the last part of the concluding scene. And if you would feel the judgment as well as the genius of Shakespeare in your heart’s core, compare this astonishing drama with Dryden’s _All For Love_.

Act i. sc. 1. Philo’s speech:—

... “His captain’s heart Which in the scuffles of great fights hath burst The buckles on his breast, _reneges_ all temper.”

It should be “reneagues,” or “reniegues,” as “fatigues,” &c.

_Ib._—

“Take but good note, and you shall see in him The triple pillar of the world transform’d Into a strumpet’s _fool_.”

Warburton’s conjecture of “stool” is ingenious, and would be a probable reading, if the scene opening had discovered Antony with Cleopatra on his lap. But, represented as he is walking and jesting with her, “fool” must be the word. Warburton’s objection is shallow, and implies that he confounded the dramatic with the epic style. The “pillar” of a state is so common a metaphor as to have lost the image in the thing meant to be imaged.

_Ib._ sc. 2.—

... “Much is breeding; Which, like the courser’s hair, hath yet but life, And not a serpent’s poison.”

This is so far true to appearance, that a horse-hair, “laid,” as Hollinshed says, “in a pail of water,” will become the supporter of seemingly one worm, though probably of an immense number of small slimy water-lice. The hair will twirl round a finger, and sensibly compress it. It is a common experiment with school boys in Cumberland and Westmoreland.

Act ii. sc. 2. Speech of Enobarbus:—

“Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides, So many _mermaids_, tended her i’ th’ eyes, And made their bends adornings. At the helm A seeming mermaid steers.”

I have the greatest difficulty in believing that Shakespeare wrote the first “mermaids.” He never, I think, would have so weakened by useless anticipation the fine image immediately following. The epithet “seeming” becomes so extremely improper after the whole number had been positively called “so many mermaids.”

“Timon Of Athens.”

Act i. sc. 1.—

“_Tim._ The man is honest.

_Old Ath._ _Therefore he will be_, Timon. His honesty rewards him in itself.”

Warburton’s comment—“If the man be honest, for that reason he will be so in this, and not endeavour at the injustice of gaining my daughter without my consent”—is, like almost all his comments, ingenious in blunder; he can never see any other writer’s thoughts for the mist-working swarm of his own. The meaning of the first line the poet himself explains, or rather unfolds, in the second. “The man is honest!”—“True;—and for that very cause, and with no additional or extrinsic motive, he will be so. No man can be justly called honest, who is not so for honesty’s sake, itself including its own reward.” Note, that “honesty” in Shakespeare’s age retained much of its old dignity, and that contradistinction of the _honestum_ from the _utile_, in which its very essence and definition consist. If it be _honestum_, it cannot depend on the _utile_.

_Ib._ Speech of Apemantus, printed as prose in Theobald’s edition:—

“So, so! aches contract, and starve your supple joints!”

I may remark here the fineness of Shakespeare’s sense of musical period, which would almost by itself have suggested (if the hundred positive proofs had not been extant) that the word “aches” was then _ad libitum_, a dissyllable—_aitches_. For read it “aches,” in this sentence, and I would challenge you to find any period in Shakespeare’s writings with the same musical or, rather dissonant, notation. Try the one, and then the other, by your ear, reading the sentence aloud, first with the word as a dissyllable and then as a monosyllable, and you will feel what I mean.

_Ib._ sc. 2. Cupid’s speech: Warburton’s correction of—

“There taste, touch, all pleas’d from thy table rise”—

into

“Th’ ear, taste, touch, smell,” &c.

This is indeed an excellent emendation.

Act ii. sc. 1. Senator’s speech:—

... “Nor then silenc’d with “Commend me to your master”—_and the cap_ _Plays in the right hand, thus_.”

Either, methinks, “plays” should be “play’d,” or “and” should be changed to “while.” I can certainly understand it as a parenthesis, an interadditive of scorn; but it does not sound to my ear as in Shakespeare’s manner.

_Ib._ sc. 2. Timon’s speech (Theobald):—

“And that unaptness made _you_ minister, Thus to excuse yourself.”

Read _your_;—at least I cannot otherwise understand the line. You made my chance indisposition and occasional inaptness your minister—that is, the ground on which you now excuse yourself. Or, perhaps, no correction is necessary, if we construe “made you” as “did you make;” “and that unaptness did you make help you thus to excuse yourself.” But the former seems more in Shakespeare’s manner, and is less liable to be misunderstood.

Act iii. sc. 3. Servant’s speech:—

“How fairly this lord strives to appear foul!—takes virtuous
copies to be wicked; _like those that under hot, ardent zeal would
set whole realms on fire. Of such a nature is his politic love_.”

This latter clause I grievously suspect to have been an addition of the players, which had hit, and, being constantly applauded, procured a settled occupation in the prompter’s copy. Not that Shakespeare does not elsewhere sneer at the Puritans; but here it is introduced so _nolenter volenter_ (excuse the phrase) by the head and shoulders!—and is besides so much more likely to have been conceived in the age of Charles I.

Act iv. sc. 3. Timon’s speech:—

“Raise me this beggar, and _deny’t_ that lord.”

Warburton reads “denude.”

I cannot see the necessity of this alteration. The editors and commentators are, all of them, ready enough to cry out against Shakespeare’s laxities and licenses of style, forgetting that he is not merely a poet, but a dramatic poet; that, when the head and the heart are swelling with fulness, a man does not ask himself whether he has grammatically arranged, but only whether (the context taken in) he has conveyed his meaning. “Deny” is here clearly equal to “withhold;” and the “it,” quite in the genius of vehement conversation, which a syntaxist explains by ellipses and _subauditurs_ in a Greek or Latin classic, yet triumphs over as ignorances in a contemporary, refers to accidental and artificial rank or elevation, implied in the verb “raise.” Besides, does the word “denude” occur in any writer before, or of, Shakespeare’s age?

“Romeo And Juliet.”

I have previously had occasion to speak at large on the subject of the three unities of time, place, and action, as applied to the drama in the abstract, and to the particular stage for which Shakespeare wrote, as far as he can be said to have written for any stage but that of the universal mind. I hope I have in some measure succeeded in demonstrating that the former two, instead of being rules, were mere inconveniences attached to the local peculiarities of the Athenian drama; that the last alone deserved the name of a principle, and that in the preservation of this unity Shakespeare stood pre-eminent. Yet, instead of unity of action, I should greatly prefer the more appropriate, though scholastic and uncouth, words homogeneity, proportionateness, and totality of interest,—expressions, which involve the distinction, or rather the essential difference, betwixt the shaping skill of mechanical talent, and the creative, productive, life-power of inspired genius. In the former each part is separately conceived, and then by a succeeding act put together;—not as watches are made for wholesale—(for there each part supposes a pre-conception of the whole in some mind),—but more like pictures on a motley screen. Whence arises the harmony that strikes us in the wildest natural landscapes,—in the relative shapes of rocks, the harmony of colours in the heaths, ferns, and lichens, the leaves of the beech and the oak, the stems and rich brown branches of the birch and other mountain trees, varying from verging autumn to returning spring,—compared with the visual effect from the greater number of artificial plantations?—From this, that the natural landscape is effected, as it were, by a single energy modified _ab intra_ in each component part. And as this is the particular excellence of the Shakespearian drama generally, so is it especially characteristic of the _Romeo and Juliet_.

The groundwork of the tale is altogether in family life, and the events of the play have their first origin in family feuds. Filmy as are the eyes of party-spirit, at once dim and truculent, still there is commonly some real or supposed object in view, or principle to be maintained; and though but the twisted wires on the plate of rosin in the preparation for electrical pictures, it is still a guide in some degree, an assimilation to an outline. But in family quarrels, which have proved scarcely less injurious to states, wilfulness, and precipitancy, and passion from mere habit and custom can alone be expected. With his accustomed judgment, Shakespeare has begun by placing before us a lively picture of all the impulses of the play; and, as nature ever presents two sides, one for Heraclitus, and one for Democritus, he has, by way of prelude, shown the laughable absurdity of the evil by the contagion of it reaching the servants who have so little to do with it, but who are under the necessity of letting the superfluity of sensoreal power fly off through the escape-valve of wit-combats, and of quarrelling with weapons of sharper edge, all in humble imitation of their masters. Yet there is a sort of unhired fidelity, an _ourishness_ about all this that makes it rest pleasant on one’s feelings. All the first scene, down to the conclusion of the Prince’s speech, is a motley dance of all ranks and ages to one tune, as if the horn of Huon had been playing behind the scenes.

Benvolio’s speech:—

“Madam, an hour before the worshipp’d sun Peer’d forth the golden window of the east”—

and, far more strikingly, the following speech of old Montague:—

“Many a morning hath he there been seen With tears augmenting the fresh morning dew”—

prove that Shakespeare meant the _Romeo and Juliet_ to approach to a poem, which, and indeed its early date, may be also inferred from the multitude of rhyming couplets throughout. And if we are right, from the internal evidence, in pronouncing this one of Shakespeare’s early dramas, it affords a strong instance of the fineness of his insight into the nature of the passions, that Romeo is introduced already love-bewildered. The necessity of loving creates an object for itself in man and woman; and yet there is a difference in this respect between the sexes, though only to be known by a perception of it. It would have displeased us if Juliet had been represented as already in love, or as fancying herself so;—but no one, I believe, ever experiences any shock at Romeo’s forgetting his Rosaline, who had been a mere name for the yearning of his youthful imagination, and rushing into his passion for Juliet. Rosaline was a mere creation of his fancy; and we should remark the boastful positiveness of Romeo in a love of his own making, which is never shown where love is really near the heart.

“When the devout religion of mine eye Maintains such falsehood, then turn tears to fires!

One fairer than my love! the all-seeing sun Ne’er saw her match, since first the world begun.”

The character of the Nurse is the nearest of any thing in Shakespeare to a direct borrowing from mere observation; and the reason is, that as in infancy and childhood the individual in nature is a representative of a class,—just as in describing one larch tree, you generalise a grove of them,—so it is nearly as much so in old age. The generalisation is done to the poet’s hand. Here you have the garrulity of age strengthened by the feelings of a long-trusted servant, whose sympathy with the mother’s affections gives her privileges and rank in the household; and observe the mode of connection by accidents of time and place, and the childlike fondness of repetition in a second childhood, and also that happy humble, ducking under, yet constant resurgence against, the check of her superiors!—

“Yes, madam!—Yet I cannot choose but laugh,” &c.

In the fourth scene we have Mercutio introduced to us. O! how shall I describe that exquisite ebullience and overflow of youthful life, wafted on over the laughing waves of pleasure and prosperity, as a wanton beauty that distorts the face on which she knows her lover is gazing enraptured, and wrinkles her forehead in the triumph of its smoothness! Wit ever wakeful, fancy busy and procreative as an insect, courage, an easy mind that, without cares of its own, is at once disposed to laugh away those of others, and yet to be interested in them,—these and all congenial qualities, melting into the common _copula_ of them all, the man of rank and the gentleman, with all its excellencies and all its weaknesses, constitute the character of Mercutio!

Act i. sc. 5.—

“_Tyb._ It fits when such a villain is a guest; I’ll not endure him.

_Cap._ He shall be endur’d. What, goodman boy!—I say, he shall:—Go to;— Am I the master here, or you?—Go to. You’ll not endure him!—God shall mend my soul— You’ll make a mutiny among my guests! You will set cock-a-hoop! you’ll be the man!

_Tyb._ Why, uncle, ’tis a shame.

_Cap._ Go to, go to, You are a saucy boy!” &c.

How admirable is the old man’s impetuosity at once contrasting, yet harmonised, with young Tybalt’s quarrelsome violence! But it would be endless to repeat observations of this sort. Every leaf is different on an oak tree; but still we can only say—our tongues defrauding our eyes— “This is another oak-leaf!”

Act ii. sc. 2. The garden scene.

Take notice in this enchanting scene of the contrast of Romeo’s love with his former fancy; and weigh the skill shown in justifying him from his inconstancy by making us feel the difference of his passion. Yet this, too, is a love in, although not merely of, the imagination.

_Ib._—

“_Jul._ Well, do not swear; although I joy in thee, I have no joy in this contract to-night: It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden,” &c.

With love, pure love, there is always an anxiety for the safety of the object, a disinterestedness, by which it is distinguished from the counterfeits of its name. Compare this scene with Act iii. sc. 1 of the _Tempest_. I do not know a more wonderful instance of Shakespeare’s mastery in playing a distinctly rememberable variety on the same remembered air, than in the transporting love confessions of Romeo and Juliet and Ferdinand and Miranda. There seems more passion in the one, and more dignity in the other; yet you feel that the sweet girlish lingering and busy movement of Juliet, and the calmer and more maidenly fondness of Miranda, might easily pass into each other.

_Ib._ sc. 3. The Friar’s speech.

The reverend character of the Friar, like all Shakespeare’s representations of the great professions, is very delightful and tranquillising, yet it is no digression, but immediately necessary to the carrying on of the plot.

_Ib._ sc. 4.—

“_Rom._ Good morrow to you both. What counterfeit did I give you?”
&c.

Compare again Romeo’s half-exerted, and half real, ease of mind with his first manner when in love with Rosaline! His will had come to the clenching point.

_Ib._ sc. 6.—

“_Rom._ Do thou but close our hands with holy words, Then love-devouring death do what he dare, It is enough I may but call her mine.”

The precipitancy, which is the character of the play, is well marked in this short scene of waiting for Juliet’s arrival.

Act iii. sc. 1.—

“_Mer._ No, ’tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church
door; but ’tis enough: ’twill serve: ask for me to-morrow, and you
shall find me a grave man,” &c.

How fine an effect the wit and raillery habitual to Mercutio, even struggling with his pain, give to Romeo’s following speech, and at the same time so completely justifying his passionate revenge on Tybalt!

_Ib._ Benvolio’s speech:—

... “But that he tilts
With piercing steel at bold Mercutio’s breast.”

This small portion of untruth in Benvolio’s narrative is finely conceived.

_Ib._ sc. 2. Juliet’s speech:—

“For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night Whiter than new snow on a raven’s back.”

Indeed the whole of this speech is imagination strained to the highest; and observe the blessed effect on the purity of the mind. What would Dryden have made of it?

_Ib._—

“_Nurse._ Shame come to Romeo.

_Jul._ Blister’d be thy tongue For such a wish!”

Note the Nurse’s mistake of the mind’s audible struggles with itself for its decision _in toto_.

_Ib._ sc. 3. Romeo’s speech:—

“’Tis torture, and not mercy: heaven’s here, Where Juliet lives,” &c.

All deep passions are a sort of atheists, that believe no future.

_Ib._ sc. 5.—

“_Cap._ Soft! take me with you, take me with you, wife—How! will she none?” &c.

A noble scene! Don’t I see it with my own eyes?—Yes! but not with Juliet’s. And observe in Capulet’s last speech in this scene his mistake, as if love’s causes were capable of being generalised.

Act iv. sc. 3. Juliet’s speech.:—

“O, look! methinks I see my cousin’s ghost Seeking out Romeo, that did spit his body Upon a rapier’s point:—Stay, Tybalt, stay!— Romeo, I come! this do I drink to thee.”

Shakespeare provides for the finest decencies. It would have been too bold a thing for a girl of fifteen;—but she swallows the draught in a fit of fright.

_Ib._ sc. 5.—

As the audience know that Juliet is not dead, this scene is, perhaps, excusable. But it is a strong warning to minor dramatists not to introduce at one time many separate characters agitated by one and the same circumstance. It is difficult to understand what effect, whether that of pity or of laughter, Shakespeare meant to produce;—the occasion and the characteristic speeches are so little in harmony! For example, what the Nurse says is excellently suited to the Nurse’s character, but grotesquely unsuited to the occasion.

Act v. sc. 1. Romeo’s speech:—

... “O mischief! thou art swift To enter in the thoughts of desperate men! I do remember an apothecary,” &c.

This famous passage is so beautiful as to be self-justified; yet, in addition, what a fine preparation it is for the tomb scene!

_Ib._ sc. 3. Romeo’s speech:—

“Good gentle youth, tempt not a desperate man, Fly hence and leave me.”

The gentleness of Romeo was shown before, as softened by love; and now it is doubled by love and sorrow and awe of the place where he is.

_Ib._ Romeo’s speech:—--

“How oft when men are at the point of death Have they been merry! which their keepers call A lightning before death. O, how may I Call this a lightning?—--O, my love, my wife!” &c.

Here, here, is the master example how beauty can at once increase and modify passion!

_Ib._ Last scene.

How beautiful is the close! The spring and the winter meet;—winter assumes the character of spring, and spring the sadness of winter.

Shakespeare’s English Historical Plays.

The first form of poetry is the epic, the essence of which may be stated as the successive in events and characters. This must be distinguished from narration, in which there must always be a narrator, from whom the objects represented receive a colouring and a manner;—whereas in the epic, as in the so-called poems of Homer, the whole is completely objective, and the representation is a pure reflection. The next form into which poetry passed was the dramatic;—both forms having a common basis with a certain difference, and that difference not consisting in the dialogue alone. Both are founded on the relation of providence to the human will; and this relation is the universal element, expressed under different points of view according to the difference of religion, and the moral and intellectual cultivation of different nations. In the epic poem fate is represented as overruling the will, and making it instrumental to the accomplishment of its designs:—

... Διὸς τελείετο βονλή

In the drama, the will is exhibited as struggling with fate, a great and beautiful instance and illustration of which is the _Prometheus_ of Æschylus; and the deepest effect is produced when the fate is represented as a higher and intelligent will, and the opposition of the individual as springing from a defect.

In order that a drama may be properly historical, it is necessary that it should be the history of the people to whom it is addressed. In the composition, care must be taken that there appear no dramatic improbability, as the reality is taken for granted. It must, likewise, be poetical;—that only, I mean, must be taken which is the permanent in our nature, which is common, and therefore deeply interesting to all ages. The events themselves are immaterial, otherwise than as the clothing and manifestation of the spirit that is working within. In this mode, the unity resulting from succession is destroyed, but is supplied by a unity of a higher order, which connects the events by reference to the workers, gives a reason for them in the motives, and presents men in their causative character. It takes, therefore, that part of real history which is the least known, and infuses a principle of life and organisation into the naked facts, and makes them all the framework of an animated whole.

In my happier days, while I had yet hope and onward-looking thoughts, I planned an historical drama of King Stephen, in the manner of Shakespeare. Indeed, it would be desirable that some man of dramatic genius should dramatise all those omitted by Shakespeare, as far down as Henry VII. Perkin Warbeck would make a most interesting drama. A few scenes of Marlow’s _Edward II._ might be preserved. After Henry VIII., the events are too well and distinctly known, to be, without plump inverisimilitude, crowded together in one night’s exhibition. Whereas, the history of our ancient kings—the events of the reigns, I mean—are like stars in the sky;—whatever the real interspaces may be, and however great, they seem close to each other. The stars—the events—strike us and remain in our eye, little modified by the difference of dates. An historic drama is, therefore, a collection of events borrowed from history, but connected together in respect of cause and time, poetically and by dramatic fiction. It would be a fine national custom to act such a series of dramatic histories in orderly succession, in the yearly Christmas holidays, and could not but tend to counteract that mock cosmopolitism, which under a positive term really implies nothing but a negation of, or indifference to, the particular love of our country. By its nationality must every nation retain its independence;—I mean a nationality _quoad_ the nation. Better thus;—nationality in each individual, _quoad_ his country, is equal to the sense of individuality _quoad_ himself; but himself as sub-sensuous and central. Patriotism is equal to the sense of individuality reflected from every other individual. There may come a higher virtue in both—just cosmopolitism. But this latter is not possible but by antecedence of the former.