Chapter XVIII: Preface: It is observed by Mr. Pope, that (8)

‘This whole scene, like many others in these plays (some of which I
believe were written by Shakespear, and others interpolated by the
players) is composed of the lowest and most trifling conceits, to be
accounted for only by the gross taste of the age he lived in:
_Populo ut placerent_. I wish I had authority to leave them out, but
I have done all I could, set a mark of reprobation upon them,
throughout this edition.’

It is strange that our fastidious critic should fall so soon from praising to reprobating. The style of the familiar parts of this comedy is indeed made up of conceits—low they may be for what we know, but then they are not poor, but rich ones. The scene of Launce with his dog (not that in the second, but that in the fourth act) is a perfect treat in the way of farcical drollery and invention; nor do we think Speed’s manner of proving his master to be in love deficient in wit or sense, though the style may be criticised as not simple enough for the modern taste.

‘_Valentine._ Why, how know you that I am in love?

_Speed._ Marry, by these special marks: first, you have learned,
like Sir Protheus, to wreathe your arms like a malcontent, to relish
a love-song like a robin-red-breast, to walk alone like one that had
the pestilence, to sigh like a school-boy that had lost his ABC, to
weep like a young wench that had buried her grandam, to fast like
one that takes diet, to watch like one that fears robbing, to speak
puling like a beggar at Hallowmas. You were wont, when you laughed,
to crow like a cock; when you walked, to walk like one of the lions;
when you fasted, it was presently after dinner; when you looked
sadly, it was for want of money; and now you are metamorphosed with
a mistress, that when I look on you, I can hardly think you my
master.’

The tender scenes in this play, though not so highly wrought as in some others, have often much sweetness of sentiment and expression. There is something pretty and playful in the conversation of Julia with her maid, when she shews such a disposition to coquetry about receiving the letter from Protheus; and her behaviour afterwards and her disappointment, when she finds him faithless to his vows, remind us at a distance of Imogen’s tender constancy. Her answer to Lucetta, who advises her against following her lover in disguise, is a beautiful piece of poetry.

‘_Lucetta._ I do not seek to quench your love’s hot fire,
But qualify the fire’s extremest rage,
Lest it should burn above the bounds of reason.

_Julia._ The more thou damm’st it up, the more it burns;
The current that with gentle murmur glides,
Thou know’st, being stopp’d, impatiently doth rage;
But when his fair course is not hindered,
He makes sweet music with th’ enamell’d stones,
Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge
He overtaketh in his pilgrimage:
And so by many winding nooks he strays,
With willing sport, to the wild ocean.[70]
Then let me go, and hinder not my course;
I’ll be as patient as a gentle stream,
And make a pastime of each weary step,
Till the last step have brought me to my love;
And there I’ll rest, as after much turmoil,
A blessed soul doth in Elysium.’

If Shakespear indeed had written only this and other passages in the TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA, he would _almost_ have deserved Milton’s praise of him—

‘And sweetest Shakespear, Fancy’s child,
Warbles his native wood-notes wild.’

But as it is, he deserves rather more praise than this.

THE MERCHANT OF VENICE

This is a play that in spite of the change of manners and prejudices still holds undisputed possession of the stage. Shakespear’s malignant has outlived Mr. Cumberland’s benevolent Jew. In proportion as Shylock has ceased to be a popular bugbear, ‘baited with the rabble’s curse,’ he becomes a half-favourite with the philosophical part of the audience, who are disposed to think that Jewish revenge is at least as good as Christian injuries. Shylock is _a good hater_; ‘a man no less sinned against than sinning.’ If he carries his revenge too far, yet he has strong grounds for ‘the lodged hate he bears Anthonio,’ which he explains with equal force of eloquence and reason. He seems the depositary of the vengeance of his race; and though the long habit of brooding over daily insults and injuries has crusted over his temper with inveterate misanthropy, and hardened him against the contempt of mankind, this adds but little to the triumphant pretensions of his enemies. There is a strong, quick, and deep sense of justice mixed up with the gall and bitterness of his resentment. The constant apprehension of being burnt alive, plundered, banished, reviled, and trampled on, might be supposed to sour the most forbearing nature, and to take something from that ‘milk of human kindness,’ with which his persecutors contemplated his indignities. The desire of revenge is almost inseparable from the sense of wrong; and we can hardly help sympathising with the proud spirit, hid beneath his ‘Jewish gaberdine,’ stung to madness by repeated undeserved provocations, and labouring to throw off the load of obloquy and oppression heaped upon him and all his tribe by one desperate act of ‘lawful’ revenge, till the ferociousness of the means by which he is to execute his purpose, and the pertinacity with which he adheres to it, turn us against him; but even at last, when disappointed of the sanguinary revenge with which he had glutted his hopes, and exposed to beggary and contempt by the letter of the law on which he had insisted with so little remorse, we pity him, and think him hardly dealt with by his judges. In all his answers and retorts upon his adversaries, he has the best not only of the argument but of the question, reasoning on their own principles and practice. They are so far from allowing of any measure of equal dealing, of common justice or humanity between themselves and the Jew, that even when they come to ask a favour of him, and Shylock reminds them that ‘on such a day they spit upon him, another spurned him, another called him dog, and for these curtesies request he’ll lend them so much monies’—Anthonio, his old enemy, instead of any acknowledgment of the shrewdness and justice of his remonstrance, which would have been preposterous in a respectable Catholic merchant in those times, threatens him with a repetition of the same treatment—

‘I am as like to call thee so again,
To spit on thee again, to spurn thee too.’

After this, the appeal to the Jew’s mercy, as if there were any common principle of right and wrong between them, is the rankest hypocrisy, or the blindest prejudice; and the Jew’s answer to one of Anthonio’s friends, who asks him what his pound of forfeit flesh is good for, is irresistible—

To bait fish withal; if it will feed nothing else, it will feed my
revenge. He hath disgrac’d me, and hinder’d me of half a million,
laughed at my losses, mock’d at my gains, scorn’d my nation,
thwarted my bargains, cool’d my friends, heated mine enemies; and
what’s his reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes; hath not a Jew
hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with
the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same
diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same
winter and summer that a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not
bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we
not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like
you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a
Christian, what is his humility? revenge. If a Christian wrong a
Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? why
revenge. The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go
hard but I will better the instruction.’

The whole of the trial-scene, both before and after the entrance of Portia, is a master-piece of dramatic skill. The legal acuteness, the passionate declamations, the sound maxims of jurisprudence, the wit and irony interspersed in it, the fluctuations of hope and fear in the different persons, and the completeness and suddenness of the catastrophe, cannot be surpassed. Shylock, who is his own counsel, defends himself well, and is triumphant on all the general topics that are urged against him, and only fails through a legal flaw. Take the following as an instance:—

‘_Shylock._ What judgment shall I dread, doing no wrong?
You have among you many a purchas’d slave,
Which like your asses, and your dogs, and mules,
You use in abject and in slavish part,
Because you bought them:—shall I say to you,
Let them be free, marry them to your heirs?
Why sweat they under burdens? let their beds
Be made as soft as yours, and let their palates
Be season’d with such viands? you will answer,
The slaves are ours:—so do I answer you:
The pound of flesh, which I demand of him,
Is dearly bought, is mine, and I will have it:
If you deny me, fie upon your law!
There is no force in the decrees of Venice:
I stand for judgment: answer; shall I have it?’

The keenness of his revenge awakes all his faculties; and he beats back all opposition to his purpose, whether grave or gay, whether of wit or argument, with an equal degree of earnestness and self-possession. His character is displayed as distinctly in other less prominent parts of the play, and we may collect from a few sentences the history of his life—his descent and origin, his thrift and domestic economy, his affection for his daughter, whom he loves next to his wealth, his courtship and his first present to Leah, his wife! ‘I would not have parted with it’ (the ring which he first gave her) ‘for a wilderness of monkies!’ What a fine Hebraism is implied in this expression!

Portia is not a very great favourite with us; neither are we in love with her maid, Nerissa. Portia has a certain degree of affectation and pedantry about her, which is very unusual in Shakespear’s women, but which perhaps was a proper qualification for the office of a ‘civil doctor,’ which she undertakes and executes so successfully. The speech about Mercy is very well; but there are a thousand finer ones in Shakespear. We do not admire the scene of the caskets: and object entirely to the Black Prince, Morocchius. We should like Jessica better if she had not deceived and robbed her father, and Lorenzo, if he had not married a Jewess, though he thinks he has a right to wrong a Jew. The dialogue between this newly-married couple by moonlight, beginning ‘On such a night,’ etc. is a collection of classical elegancies. Launcelot, the Jew’s man, is an honest fellow. The dilemma in which he describes himself placed between his ‘conscience and the fiend,’ the one of which advises him to run away from his master’s service and the other to stay in it, is exquisitely humourous.

Gratiano is a very admirable subordinate character. He is the jester of the piece: yet one speech of his, in his own defence, contains a whole volume of wisdom.

‘_Anthonio._ I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano,
A stage, where every one must play his part;
And mine a sad one.

_Gratiano._ Let me play the fool:
With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come;
And let my liver rather heat with wine,
Than my heart cool with mortifying groans.
Why should a man, whose blood is warm within,
Sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster?
Sleep when he wakes? and creep into the jaundice
By being peevish? I tell thee what, Anthonio—
I love thee, and it is my love that speaks;—
There are a sort of men, whose visages
Do cream and mantle like a standing pond:
And do a wilful stillness entertain,
With purpose to be drest in an opinion
Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit;
As who should say, _I am Sir Oracle,
And when I ope my lips, let no dog bark_!
O, my Anthonio, I do know of these,
That therefore only are reputed wise,
For saying nothing; who, I am very sure,
If they should speak, would almost damn those ears,
Which hearing them, would call their brothers, fools.
I’ll tell thee more of this another time:
But fish not with this melancholy bait,
For this fool’s gudgeon, this opinion,’

Gratiano’s speech on the philosophy of love, and the effect of habit in taking off the force of passion, is as full of spirit and good sense. The graceful winding up of this play in the fifth act, after the tragic business is despatched, is one of the happiest instances of Shakespear’s knowledge of the principles of the drama. We do not mean the pretended quarrel between Portia and Nerissa and their husbands about the rings, which is amusing enough, but the conversation just before and after the return of Portia to her own house, beginning ‘How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank,’ and ending ‘Peace! how the moon sleeps with Endymion, and would not be awaked.’ There is a number of beautiful thoughts crowded into that short space, and linked together by the most natural transitions.

When we first went to see Mr. Kean in Shylock, we expected to see, what we had been used to see, a decrepid old man, bent with age and ugly with mental deformity, grinning with deadly malice, with the venom of his heart congealed in the expression of his countenance, sullen, morose, gloomy, inflexible, brooding over one idea, that of his hatred, and fixed on one unalterable purpose, that of his revenge. We were disappointed, because we had taken our idea from other actors, not from the play. There is no proof there that Shylock is old, but a single line, ‘Bassanio and _old_ Shylock, both stand forth,’—which does not imply that he is infirm with age—and the circumstance that he has a daughter marriageable, which does not imply that he is old at all. It would be too much to say that his body should be made crooked and deformed to answer to his mind, which is bowed down and warped with prejudices and passion. That he has but one idea, is not true; he has more ideas than any other person in the piece; and if he is intense and inveterate in the pursuit of his purpose, he shews the utmost elasticity, vigour, and presence of mind, in the means of attaining it. But so rooted was our habitual impression of the part from seeing it caricatured in the representation, that it was only from a careful perusal of the play itself that we saw our error. The stage is not in general the best place to study our author’s characters in. It is too often filled with traditional common-place conceptions of the part, handed down from sire to son, and suited to the taste of _the great vulgar and the small_.—‘’Tis an unweeded garden: things rank and gross do merely gender in it!’ If a man of genius comes once in an age to clear away the rubbish, to make it fruitful and wholesome, they cry, ‘’Tis a bad school: it may be like nature, it may be like Shakespear, but it is not like us.’ Admirable critics!

THE WINTER’S TALE

We wonder that Mr. Pope should have entertained doubts of the genuineness of this play. He was, we suppose, shocked (as a certain critic suggests) at the Chorus, Time, leaping over sixteen years with his crutch between the third and fourth act, and at Antigonus’s landing with the infant Perdita on the sea-coast of Bohemia. These slips or blemishes however do not prove it not to be Shakespear’s; for he was as likely to fall into them as any body; but we do not know any body but himself who could produce the beauties. The _stuff_ of which the tragic passion is composed, the romantic sweetness, the comic humour, are evidently his. Even the crabbed and tortuous style of the speeches of Leontes, reasoning on his own jealousy, beset with doubts and fears, and entangled more and more in the thorny labyrinth, bears every mark of Shakespear’s peculiar manner of conveying the painful struggle of different thoughts and feelings, labouring for utterance, and almost strangled in the birth. For instance:—

‘Ha’ not you seen, Camillo?
(But that’s past doubt; you have, or your eye-glass
Is thicker than a cuckold’s horn) or heard,
(For to a vision so apparent, rumour
Cannot be mute) or thought (for cogitation
Resides not within man that does not think)
My wife is slippery? If thou wilt, confess,
Or else be impudently negative,
To have nor eyes, nor ears, nor thought.’—

Here Leontes is confounded with his passion, and does not know which way to turn himself, to give words to the anguish, rage, and apprehension, which tug at his breast. It is only as he is worked up into a clearer conviction of his wrongs by insisting on the grounds of his unjust suspicions to Camillo, who irritates him by his opposition, that he bursts out into the following vehement strain of bitter indignation: yet even here his passion staggers, and is as it were oppressed with its own intensity.

‘Is whispering nothing?
Is leaning cheek to cheek? is meeting noses?
Kissing with inside lip? stopping the career
Of laughter with a sigh? (a note infallible
Of breaking honesty!) horsing foot on foot?
Skulking in corners? wishing clocks more swift?
Hours, minutes? the noon, midnight? and all eyes
Blind with the pin and web, but theirs; theirs only,
That would, unseen, be wicked? is this nothing?
Why then the world, and all that’s in’t, is nothing,
The covering sky is nothing, Bohemia’s nothing,
My wife is nothing!’

The character of Hermione is as much distinguished by its saintlike resignation and patient forbearance, as that of Paulina is by her zealous and spirited remonstrances against the injustice done to the queen, and by her devoted attachment to her misfortunes. Hermione’s restoration to her husband and her child, after her long separation from them, is as affecting in itself as it is striking in the representation. Camillo, and the old shepherd and his son, are subordinate but not uninteresting instruments in the developement of the plot, and though last, not least, comes Autolycus, a very pleasant, thriving rogue; and (what is the best feather in the cap of all knavery) he escapes with impunity in the end.

THE WINTER’S TALE is one of the best-acting of our author’s plays. We remember seeing it with great pleasure many years ago. It was on the night that King took leave of the stage, when he and Mrs. Jordan played together in the after-piece of the Wedding-day. Nothing could go off with more _éclat_, with more spirit, and grandeur of effect. Mrs. Siddons played Hermione, and in the last scene acted the painted statue to the life—with true monumental dignity and noble passion; Mr. Kemble, in Leontes, worked himself up into a very fine classical phrensy; and Bannister, as Autolycus, roared as loud for pity as a sturdy beggar could do who felt none of the pain he counterfeited, and was sound of wind and limb. We shall never see these parts so acted again; or if we did, it would be in vain. Actors grow old, or no longer surprise us by their novelty. But true poetry, like nature, is always young; and we still read the courtship of Florizel and Perdita, as we welcome the return of spring, with the same feelings as ever.

‘_Florizel._ Thou dearest Perdita, With these forc’d thoughts, I pr’ythee, darken not The mirth o’ the feast: or, I’ll be thine, my fair, Or not my father’s: for I cannot be Mine own, nor any thing to any, if I be not thine. To this I am most constant, Tho’ destiny say, No. Be merry, gentle; Strangle such thoughts as these, with any thing That you behold the while. Your guests are coming: Lift up your countenance; as it were the day Of celebration of that nuptial, which We two have sworn shall come.

_Perdita._ O lady fortune, Stand you auspicious!

_Enter Shepherd, Clown_, MOPSA, DORCAS, _Servants; with_ POLIXENES,
_and_ CAMILLO, _disguised_.

_Florizel._ See, your guests approach. Address yourself to entertain them sprightly, And let’s be red with mirth.

_Shepherd._ Fie, daughter! when my old wife liv’d, upon This day, she was both pantler, butler, cook; Both dame and servant: welcom’d all, serv’d all: Would sing her song, and dance her turn: now here At upper end o’ the table, now i’ the middle: On his shoulder, and his: her face o’ fire With labour; and the thing she took to quench it She would to each one sip. You are retir’d, As if you were a feasted one, and not The hostess of the meeting. Pray you, bid These unknown friends to us welcome; for it is A way to make us better friends, more known. Come, quench your blushes; and present yourself That which you are, mistress o’ the feast. Come on, And bid us welcome to your sheep-shearing, As your good flock shall prosper.

_Perdita._ Sir, welcome! [_To Polixenes and Camillo._ It is my father’s will I should take on me The hostess-ship o’ the day: you’re welcome, sir!

Give me those flowers there, Dorcas.—Reverend sirs, For you there’s rosemary and rue; these keep Seeming, and savour, all the winter long: Grace and remembrance be unto you both, And welcome to our shearing!

_Polixenes._ Shepherdess, (A fair one are you) well you fit our ages With flowers of winter.

_Perdita._ Sir, the year growing ancient, Not yet on summer’s death, nor on the birth Of trembling winter, the fairest flowers o’ the season Are our carnations, and streak’d gilly-flowers, Which some call nature’s bastards: of that kind Our rustic garden’s barren; and I care not To get slips of them.

_Polixenes._ Wherefore, gentle maiden, Do you neglect them?

_Perdita._ For I have heard it said There is an art, which, in their piedness, shares With great creating nature.

_Polixenes._ Say, there be: Yet nature is made better by no mean, But nature makes that mean: so, o’er that art Which you say, adds to nature, is an art That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry A gentler scyon to the wildest stock; And make conceive a bark of baser kind By bud of nobler race. This is an art Which does mend nature, change it rather: but The art itself is nature.

_Perdita._ So it is.[71]

_Polixenes._ Then make your garden rich in gilly-flowers, And do not call them bastards.

_Perdita._ I’ll not put The dibble in earth, to set one slip of them;[71] No more than, were I painted, I would wish This youth should say, ‘twere well; and only therefore Desire to breed by me.—Here’s flowers for you; Hot lavender, mints, savoury, marjoram; The marigold, that goes to bed with the sun, And with him rises, weeping: these are flowers Of middle summer, and, I think, they are given To men of middle age. You are very welcome.

_Camillo._ I should leave grazing, were I of your flock, And only live by gazing.

_Perdita._ Out, alas! You’d be so lean, that blasts of January

Would blow you through and through. Now my fairest friends, I would I had some flowers o’ the spring, that might Become your time of day; and your’s, and your’s, That wear upon your virgin branches yet Your maiden-heads growing: O Proserpina, For the flowers now, that, frighted, thou let’st fall From Dis’s waggon! daffodils, That come before the swallow dares, and take The winds of March with beauty: violets dim, But sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes, Or Cytherea’s breath; pale primroses, That die unmarried, ere they can behold Bright Phœbus in his strength (a malady Most incident to maids); bold oxlips, and The crown-imperial; lilies of all kinds, The fleur-de-lis being one! O, these I lack To make you garlands of; and my sweet friend To strow him o’er and o’er.

_Florizel._ What, like a corse?

_Perdita._ No, like a bank, for love to lie and play on; Not like a corse; or if—not to be buried, But quick, and in mine arms. Come take your flowers; Methinks, I play as I have seen them do In Whitsun pastorals: sure this robe of mine Does change my disposition.

_Florizel._ What you do, Still betters what is done. When you speak, sweet, I’d have you do it ever: when you sing, I’d have you buy and sell so; so, give alms; Pray, so; and for the ordering your affairs, To sing them too. When you do dance, I wish you A wave o’ the sea, that you might ever do Nothing but that: move still, still so, And own no other function. Each your doing, So singular in each particular, Crowns what you’re doing in the present deeds, That all your acts are queens.

_Perdita._ O Doricles, Your praises are too large; but that your youth And the true blood, which peeps forth fairly through it, Do plainly give you out an unstained shepherd; With wisdom I might fear, my Doricles, You woo’d me the false way.

_Florizel._ I think you have As little skill to fear, as I have purpose To put you to’t. But come, our dance, I pray: Your hand, my Perdita: so turtles pair, That never mean to part.

_Perdita._ I’ll swear for ‘em.

_Polixenes._ This is the prettiest low-born lass that ever Ran on the green-sward; nothing she does, or seems, But smacks of something greater than herself, Too noble for this place.

_Camillo._ He tells her something That makes her blood look out: good sooth she is The queen of curds and cream.’

This delicious scene is interrupted by the father of the prince discovering himself to Florizel, and haughtily breaking off the intended match between his son and Perdita. When Polixenes goes out, Perdita says,

‘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’t alike. Wilt 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.’

As Perdita, the supposed shepherdess, turns out to be the daughter of Hermione, and a princess in disguise, both feelings of the pride of birth and the claims of nature are satisfied by the fortunate event of the story, and the fine romance of poetry is reconciled to the strictest court-etiquette.

ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL

ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL is one of the most pleasing of our author’s comedies. The interest is however more of a serious than of a comic nature. The character of Helen is one of great sweetness and delicacy. She is placed in circumstances of the most critical kind, and has to court her husband both as a virgin and a wife: yet the most scrupulous nicety of female modesty is not once violated. There is not one thought or action that ought to bring a blush into her cheeks, or that for a moment lessens her in our esteem. Perhaps the romantic attachment of a beautiful and virtuous girl to one placed above her hopes by the circumstances of birth and fortune, was never so exquisitely expressed as in the reflections which she utters when young Roussillon leaves his mother’s house, under whose protection she has been brought up with him, to repair to the French king’s court.

‘_Helena._ Oh, were that all—I think not on my father,
And these great tears grace his remembrance more
Than those I shed for him. What was he like?
I have forgot him. My imagination
Carries no favour in it, but Bertram’s.
I am undone, there is no living, none
If Bertram be away. It were all one
That I should love a bright particular star,
And think to wed it; he is so above me:
In his bright radiance and collateral light
Must I be comforted, not in his sphere.
Th’ ambition in my love thus plagues itself;
The hind that would be mated by the lion,
Must die for love. ’Twas pretty, tho’ a plague,
To see him every hour, to sit and draw
His arched brows, his hawking eye, his curls
In our heart’s table: heart too capable
Of every line and trick of his sweet favour.
But now he’s gone, and my idolatrous fancy
Must sanctify his relics.’

The interest excited by this beautiful picture of a fond and innocent heart is kept up afterwards by her resolution to follow him to France, the success of her experiment in restoring the king’s health, her demanding Bertram in marriage as a recompense, his leaving her in disdain, her interview with him afterwards disguised as Diana, a young lady whom he importunes with his secret addresses, and their final reconciliation when the consequences of her stratagem and the proofs of her love are fully made known. The persevering gratitude of the French king to his benefactress, who cures him of a languishing distemper by a prescription hereditary in her family, the indulgent kindness of the Countess, whose pride of birth yields, almost without a struggle, to her affection for Helen, the honesty and uprightness of the good old lord Lafeu, make very interesting parts of the picture. The wilful stubbornness and youthful petulance of Bertram are also very admirably described. The comic part of the play turns on the folly, boasting, and cowardice of Parolles, a parasite and hanger-on of Bertram’s, the detection of whose false pretensions to bravery and honour forms a very amusing episode. He is first found out by the old lord Lafeu, who says, ‘The soul of this man is in his clothes’; and it is proved afterwards that his heart is in his tongue, and that both are false and hollow. The adventure of ‘the bringing off of his drum’ has become proverbial as a satire on all ridiculous and blustering undertakings which the person never means to perform: nor can any thing be more severe than what one of the bye-standers remarks upon what Parolles says of himself, ‘Is it possible he should know what he is, and be that he is?’ Yet Parolles himself gives the best solution of the difficulty afterwards when he is thankful to escape with his life and the loss of character; for, so that he can live on, he is by no means squeamish about the loss of pretensions, to which he had sense enough to know he had no real claim, and which he had assumed only as a means to live.

‘_Parolles._ Yet I am thankful: if my heart were great,
‘Twould burst at this. Captain I’ll be no more,
But I will eat and drink, and sleep as soft
As captain shall. Simply the thing I am
Shall make me live: who knows himself a braggart,
Let him fear this; for it shall come to pass,
That every braggart shall be found an ass.
Rust sword, cool blushes, and Parolles live
Safest in shame; being fool’d, by fool’ry thrive;
There’s place and means for every man alive.
I’ll after them.’

The story of ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL, and of several others of Shakespear’s plays, is taken from Boccacio. The poet has dramatised the original novel with great skill and comic spirit, and has preserved all the beauty of character and sentiment without _improving upon_ it, which was impossible. There is indeed in Boccacio’s serious pieces a truth, a pathos, and an exquisite refinement of sentiment, which is hardly to be met with in any other prose writer whatever. Justice has not been done him by the world. He has in general passed for a mere narrator of lascivious tales or idle jests. This character probably originated in his obnoxious attacks on the monks, and has been kept up by the grossness of mankind, who revenged their own want of refinement on Boccacio, and only saw in his writings what suited the coarseness of their own tastes. But the truth is, that he has carried sentiment of every kind to its very highest purity and perfection. By sentiment we would here understand the habitual workings of some one powerful feeling, where the heart reposes almost entirely upon itself, without the violent excitement of opposing duties or untoward circumstances. In this way, nothing ever came up to the story of Frederigo Alberigi and his Falcon. The perseverance in attachment, the spirit of gallantry and generosity displayed in it, has no parallel in the history of heroical sacrifices. The feeling is so unconscious too, and involuntary, is brought out in such small, unlooked-for, and unostentatious circumstances, as to show it to have been woven into the very nature and soul of the author. The story of Isabella is scarcely less fine, and is more affecting in the circumstances and in the catastrophe. Dryden has done justice to the impassioned eloquence of the Tancred and Sigismunda; but has not given an adequate idea of the wild preternatural interest of the story of Honoria. Cimon and Iphigene is by no means one of the best, notwithstanding the popularity of the subject. The proof of unalterable affection given in the story of Jeronymo, and the simple touches of nature and picturesque beauty in the story of the two holiday lovers, who were poisoned by tasting of a leaf in the garden at Florence, are perfect master-pieces. The epithet of Divine was well bestowed on this great painter of the human heart. The invention implied in his different tales is immense: but we are not to infer that it is all his own. He probably availed himself of all the common traditions which were floating in his time, and which he was the first to appropriate. Homer appears the most original of all authors—probably for no other reason than that we can trace the plagiarism no farther. Boccacio has furnished subjects to numberless writers since his time, both dramatic and narrative. The story of Griselda is borrowed from his Decameron by Chaucer; as is the Knight’s Tale (Palamon and Arcite) from his poem of the Theseid.

LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST

If we were to part with any of the author’s comedies, it should be this. Yet we should be loth to part with Don Adriano de Armado, that mighty potentate of nonsense, or his page, that handful of wit; with Nathaniel the curate, or Holofernes the schoolmaster, and their dispute after dinner on ‘the golden cadences of poesy’; with Costard the clown, or Dull the constable. Biron is too accomplished a character to be lost to the world, and yet he could not appear without his fellow courtiers and the king: and if we were to leave out the ladies, the gentlemen would have no mistresses. So that we believe we may let the whole play stand as it is, and we shall hardly venture to ‘set a mark of reprobation on it.’ Still we have some objections to the style, which we think savours more of the pedantic spirit of Shakespear’s time than of his own genius; more of controversial divinity, and the logic of Peter Lombard, than of the inspiration of the Muse. It transports us quite as much to the manners of the court, and the quirks of courts of law, as to the scenes of nature or the fairy-land of his own imagination. Shakespear has set himself to imitate the tone of polite conversation then prevailing among the fair, the witty, and the learned, and he has imitated it but too faithfully. It is as if the hand of Titian had been employed to give grace to the curls of a full-bottomed periwig, or Raphael had attempted to give expression to the tapestry figures in the House of Lords. Shakespear has put an excellent description of this fashionable jargon into the mouth of the critical Holofernes ‘as too picked, too spruce, too affected, too odd, as it were, too peregrinate, as I may call it’; and nothing can be more marked than the difference when he breaks loose from the trammels he had imposed on himself, ‘as light as bird from brake,’ and speaks in his own person. We think, for instance, that in the following soliloquy the poet has fairly got the start of Queen Elizabeth and her maids of honour:—

‘_Biron._ O! and I forsooth in love,
I that have been love’s whip;
A very beadle to an amorous sigh:
A critic; nay, a night-watch constable,
A domineering pedant o’er the boy,
Than whom no mortal more magnificent.
This wimpled, whining, purblind, wayward boy,
This signior Junio, giant dwarf, Dan Cupid,
Regent of love-rhymes, lord of folded arms,
Th’ anointed sovereign of sighs and groans:
Liege of all loiterers and malecontents,
Dread prince of plackets, king of codpieces,
Sole imperator, and great general
Of trotting parators (O my little heart!)
And I to be a corporal of his field,
And wear his colours like a tumbler’s hoop?
What? I love! I sue! I seek a wife!
A woman, that is like a German clock,
Still a repairing; ever out of frame;
And never going aright, being a watch,
And being watch’d, that it may still go right?
Nay, to be perjur’d, which is worst of all:
And among three to love the worst of all,
A whitely wanton with a velvet brow,
With two pitch balls stuck in her face for eyes;
Ay, and by heav’n, one that will do the deed,
Though Argus were her eunuch and her guard;
And I to sigh for her! to watch for her!
To pray for her! Go to; it is a plague
That Cupid will impose for my neglect
Of his almighty dreadful little might.
Well, I will love, write, sigh, pray, sue, and groan:
Some men must love my lady, and some Joan.’

The character of Biron drawn by Rosaline and that which Biron gives of Boyet are equally happy. The observations on the use and abuse of study, and on the power of beauty to quicken the understanding as well as the senses, are excellent. The scene which has the greatest dramatic effect is that in which Biron, the king, Longaville, and Dumain, successively detect each other and are detected in their breach of their vow and in their profession of attachment to their several mistresses, in which they suppose themselves to be overheard by no one. The reconciliation between these lovers and their sweethearts is also very good, and the penance which Rosaline imposes on Biron, before he can expect to gain her consent to marry him, full of propriety and beauty.

‘_Rosaline._ Oft have I heard of you, my lord Biron,
Before I saw you: and the world’s large tongue
Proclaims you for a man replete with mocks;
Full of comparisons, and wounding flouts;
Which you on all estates will execute,
That lie within the mercy of your wit.
To weed this wormwood from your faithful brain;
And therewithal to win me, if you please,
(Without the which I am not to be won)
You shall this twelvemonth term from day to day
Visit the speechless sick, and still converse
With groaning wretches; and your task shall be,
With all the fierce endeavour of your wit,
T’ enforce the pained impotent to smile.

_Biron._ To move wild laughter in the throat of death?
It cannot be: it is impossible:
Mirth cannot move a soul in agony.

_Rosaline._ Why, that’s the way to choke a gibing spirit,
Whose influence is begot of that loose grace,
Which shallow laughing hearers give to fools:
A jest’s prosperity lies in the ear
Of him that hears it; never in the tongue
Of him that makes it: then, if sickly ears,
Deaf’d with the clamours of their own dear groans,
Will hear your idle scorns, continue then,
And I will have you, and that fault withal;
But, if they will not, throw away that spirit,
And I shall find you empty of that fault,
Right joyful of your reformation.

_Biron._ A twelvemonth? Well, befall what will befall,
I’ll jest a twelvemonth in an hospital.’

The famous cuckoo-song closes the play: but we shall add no more criticisms: ‘the words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo.’

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING

This admirable comedy used to be frequently acted till of late years. Mr. Garrick’s Benedick was one of his most celebrated characters; and Mrs. Jordan, we have understood, played Beatrice very delightfully. The serious part is still the most prominent here, as in other instances that we have noticed. Hero is the principal figure in the piece, and leaves an indelible impression on the mind by her beauty, her tenderness, and the hard trial of her love. The passage in which Claudio first makes a confession of his affection towards her, conveys as pleasing an image of the entrance of love into a youthful bosom as can well be imagined.

‘Oh, my lord,
When you went onward with this ended action,
I look’d upon her with a soldier’s eye,
That lik’d, but had a rougher task in hand
Than to drive liking to the name of love;
But now I am return’d, and that war-thoughts
Have left their places vacant; in their rooms
Come thronging soft and delicate desires,
All prompting me how fair young Hero is,
Saying, I lik’d her ere I went to wars.’

In the scene at the altar, when Claudio, urged on by the villain Don John, brings the charge of incontinence against her, and as it were divorces her in the very marriage-ceremony, her appeals to her own conscious innocence and honour are made with the most affecting simplicity.

‘_Claudio._ No, Leonato,
I never tempted her with word too large,
But, as a brother to his sister, shew’d
Bashful sincerity, and comely love.

_Hero._ And seem’d I ever otherwise to you?

_Claudio._ Out on thy seeming, I will write against it:
You seem to me as Dian in her orb,
As chaste as is the bud ere it be blown;
But you are more intemperate in your blood
Than Venus, or those pamper’d animals
That rage in savage sensuality.

_Hero._ Is my lord well, that he doth speak so wide?

_Leonato._ Are these things spoken, or do I but dream?

_John._ Sir, they are spoken, and these things are true.

_Benedick._ This looks not like a nuptial.

_Hero._ True! O God!’

The justification of Hero in the end, and her restoration to the confidence and arms of her lover, is brought about by one of those temporary consignments to the grave of which Shakespear seems to have been fond. He has perhaps explained the theory of this predilection in the following lines:—

‘_Friar._ She dying, as it must be so maintain’d,
Upon the instant that she was accus’d,
Shall be lamented, pity’d, and excus’d,
Of every hearer: for it so falls out,
That what we have we prize not to the worth,
While we enjoy it; but being lack’d and lost,
Why then we rack the value; then we find
The virtue, that possession would not shew us
Whilst it was ours.—So will it fare with Claudio;
When he shall hear she dy’d upon his words,
The idea of her love shall sweetly creep
Into his study of imagination;
And every lovely organ of her life
Shall come apparel’d in more precious habit,
More moving, delicate, and full of life,
Into the eye and prospect of his soul,
Than when she liv’d indeed.’

The principal comic characters in MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, Benedick and Beatrice, are both essences in their kind. His character as a woman-hater is admirably supported, and his conversion to matrimony is no less happily effected by the pretended story of Beatrice’s love for him. It is hard to say which of the two scenes is the best, that of the trick which is thus practised on Benedick, or that in which Beatrice is prevailed on to take pity on him by overhearing her cousin and her maid declare (which they do on purpose) that he is dying of love for her. There is something delightfully picturesque in the manner in which Beatrice is described as coming to hear the plot which is contrived against herself—

‘For look where Beatrice, like a lapwing, runs
Close by the ground, to hear our conference.’

In consequence of what she hears (not a word of which is true) she exclaims when these good-natured informants are gone,

‘What fire is in mine ears? Can this be true?
Stand I condemn’d for pride and scorn so much?
Contempt, farewell! and maiden pride adieu!
No glory lives behind the back of such.
And, Benedick, love on, I will requite thee;
Taming my wild heart to thy loving hand;
If thou dost love, my kindness shall incite thee
To bind our loves up in an holy band:
For others say thou dost deserve; and I
Believe it better than reportingly.’

And Benedick, on his part, is equally sincere in his repentance with equal reason, after he has heard the grey-beard, Leonato, and his friend, ‘Monsieur Love,’ discourse of the desperate state of his supposed inamorata.

‘This can be no trick; the conference was sadly borne.—They have the
truth of this from Hero. They seem to pity the lady; it seems her
affections have the full bent. Love me! why, it must be requited. I
hear how I am censur’d: they say, I will bear myself proudly, if I
perceive the love come from her; they say too, that she will rather
die than give any sign of affection.—I did never think to marry: I
must not seem proud:—happy are they that hear their detractions, and
can put them to mending. They say, the lady is fair; ’tis a truth, I
can bear them witness: and virtuous;—’tis so, I cannot reprove it:
and wise—but for loving me:—by my troth it is no addition to her
wit;—nor no great argument of her folly, for I will be horribly in
love with her.—I may chance to have some odd quirks and remnants of
wit broken on me, because I have rail’d so long against marriage:
but doth not the appetite alter? A man loves the meat in his youth,
that he cannot endure in his age.—Shall quips, and sentences, and
these paper bullets of the brain, awe a man from the career of his
humour? No: the world must be peopled. When I said, I would die a
bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were marry’d.—Here
comes Beatrice: by this day, she’s a fair lady: I do spy some marks
of love in her.

The beauty of all this arises from the characters of the persons so entrapped. Benedick is a professed and staunch enemy to marriage, and gives very plausible reasons for the faith that is in him. And as to Beatrice, she persecutes him all day with her jests (so that he could hardly think of being troubled with them at night) she not only turns him but all other things into jest, and is proof against everything serious.

‘_Hero._ Disdain and scorn ride sparkling in her eyes,
Misprising what they look on; and her wit
Values itself so highly, that to her
All matter else seems weak: she cannot love,
Nor take no shape nor project of affection,
She is so self-endeared.

_Ursula._ Sure, I think so;
And therefore, certainly, it were not good
She knew his love, lest she make sport at it.

_Hero._ Why, you speak truth: I never yet saw man,
How wise, how noble, young, how rarely featur’d,
But she would spell him backward: if fair-fac’d,
She’d swear the gentleman should be her sister;
If black, why, nature, drawing of an antick,
Made a foul blot: if tall, a lance ill-headed;
If low, an agate very vilely cut:
If speaking, why, a vane blown with all winds;
If silent, why, a block moved with none.
So turns she every man the wrong side out;
And never gives to truth and virtue that
Which simpleness and merit purchaseth.’

These were happy materials for Shakespear to work on, and he has made a happy use of them. Perhaps that middle point of comedy was never more nicely hit in which the ludicrous blends with the tender, and our follies, turning round against themselves in support of our affections, retain nothing but their humanity.

Dogberry and Verges in this play are inimitable specimens of quaint blundering and misprisions of meaning; and are a standing record of that formal gravity of pretension and total want of common understanding, which Shakespear no doubt copied from real life, and which in the course of two hundred years appear to have ascended from the lowest to the highest offices in the state.

AS YOU LIKE IT

SHAKESPEAR has here converted the forest of Arden into another Arcadia, where they ‘fleet the time carelessly, as they did in the golden world.’ It is the most ideal of any of this author’s plays. It is a pastoral drama, in which the interest arises more out of the sentiments and characters than out of the actions or situations. It is not what is done, but what is said, that claims our attention. Nursed in solitude, ‘under the shade of melancholy boughs,’ the imagination grows soft and delicate, and the wit runs riot in idleness, like a spoiled child, that is never sent to school. Caprice and fancy reign and revel here, and stern necessity is banished to the court. The mild sentiments of humanity are strengthened with thought and leisure; the echo of the cares and noise of the world strikes upon the ear of those ‘who have felt them knowingly,’ softened by time and distance. ‘They hear the tumult, and are still.’ The very air of the place seems to breathe a spirit of philosophical poetry: to stir the thoughts, to touch the heart with pity, as the drowsy forest rustles to the sighing gale. Never was there such beautiful moralising, equally free from pedantry or petulance.

‘And this their life, exempt from public haunts,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.’

Jaques is the only purely contemplative character in Shakespear. He thinks, and does nothing. His whole occupation is to amuse his mind, and he is totally regardless of his body and his fortunes. He is the prince of philosophical idlers; his only passion is thought; he sets no value upon any thing but as it serves as food for reflection. He can ‘suck melancholy out of a song, as a weasel sucks eggs’; the motley fool, ‘who morals on the time,’ is the greatest prize he meets with in the forest. He resents Orlando’s passion for Rosalind as some disparagement of his own passion for abstract truth; and leaves the Duke, as soon as he is restored to his sovereignty, to seek his brother out who has quitted it, and turned hermit.

—‘Out of these convertites
There is much matter to be heard and learnt.’

Within the sequestered and romantic glades of the forest of Arden, they find leisure to be good and wise, or to play the fool and fall in love. Rosalind’s character is made up of sportive gaiety and natural tenderness: her tongue runs the faster to conceal the pressure at her heart. She talks herself out of breath, only to get deeper in love. The coquetry with which she plays with her lover in the double character which she has to support is managed with the nicest address. How full of voluble, laughing grace is all her conversation with Orlando—

—‘In heedless mazes running
With wanton haste and giddy cunning.’

How full of real fondness and pretended cruelty is her answer to him when he promises to love her ‘For ever and a day!’

‘Say a day without the ever: no, no, Orlando, men are April when
they woo, December when they wed: maids are May when they are maids,
but the sky changes when they are wives: I will be more jealous of
thee than a Barbary cock-pigeon over his hen; more clamorous than a
parrot against rain; more new-fangled than an ape; more giddy in my
desires than a monkey; I will weep for nothing like Diana in the
fountain, and I will do that when you are disposed to be merry; I
will laugh like a hyen, and that when you are inclined to sleep.

_Orlando._ But will my Rosalind do so?

_Rosalind._ By my life she will do as I do.’

The silent and retired character of Celia is a necessary relief to the provoking loquacity of Rosalind, nor can anything be better conceived or more beautifully described than the mutual affection between the two cousins:—

—‘We still have slept together,
Rose at an instant, learn’d, play’d, eat together,
And wheresoe’r we went, like Juno’s swans,
Still we went coupled and inseparable.’