Chapter VII: Part 7

on the entrance of the deeper traitor for whom Cawdor had made way! And here in contrast with Duncan’s “plenteous joys,” Macbeth has nothing but the common-places of loyalty, in which he hides himself with “our duties.” Note the exceeding effort of Macbeth’s addresses to the king, his reasoning on his allegiance, and then especially when a new difficulty, the designation of a successor, suggests a new crime. This, however, seems the first distinct notion, as to the plan of realising his wishes; and here, therefore, with great propriety, Macbeth’s cowardice of his own conscience discloses itself. I always think there is something especially Shakespearian in Duncan’s speeches throughout this scene, such pourings forth, such abandonments, compared with the language of vulgar dramatists, whose characters seem to have made their speeches as the actors learn them.

_Ib:_ Duncan’s speech:—

... “Sons, kinsmen, thanes, And you whose places are the nearest, know, We will establish our estate upon Our eldest Malcolm, whom we name hereafter The Prince of Cumberland: which honour must Not unaccompanied, invest him only; But signs of nobleness, like stars, shall shine On all deservers.”

It is a fancy;—but I can never read this and the following speeches of Macbeth, without involuntarily thinking of the Miltonic Messiah and Satan.

_Ib._ sc. 5. Macbeth is described by Lady Macbeth so as at the same time to reveal her own character. Could he have every thing he wanted, he would rather have it innocently;—ignorant, as alas! how many of us are, that he who wishes a temporal end for itself, does in truth will the means; and hence the danger of indulging fancies.

Lady Macbeth, like all in Shakespeare, is a class individualised:—of high rank, left much alone, and feeding herself with day-dreams of ambition, she mistakes the courage of fantasy for the power of bearing the consequences of the realities of guilt. His is the mock fortitude of a mind deluded by ambition; she shames her husband with a superhuman audacity of fancy which she cannot support, but sinks in the season of remorse, and dies in suicidal agony. Her speech:—

... “Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,” &c.—

is that of one who had habitually familiarised her imagination to dreadful conceptions, and was trying to do so still more. Her invocations and requisitions are all the false efforts of a mind accustomed only hitherto to the shadows of the imagination, vivid enough to throw the every-day substances of life into shadow, but never as yet brought into direct contact with their own correspondent realities. She evinces no womanly life, no wifely joy, at the return of her husband, no pleased terror at the thought of his past dangers, whilst Macbeth bursts forth naturally—

“My dearest love”—

and shrinks from the boldness with which she presents his own thoughts to him. With consummate art she at first uses as incentives the very circumstances, Duncan’s coming to their house, &c., which Macbeth’s conscience would most probably have adduced to her as motives of abhorrence or repulsion. Yet Macbeth is not prepared:—

“We will speak further.”

_Ib._ sc. 6. The lyrical movement with which this scene opens, and the free and unengaged mind of Banquo, loving nature, and rewarded in the love itself, form a highly dramatic contrast with the laboured rhythm and hypocritical over-much of Lady Macbeth’s welcome, in which you cannot detect a ray of personal feeling, but all is thrown upon the “dignities,” the general duty.

_Ib._ sc. 7. Macbeth’s speech:—

“We will proceed no further in this business: He hath honour’d me of late; and I have bought Golden opinions from all sorts of people, Which would be worn now in their newest gloss, Not cast aside so soon.”

Note the inward pangs and warnings of conscience interpreted into prudential reasonings.

Act ii. sc. 1. Banquo’s speech:—

“A heavy summons lies like lead upon me, And yet I would not sleep. Merciful powers! Restrain in me the cursed thoughts, that nature Gives way to in repose.”

The disturbance of an innocent soul by painful suspicions of another’s guilty intentions and wishes, and fear of the cursed thoughts of sensual nature.

_Ib._ sc. 2. Now that the deed is done or doing—now that the first reality commences, Lady Macbeth shrinks. The most simple sound strikes terror, the most natural consequences are horrible, whilst previously every thing, however awful, appeared a mere trifle; conscience, which before had been hidden to Macbeth in selfish and prudential fears, now rushes in upon him in her own veritable person:—

“Methought I heard a voice cry—Sleep no more! I could not say Amen, When they did say, God bless us!”

And see the novelty given to the most familiar images by a new state of feeling.

_Ib._ sc. 3. This low soliloquy of the Porter and his few speeches afterwards, I believe to have been written for the mob by some other hand, perhaps with Shakespeare’s consent; and that finding it take, he with the remaining ink of a pen otherwise employed, just interpolated the words—

“I’ll devil-porter it no further: I had thought to have let in
some of all professions, that go the primrose way to the
everlasting bonfire.”

Of the rest not one syllable has the ever-present being of Shakespeare.

Act iii. sc. 1. Compare Macbeth’s mode of working on the murderers in this place with Schiller’s mistaken scene between Butler, Devereux, and Macdonald in _Wallenstein_.—(Part II. act iv. sc. 2.) The comic was wholly out of season. Shakespeare never introduces it, but when it may react on the tragedy by harmonious contrast.

_Ib._ sc. 2. Macbeth’s speech:—

“But let the frame of things disjoint, both the worlds suffer, Ere we will eat our meal in fear, and sleep In the affliction of these terrible dreams That shake us nightly.”

Ever and ever mistaking the anguish of conscience for fears of selfishness, and thus as a punishment of that selfishness, plunging still deeper in guilt and ruin.

_Ib._ Macbeth’s speech:—

“Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck, Till thou applaud the deed.”

This is Macbeth’s sympathy with his own feelings, and his mistaking his wife’s opposite state.

_Ib._ sc. 4.—

“_Macb._ It will have blood; they say, blood will have blood: Stones have been known to move, and trees to speak; Augurs, and understood relations, have By magot-pies, and choughs, and rooks, brought forth The secret’st man of blood.”

The deed is done; but Macbeth receives no comfort, no additional security. He has by guilt torn himself live-asunder from nature, and is, therefore, himself in a preternatural state: no wonder, then, that he is inclined to superstition, and faith in the unknown of signs and tokens, and super-human agencies.

Act iv. sc. 1.—

“_Len._ ’Tis two or three, my lord, that bring you word Macduff is fled to England.

_Macb._ Fled to England!”

The acme of the avenging conscience.

_Ib._ sc. 2. This scene, dreadful as it is, is still a relief, because a variety, because domestic, and therefore soothing, as associated with the only real pleasures of life. The conversation between Lady Macduff and her child heightens the pathos, and is preparatory for the deep tragedy of their assassination. Shakespeare’s fondness for children is everywhere shown;—in Prince Arthur, in _King John_; in the sweet scene in the _Winter’s Tale_ between Hermione and her son; nay, even in honest Evans’s examination of Mrs. Page’s schoolboy. To the objection that Shakespeare wounds the moral sense by the unsubdued, undisguised description of the most hateful atrocity—that he tears the feelings without mercy, and even outrages the eye itself with scenes of insupportable horror—I, omitting _Titus Andronicus_, as not genuine, and excepting the scene of Gloster’s blinding in _Lear_, answer boldly in the name of Shakespeare, not guilty.

_Ib._ sc. 3. Malcolm’s speech:—

... “Better Macbeth,
Than such an one to reign.”

The moral is—the dreadful effects even on the best minds of the soul-sickening sense of insecurity.

_Ib._ How admirably Macduff’s grief is in harmony with the whole play! It rends, not dissolves, the heart. “The tune of it goes manly.” Thus is Shakespeare always master of himself and of his subject,—a genuine Proteus:—we see all things in him, as images in a calm lake, most distinct, most accurate,—only more splendid, more glorified. This is correctness in the only philosophical sense. But he requires your sympathy and your submission; you must have that recipiency of moral impression without which the purposes and ends of the drama would be frustrated, and the absence of which demonstrates an utter want of all imagination, a deadness to that necessary pleasure of being innocently—shall I say, deluded?—or rather, drawn away from ourselves to the music of noblest thought in harmonious sounds. Happy he, who not only in the public theatre, but in the labours of a profession, and round the light of his own hearth, still carries a heart so pleasure-fraught!

Alas for Macbeth! now all is inward with him; he has no more prudential prospective reasonings. His wife, the only being who could have had any seat in his affections, dies; he puts on despondency, the final heart-armour of the wretched, and would fain think every thing shadowy and unsubstantial, as indeed all things are to those who cannot regard them as symbols of goodness:—

“Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow; a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more; it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.”

“Winter’s Tale.”

Although, on the whole, this play is exquisitely respondent to its title, and even in the fault I am about to mention, still a winter’s tale; yet it seems a mere indolence of the great bard not to have provided in the oracular response (Act ii. sc. 2.) some ground for Hermione’s seeming death and fifteen years’ voluntary concealment. This might have been easily effected by some obscure sentence of the oracle, as for example:—

“ ‘Nor shall he ever recover an heir, if he have a wife before
that recovery.’ ”

The idea of this delightful drama is a genuine jealousy of disposition, and it should be immediately followed by the perusal of _Othello_, which is the direct contrast of it in every particular. For jealousy is a vice of the mind, a culpable tendency of the temper, having certain well-known and well-defined effects and concomitants, all of which are visible in Leontes, and, I boldly say, not one of which marks its presence in Othello;—such as, first, an excitability by the most inadequate causes, and an eagerness to snatch at proofs; secondly, a grossness of conception, and a disposition to degrade the object of the passion by sensual fancies and images; thirdly, a sense of shame of his own feelings exhibited in a solitary moodiness of humour, and yet from the violence of the passion forced to utter itself, and therefore catching occasions to ease the mind by ambiguities, equivoques, by talking to those who cannot, and who are known not to be able to, understand what is said to them,—in short, by soliloquy in the form of dialogue, and hence a confused, broken, and fragmentary, manner; fourthly, a dread of vulgar ridicule, as distinct from a high sense of honour, or a mistaken sense of duty; and lastly, and immediately, consequent on this, a spirit of selfish vindictiveness.

Act i. sc. 1, 2.—

Observe the easy style of chitchat between Camillo and Archidamus as contrasted with the elevated diction on the introduction of the kings and Hermione in the second scene: and how admirably Polixenes’ obstinate refusal to Leontes to stay,—

“There is no tongue that moves; none, none i’ the world So soon as yours, could win me;”—

prepares for the effect produced by his afterwards yielding to Hermione;—which is, nevertheless, perfectly natural from mere courtesy of sex, and the exhaustion of the will by former efforts of denial, and well calculated to set in nascent action the jealousy of Leontes. This, when once excited, is unconsciously increased by Hermione,—

... “Yet, good deed, Leontes, I love thee not a jar o’ the clock behind What lady she her lord;”—

accompanied, as a good actress ought to represent it, by an expression and recoil of apprehension that she had gone too far.

“At my request, he would not:”—

The first working of the jealous fit;—

“Too hot, too hot:”—

The morbid tendency of Leontes to lay hold of the merest trifles, and his grossness immediately afterwards,—

“Paddling palms and pinching fingers;”—

followed by his strange loss of self-control in his dialogue with the little boy.

Act iii. sc. 2. Paulina’s speech:—

“That thou betray’dst Polixenes, ’twas nothing; That did but show thee, of a _fool_, inconstant, And damnable ingrateful.”

Theobald reads “soul.”

I think the original word is Shakespeare’s. 1. My ear feels it to be Shakespearian; 2. The involved grammar is Shakespearian—“show thee, being a fool naturally, to have improved thy folly by inconstancy;” 3. The alteration is most flat, and un-Shakespearian. As to the grossness of the abuse—she calls him “gross and foolish” a few lines below.

Act iv. sc. 3. Speech of Autolycus:—

“For the life to come, I sleep out the thought of it.”

Fine as this is, and delicately characteristic of one who had lived and been reared in the best society, and had been precipitated from it by dice and drabbing; yet still it strikes against my feelings as a note out of tune, and as not coalescing with that pastoral tint which gives such a charm to this act. It is too Macbeth-like in the “snapper up of unconsidered trifles.”

_Ib._ sc. 4. Perdita’s speech:—

“From Dis’s waggon! daffodils.”

An epithet is wanted here, not merely or chiefly for the metre, but for the balance, for the æsthetic logic. Perhaps “golden” was the word which would set off the “violets dim.”

_Ib._—

... “Pale primroses
That die unmarried.”

Milton’s—

“And the rathe primrose that forsaken dies.”

_Ib._ Perdita’s speech:—

“Even here undone: I was not much afraid; for once or twice I was about to speak, and tell him plainly, The self-same sun, that shines upon his court, Hides not his visage from our cottage, but Looks on alike. Will’t please you, Sir, be gone! (_To Florizel._) I told you, what would come of this. Beseech you, Of your own state take care: this dream of mine, Being now awake, I’ll queen it no inch farther, But milk my ewes, and weep.”

O how more than exquisite is this whole speech! And that profound nature of noble pride and grief venting themselves in a momentary peevishness of resentment toward Florizel:—

... “Will’t please you, Sir, be gone!”

_Ib._ Speech of Autolycus:—

“Let me have no lying; it becomes none but tradesmen, and they
often give us soldiers the lie; but we pay them for it with
stamped coin, not stabbing steel;—therefore they do not _give_ us
the lie.”

As we _pay_ them, they, therefore, do not _give_ it us.

“Othello.”

Act i. sc. 1.—

Admirable is the preparation, so truly and peculiarly Shakespearian, in the introduction of Roderigo, as the dupe on whom Iago shall first exercise his art, and in so doing display his own character. Roderigo, without any fixed principle, but not without the moral notions and sympathies with honour, which his rank and connections had hung upon him, is already well fitted and predisposed for the purpose; for very want of character and strength of passion, like wind loudest in an empty house, constitute his character. The first three lines happily state the nature and foundation of the friendship between him and Iago,—the purse,—as also the contrast of Roderigo’s intemperance of mind with Iago’s coolness,—the coolness of a preconceiving experimenter. The mere language of protestation,—

“If ever I did dream of such a matter, abhor me,”—

which, falling in with the associative link, determines Roderigo’s continuation of complaint,—

“Thou told’st me, thou didst hold him in thy hate,”—

elicits at length a true feeling of Iago’s mind, the dread of contempt habitual to those who encourage in themselves, and have their keenest pleasure in, the expression of contempt for others. Observe Iago’s high self-opinion, and the moral, that a wicked man will employ real feelings, as well as assume those most alien from his own, as instruments of his purposes:—

“And, by the faith of man,
I know my price, I am worth no worse a place.”

I think Tyrwhitt’s reading of “life” for “wife”—

“A fellow almost damn’d in a fair _wife_”—

the true one, as fitting to Iago’s contempt for whatever did not display power, and that intellectual power. In what follows, let the reader feel how by and through the glass of two passions, disappointed vanity and envy, the very vices of which he is complaining, are made to act upon him as if they were so many excellences, and the more appropriately, because cunning is always admired and wished for by minds conscious of inward weakness;—but they act only by half, like music on an inattentive auditor, swelling the thoughts which prevent him from listening to it.

_Ib._—

“_Rod._ What a full fortune does the _thick-lips_ owe, If he can carry ’t thus.”

Roderigo turns off to Othello; and here comes one, if not the only, seeming justification of our blackamoor or negro Othello. Even if we supposed this an uninterrupted tradition of the theatre, and that Shakespeare himself, from want of scenes, and the experience that nothing could be made too marked for the senses of his audience, had practically sanctioned it,—would this prove aught concerning his own intention as a poet for all ages? Can we imagine him so utterly ignorant as to make a barbarous negro plead royal birth,—at a time, too, when negroes were not known except as slaves? As for Iago’s language to Brabantio, it implies merely that Othello was a Moor,—that is, black. Though I think the rivalry of Roderigo sufficient to account for his wilful confusion of Moor and Negro,—yet, even if compelled to give this up, I should think it only adapted for the acting of the day, and should complain of an enormity built on a single word, in direct contradiction to Iago’s “Barbary horse.” Besides, if we could in good earnest believe Shakespeare ignorant of the distinction, still why should we adopt one disagreeable possibility instead of a ten times greater and more pleasing probability? It is a common error to mistake the epithets applied by the _dramatis personæ_ to each other, as truly descriptive of what the audience ought to see or know. No doubt Desdemona saw Othello’s visage in his mind; yet, as we are constituted, and most surely as an English audience was disposed in the beginning of the seventeenth century, it would be something monstrous to conceive this beautiful Venetian girl falling in love with a veritable negro. It would argue a disproportionateness, a want of balance, in Desdemona, which Shakespeare does not appear to have in the least contemplated.

_Ib._ Brabantio’s speech:—

“This accident is not unlike my dream.”

The old careful senator, being caught careless, transfers his caution to his dreaming power at least.

_Ib._ Iago’s speech:—

... “For their souls, Another of his fathom they have not, To lead their business.”

The forced praise of Othello, followed by the bitter hatred of him in this speech! And observe how Brabantio’s dream prepares for his recurrence to the notion of philtres, and how both prepare for carrying on the plot of the arraignment of Othello on this ground.

_Ib._ sc. 2.—

“_Oth._ ’Tis better as it is.”

How well these few words impress at the outset the truth of Othello’s own character of himself at the end—“that he was not easily wrought!” His self-government contradistinguishes him throughout from Leontes.

_Ib._ Othello’s speech:—

... “And my demerits
May speak, _unbonneted_.”

The argument in Theobald’s note, where “and bonneted” is suggested, goes on the assumption that Shakespeare could not use the same word differently in different places; whereas I should conclude, that as in the passage in _Lear_ the word is employed in its direct meaning, so here it is used metaphorically; and this is confirmed by what has escaped the editors, that it is not “I,” but “my demerits” that may speak unbonneted,—without the symbol of a petitioning inferior.

_Ib._ sc. 3. Othello’s speech:—

“So please your grace, my ancient; A man he is of honesty and trust: To his conveyance I assign my wife.”

Compare this with the behaviour of Leontes to his true friend Camillo.

_Ib._—

“_Bra._ Look to her, Moor; if thou hast eyes to see; She has deceived her father, and may thee.

_Oth._ My life upon her faith.”

In real life, how do we look back to little speeches as presentimental of, or contrasted with, an affecting event! Even so, Shakespeare, as secure of being read over and over, of becoming a family friend, provides this passage for his readers, and leaves it to them.

_Ib._ Iago’s speech:—

“Virtue? a fig! ’tis in ourselves, that we are thus, or thus,” &c.

This speech comprises the passionless character of Iago. It is all will in intellect; and therefore he is here a bold partizan of a truth, but yet of a truth converted into a falsehood by the absence of all the necessary modifications caused by the frail nature of man. And then comes the last sentiment:—

“Our raging motions, our carnal stings, our unbitted lusts,
whereof I take this, that you call—love, to be a sect or scion!”

Here is the true Iagoism of, alas! how many! Note Iago’s pride of mastery in the repetition of “Go, make money!” to his anticipated dupe, even stronger than his love of lucre: and when Roderigo is completely won,—

“I am chang’d. I’ll go sell all my land,”—

when the effect has been fully produced, the repetition of triumph:—

“Go to; farewell; put money enough in your purse!”

The remainder—Iago’s soliloquy—the motive-hunting of a motiveless malignity—how awful it is! Yea, whilst he is still allowed to bear the divine image, it is too fiendish for his own steady view,—for the lonely gaze of a being next to devil, and only not quite devil,—and yet a character which Shakespeare has attempted and executed, without disgust and without scandal!

Dr. Johnson has remarked that little or nothing is wanting to render the _Othello_ a regular tragedy, but to have opened the play with the arrival of Othello in Cyprus, and to have thrown the preceding act into the form of narration. Here then is the place to determine whether such a change would or would not be an improvement;—nay (to throw down the glove with a full challenge), whether the tragedy would or not by such an arrangement become more regular,—that is, more consonant with the rules dictated by universal reason, on the true common-sense of mankind, in its application to the particular case. For in all acts of judgment, it can never be too often recollected, and scarcely too often repeated, that rules are means to ends, and, consequently, that the end must be determined and understood before it can be known what the rules are or ought to be. Now, from a certain species of drama, proposing to itself the accomplishment of certain ends,—these partly arising from the idea of the species itself, but in part, likewise, forced upon the dramatist by accidental circumstances beyond his power to remove or control,—three rules have been abstracted;—in other words, the means most conducive to the attainment of the proposed ends have been generalised, and prescribed under the names of the three unities,—the unity of time, the unity of place, and the unity of action—which last would, perhaps, have been as appropriately, as well as more intelligibly, entitled the unity of interest. With this last the present question has no immediate concern: in fact, its conjunction with the former two is a mere delusion of words. It is not properly a rule, but in itself the great end not only of the drama, but of the epic poem, the lyric ode, of all poetry, down to the candle-flame cone of an epigram,—nay, of poesy in general, as the proper generic term inclusive of all the fine arts as its species. But of the unities of time and place, which alone are entitled to the name of rules, the history of their origin will be their best criterion. You might take the Greek chorus to a place, but you could not bring a place to them without as palpable an equivoque as bringing Birnam wood to Macbeth at Dunsinane. It was the same, though in a less degree, with regard to the unity of time:—the positive fact, not for a moment removed from the senses, the presence, I mean, of the same identical chorus, was a continued measure of time;—and although the imagination may supersede perception, yet it must be granted to be an imperfection—however easily tolerated—to place the two in broad contradiction to each other. In truth, it is a mere accident of terms; for the Trilogy of the Greek theatre was a drama in three acts, and notwithstanding this, what strange contrivances as to place there are in the Aristophanic Frogs. Besides, if the law of mere actual perception is once violated—as it repeatedly is, even in the Greek tragedies—why is it more difficult to imagine three hours to be three years than to be a whole day and night?

Act ii. sc. 1.—

Observe in how many ways Othello is made, first, our acquaintance, then our friend, then the object of our anxiety, before the deeper interest is to be approached!

_Ib._—

“_Mont._ But, good lieutenant, is your general wived?

_Cas._ Most fortunately: he hath achieved a maid That paragons description, and wild fame; One that excels the quirks of blazoning pens, And, in the essential vesture of creation, Does tire the ingener.”

Here is Cassio’s warm-hearted, yet perfectly disengaged, praise of Desdemona, and sympathy with the “most fortunately” wived Othello;—and yet Cassio is an enthusiastic admirer, almost a worshipper, of Desdemona. Oh, that detestable code that excellence cannot be loved in any form that is female, but it must needs be selfish! Observe Othello’s “honest” and Cassio’s “bold” Iago, and Cassio’s full guileless-hearted wishes for the safety and love-raptures of Othello and “the divine Desdemona.” And also note the exquisite circumstance of Cassio’s kissing Iago’s wife, as if it ought to be impossible that the dullest auditor should not feel Cassio’s religious love of Desdemona’s purity. Iago’s answers are the sneers which a proud bad intellect feels towards women, and expresses to a wife. Surely it ought to be considered a very exalted compliment to women, that all the sarcasms on them in Shakespeare are put in the mouths of villains.

_Ib._—

“_Des._ I am not merry; but I do beguile,” &c.

The struggle of courtesy in Desdemona to abstract her attention.

_Ib._—

“(_Iago aside_). He takes her by the palm: Ay, well said, whisper;
with as little a web as this, will I ensnare as great a fly as
Cassio. Ay, smile upon her, do,” &c.

The importance given to trifles, and made fertile by the villany of the observer.

_Ib._ Iago’s dialogue with Roderigo.

This is the rehearsal on the dupe of the traitor’s intentions on Othello.

_Ib._ Iago’s soliloquy:—

“But partly led to diet my revenge, For that I do suspect the lusty Moor Hath leap’d into my seat.”

This thought, originally by Iago’s own confession a mere suspicion, is now ripening, and gnaws his base nature as his own “poisonous mineral” is about to gnaw the noble heart of his general.

_Ib._ sc. 3. Othello’s speech:—

“I know, Iago, Thy honesty and love doth mince this matter, Making it light to Cassio.”

Honesty and love! Ay, and who but the reader of the play could think otherwise?

_Ib._ Iago’s soliloquy:—

“And what’s he then that says—I play the villain? When this advice is free I give, and honest, Provable to thinking, and, indeed, the course To win the Moor again.”

He is not, you see, an absolute fiend; or, at least, he wishes to think himself not so.

Act iii. sc. 3.—

“_Des._ Before Æmilia here, I give thee warrant of thy place.”

The over-zeal of innocence in Desdemona.

_Ib._—

“_Enter Desdemona and Æmilia._

_Oth._ If she be false, O, then, heaven mocks itself! I’ll not believe’t.”

Divine! The effect of innocence and the better genius!

Act iv. sc. 3.—

“_Æmil._ Why, the wrong is but a wrong i’ the world; and having the world for your labour, ’tis a wrong in your own world, and you might quickly make it right.”

Warburton’s note.

What any other man, who had learning enough, might have quoted as a playful and witty illustration of his remarks against the Calvinistic _thesis_, Warburton gravely attributes to Shakespeare as intentional; and this, too, in the mouth of a lady’s woman!

Act v. last scene. Othello’s speech:—

... “Of one, whose hand, Like the base _Indian_, threw a pearl away Richer than all his tribe,” &c.

Theobald’s note from Warburton.

Thus it is for no-poets to comment on the greatest of poets! To make Othello say that he, who had killed his wife, was like Herod who killed Mariamne!—O, how many beauties, in this one line, were impenetrable to the ever thought-swarming, but idealess, Warburton! Othello wishes to excuse himself on the score of ignorance, and yet not to excuse himself,—to excuse himself by accusing. This struggle of feeling is finely conveyed in the word “base,” which is applied to the rude Indian, not in his own character, but as the momentary representative of Othello’s. “Indian”—for I retain the old reading—means American, a savage _in genere_.

Finally, let me repeat that Othello does not kill Desdemona in jealousy, but in a conviction forced upon him by the almost superhuman art of Iago, such a conviction as any man would and must have entertained who had believed Iago’s honesty as Othello did. We, the audience, know that Iago is a villain, from the beginning; but in considering the essence of the Shakespearian Othello, we must perseveringly place ourselves in his situation, and under his circumstances. Then we shall immediately feel the fundamental difference between the solemn agony of the noble Moor, and the wretched fishing jealousies of Leontes, and the morbid suspiciousness of Leonatus, who is, in other respects, a fine character. Othello had no life but in Desdemona:—the belief that she, his angel, had fallen from the heaven of her native innocence, wrought a civil war in his heart. She is his counterpart; and, like him, is almost sanctified in our eyes by her absolute unsuspiciousness, and holy entireness of love. As the curtain drops, which do we pity the most?

_Extremum hunc_——. There are three powers:—Wit, which discovers partial likeness hidden in general diversity; subtlety, which discovers the diversity concealed in general apparent sameness;—and profundity, which discovers an essential unity under all the semblances of difference.

Give to a subtle man fancy, and he is a wit; to a deep man imagination, and he is a philosopher. Add, again, pleasurable sensibility in the threefold form of sympathy with the interesting in morals, the impressive in form, and the harmonious in sound,—and you have the poet.

But combine all,—wit, subtlety, and fancy, with profundity, imagination, and moral and physical susceptibility of the pleasurable,—and let the object of action be man universal; and we shall have—O, rash prophecy! say, rather, we have—a SHAKESPEARE!

NOTES ON BEN JONSON.

It would be amusing to collect out of our dramatists from Elizabeth to Charles I. proofs of the manners of the times. One striking symptom of general coarseness of manners, which may co-exist with great refinement of morals, as, alas! _vice versa_, is to be seen in the very frequent allusions to the olfactories with their most disgusting stimulants, and these, too, in the conversation of virtuous ladies. This would not appear so strange to one who had been on terms of familiarity with Sicilian and Italian women of rank: and bad as they may, too many of them, actually be, yet I doubt not that the extreme grossness of their language has impressed many an Englishman of the present era with far darker notions than the same language would have produced in the mind of one of Elizabeth’s or James’s courtiers. Those who have read Shakespeare only, complain of occasional grossness in his plays; but compare him with his contemporaries, and the inevitable conviction, is that of the exquisite purity of his imagination.

The observation I have prefixed to the _Volpone_ is the key to the faint interest which these noble efforts of intellectual power excite, with the exception of the fragment of the _Sad Shepherd_; because in that piece only is there any character with whom you can morally sympathise. On the other hand, _Measure for Measure_ is the only play of Shakespeare’s in which there are not some one or more characters, generally many, whom you follow with affectionate feeling. For I confess that Isabella, of all Shakespeare’s female characters, pleases me the least; and _Measure for Measure_ is, indeed, the only one of his genuine works, which is painful to me.

Let me not conclude this remark, however, without a thankful acknowledgment to the _manes_ of Ben Jonson, that the more I study his writings, I the more admire them; and the more my study of him resembles that of an ancient classic, in the _minutiæ_ of his rhythm, metre, choice of words, forms of connection, and so forth, the more numerous have the points of my admiration become. I may add, too, that both the study and the admiration cannot but be disinterested, for to expect therefrom any advantage to the present drama would be ignorance. The latter is utterly heterogeneous from the drama of the Shakespearian age, with a diverse object and contrary principle. The one was to present a model by imitation of real life, taking from real life all that in it which it ought to be, and supplying the rest;—the other is to copy what is, and as it is,—at best a tolerable but most frequently a blundering, copy. In the former the difference was an essential element; in the latter an involuntary defect. We should think it strange, if a tale in dance were announced, and the actors did not dance at all;—and yet such is modern comedy.

Whalley’s Preface.

“But Jonson was soon sensible, how inconsistent this medley of
names and manners was in reason and nature; and with how little
propriety it could ever have a place in a legitimate and just
picture of real life.”

But did Jonson reflect that the very essence of a play, the very language in which it is written, is a fiction to which all the parts must conform? Surely, Greek manners in English should be a still grosser improbability than a Greek name transferred to English manners. Ben’s _personæ_ are too often not characters, but derangements;—the hopeless patients of a mad-doctor rather,—exhibitions of folly betraying itself in spite of exciting reason and prudence. He not poetically, but painfully exaggerates every trait; that is, not by the drollery of the circumstance, but by the excess of the originating feeling.

“But to this we might reply, that far from being thought to build
his characters upon abstract ideas, he was really accused of
representing particular persons then existing; and that even those
characters which appear to be the most exaggerated, are said to
have had their respective archetypes in nature and life.”

This degrades Jonson into a libeller, instead of justifying him as a dramatic poet. _Non quod verum est, sed quod verisimile_, is the dramatist’s rule. At all events, the poet who chooses transitory manners, ought to content himself with transitory praise. If his object be reputation, he ought not to expect fame. The utmost he can look forwards to, is to be quoted by, and to enliven the writings of, an antiquarian. Pistol, Nym, and _id genus omne_, do not please us as characters, but are endured as fantastic creations, foils to the native wit of Falstaff.—I say wit emphatically; for this character so often extolled as the masterpiece of humour, neither contains, nor was meant to contain, any humour at all.

“Whalley’s ‘Life Of Jonson.’ ”

“It is to the honour of Jonson’s judgment, that _the greatest poet
of our nation_ had the same opinion of Donne’s genius and wit; and
hath preserved part of him from perishing, by putting his thoughts
and satire into modern verse.”

_Videlicet_ Pope!—

“He said further to Drummond, Shakespeare wanted art, and
sometimes sense; for in one of his plays he brought in a number of
men, saying they had suffered shipwreck in Bohemia, where is no
sea near by a hundred miles.”

I have often thought Shakespeare justified in this seeming anachronism. In Pagan times a single name of a German kingdom might well be supposed to comprise a hundred miles more than at present. The truth is, these notes of Drummond’s are more disgraceful to himself than to Jonson. It would be easy to conjecture how grossly Jonson must have been misunderstood, and what he had said in jest, as of Hippocrates, interpreted in earnest. But this is characteristic of a Scotchman; he has no notion of a jest, unless you tell him—“This is a joke!”—and still less of that finer shade of feeling, the half-and-half, in which Englishmen naturally delight.

“Every Man Out Of His Humour.”

Epilogue.—

“The throat of war be stopt within her land, And _turtle-footed_ peace dance fairie rings About her court.”

“Turtle-footed” is a pretty word, a very pretty word: pray, what does it mean? Doves, I presume, are not dancers; and the other sort of turtle, land or sea, green-fat or hawksbill, would, I should suppose, succeed better in slow minuets than in the brisk rondillo. In one sense, to be sure, pigeons and ring-doves could not dance but with _éclat_—_a claw_!

“Poetaster.”

Introduction.—

“Light! I salute thee, but with wounded nerves, Wishing thy golden splendour pitchy darkness.”

There is no reason to suppose Satan’s address to the sun in the _Paradise Lost_, more than a mere coincidence with these lines; but were it otherwise, it would be a fine instance what usurious interest a great genius pays in borrowing. It would not be difficult to give a detailed psychological proof from these constant outbursts of anxious self-assertion, that Jonson was not a genius, a creative power. Subtract that one thing, and you may safely accumulate on his name all other excellences of a capacious, vigorous, agile, and richly-stored intellect.

Act i. sc. 1.—

“_Ovid._ While slaves be false, fathers hard, and bawds be whorish.”

The roughness noticed by Theobald and Whalley, may be cured by a simple transposition:—

“While fathers hard, slaves false, and bawds be whorish.”

Act. iv. sc. 3—

“_Crisp._ O—oblatrant—furibund—fatuate—strenuous. O—conscious.”

It would form an interesting essay, or rather series of essays, in a periodical work, were all the attempts to ridicule new phrases brought together, the proportion observed of words ridiculed which have been adopted, and are now common, such as _strenuous_, _conscious_, &c., and a trial made how far any grounds can be detected, so that one might determine beforehand whether a word was invented under the conditions of assimilability to our language or not. Thus much is certain, that the ridiculers were as often wrong as right; and Shakespeare himself could not prevent the naturalisation of _accommodation_, _remuneration_, &c.; or Swift the gross abuse even of the word _idea_.

“Fall Of Sejanus.”

Act i.—

“_Arruntius._ The name Tiberius, I hope, will keep, howe’er he hath foregone The dignity and power.

_Silius._ Sure, while he lives.

_Arr._ And dead, it comes to Drusus. Should he fail, To the brave issue of Germanicus; And they are three: too many (ha?) for him To have a plot upon?

_Sil._ I do not know The heart of his designs; but, sure, their face Looks farther than the present.

_Arr._ By the gods, If I could guess he had but such a thought, My sword should cleave him down,” &c.

The anachronic mixture in this Arruntius of the Roman republican, to whom Tiberius must have appeared as much a tyrant as Sejanus, with his James-and-Charles-the-First zeal for legitimacy of descent in this passage, is amusing. Of our great names Milton was, I think, the first who could properly be called a republican. My recollections of Buchanan’s works are too faint to enable me to judge whether the historian is not a fair exception.

Act ii. Speech of Sejanus:—

“Adultery! it is the lightest ill I will commit. A race of wicked acts Shall flow out of my anger, and o’erspread The world’s wide face, which no posterity Shall e’er approve, nor yet keep silent,” &c.

The more we reflect and examine, examine and reflect, the more astonished shall we be at the immense superiority of Shakespeare over his contemporaries;—and yet what contemporaries!—giant minds indeed! Think of Jonson’s erudition, and the force of learned authority in that age; and yet, in no genuine part of Shakespeare’s works is there to be found such an absurd rant and ventriloquism as this, and too, too many other passages ferruminated by Jonson from Seneca’s tragedies, and the writings of the later Romans. I call it ventriloquism, because Sejanus is a puppet, out of which the poet makes his own voice appear to come.

Act v. Scene of the sacrifice to Fortune.

This scene is unspeakably irrational. To believe, and yet to scoff at, a present miracle is little less than impossible. Sejanus should have been made to suspect priestcraft and a secret conspiracy against him.

“Volpone.”

This admirable, indeed, but yet more wonderful than admirable, play is, from the fertility and vigour of invention, character, language, and sentiment, the strongest proof how impossible it is to keep up any pleasurable interest in a tale, in which there is no goodness of heart in any of the prominent characters. After the third act, this play becomes not a dead, but a painful, weight on the feelings. _Zeluco_ is an instance of the same truth. Bonario and Celia should have been made in some way or other principals in the plot; which they might have been, and the objects of interest, without having been made characters. In novels, the person in whose fate you are most interested, is often the least marked character of the whole. If it were possible to lessen the paramountcy of Volpone himself, a most delightful comedy might be produced, by making Celia the ward or niece of Corvino, instead of his wife, and Bonario her lover.

“Apicæne.”

This is to my feelings the most entertaining of old Ben’s comedies, and, more than any other, would admit of being brought out anew, if under the management of a judicious and stage-understanding playwright; and an actor, who had studied Morose, might make his fortune.

Act i. sc. 1. Clerimont’s speech:—

“He would have hang’d a pewterer’s ’prentice once upon a Shrove Tuesday’s riot, for being of that trade, when the rest were _quiet_.”

“The old copies read _quit_,—_i.e._, discharged from working, and
gone to divert themselves.”—Whalley’s note.

It should be “quit” no doubt, but not meaning “discharged from working,” &c.—but quit, that is, acquitted. The pewterer was at his holiday diversion as well as the other apprentices, and they as forward in the riot as he. But he alone was punished under pretext of the riot, but in fact for his trade.

Act ii. sc. 1.—

“_Morose._ Cannot I, yet, find out a more compendious method than
by this _trunk_, to save my servants the labour of speech, and
mine ears the discord of sounds?”

What does “trunk” mean here, and in the first scene of the first act? Is it a large ear-trumpet?—or rather a tube, such as passes from parlour to kitchen, instead of a bell?

Whalley’s note at the end:—

“Some critics of the last age imagined the character of Morose to
be wholly out of nature. But to vindicate our poet, Mr. Dryden
tells us from tradition, and we may venture to take his word, that
Jonson was really acquainted with a person of this whimsical turn
of mind: and as humour is a personal quality, the poet is
acquitted from the charge of exhibiting a monster, or an
extravagant unnatural _caricatura_.”

If Dryden had not made all additional proof superfluous by his own plays, this very vindication would evince that he had formed a false and vulgar conception of the nature and conditions of drama and dramatic personation. Ben Jonson would himself have rejected such a plea:—

“For he knew, poet never credit gain’d By writing _truths_, but things, like truths, well feign’d.”

By “truths” he means “facts.” Caricatures are not less so because they are found existing in real life. Comedy demands characters, and leaves caricatures to farce. The safest and the truest defence of old Ben would be to call the _Epicœne_ the best of farces. The defect in Morose, as in other of Jonson’s _dramatis personæ_, lies in this;—that the accident is not a prominence growing out of, and nourished by, the character which still circulates in it; but that the character, such as it is, rises out of, or, rather, consists in, the accident. Shakespeare’s comic personages have exquisitely characteristic features; however awry, disproportionate, and laughable they may be, still, like Bardolph’s nose, they are features. But Jonson’s are either a man with a huge wen, having a circulation of its own, and which we might conceive amputated, and the patient thereby losing all his character; or they are mere wens themselves instead of men,—wens personified, or with eyes, nose, and mouth cut out, mandrake-fashion.

_Nota bene._—All the above, and much more, will have justly been said, if, and whenever, the drama of Jonson is brought into comparisons of rivalry with the Shakespearian. But this should not be. Let its inferiority to the Shakespearian be at once fairly owned,—but at the same time as the inferiority of an altogether different _genius_ of the drama. On this ground, old Ben would still maintain his proud height. He, no less than Shakespeare stands on the summit of his hill, and looks round him like a master,—though his be Lattrig and Shakespeare’s Skiddaw.

“The Alchemist.”

Act i. sc. 2. Face’s speech:—

“Will take his oath o’ the Greek _Xenophon_, If need be, in his pocket.”

Another reading is “Testament.”

Probably, the meaning is—that intending to give false evidence, he carried a Greek _Xenophon_ to pass it off for a Greek Testament, and so avoid perjury—as the Irish do, by contriving to kiss their thumb-nails instead of the book.

Act ii. sc. 2. Mammon’s speech:—

“I will have all my beds blown up; not stuft: Down is too hard.”

Thus the air-cushions, though perhaps only lately brought into use, were invented in idea in the seventeenth century!

“Catiline’s Conspiracy.”

A fondness for judging one work by comparison with others, perhaps altogether of a different class, argues a vulgar taste. Yet it is chiefly on this principle that the _Catiline_ has been rated so low. Take it and _Sejanus_, as compositions of a particular kind, namely, as a mode of relating great historical events in the liveliest and most interesting manner, and I cannot help wishing that we had whole volumes of such plays. We might as rationally expect the excitement of the _Vicar of Wakefield_ from Goldsmith’s _History of England_, as that of _Lear_, _Othello_, &c., from the _Sejanus_ or _Catiline_.

Act i. sc. 4.—

“_Cat._ Sirrah, what ail you?

(_He spies one of his boys not answer._)

_Pag._ Nothing.

_Best._ Somewhat modest.

_Cat._ Slave, I will strike your soul out with my foot,” &c.

This is either an unintelligible, or, in every sense, a most unnatural, passage,—improbable, if not impossible, at the moment of signing and swearing such a conspiracy, to the most libidinous satyr. The very presence of the boys is an outrage to probability. I suspect that these lines down to the words “throat opens,” should be removed back so as to follow the words “on this part of the house,” in the speech of Catiline soon after the entry of the conspirators. A total erasure, however, would be the best, or, rather, the only possible, amendment.

Act ii. sc. 2. Sempronia’s speech:—

...“He is but a new fellow,
An _inmate_ here in Rome, as Catiline calls him.”

A “lodger” would have been a happier imitation of the _inquilinus_ of Sallust.

Act iv. sc. 6. Speech of Cethegus:—

“Can these or such be any aids to us,” &c.

What a strange notion Ben must have formed of a determined, remorseless, all-daring, foolhardiness, to have represented it in such a mouthing Tamburlane, and bombastic tonguebully as this Cethegus of his!

“Bartholomew Fair.”

Induction. Scrivener’s speech:—

“If there be never a _servant-monster_ in the Fair, who can help it he says, nor a nest of antiques?”

The best excuse that can be made for Jonson, and in a somewhat less degree for Beaumont and Fletcher, in respect of these base and silly sneers at Shakespeare is, that his plays were present to men’s minds chiefly as acted. They had not a neat edition of them, as we have, so as, by comparing the one with the other, to form a just notion of the mighty mind that produced the whole. At all events, and in every point of view, Jonson stands far higher in a moral light than Beaumont and Fletcher. He was a fair contemporary, and in his way, and as far as Shakespeare is concerned, an original. But Beaumont and Fletcher were always imitators of, and often borrowers from him, and yet sneer at him with a spite far more malignant than Jonson, who, besides, has made noble compensation by his praises.

Act ii. sc. 3.—

“_Just._ I mean a child of the horn-thumb, a babe _of booty_, boy, a cut purse.”

Does not this confirm, what the passage itself cannot but suggest, the propriety of substituting “booty” for “beauty” in Falstaff’s speech, _Henry IV._ part i. act i. sc. 2. “Let not us, &c.?”

It is not often that old Ben condescends to imitate a modern author; but Master Dan. Knockhum Jordan, and his vapours are manifest reflexes of Nym and Pistol.

_Ib._ sc. 5.—

“_Quarl._ She’ll make excellent geer for the coachmakers here in Smithfield, to anoint wheels and axletrees with.”

Good! but yet it falls short of the speech of a Mr. Johnes, M.P., in the Common Council, on the invasion intended by Buonaparte:—“Houses plundered—then burnt;—sons conscribed—wives and daughters ravished,” &c., &c.—“But as for you, you luxurious Aldermen! with your fat will he grease the wheels of his triumphant chariot!”

_Ib._ sc. 6.—

“_Cok._ Avoid in your satin doublet, Numps.”

This reminds me of Shakespeare’s “Aroint thee, witch!” I find in several books of that age the words _aloigne_ and _eloigne_—that is,—“keep your distance!” or “off with you!” Perhaps “aroint” was a corruption of “aloigne” by the vulgar. The common etymology from _ronger_ to gnaw seems unsatisfactory.

Act iii. sc. 4.—

“_Quarl._ How now, Numps! almost tired in your protectorship? overparted, overparted?”

An odd sort of propheticality in this Numps and old Noll!

_Ib._ sc. 6. Knockhum’s speech:—

“He eats with his eyes, as well as his teeth.”

A good motto for the Parson in Hogarth’s _Election Dinner_,—who shows how easily he might be reconciled to the Church of Rome, for he worships what he eats.

Act v. sc. 5.—

“_Pup._ _Di._ It is not profane.

_Lan._ It is not profane, he says.

_Boy._ It is profane.

_Pup._ It is not profane.

_Boy._ It is profane.

_Pup._ It is not profane.

_Lan._ Well said, confute him with Not, still.”

An imitation of the quarrel between Bacchus and the Frogs in Aristophanes:—

“Χορός. ἀλλὰ μὴν κεκραξόμεσθά γ’, ὁπόσον ἡ φάρυνξ ἂν ἡμῶν χανδάνη δι’ ἡμέρας, βρεκεκεκὲξ, κοὰξ, κοὰξ.

Διόνυσος. τούτω γὰρ οὐ νικήσετε.

Χορός. οὐδὲ μὴν ἡμᾶς σὺ τάντως.

Διόνυσος. οὐδὲ μὴν ὑμεῖς γε δή μ’ οὐδέποτε.”

“The Devil Is An Ass.”

Act i. sc. 1.—

“_Pug._ Why any: Fraud, Or Covetousness, or lady Vanity, Or old Iniquity, _I’ll call him hither_.”

“The words in italics should probably be given to the
master-devil, Satan.”—Whalley’s note.

That is, against all probability, and with a (for Jonson) impossible violation of character. The words plainly belong to Pug, and mark at once his simpleness and his impatience.

_Ib._ sc. 4. Fitz-dottrel’s soliloquy.

Compare this exquisite piece of sense, satire, and sound philosophy in 1616 with Sir M. Hale’s speech from the bench in a trial of a witch many years afterwards.

Act ii. sc. 1. Meercraft’s speech:—

“Sir, money’s a whore, a bawd, a drudge.”

I doubt not that “money” was the first word of the line, and has dropped out:—

“Money! Sir, money’s a,” &c.

“The Staple Of News.”

Act iv. sc. 3. Pecunia’s speech:—

“No, he would ha’ done, That lay not in his power: he had the use Of your bodies, Band and Wax, and sometimes Statute’s.”

Read (1815)—

... “he had the use of
Your bodies,” &c.

Now, however, I doubt the legitimacy of my transposition of the “of” from the beginning of this latter line to the end of the one preceding;—for though it facilitates the metre and reading of the latter line, and is frequent in Massinger, this disjunction of the preposition from its case seems to have been disallowed by Jonson. Perhaps the better reading is—

“O’ your bodies,” &c.—