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CRITICAL ESSAYS ON THE PLAYS
OF SHAKESPEARE.
I




41




CRITICAL ESSAYS
ON THE
PLAYS OF SHAKESPEARE


BY WILLIAM WATKISS LLOYD


LONDON
GEORGE BELL AND SONS, YORK STREET
COVENT GARDEN
1875




CHISWICK PRESS -PRZINTED BY WHITTINGSIAM AND WILKINS,
TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE.




ADVERTISEMENT.
N looking over these Essays on the occasion of their proposed re-issue, I have
found, and in some degree to my surprise, not alone how little I should now,
after the lapse of years, think necessary
to add to them, but also how little they contain that
I am prepared to revoke or should be anxious tc
modify. They reappear in consequence unaltered,
and in all but secondary and trifling respects are still
to be accepted as enunciations of my deliberate views.
These, I am well aware, will often be found counter
to some that are just now most audibly pronounced,
and even, it may be, rather indulgently listened to;
but I am quite content, without strengthening my
positions, to let Time try these issues as it has already
decided others.
The Essays were originally written under circumstances that put laborious correction out of the question
and I believe that in a measure this nab iuL entirely
a disadvantage; they are certainly in consequence all
the nearer to such an expression of an unforced but
not on that account unstudied appreciation of the
most truly national and popular of our poets, as it
was my desire and only design to promulgate.  I
cannot do better, therefore, than repeat here words
which I prefixed, some seventeen years since, to copies
of a reprint for private circulation.
" The book may be taken simply as a late response


i




Vi


ADVERTISEMENT.


to the great dramatist from the midst of that general
English public which he addressed directly in the first
Cinstance, and which of its own unprompted motion
admitted the supremacy of his genius, and adopted
his national reputation at once full-grown. Of the
lovers of Shakespeare, so numerous among the multitude, who are led to exercise their minds on the
analysis of his art, many are content to dwell on their
own reflections, and the rest to scatter their results
in desultory conversation; by the concurrence of
various aids and incitements, it has been at last the
inclination or the destiny of one to write his conclusions down, and in this form, and with no claim
beyond directness and simplicity, to deliver them in
print."
One word more I must add of affectionate remembrance for the friend to whom it was due that my
own reflections on the genius and art of Shakespeare
found other expression than in conversations that
remain associated in my mind with many a delightful ramble in his company over Box Hill and Mickleham Downs. At a time when zeal for the correction
of Shakespeare's text is as ardent, and when it behoves
solicitude for its conservation to be as watchful as
ever, it is but just to Mr. Singer's memory to recall
the fact that he was the first to discern, and on sufficient moral evidence, as distinguished from the
material that afterwards accrued, the true character
of":Emendations " asserted as authoritative, which
were vitiating successive editions of the poet, and the
first to demonstrate and denounce it in his " Text of
Shakespeare Vindicated," with the decision and courage which were demanded by the occasion, and were
up to the level of his devoted interest and critical
acumen.
W. WATKISs LLOYD.




LIST OF CRITICAL ESSAYS.
Page./EMPEST./...   1
Two Gentlemen of Verona..  13
I Merry Wives of Windsor..  19
Measure for Measure.    33 —
d Comedy of Errors          45
Much Ado about Nothing....  53
Love's Labour's Lost......  69
Midsummer Night's Dream......  81 -Merchant of Venice.....     95 6 -s You Like It.....     111
Taming of the Shrew...... 125.l's Well that Ends Well...  135 -Twelfth Night.....  143
The Winter's Tale.......  157
Pericles, Prince of Tyre......  171
King John........  181
King Richard the Second..       99 -The First Part of King Henry IV..  6.  i   -
The Second Part of King Ienry IV.   235
King Henry V....    251.
First Part of King Henry VI. (Three Parts).. 269
King Richard III.......  285
King Henry VIII........ 301
Troilus and Cressida...          31X7
Coriolanus........  333
Titus Andronicus...               349
Romeo and Juliet..                357
Timon of Athens...               375
Julius Caesar.....         389




viii        LIST OF CRITICAL ESSAYS.
Page
4~&Iacbeth........   405
Hamlet........   421
-,King Lear........   437
Othello..                                  453
J Antony and Cleopatra......   467
J Cymbeline........   481




CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE TEMPEST.
HE date of The Tempest can only be fixed approximately. It is not named in the list of plays ascribed
to Shakspeare by Francis Meres, in 1509, and it contains a passage, derived from Florio's Montaigne, that
was published still later, in 1603. It was played at the beginning of 1613, before Prince Charles, the Lady Elizabeth, and the
Prince Palatine elector; and an allusion to it, by Ben Jonson, in
his " Bartholomew Fair," the following year, seems to indicate
that it was comparatively a new production. The more precise
assignment of the date, in the interval 1603-1613, depends on
evidence which I believe satisfactory, though implicit assent
cannot be demanded for it.
The contemporary account. of the Shipwreck of Sir George
Somers, in 1609, on "that dreadful coast of the Bermudas,
which islands were, of all nations, said and supposed to be enchanted and inhabited with witches and devils," when the ship
was run ashore, " stuck fast without breaking," and all souls
were saved, and " soon cheered and refreshed, the soil and air
being most sweet and delicate," furnished Shakspeare not only
with an epithet for the " still vexed Bermoothes," but with much
of the colour and tone of his storm and desert picture-even it
may be with the suggestion by a " sea-monster," of the half-fish
Caliban. This brings us for the composition of the play to
1610-11.
The fleet of Sir George Somers was sent out to supply and
make strong the colony of Virginia, respecting which the greatest
interest must have prevailed at this time, and not least at Court.
Sir Francis Bacon had sanctioned the application of martial law
to obviate the disorders of the colonists; and, in March, 1612,
King James granted a renewed charter, with increased encouragement to settlers-a revision of his original patent of 1606,
in which he had exercised his talents for scientific government,
and particularly had divided Virginia into two colonies, which,
to avoid disputes, were not to approach each other within 100
miles. Popular excitement would alone give point to the satire
on the eager curiosity of the English, for monsters and Indians,
k                   B




2                     TEMPEST.
dead or alive, and it must be added, in deference to the words,
" Do you put tricks upon us with salvages and men of Inde?"
genuine or counterfeit. The first expedition of Raleigh, in 1584,
brought over, along with the first tobacco, two Indians, who, as
we learn from the 'Counterblaste,' sickened and died, and there is
little doubt that speculative importations would follow at later
date.
Now, it is quite true that in the play all hints of place and
time pertain to the Mediterranean and Italian civilization, and
nothing, so far, can be more remote from the associations of the
age, in voyage and adventure, as derived from journals and narratives of the comrades of Raleigh and Drake.  Yet the mari.
time and colonial adventures of the time were highly stimulating
to intellect and interest, and we may see that Shakspeare, though
far above the mere putting on the stage of the topic of the day,
did not let the opportunity pass of presenting those views of
man and nature, that, true eternally, might never be so vividly
apprehended as at the moment of such excitement. It was in
this sense that Shakspeare conceived the relation of the Drama
to the day, and set forth as the noble aim of the dramatist, the
showing "the very age and body of the time, its form and
pressure;" and how well he did this we shall never know till we
can assign his plays to their true dates and study them in connection.
While, then, the drama before us is apparently so remote in
locality and detail from Virginia, it is most curious to observe!
how many of the topics brought up by colonies and colonization,
are indicated and characterized in the play.
The wonders of new lands, new races: the exaggerations of
travellers, and their truths more strange than exaggeration: new
natural phenomena, and superstitious suggestions of them, the
perils of the sea and shipwrecks, the effect of such fatalities
in awakening remorse for ill deeds, not unremembered because
easily committed: the quarrels and mutinies of colonists for
grudges new and old, the contests for authority of the leaders,
and the greedy misdirection of industry while even subsistence
is precarious: the theories of government for plantations, the /
imaginary and the actual characteristics of man in the state of
nature, the complications with the indigene, the resort, penally
or otherwise, to compelled labour, the reappearance on new soil
of the vices of the older world, the contrast of moral and intellectual qualities between the civilized and the savage, and the
gradual apprehension of the wondrous strangers by the savage,
with all the requirements of activity, promptitude, and vigour
demanded for the efficient and successful administration of a settlement,-all these topics, problems, and conjunctures came up
in the plantation of Virginia by James I.; and familiarity with  {
them and their collateral dependence, would heighten the sensi



CRITICAL ESSAY.


3


bility of the audience to every scene of a play which presented
them in contrasted guise, but in a manner that only the more
distinctly brought them home to their cardinal bearings in the
philosophy of society-of man.
The folly with which Stephano and Trinculo allow themselves
to be diverted from their enterprise by the glittering frippery
would, consciously or not, be heightened by recent note of the
infatuated colonists, among whom, with failing supplies, " there
was no work, no talk, no hope, but dig gold, wash gold, refine
gold," and from whom two ships had recently arrived, freighted
with what was imagined by the adventurers to be the precious
ore, and turned out to be talc!
To turn to the play itself:-the proper action, the dramatic
movement of it, is of very limited scope. Prospero, duke of
Milan, who had been deposed by his brother and the king of
Naples, " an enemy inveterate" (Act I. 2), and exposed at sea
in an open boat, raises by his power of enchantment, a violent
tempest, and causes his enemies, who are on their return from
Africa, to be cast ashore on the island, where for many years
he has found refuge with his daughter. By wise and prompt
direction of the agency of spirits, over whom his knowledge
has given him command, he improves the opportunity to strike
the king of Naples with remorse, to convert him from an enemy
into an ally, to bring about the marriage of his own daughter
with his son, regain his right in an independent dukedom, and
take noble revenge fo~the treachery of his brother. The supernatural aids at the command of Prospero give occasion for
highly picturesque incident, but his success, and the interest
of the play, are not less due to the discretion, self command, and
vigour, which he displays in availing himself of them. Such
qualities might appear inconsistent with his original loss of position, but this is explained by his misfortune being ascribed to his
neglect of the active virtues for the sake of knowledge; and it is
the very pith and marrow of the argument and condu6t of the
play, to show what are the exercises and what are the impulses
by which in a noble nature such a want of balance may be corrected, and how when studious and administrative energy and
moral purpose at last work together in harmony, the coarser,
ruder, and baser talents of mere men of the world, are weak as
the ways of children.
In the second Scene, Act I. Prospero describes to his daughter
the cause and circumstances of his fall-;.... Those (the liberal arts) being all my study
The government I cast upon my brother,
And to my state grew stranger, being transported
And rapt in secret studies.
*    *    *.    *    *    ~




4


TEMPEST.


I thus neglecting worldly ends, all dedicated
To closeness, and the bettering of my mind
With that, which, but by being so retired,
O'erprized all popular rate, in my false brother
Awaked an evil nature.
He also indicates that the moment has come when fortune favours his restoration, but it must be won by alertness equal to
his former negligence.
By my prescience
I find my zenith doth depend upon
A most auspicious star; whose influence
If now I court not, but omit, my fortunes
Will ever after droop.
But whence comes the ability of the bookish prince to grapple
with the necessities of such an occasion, and to make the studies
that had bewrayed him the means of his restoration. Apart
from difference of temperament, Prospero,. in his position, maybe
compared with Hamlet and contrasted with him, as he manifests
a sustained energy equal to his requirement. Hamlet, disgusted
at the contemptible weakness of his mother, loses faith in the
affection of Ophelia, that might have made the uses of the world
appear less " weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable." Prospero is
animated and saved by his interests as a father;
0 a cherubim
Thou wast that did preserve me! Thou didst smile
Infused with a fortitude from heaven,
When I have deck'd the sea with drops full salt;
Under my burden groaned; which raised in me
An undergoing stomach to bear up
Against what else might come.
Supplied with his books by Gonzalo at the time of his exposure,
he educates his daughter, and made hermore profit
Than other princes can that have more time
For vainer hours and tutors not so careful.
And the disproportion of her cultivation to her experience, is the
explanation of the speeches of Miranda that have been questioned or cavilled at. Another pupil is the half brute Caliban,
on whom he tries all the effect of culture and kindness, but experience has already taught him caution, and he this time escapes
a dreadful mischief; after fair trial given he recognizes the incorrigibility of convict vice-" the lying slave whom stripes
may move not kindness," and controls it severely, and employs
it without scruple. More delicate agencies are equally appre



CRITICAL ESSAY.                       5
ciated, and, for the relief he has rendered to Ariel, incapable of
malignancy or vice, but equally incapable by mere elementary
nature, of affection and gratitude, he takes payment for himself
by exacting service, and gives way, on the one hand, to no tyranny, on the other to no indulgence that would weaken his
efficiency and zeal.
Caliban, half human, labours grumbling, grudgingly and ill,
under the fear of cramps and aches; Ariel, a being whose nature
is unknown to humanity, has dislike of labour as absolute as Caliban himself, and only labours in the hope of liberty and release,
but then with alacrity and cheerfulness only to be rivalled by
the labourers for affection of which he knows no touch.
Such a labourer is Ferdinand: as generous, brave, aspiring,
contemning the degrading toil of piling logs, assigned to him by
Prospero, and prepared to encounter all consequence of refusal;
but as susceptible of the tender affections, content to undergo
anything to purchase the sight of his mistress, who, on her part,
would bear the logs instead of him, and labours a volunteer.
Miranda and Caliban, both log-bearers, are in complete antithesis, and both equally contrast with the superior figure of
Prospero, intent on his self-imposed but unselfish task, doing
violence to his predilections for retirement and repose: in the interest of affection doing violence even to his affections: and as he
once was too indulgent and confiding to a brother, now moderating indulgence and confidence to his child, and wisely admonitory to his son-in-law, on the ill suggestions of opportunity.
Ong, it is true, he appears to be relapsing into his formefault, and while he delights his children with the masque, as
aR ensample of his art, is on the point of forgetting the plot of
the contemptible yet still dangerous Caliban, and he starts in
*    self-reproach, more violently disturbed than Miranda had ever
seen him. Still he does remember the exigency in time, and
evinces that it was by no mere accident that he did so, by immediately recovering his self-control and calmly resuming his precautions. This practical consciousness of his besetting liability,
and evidence of habitual self-watchfulness, give the last security
that his course henceforth will be that of a prudent prince, although he anticipates, at Milan, an age of tempered and solemn
contemplation,
And thence retire me to my Milan, where
Every third thought shall be my grave.
In any case he has fulfilled his duties for the crisis, and the promise of his first scene is not forgotten, that assured in such case
happy tranquillity permanent thereafter.
There is much in the sentiment of the story that recals the
beautiful history of Joseph, victim through youthful inexperience of fraternal jealousy and animosity, excited by his own in



6


TEMPEST.


cautiousness, but becoming, through trials, the experienced
governor and man of the world, controlling his passions and
affections, and in calm wisdom subjecting his oppressive kindred
to that discipline of trouble and perplexity that best awakes the
dormant conscience, and, at last, when full signs appear of renewed hearts, opening his own, declaring his name, and with
full forgiveness reuniting the ties of family and home.
The king of Naples, Alonso, is fallen as far below his former
energies as Prospero has risen superior. The late active and
ambitious potentate, aggressive on other states with traitorous
aids, deaf to the calls of humanity, callous even in his own domestic affections when dignified state alliance is compassed by
their sacrifice, is now quite prostrate. The supposed loss of his
heir has rendered him sensible of his want of feeling towards his
daughter, and this, together with the circumstance of the tempestuous scene, awakens his sympathy for the feelings of Prospero, exposed along with his daughter, to the waves, and
remorse for his share in the bad deed;
0 it is monstrous! monstrous!
Methought the billows spoke and told me of it;
The winds did sing it to me; and the thunder,
That deep and dreadful organ pipe, pronounced
The name of Prosp   i it did bass my trespass.
Therefore my son, i' the ooze is bedded; and
I'll seek him deeper than e'er plummet sounded,
And with him there lie mudded.
Natural capacity and vigour are weakened by the sense of
self-disrespect and conscious desert of ill success, and AlonsQis
on the point of becoming the victim of the same error that had
enabled him to depose Prospero,-incautious reliance on a false  4
brother.
The perfect prostration of the faculties of Alonso is brought
into full relief by the sustained and hearty cheerfulness in storm
and shine, of the brave and clear souled Gonzalo, whose sympathy for his master and equable temperament, are equally contrasted with the formal attention and assentation of the mere
courtiers, Adrian and Francisco, and the unfeeling recriminations and cold-hearted persiflage of Sebastian and Antonio.
Alonso is disabled by the unstrung condition of his moral
nature. Sebastian and Antonio are destitute of the better qualities or capabilities that would ever subject them to such reaction. Thus even the charms of Prospero subject them to frantic
agony, but produce no signs of proper remorse. Consistently
with this, while Prospero embraces Alonso at the final reconciliation, the brace of Lords are but warned severely that they
are known, and are pardoned with magnanimity and contempt.
Antonio is tongue-tied, and Sebastian has no word of thanks or




CRITICAL ESSAY.


7


deprecation; yet both are obviously as incapable of shame as of
remorse; and, as the scene proceeds, we find each has recovered
his self-possession, and recurs without embarrassment to his
habit of frivolous, though more justifiably directed satire. When
Caliban and his compeers come in, Sebastian has his
Ha, ha!
What things are these, my Lord Antonio,
Will money buy them?
And Antonio is ready to reply,
Very like; one of them
Is a plain fish, and no doubt marketable;
And so to the last, when Alonso bids his butler and jester,
by way of completing the general restitution, " Hence, and bestow your luggage where you found it," Sebastian subjoins, in
characteristic indulgence of the small evil of semiverbal trifling,
"Or stole it rather."
The essentially narrow characteristics of the intellectual, as
well as of the moral character of Sebastian and Antonio, are
displayed in the exercise of paltry ingenuity to give scornful
translation or comment on every incident and observation; and
so infected are they that one of them scarcely spares himself,
but scoffs, in a parenthetic sentence, at his own preceding words.
From such minds promptitude and efficiency are not to be hoped
in any enterprise, either good or ill. Accordingly, when opportunity tempts them to assassinate Alonso and Gonsalo, though
each is as unscrupulous as the other, and it is difficult to say
which is foremost in suggesting the project, they come to an explanation, by the most tedious beating about and trifling bye
remarks; and, although Antonio declares,
I am more serious than is my custom: you
Must be so too, if heed me; which to do
Trebles thee o'er,
he relapses into his feeble and inconsequent ways of expression
as readily as he whom he admonishes, and the discourse is expanded and prolonged until we feel that Antonio speaks truer
than he purposes, in saying,
There be that can rule Naples
As well as he that sleeps; lords that can prate
As amply and unnecessarily
As this Gonzalo, I myself could make
A chough of as deep chat.
Even after agreement is come to and declared, there is more
talk, and then their intended victims, so long at their mercy, are
roused, and they have but to determine for a second chance,
The next advantage
Will we take thoroughly.




8


TEMPEST.


Perhaps it is by their sustained elasticity under danger and
privation, and a certain Don Juan-like indifference to the most
startling events, that Antonio and Sebastian command respect
enough to let us acquiesce in their ultimate impunity. In the
tempest scene they evince quite as little cowardice as Gonzalo,
though he is far superior to them in equanimity. They are more
credulous than he as to the nature of the shapes that bring the
banquet, but would fall to without hesitation, and when it vanishes in storm, and amidst the solemn denunciations of Ariel,
their response to the self-accusation of Alonso, is
Seb.           But one fiend at a time,
I'll fight their legions o'er.
Ant.                   I'll be thy second.
The penal anguish of mind to which they are subjected by
Prospero is forgotten, when the charm ceases; to them it is as
much an infliction from without as the buffets and pinches endured by Caliban.
The conspiracy of Caliban, Trinculo and Stephano, is that of
Antonio and Sebastian, travestied to the very height of ridiculousness; their schemes of sovereignty are frustrated by like
weakness in its ludicrous form, the very bass string of the fault
that, in its nobler development, had caused the fall of Prospero,
and by his victory over which it is that he recovers himself.
There is relief, as well as instruction, in the society of the meaner
rascals. The wit of Trinculo, crude but genuine, is the true
gold, in comparison to the false tinsel wit of the noble traitors;
and, after their cold-blooded treason, the vigorous hate and
gloating malignity of Caliban, almost engage respect, by contagious sympathy. The project of royalty and revolution breaks
down by the inadequate power to concentrate determination and
pursue a purpose. The plot agreed on, catches succeed, and
drinking continues; and the high contracting parties, when the
pipe and tabor of Ariel play a delusive tune, follow the taborer
till he leaves them up to the neck in a horse-pond. Proposing,
" The sound is going away, let's follow, and after do our work,"
Stephano already betrays his disposition to neglect the necessities of government for the patronage of the liberal arts. " This
will prove a brave kingdom to me, where I shall have my music
for nothing." Ultimately the bait of the glistering apparel is
enough to occupy and divert them, dresses now as Music before,
as Prospero himself had almost become absorbed in the interest
of his masque; and Stephano indulges at once the royal privilege,
not often exercised precipitately, of rewarding wit. "I thank
thee for that jest; here's a garment for't; wit shall not go unrewarded while I am sovereign of this country," &c.
Mental dismay and harassment punished the princes, the
meaner rogues are dismissed with an allowance of cramps and




CRITICAL ESSAY.


9


pinches, that bears proportion to their foolishness rather than
their vice. Caliban himself, when the fumes of wine are no
longer operant, is indignant with himself and his choice of leaders, like any undeceived socialist, and with his inference of
divine knowledge from excellence of liquor. He however, is
only capable of the conclusion, that, in his ill-planned wickedness,
he has been a thrice double ass; and his determination to " be
wiser and seek for grace," gets and deserves no better answer
than " Go to, away."
The name of Miranda betokens an object of wonderment, and
hints at the world of wonderment by which she is surrounded,
and that causes the shipwrecked statesmen to wonder as much
as she, new to mankind and to the new world. The complete
reservation of self-respect, conjoined with the frankest and most
charming candour, that pervades the bearing of Miranda when
she believes herself alone with Ferdinand, but both are watched
with love and admiration by Prospero,-this in itself is one of
the most delicate, yet defined delineations of art. And yet Shakspeare, as is his wont, did not trust for the force of the delineation, to the single and unassisted scene. The charming aspect of
the " Fair encounter of two most rare affections," has been prepared by another representation, coarser but as truthful, of Caliban, as new to the world as Miranda, losing what little selfcommand he had in intoxicating draughts, and grovelling before
Stephano as a king, a god, on the faith of his liquor; and of this
encounter of worthy compeers, there is also a contemplative spectator, Trinculo, who does not fail to set due worth on the drunken
and perfidious and ridiculous monster. Why is Miranda more
rational than Caliban? In the last scene, she too, is dazzled
by a glittering assemblage, and her hasty estimate of the world
receives the gentle check from her father, " It is new to you."
We have no other ground for justifying the utter confidence of
Miranda in Ferdinand while we laugh at the blunder of Caliban,
than the faith in sympathy, intuition, and consent of truthfulness, that poets take for granted, and lovers are like to do the
same.
Caliban, in one sense, is nearer to Miranda than Ariel, for
Ariel is without capacity of sympathetic affection in any form;
can recognize the compassionable as an object of intellect, but
knows no touch of the appropriate sentiment; and for aught that
can be inferred, would be equally incapable of personal hatred.
Miranda has an aversion for the very sight of Caliban, that,
under requiring circumstances, is capable of any degree of intensity, and she could even think ill of her grandmother, though it
would be unwillingly. But for this power, she could not love so
truly and so tenderly; love not only her father, the only human
being she has seen, but Gonzalo, whose character she apprehends
by his acts; while she is so deeply interested for the fate of the




10


TEMPEST.


noble creatures, whose existence she only infers in the wrecked
vessel, that she can scarcely keep her attention while her father
recounts her own story that she has been curious about for
years, but interrupts him at the first opportunity, and after he
has recalled her attention and endeavoured to fix it on certain
points repeatedlyHeaven thank you for't! and now I pray you, sir,
(For still 'tis beating in my mind) your reason
For raising this sea storm?
The incidental references to Claribel have the effect of adding
another female character to the play; besides their use in furnishing an unforced motive for the voyage of Alonso, they serve to
place him in contrast with Prospero, in respect of paternal sensibility, while the word Gonzalo' throws in at last, reconciles uneasy thoughts about her fate, by indicating that the African
marriage had, by good fortune, been of happier event than
Alonso had any right to count on, or had concerned himself
about anticipating.
Gonzalo's Utopian theory of a happy island under theoretical
government, presupposes an alteration in power and quality, not
only of human nature, but of nature at large; it prepares the
edge and point of the next scene, where the inclemencies of the
isle, the debasing labour rendered necessary, and the vile tendencies of imbruted passion in the occupants, tend to make the
fantastic paradise a hell; and the outcry of the debauched slave,
"Freedom, hey day, freedom," echoing the philosopher's aspiration for entire freedom from all restraint, is only ominous of disaster and misery.
In power of pervading local realization, The Tempest is equal
to any of Shakspeare's dramas,-Midsummer Night's Dream,
As You Like It, that are most admirable for this poetic achievement. The storm, in the first scene on ship board, and the news
from the ship tight and yare in the harbour, and the glimpse of
the becalmed fleet, in the last, make the intermediate scenes to
be rounded by circled waves; and throughout we seem, as we
read, from time to time to hear them beating on the shingly
beach, and to catch glimpses of the tranquil sea line in the offing.
The air takes its character from the visitants and their doingsit lulls or excites with floating airs; it is drowsy, or breathes
balm and refreshment; and murky with lightning, and heav)with dropping storm, around the ways of monster and fuddled
mariner; while constant sunshine is round the path of Miranda
and over the cell of Prospero. The masque of Ceres and Juno,
with scenery and airy population of tilth and harvest, most
beautifully relieves the scene of the bare and desert isle.
Below the horizon, on one side, are Algiers and Tunis, on the
other Naples, a powerful kingdom, and busy and cultivated Ita~a.




CRITICAL       ESSAY.                  11
lian seigniories active in commerce, alive and sensitive to poetry
and art, intent on speculations opening the dependence of the
mental and material world, and of civilizations so complex as to
move all the questions of government and polity. Milan, of
these, is the chief-of geographical relations so indicated as to
deter us from exact inquiry.
The Tempest may be studied with advantage, in comparison
with two plays, united by extensively involving a fantastic mythology, but otherwise of most absolute antithesis, Midsummer
Night's Dream and Macbeth. The Tempest, despite the greater
proximity of Ariel to Oberon than to Hecate, is quite as widely
separated from the Midsummer Night's Dream by the gravity of
tone with which it is so largely pervaded, as it is from Macbeth
by the specific distinctions of Tragedy and Comedy; while, as
the story of a throne lost and regained, of traitorous kindred,
abused confidence, requited usurpation, the Tempest is so replete
with " arguments of state," and leads thought so deep and wide
into the theory and responsibilities of government, and the conditions of civil society, that it seems in this aspect more cognate
to Macbeth than to the Midsummer Night's Dream. The supernatural scheme, with its lyrical expression, in each of the three
plays, has an individuality and consistency that are themes of
critical exposition inexhaustible-but, in truth) no less unnecessary, when, to read the plays is to feel the spirit of their characteristics with a vividness, no criticism within present reach is
likely to enhance.
The Tempest takes its place among the finished plays of the
poet, and, therefore, like its peers, is characterized by complete
and harmonious proportion of parts, by every scene and every
character being organically complete, animated with appropriate
and sustained spirit and wrought to the same degree of correctness, and that the highest: and by the general result of realizing
the perception, that the original germ, vigorous and healthy in
its nature and excellent in power, has expanded without let or
distortion and by all favourable tending and under all consenting influences, to the utmost and most admirable perfection.
To the female characters of the play, must be added Sycorax,
whom Shakspeare probably found, with much more of his materials, in some novel, to us unknown. Her name, I suppose it
has been remarked before, is Greek. Psychorrhagia is, the death
struggle; and Psychorrhax, may be translated " heartbreaker,"
(4vxoppn,).
The writhing Stephano's word-had he been king of the island.
he would have been a sore one, reminds us of king James's own
complaint of St. David, the predecessor who alienated so much
royal property to the church, that he was a ' Sore Saint for the
Crown."
This then was the drama, at which, in 1613, and at the age




12                    TEMPEST.
of 13, Prince Charles, or Charles I., looked on. Here was presented to him a picture of the qualities, by which kingdoms
are lost-are regained, when regained they may be. Charles I.
— Prospero-the prince whose name even, is auspicious, and he
whose very aspect it is said, was boding of something ill to happen to him. Charles was to be the hero of the sadder dramabut the poet, who shall do him justice in his weakness and his
strength, is yet unknown to England.




CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA.
ID   R Proteus and Sir Valentine, gentlemen twain and
S    friends, of Verona, are enamoured respectively of Julia
-   )     and Silvia: parallel in their loves,-for both find favour,
and the lady of either is prepared to quit sire and
home for their sakes without leave or leavetaking; they are as
nearly parallel in their attendance,-Speed is the boy-page of
Sir Valentine, and Launce waits after a genius and fashion of
his own, upon Sir Proteus.
It is the inconstancy of Sir Proteus-a name suggested by his
character, that chiefly gives movement to the story. Separated
from his own love, he becomes enamoured of his friend's, whom
his friend only too incautiously brings him near; and incited by
his new passion he betrays Valentine to procure his banishment;
makes a catspaw of another rival to gain opportunity for pressing his own suit; receives even encouragement enough to excuse some loss of head: is repentant, pardoned, and again loyal
to Julia, when Valentine upbraids him, and when-O potent
mystery of love I the first object is again present to vindicate her
power.
The excuse that renders the falsehood of Proteus tolerable, is
the foolish " braggardism" of Valentine in setting forth his
mistress; the fault of the boy in Much Ado about Nothing,
" who found a bird's nest and told his comrade, and he stole it."
The little consideration he shows or admits for the prepossessions
of Proteus in favour of another, is great apology for reciprocation
on the part of his confidant, who practically rebukes him by
adopting his opinion to his cost. Valentine's love has no slightest savour of jealousy,-he despises the pretensions of Thurio,
and thence of all others. He heralds and proclaims the perfection of Proteus beforehand, and urges Silvia to " confirm his
welcome with some special favour."-" Sweet lady entertain him
for your servant." He certainly professes that he must follow
Silvia as Thurio is with her, and " love thou knowest is full of
jealousy;" but the next minute he forgets that errand, and is off
to his chamber, and forgets his yet warm maxim too, for he invites Proteus to full confidence in all his schemes and counsel




14


CRITICAL ESSAY.


for elopement, and when he is banished he apparently falls entirely in with the offer of Proteus to " confer at large of all that
may concern his love affairs," and to be the medium of clandestine correspondence. Valentine was wrong-he ought to have
known better the tendencies of a susceptible nature, whose lady
love is at a distance, and for a long time likely to be so.
Valentine is imprudent, but Thurio is ridiculous; the mistake
of the romantic lover is with the sordid rival distorted into a
blunder. Assuredly we feel no indignation against Proteus in
this second faithless attorneyship, and his impunity in the second somewhat carries off the feeling of heinousness associated
with the first, which it seems like casuistry to construe very differently. Proteus is too near akin to his fellow gentleman quite
to escape his error of misjudging confidence, though with less
serious consequences. He sends his love-letter to Julia by his
friend's page who delivers it to Julia's waiting-woman, as if to
herself. He sends his present of a pet dog to Silvia by Launce,
who loses " the squirrel" and substitutes his own brute Crab,
unmannerly cur; messengers undeft enough, but at least they
were not rivals. As a last resource, he falls into the last absurdity of engaging his old love to promote his suit with his new
one. The art of delegation is at fault throughout the play, and
Valentine is vain to hope for love-making by proxy in his exile,
when he cannot get the commonest message delivered as it
should be; Launce, who has charge of it,
I pray thee, Launce, an' if thou seest my boy,
Bid him make haste and meet me at the north gatesimply improves the opportunity to get Speed a whipping by
delaying him for half an hour. Silvia, after all, has best judgment in choice of both secretary and messenger, when she makes
Valentine write a letter in her name to himself, and to himself
deliver it-yet strange to say, even in this case, it hardly comes
to hand. But what exception can be taken to her choice as
convoy and conductor to Mantua, of the loyal Sir Eglamour?
" And for the ways are dangerous to pass,
I do desire thy worthy company,
Upon whose faith and honour I repose."
For faith and honour let Sir Eglamour pass; but where was he
when most needed    n "the dangerous ways? "-" Where is
the gentlemanl that was with her? Being nimble-footed he hath
outrun us, answers o4e outlaw to another; but Moyses and Valerius follow him," anal i is my sincere hope that he was caught.
The suitor, respecting whom Julia enquires, " What thinkest
thou of the fair Sir Eglamour?" if only a namesake, might from
Lucetta's answer, be something more:"As of a knight well spoken, neat and fine;
But, were I you, he never should be mine."




TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA. 15
By usual fatality the fickle lover has gained a truly constant
heart-for such is Julia's; and Julia is the most charming character in the play, and more than rudimentary of more than
one of Shakspeare's most charming heroines. From her lips fall
the lines of sweetest poetry in the play, expressive of the behaviour of true affection in all circumstances; in difficulty, excited
and lively; in prosperity and ease, availing itself only of such
happiness to pursue its course -untarrying, undivergent, a
beauty and a blessing; and varied in this manner by contingent
fortunes, but ever in itself the same, is the affection of Julia and
the history of its course.
Silvia, " hard beset" with lovers in her father's court, though
she gives proof not to be excepted against that she loves Valentine, betrays not the less a tinge of the temper of'her wooer Proteus. It must be said without disguise, that it was not absolutely necessary for her to give her picture to Proteus while she
was upbraiding him with falsehood to his friend and to a former
love; and if the act was not falsehood on her part towards
Valentine, it was dangerous coquetry towards Proteus, and goes
far to account for the interpretation he evidently put upon her
coyness, when he had added the service of rescue from the robbers to former fervent protestations. Her bitter upbraidings are
phenomena that Homer and Paris Alexander knew, and Proteus may therefore not unnaturally have thought, to be far less
sincere than they may sometimes have sounded; and Valentine
himself who unseen was looking on and listening at the scene,
may have had his own apprehensions too, and interfered, it may
be, to rescue Silvia scarcely more from Proteus than from herself. Thus may be, but only thus can be accounted for, the remainder of the scene; thus the more than Christian eagerness
of pardon with which Valentine overwhelms the abashed Proteus,
and the alacrity of his renunciation of all previous rights in the
blushing damsel who has no word of recognition or gratitude to
greet him with, but is tongue-tied to the end.
" And that my love may appear plain and free,
All that was mine in Silvia I give thee."
The distress and revelation of Julia set all to rights. Proteus is recalled to his first attachment and his better nature;
Valentine recalls his gift of Silvia by heartily joining the hands
of Julia and her recovered knight; and the arrival of Thurio, and
the graciousness of the duke, give hint for the revival of his own
passion-the recovery of his confidence, at least to a point that
will not prevent his being more circumspect in future.
One may be tempted to think, as Valentine draws the Duke's
attention gracefully to the blushing page, that he and Julia
would have been the more fitting match. But love manages
not these matters on this wise, and it is quite in the order of his




16


CRITICAL ESSAY.


dispensations, that the two most constant and sincerest lovers
should each be mated with a husband and a wife who had
hitherto at least had neither steadfastness nor sincerity to spare.
Launce and Speed are complementary to each other like their
masters, but in lower grade, mortals still more inferior to the
heroes than the heroes are to the gods. Personally Speed is
contrasted with Launce whose age is undefined, by constant indications of youthfulness yet unescaped from boyhood. He is
equally matched with Launce in the wit of word-catching, but
appropriately, as the servant of the more refined Valentine, he
wants the humour of the servant of Proteus, humour that
smacks so strongly of worldly wisdom, that consorts in easy familiarity with whatever coarseness may come in the way or
even lie a little beside it, and that is as little checked in its indulgence by theoretical delicacy as by mischievous consequence
to master or fellow. It is quite intelligible that Launce should
relish the misbehaviour of the substituted Crab,-he waited, of
course, in expectation of such reward; and when he believes he
has got Speed into trouble, he looks forward to " a sight of the
boy's correction" while he shall stand by in the character of
moralist, as the completion of the fun.
Both Speed and Launce surpass their masters in the quality of
mind denoted by the term shrewdness-the epithet " clownish,"
in the original list of actors refers not to rusticity, but to the
stage clown of the day-Speed interprets Silvia to his puzzled
master, and Launce discerns the knavery of Proteus with perspicacity enough. Proteus, in his excuse to his father, only overreaches himself, and Valentine gives himself up to the inartificial discovery of the duke with an aptitude for being bewildered,
that is delightful.
There is sufficient indication in the play that when it was
written, Shakspeare had already conceived the principle by which
in his more perfect works he so wonderfully harmonizes the
farcical and the comic; thus, the parting of Julia and Proteus,
when kiss and token are interchanged, but poor Julia, more
moved than her swain, is fain to break away, is " gone without
a word" and leaves Proteus to reflect" Ay, so true love should do: it carmot speak;
For truth hath better deeds than words to grace it."And,
"Alas! this parting strikes poor lovers dumb,"a scene in which the comparative coldness of the lover is certainly
palpable, introduces the still more ominous monologue of Launce
descriptive of the passionate domestic scene at his own leavetaking, and the cruelhearted indifference of the dog Crab, " that
all this while sheds not a tear nor speaks a word."




TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA.                       17
Launce's communication of his love-texts to Speed, and the
punishment of prying incurred by the latter, give pale reflex of
the too confidential Valentine and Thurio and the little profiting
of Proteus the eager confidant, thereby. It may be sin to say
so, but I verily believe that the account given by Launce of his
self-devotion to rescue Crab from the results of his transgression
once and again, presents designedly the farcical aspect of the
self-sacrifice of the better for the baser, that in the aspect of
loftier comedy is presented in the end of the scene by the disguised Julia.
By contrast with the other plays of Shakspeare, the Two Gentlemen of Verona has an air of sketchiness that disappears to a
great extent when it is compared with the works of other dramatists of his age. The versification throughout is indeed very
highly finished, a point that becomes more apparent when its
proper laws are seen and allowed for. A peculiar character is
given to it by the avoiding of periods anywhere but at the close
of a line, unless in case of the termination of a speech. Again,
when the verses transgress the common licenses of the tensyllable line, they betray a preference for a certain rhythmical
variation.
"Coy looks with heart-sore sighs:-one fading moment's
mirth."
Compare Act i. Scene 2:
Jul. I would I knew his mind.
Luc.                         Peruse this paper, madam.
And the next after,
Luc. No, madam; 'tis too sharp.
Jul.                           You minion are too saucy.
The rhymes of Speed, Act ii. Scene 1, exhaust in brief compass
all the changes of this rhythmical divisionSpeed. 0 jest unseen, inscrutable, invisible,
As a nose on a man's face, or a weathercock on a
steeple, &c.
In like manner many, perhaps most, of the incidental departures
from ordinary heroic measure, are susceptible of a scansion that
harmonizes the interruption.
For a judgment on the play at large we may in this case appeal to Shakspeare himself, whose appreciation is discernible in
the remarkable fact, that its scenes, incidents, images and situations, are met with in others of his later plays-always extended,
developed, and refined-and we may infer that the poet considered that in this work he had recorded ideas of great poetical
worth, but still with a certain crudeness that made him feel no
scruple in making other appliance of them. The review of lovers


I




18                CRITICAL ESSAY.
and running satirical commentary of Julia and her maid Lucetta,
anticipate the diversion of Portia and Nerissa at Belmont. Julia's modest motive for donning masculine attire, and her appeal
to the fantastic ways of men who are womanly, to carry off the
effect of any inexactitude of imitation, are reproduced in still
livelier tones by Rosalind; and so is her deliberate entertainment of the policy of falling in love. Viola, in Twelfth Night,
is, like Julia, employed in messages of love by him whom she
herself is enamoured of; and, like her, takes pleasure of covertly
exciting an interest by a feigned parallel, in her proper fortunes
and person. These are instances among others; and to them
we may add, that Launcelot Gobbo, like other wits, was not entirely original; Speed had been before him in his excuse for
echoing an ejaculation of his master's, that he " was last chidden
for being too slow;" and his namesake Launce had set him unfilial example in graceless comment on the relative moral worth
of his father and mother. Even Benedick himself is under suspicion of not being unacquainted with Speed's sketch of the
changes wrought in a sensible man's appearance by simpleton
love.
But a more fundamental coincidence directs attention to what
is really the weak point in the structure and elaboration of the
play. The Two Gentlemen of Verona has the imperfection that
perplexes us in All's Well that Ends Well;-the motive incident of the intrigue is prolonged and tightened, until, by the
necessity of a close, a greater strain is put upon our faith in the
sincerity of conversions taken up suddenly and when no further
evasion is available, than that faith when most charitably disposed, very willingly bears. In dramas, therefore, that we may
confidently consider of later date, Shakspeare avoids making
such a demand in the case of any of the chief characters of the
play; and in the case of subordinates, as Jacques de Bois and
the usurping Duke, in As You Like It, he accords a variety of
preparatory incident, and either does not re-introduce the penitent in presence again, or at least avoids exhibiting the very
moment of conversion. But, in the Midsummer Night's Dream,
he recurred to his early theme of the volatility of love, and
heightened the dilemmas it induces, of interchanging fancy and
sudden revolutions and vagaries of affection, by double complexities and cross purposes, that outvie the transformations of
Proteus, the dallying uncertainty of Silvia, the impulse of Valentine; but here he is still more bold, because he is at the same
time more indulgent; and he is able to achieve the full interest
of all the situations because he entirely relieves the agents of
responsibility for their fickleness, by the intertwining with the
course of their action and the very origin of their imaginations,
the influence of faery charms and the finest of all fantastic
supernatural influences.




CRITICAL ESSAY ON MERRY WIVES
OF WINDSOR.
HAKSPEARE, who chose so many subjects for historical and tragic plays from the History of England,
has only left one Comedy of which the scene lies on
English ground-the Merry Wives of Windsor; and,
if tradition may be trusted, the origin of this is due less to his
own preference than to the urgency of Royal command. It may
not be impossible to discover sufficient reasons for the course of
his predilections by the indications of treatment, but it is desirable in the first instance to consider what value we may safely
attach to the tradition.
It is first found in print in 1702, under the hand of Mr. John
Dennis, who, with reference to this play, avers, —" I knew very
well that it had pleased one of the greatest queens that ever was
in the world.... this Comedy was written at her command and
by her direction, and she was so eager to see it acted that she
commanded it to be finished in fourteen days; and was afterwards, as tradition tells us, very well pleased at the representation." Thus the title of the quarto edition, entered on the Stationers' books in January 1602, witnesses that it had been played
before her Majesty. Dennis felt himself far above the necessity
of an apology for altering Shakspeare, and he makes no use of
the rapidity of the composition of the play as an argument that
it might naturally be the better for more matured elaboration.
Rowe, seven years later, furnishes other details: " The Queen,"
he says, " was so well pleased with that admirable character of
Falstaff in the two parts of Henry IV. that she commanded him
to continue it for one play more, and to show him in love; and
this is said to be the occasion of his writing the Merry Wives
of Windsor." Some further details than Dennis mentions must
have been in his mind when he spoke of the play being written
not only " at her command," but " by her direction."  And
there is every appearance that they were those given by Rowe
and drawn at the same well-head of playhouse or play-writers'
tradition.
That the Comedy was written after the two parts of Henry IV.
and Henry V. there can be little doubt; the quarto editions of




20        MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR.
these plays date earlier, and Corporal Nym, who only appears in
the Comedy and in Henry V. is palpably a growth and suggestion of the theme of the latter play, the proper complement as a
sullen coward to the swaggering poltroonery of Pistol, which
only required such relief in a tale of war and scenes of the camp.
The second part of Henry IV. it will be recollected, closes with
a promise to reproduce Falstaff in the French wars; the expectation was disappointed, and this in itself was sufficient to provoke such a demand as we are now considering. Sir John walks
on at his first entrance as an old acquaintance, and it is only
because we read with former associations that we do not feel
dissatisfied at the absence of more exact explanation of his
origin and position. Some commentators have assumed with
simplicity enough that inasmuch as the Comedy presents earlier
incidents in the career of the common characters,-the maiden
life of Mrs. Quickly, who is wife or widow in the histories that
also record the hanging of Bardolph and Nym, it must have
been written earlier; and others who have the acuteness to waive
this inference apply themselves to reconcile by stratagems familiar to the harmonist, the discrepant biographical notices of these
children of the brain. This of course is mere trifling; coherence
and consistency are sufficiently cared for among the plays that
have immediate historical dependance, but they are lightly and
probably studiously disregarded in transition to a play which is disconnected with them in tone, in scene, and in subject. It is quite
clear that a certain proportion of the interest of the Comedy was to
depend on the reproduction of former favourites under new circumstances, but complete transference of living organisms to
circumstances entirely contrasted, is impossible in poetry as in
nature. Shallow moves from Gloucestershire to Windsor with
little oppression of the vital functions; but the moral constitution of Mrs. Quickly of Eastcheap would gasp helplessly in the
atmosphere of the country town and the forest, however aptly at
some later day the Quickly of Windsor might become acclimated
in the city. The fat knight himself, it has often been remarked,
undergoes not slight change by being transported to purer air
and cleaner company, and we have not to regret the failure of
some characteristics already sufficiently realized, but to admire
the art with which the dramatist avails himself of the capabilities and responds to the exigence of the new, and, as I believe,
the imposed combination, and, as love and Falstaff are incompatible, takes the course of involving him for other motives in an
intrigue which might pass with Queen Bess as much the same
thing.
If there were any argument that would go far to convince us
that the Merry Wives of Windsor dated before the Histories,
it would be the improbability of a poet bringing back Falstaff
and his compeers to the stage in a combination that could not




CRITICAL      ESSAY.                 21
heighten, and indeed could scarcely be thought to maintain, the
glory of their original display. Counter evidence,however, obliges
us to admit that this is one of the improbabilities that are facts
notwithstanding, and the tradition gives satisfactory solution of
the difficulty. It remains for us to appreciate the success with
which Shakspeare contrived to satisfy an injunction more capricious than happy, and to bear harmless the integrity of his creations and the dignity of his art, through a dangerous trial, and
produce the finished play we should now be so loth to spare.
I have sometimes thought that Shakspeare intended a mischievous hint not complimentary to the taste of the Queen, in
one of the last reflections of the abused and baited knight" See, now, how wit may be made a Jack-a-lent, when 'tis upon
ill employment."
How much truth there may be in a tradition appears to be
shown by the squib on the arms of Sir Thomas Lucy at the
commencement of the play, the purport of which was not recognized by Rowe, who first gave currency to the story that the
poet had embroiled himself with the occupant of Charlecote by
killing his deer; and the feud and its details thus gained striking
and independent confirmation. The date of the play seems to
point to a further illustration of this pique. The first sketch
has been carried at least to Christmas, 1601. Now, it was in
1596 that a grant of arms had been obtained by the poet for his
father, John Shakspeare, about the time that the purchase of
New Place was proceeding, and it was confirmed in 1599; this
grant among others was afterwards objected to, and as the challenge of its propriety was officially rebutted in 1602, if the
attack was indeed promoted by jealous, or envious, or resentful
neighbours, the date of it would correspond significantly with
that of the play that administered retaliation. The social influence of these badges rendered touchiness upon such points
less of a puerility than it may be accounted at present, and the
distinction was not to be despised for its uses by those who had
claims above it. When the right of Sir Francis Drake to the
arms of a namesake was repudiated with an insult, the Queen
interfered, and granted the circumnavigator as a crest, a ship
with a wivern gules, the arms of his opponent, hung up in the rigging by the heels. Shakspeare had the means of redress in his
own hands, and employed them very effectively.
Stray hints of dates have been noted in the play, but no way
aiding a more accurate limit. They are the allusions to Raleigh's voyage to Guiana, to the hackneyed knighthood that
began its ill name with James I. and, in the first sketch, to the
visit of a German Prince to Windsor,-common property of a
wide interval and defining nothing. The name of Dr. Caius, a
physician under Henry VIII. and his daughters, and of whose
deserts to science an account will le found in Dr. Elliotson's




22        MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR.
noble Harveian Oration, is made use of, it must be owned, somewhat irreverently, and must have been so recent in men's memories that it seems part of a plan, in a play of which the manners
were to be contemporary and the date remote, to bring the chronology deliberately into a state of mystified equivocation.
Is it possible that busy genial Sir Hugh, the priest and pedagogue, was also a sketch from the life at Stratford; of the two
masters of the grammar-school there in Shakspeare's time, one
is noted as curate of Luddington, and the other has a name from
the principality.
Gloucestershire, of course, is an adjoining county to Warwickshire on the Stratford side, and though Shallow may have come
to Windsor on the errand of complaining to the king or council
in the matter of the riot, the very ground of quarrel which a
Lucy is recorded to have had with the townsmen of Stratford, it
is not so clear what should have originally led Falstaff to Gloucestershire when on his way to the army in Yorkshire-he is
expected also to pay a visit on his way back, unless it were the
convenience of the poet in the accommodation of local allusions
on ground and among persons he was familiar with.
In 1601, the date of the less finished play, and within about a
year of the death of Elizabeth, Shakspeare was 37 years old,
and had already produced such works as Romeo and Juliet, and
As You Like It, and the Midsummer Night's Dream. We cannot suppose therefore the slovenly quarto to represent even the
earlier and hurried draught of the play with accuracy, and no
doubt it was obtained imperfectly and surreptitiously. We are
concerned with a production of the prime period of the author's
genius, and must be prepared to find it distinguished by his best
characteristics.
This Comedy accordingly belongs to that class of Shakspeare's
plays that is marked by correctness of proportion both in characters and distribution. Indeed, it would be difficult to name
a play that is more distinguished by the avoidance of redundancy, by the specific quality of correctness. The characters,
which are very numerous,-they amount to twenty-are all
wrought to an equal degree of finish, and are brought forward
or subordinated with the exact relief that corresponds with their
several functions and importance. The scenes follow in succession with admirably regulated length and variety of movement, and with such exact compensation of tone and humour as
to move forward the busy action without delay or confusion,
without a hint of tediousness or a moment of dissatisfaction from
the beginning to the end. These are qualities that best evidence
the height and maturity of poetic powers. Still it is apparent
that for such powers the scope and subject of the play did not
afford the fullest opportunities of exercise. It is not for an
instant to be placed beside the more perfect poetical comedies, be



CRITICAL ESSAY.                      23
side As You Like It, or Twelfth Night, or even beside The Two
Gentlemen of Verona, or perhaps Love's Labour's Lost; works
for which lavish expenditure of poetic gold vindicates rank in a
higher class notwithstanding defects in correctness and proportion. That Shakspeare left unattempted a poetic English
Comedy, seems to imply that to his apprehension the scene that
harmonized so well with humour and tragic and even heroic
action, was not so favourable for romance. Certain it is that
the limits within which he restricted himself in the Merry Wives
of Windsor, seem fully accounted for by the nature and truth of
the social aspect he was invited to depict. We are introduced
to the domestic incidents of English households of the easy
middle class. We are among the substantial and thrift-considering gentry, on the margin of the town and the county,
with means and leisure, following the minor field sports and
open air amusements, not without passions and not without prejudices, but with good solid groundwork of character in right
meaning and deliberateness, and with hearts that sooner or later
prove to be in their right places. For the rest the husk of provincial quaintness holds stiffly about them even in their heartiest
hospitalities, and they are not apt to be disturbed or distinguished by either variety or vivacity of ideas.
The ceremonious formality of country courtesy is heightened
from Page, to the ridiculous in the pomposity and repetitions of
Shallow, to grotesque fatuity in the imbecility of Slender. The
dramatist assuredly bore no good will to the originals of these
types of high sheriffs and justices, and he brought them forth
for exhibition-poor scarecrows to those who could defy and
plague them at home, and asses to the eyes of Court-frequenting
Londoners. With the redoubted Silence of the earlier play, they
belong to a class that supplied our literature with the genuine
English creations of Squire Western and Sir Roger de Coverley,
and is still rich in characteristic materials worth rescuing before
it entirely passes away.
The credulous apprehensions of Ford and his unskilful endeavours
in detective arts, would render him contemptible as well as ridiculous, but for contrast with the still more ludicrous inanities around
him; with Shallow put easily to silence by the bold bluster and
ridicule of Sir John, with Slender so helpless with the best of
causes against the slang dialectics of Pistol, Bardolph, and Nym,
and with Simple, whose entire transparency serves to indicate
that even the wit of Slender in comparison has substance enough
to cast a faint shadow.
The nationality of the portraitures are defined by the Welsh
pedagogue and the French doctor. In the frankness with which
Page and Ford recognize their mistakes and get over their disappointments, shake hands, and are friends, there is embodied
the English theory of the right way of recovering balance of




24          MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR.
mind after a disturbance, with no afterclap of suspicion, rancour,
meanness, or malice. We can scarcely say this of Caius or even
of dear peace-making and match-making Sir Hugh, who are
more than merry in their retaliation on mine host. They also
indulge in coarseness of expression, which only in the case of
Sir Hugh is occasionally qualified by mirth. Mine host of the
Garter is bright and sparkling as his own canary; at home and
at ease with all, brimming with animal spirits and affecting the
rapid in speech and movement, he is a congenial carouser with
Falstaff and the welcome enlivener of the country gentlemen; he
is to them, like his own inn in the town, the chief centre where
the pulsations of social life could in the dullest times be actually
observed and sworn to.
A certain tendency to tameness in the husbands is corrected
by the briskness of the merry wives, who engross a large proportion of what cleverness falls in distribution. Still it is remarkable in a play where the distinctions of character are so
sharply marked, that there is little hint of any subjective difference between the pair; and this drawback on their originality,
keeps them in harmony with their sober environments. We can
scarcely think of them otherwise than as dressed exactly alike,
and Falstaff had some excuse for thinking that a love-letter that
would suit one scarcely required variation for the other.
The Windsor wives are merry, and at times free spoken enough,
but this is only when they " laugh alone," for the audience counts
for nothing, and that some liberality in phrase is no impeachment of their honesty is the very point that protects them from
the dulness of demure propriety, which would so easily lose them
the sympathy of a theatrical audience, which has little tolerance
for the most respectable virtue when it ignores the humanity of
liveliness and animal spirits. And this is the very moral that
the sober sided Ford, who could so little understand his wife's love
of her lively neighbour's company, or the feminine necessity for
change of scene and lively diversion, has to learn for his own advantage, and the advantage and amusement of lookers on.
Among these quiet characters of temperate routine, two sources
and springs of action and excitement are introduced. Anne Page
is marriageable, and has not only some money, but a certain will
of her own, that is neither that of her father nor mother, who also
disagree. The love-story fills very little space, very unexciting
love-making indeed it is, yet at least it is love, and this suffices to
give the warm glow of a bright tint to the composition, as we
shall find that it is invaluable to its moral import. The other
motive is of larger development, and grows from the contact of
the society of the town of Windsor with the outskirts of the
Court. The Castle, indeed, is seldom long out of sight or mind
in the course of the story, and the park furnishes the usual scenery, as the forest glade and primeval oak of Herne the hunter




CRITICAL ESSAY.                        25
give its picturesque conclusion. The allusions of Falstaff, Shallow, and mine Host, the errands of Dr. Caius, and still more the
cultivated dexterity in intrigue of Mistress Quickly, keep up a
consciousness of the proximity of Court influences. Mrs. Page's
predilection for Caius, as a suitor, on the ground of his connection with the Court, is a betrayal of the same weakness that to
this day furnishes readers of the drearinesses of the Court newsman; while Page's objection to Fenton, his having consorted
with the wild young prince and Poins, evinces the same respectable aversion to irregularities, however aristocratic, that continues so strangely compatible with theoretic veneration for the
dignities that harbour them. Falstaff is the type of the ill-conditioned idlers who hang about the Court and foray in the neighbourhood; and the jealousy of Ford is a little accounted for by
the hints of the gallants who press irregular suits-fragrant as
" Bucklersbury in simple time," and engage with perquisites accepted at all hands, the aid of the " good maid" Quickly.
Here, then, we have the stuff of the plot. The fair-spoken
knight sees the merry wives at the dinner at Mr. Page's, and his
seemly ways and speeches at the first interview engage kind
looks; the lax and needy courtier has but one interpretation for
these, and is alert at the chance of finding the way to the husbands' purses. He tries, in a country town, the arts that he had
learned at Whitehall, and in the purlieus of the tilt-yard, but
his duplicate appeals are compared, and there is no disappointed
vanity in the genuine resentment excited. Treacherous assignations lead him on to one mishap and humiliation after another,
by a process which at the same time disabuses a jealous husband
of his " lunes," and at last he is the butt of the entire crowd.
The substantive wit of the piece, therefore, does not exceed
the capabilities of the old English form of the practical joke,the hoax; but these resources are wrought out to the fullest extent, and the humour swells and undulates on the full tide of
flowing animal spirits. The hoax is the instrument of the punishments of Falstaff, but these instances do not stand alone, it
dissipates the foolish quarrel of Caius and Sir Hugh Evans on
the one hand, and on the other it is the means of foiling the illconsidered plans of the parents of Anne Page. The false appointments of the pedagogue and doctor, and the excursion of
the latter lured over the country, to his confusion, in the hope of
finding Anne Page at a farm-house feasting, are exercises of
country mirth of the same class as the false assignations that
carry Falstaff into the ditch at Datchet Mead, or conduct him in
disguise, under the cudgel of Ford. The mishap of Ford, in his
attempts to follow the appointments of Falstaff, and to compete
in cleverness with the mirthful matrons, gives the hoax potential, and in the flight of Falstaff through Windsor, as Mother
Pratt, eluding by his " admirably counterfeiting the action of an




26           MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR.
old woman," the penal intentions of the rogue constable, and deceiving the eyes, as he afterwards imposes on the wits of Simple,
we have a foreshadowing of the successful hoaxes of the last
scene, when Slender exclaims, " If I did not think it had been
Anne Page I might never stir, and 'tis a post-master's boy;" and
Dr. Caius, "Vere is Mistress Page? By gar, I am cozened; I
ha' married un yarpon, a boy." Merriment of this character is
not unapt to degenerate into the unfeeling, and all tempers do
not bear it equally well. Mine host is made a victim out of retaliation for his jest; and for once is in low spirits; all rancour
however explodes at the last harmlessly: Caius will be satisfied
by " raising all Windsor," and Slender by communicating how
he has been befooled, to " the best in Gloucestershire." Ford
does not triumph without a little drawback; Mrs. and Mr. Page
are foiled at their own weapons, and Falstaff has a laugh at their
expense spared to him in his turn. Compensation is complete
throughout; the circle of ridicule returns into itself, and the play
ends as a comedy should, with liberal amnesty and cordial reconciliation.
The ultimate sources of the plot of the Merry Wives of Windsor are to be found in various Italian novels of the 16th century,
reprinted by Halliwell, and a portion of them more immediately
in Tarleton's News out of Purgatory, a collection printed about
1590, soon after the death of the highly celebrated Comedian
whose name it carried. Besides this, no other translations that
Shakspeare could have used have been recovered.
A tale, in Le Piacevoli Notti of Gio. Francesco Straparola,
of which there are several editions after the first (Vineg. 1550),
furnishes a league of ladies for the confusion of a lover who addressed similar protestations to three at the same time. Filenio
receives three assignations, and at each in succession he is entrapped and ill-treated mercilessly enough, his retirement in one
instance, like that of Falstaff, to a retreat of prepared discomfort,
being hastened by the return of the husband. The ladies exercise no ingenuity to make the disasters appear unpremeditated,
and as each successive assignation is with a different lady, the
infatuation of another venture is less ludicrously marked. They
are all married; but pique not virtue is the motive of their indignation: and the author so completes his tale as to give them
the worst of the contest at last.
In another story, in the same volume, we find the precedent
for the position of Ford, who becomes, but to no purpose, the
confidant of his wife's suitor. A physician, with some of the
imprudence of king Candaules, is the cause of a gallant becoming
enamoured of his wife, and is made by him the confidant of his
adventures and success. The escapes of the lover are all told at
the expense of the duped husband, who receives the particulars
of one only to be baffled as grossly in his next pursuit and




CRITICAL ESSAY.                       27
search. One escape is effected by drawn curtains, another in
a box of deeds; the second of the set is effected by the lady
putting him in a large chest behind a heap of clothes, which, at
the next search, are of course duly visited, while the new hiding
place is overlooked.
A witty variation of this story is found in Ii Pecorone of Ser
Giovanni Fiorentino (first printed in 1558, but there are many
later impressions), which was translated, Mr. Halliwell says, in
1632. The husband is now wrong, as well as imprudent; he
gives lessons in the conduct of an intrigue, finds to his mortification that his pupil is applying them successfully against
himself, and fails signally in his attempts to catch the lover, who
supplies him with full details of his intentions, appointments, and
previous escapes. One of the concealments is by being put under
a heap of clothes from the wash, not fully dry, but the unpleasantness does not appear invented with any malice to the lover,
who has the author's goodwill. The search at the second adventure, among the heap of linen that had hid the traitor before,
is the unfailing comic incident, but the incidents of the story furnish nothing illustrative in addition to Straparola's story, unless
it be the substitution of wet clothes for dry, as a nearer approach
to the misery of the penitential buck-basket.
The Tarleton story does not vary much from the second of
Straparola, of which it may, in large portions be considered a
translation. It is not much better in its moral construction.
The lover, it is true, is disappointed, but he is quit for his escape;
in both stories the husband dies of vexation, and it is a slight
difference that, in the Italian, the wife elopes with her lover before this catastrophe, in the other marries him after it. Halliwell points out various verbal coincidences, that leave little doubt,
or none that Shakspeare worked from this sketch, which lay so
directly in his way, though the anomaly still remains, that while
he adopts the basket of the translation, in place of the chest of
the original, he takes the clothes of the latter instead of the feathers of the first as the concealing heap; and still stranger, the
hiding the lover in a chest, and the chest by a heap of clothes
before it, is not so parallel to the play as the corresponding incident, and even words in Fiorentino's novel; nascose lo sotto un
monte di panni di bucato, il quali non erano ancora nasciutti. It is
probable, therefore, that some other romance, some earlier translation of the latter novel, than that preserved, as an adaptation
of it, remains undiscovered. Till such be found, we must credit
Shakspeare with the combination of this escape, with the comic
point of another in the second story, the carrying off of the lover
in a chest of deeds, by four porters, under the eyes and auspices
of the husband.
If we imagine that Master Page constrained his daughter to
marry Dr. Caius for the sake of wealth, as he purposed, and that




28        MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR.
the adventures of the buck-basket, and the woman's muffler,
were the dexterous shifts of faithless Mrs. Caius, to secure the
escape of Fenton, visiting her on an ill errand, from the search
of her husband, with whom the lover had unwittingly taken
counsel in his enterprises, then we shall have the Tarleton story of
The Two Lovers of Pisa transferred to Windsor. This tale is
well told in its way; but a third escape weakens the fun. The
second heightens it by the disappointment of the confident
searcher, through a new device; but he is made too great a fool
to be amusing, when he appears unprepared for a novel resource
the next time. The conclusion is ingenious; after the lover has
been led on by the husband to detail all his adventures before
witnesses, he interprets a hint, just in time to reverse the impression; and, as a surprise, at the end of the story, avers that
he knew the doctor to be the husband, generally reputed to be a
jealous fool, and that his pretended confidences were all fictions,
to make a public jest of his causeless folly.
Shakspeare, therefore, represents, as actually put in practice,
what Lionello falselypretended; and exhibiting a husband causelessly and foolishly jealous of a wife, merry but honest, he puts
him through a series of false alarms, till he is shamed out of his
weakness, and he transforms the lover's scatheless escapes into
occasions of humiliation and belabourment.
Thus did our dramatist unravel the web of the story, and
weave the threads anew. The age was not yet come in England when the readiest sympathies of the best audiences were
given to dashing intriguers with the wives of jealous husbands.
Even the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, that are so licentious
in grain that their excellence cannot be rescued in a coherent
body for a single stage representation now, are free from this last
taint. We must not, however, overlook the dependence of the
literary on the social vice, or its influence in working round a
better condition of things. Sordid contracts lead to unhappy,
and then to dissolute married lives, as dissolute habits conduct
to heartless wedlock; and, when the mischief is thus far rife,
human sympathies rebel against tyranny, and in irritation and
disgust take part with the counter vices that scourge the earlier
misdemeanour, and become themselves, at last, not only an additional but an aggravated and rival mischief. The dramas of
a Congreve, and the novels of a Paul de Kock, rouse indignation at
last, but a proportion descends on the false morals that first prepared them a reception; and I know not by what other process
it has been that the healthy principle acquired its present force,
-the prevailing conviction that personal predilections must have
fair play, as securing at least the best odds in what must, after
all, too frequently-so it seems to a bachelor, be a desperate
game of chance. Thus, in England, through many revolutions,
the affections gained their Magna Charta, and limits were set




CRITICAL ESSAY.


29


even to the authority, that of all others claims most plausibly
from heaven; and Shakspeare rests the ultimate safeguard of domestic morals upon the strength of character of the young, as
well as the forbearance of the elder, and with no tolerance for
laxity, frivolity, or caprice, he sanctions the right of the weakest
to protect themselves from the abuse of paternal prerogative that
would set in motion a frightful sequence of miseries, involving
both body and soul;
Hear the truth of it.
You would have married her most shamefully,
Where there was no proportion held in love.
The truth is, she and I, long since contracted,
Are now so sure that nothing can dissolve us.
The offence is holy that she hath committed:
And this deceit loses the name of craft,
Of disobedience, or unduteous guile;
Since therein she doth evitate and shun
A thousand irreligious cursed hours,
Which forced marriage would have brought upon her.
The style of the play is most purely colloquial of any of the
collection; it warms into metre when Master Fenton urges his
suit, or plans its adventurous consummation, and when the discovery to Ford, of the disproof of his groundless jealousy restores
domestic confidence and harmony; but neither does the versification, nor the poetry, of which it is the vehicle, attain a high
pitch, or soar to the true empyrean. It is the poetry of prosaic
people, and Shakspeare controls it within such range, with jealous watchfulness for the general harmony of the piece. The assumption in the quotation above, of a style of unusual impressiveness, leans somewhat weakly on the resource of ponderous
tautology-" since therein she doth evitate and shun;" and with
like moderation, the fairy scene, where the poetic element reaches
its bloom and its brightest, is less coloured and finished than the
similar scenes of Midsummer Night's Dream. At the opposite
pole of idealization are the speeches of Falstaff —for the specific
humour embodied in Mrs. Quickly's unconscious equivoques, has
an affinity to the displays of Slender and Simple, that allows her
unfettered scope; but, with respect to Falstaff, one step farther
allowed to him in infringement of the sobered tone of the intellectuality of the composition, would have brought in such a blaze
of wit as to have rendered the group of provincial inanities that
contribute, by right, so large a proportion of the amusement, uninteresting and invisible, and we should never have known what
resources the highest genius can find for its exercise among the
surface deposits of districts as barren as the dullest country town
or its still duller neighbourhood.




30        MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR.
We are apt to feel a slight twinge of mistrust of the candour
of the poet, when we find that Falstaff is represented as actually
believing even for a moment,-and in truth it is for longer, for
it is his scepticism that was momentary,-that his tormentors
might in truth be fairies.
"And these are not fairies? I was three or four times in the
thought, they were not fairies: and yet the guiltiness of my
mind, the sudden surprise of my powers, drove the grossness of
the foppery into a received belief, in despite of the teeth of all
rhyme and reason, that they were fairies."
Could any state of confusion render such a blunder, founding,
as it ultimately must, on superstitious admission of the entity
Fairy, natural and probable in a rogue of the social position and
habits of Falstaff? Did not Shakspeare here, as other dramatists
have done, blink an incongruity in the moral sequence he was
delineating, in order to help himself over a difficulty in his plot?
This required the marked humiliation and exposure of the lewdminded knight; and, to give effect to this, did not the poet allow
himself, for his own convenience, to ignore some of those mental
qualities that would always have preserved the profane old fellow from this complication of his scrape? But we must remember that the manners are of Queen Elizabeth's time, the age of
witches and witch-findings, of which these superstitions present
us with the less hideous form, and this accounts for a chief difficulty,-especially after the fair allowance poetry always claims,
to assume anything that it can make plausible. Falstaff's superstition was not an utter improbability at a time when the
mythology of the middle ages had some force everywhere, and
locally, exaggerated force.
As au idiosyncrasy, the liability to such a belief, not to say its
habitual entertainment, was quite possible with still more refined
courtiers.
Falstaff, who jests at the Nemesis that attended his false
oath at Primero, and the destiny that awaited him for avouching
the honesty of known rogues, and who raises the price of peccadilloes on the playful pretext of indemnity for the risk of his
soul, is profane enough; but it is not the profane who are sceptical, and blasphemy, no more than calumny or insult, disbelieves the existence of its object and occasion. It is they who
would fain but cannot disbelieve the existence and power of a
being, whether witch, fairy, devil, or divinity, that theoretically
may annoy them, who make it a jest, a bravado,-a very different matter to jesting at its professors or dupes, and who seek to
fortify what only amounts to a doubt, or distract, and relieve
their attention. Temperament and disposition might induce
Falstaff to ridicule the existence of the fairy mythology, but it
is not thus that beliefs are eradicated, and earlier impressions
regain place when the excitement is reversed. Epicurean as he




CRITICAL ESSAY.                       31
was in life, he had none of the deliberate intellectuality of the
man who burst for the Greeks the " flaming boundaries of the
world," and raised his eyes to look steadily at the object before
which men were bending with vision closed or averted. Hence,
when he is nonplused in Windsor Park, he entertains for a
time the possibility of Faeiry, and when illness and dejection have
told upon his animal spirits, he betrays the factitious spirit of
his habits in days gone by, by the faint and helpless ejaculations
preserved to memory by Mrs. Quickly.
This perfectly conceivable bewilderment, therefore, of the fat
knight is the chief sting of his humiliation-keener far than
the mere exposure of his malpractices and the taunts of the bvystanders; and he is not only entrapped, but deceived more disgracefully than all the others, and by the very grossest hoax;
and neither Simple nor Page, who mistook him for an old woman,
nor Caius nor Slender, the chief butts of the piece, who carried
off louts of boys for Anne Page, made a fault so inexcusable as
taking Parson Hugh for a fairy.
I confess I do not feel satisfied that the original reading of
the folio, which gives the part of the Queen of the Fairies to Mrs.
Quickly, is not correct. It is true that Mrs. Page had said that
her daughter would present the Queen, but Mrs. Page is taken in
by her daughter Anne, who assumes another dress, and probably
another character. The introduction in this position of Mrs.
Quickly, would correspond with the utilizing for the like behoof
of Sir Hugh and of the fantastic Pistol, who is no less sublimated
out of his humour by speech provided for him, and would contribute with those instances to give effect to the poet's intention of
heightening the contrast between Falstaff and his deceivers to
the extreme.
To the list of ultimate sources of the incidents of the play I am
disposed to add the third and fifth novels of the first book of Bandelli; in the latter we meet with a rudiment of Mother Pratt and
her muffler.




I


I




CRITICAL ESSAY ON MEASURE FOR
MEASURE.
EASURE for Measure was printed for the first time in
the folio of 1623; but this affords no argument for
its date of composition, for the same is the case with
the Two Gentlemen of Verona, which appears in
the enumeration of Francis Mere, twenty-five years before. Absence from that list is also as little decisive; for it does not pretend to be complete; thus far, therefore, we get nothing to aid
us to a date.
A passage has been noticed in a poem, Myrrha, the mother
of Adonis, by William Barksted, published in 1607, which is remarkably coincident in idea and expression with a passage in
the play; but the derivation of one from the other is only a high
probability, and even admitting it there is no means of determining which writer had the priority.
For evidence, of the nature of allusion in the play to contemporary events or personages, we have the observation of Chalmers,
that the duke of the drama has many points of resemblance to
James I.; besides an agreement, founded in character, there is
noticed the coincidence of the king's proclamation, on his accession in 1603, forbidding people to resort to him, with the whim
of the Duke, expressed on two occasions" I love the people,
But do not like to stage me to their eyes."
If Shakespeare really were indebted to James (born 1566), for
any traits of his duke of Vienna, it seems, in some respects, more
likely that he made use of them before than after the accession
of the Scottish monarch to the throne of England; for the picture is by no means an unqualified compliment. A different
supposition, and this is in truth the difficulty, would oblige us to
date this play, which is, with all its merits, decidedly inferior,
judged by the standard Shakespeare himself provides, after plays
much superior in every respect, and we should have to make the
disagreeable admission of a retrocession-a falling off in poetic
energy and inspiration. This can scarcely be admitted unless
D




34         MEASURE FOR MEASURE.
by compulsion of evidence not yet apparent, since the general
tendency of all other chronological indications, is in favour of
the constantly later date of the better plays. There is very
much in Measure for Measure that of itself would assign it to the
period of the Two Gentlemen of Verona, All's Well that Ends
Well, Titus Andronicus, Love's Labours Lost,-plays which are
all equally remarkable for imperfections, and for the beauties and
displays of genius associated with them.  The versification is
peculiar, and so is that of all the plays enumerated-so is that,
we may even say, of every one of Shakespeare's plays as distinctly
as of every one of the Odes of Pindar. The comparative disappearance, however, of the rhymed couplet, the absorption of the
clown's part into the real comic action, the more even distribution of the parts of each leading character over the entire piece,
and a more appropriate proportion and development of the concluding scene, would dispose me to infer that Measure for Measure was later than, perhaps next in date to, All's Well that Ends
Well.
The present play has, in common with All's Well that Ends
Well, the incident of the substituted bride, which is not in the
source to which Shakespeare was in this instance indebted. That
there is no other trace of transference to this play from Giletta
of Narbon, is to me a proof that Shakespeare had already made
full use and application of it, and he therefore used no more a
second time than was absolutely required to render his new materials manageable in the sense he wished.
But there are other parallelisms; and applying the rule or
canon of sequence approved in the examination of the parallelisms of the Two Gentlemen of Verona, I would deduce the necessary posteriority of Measure for Measure to Much Ado About
Nothing, and to King Henry IV., on the ground that it contains
the germs of characters and scenes which appear in those plays
in perfect and entire developement.
The "simple constable" Elbow is an incipient Dogberry-he
blunders as boldly, but by no means so fortunately. Shakespeare,
in many a play, has delighted to make both fools and knaves
speak " wiser than they were 'ware of," their words ever missing
the mark their meaning aimed at, but sometimes hitting unconsciously the very truth they intend most carefully to ignore, and
sometimes lighting fortuitously upon a truth that condemns
them, but far beyond their powers either of note or comprehension. But the blunders of Elbow are by no means of the first
quality of this species of humour. He calls the malefactors,
benefactors; blunders between attest and detest; and by misplacement, calls the justices varlets, and the prisoners honourable men; he accuses his prisoners of being respected, and acquits himself and his wife of such a fault; and would make a
slander the ground of an action of battery. This is very like,.




CRITICAL      ESSAY.                  35
even to the words on which the fun turns, to the officer of Messina, who turns however every mistake that he touches to fine
gold; when the malefactors are summoned he announces himself
and his fellows-and is not so wrong as he seems to be; indignant at an insult he exclaims, " Dost thou not suspect my place?
Dost thou not suspect my years?" Good grounds of suspicion
both, as parish appointments were, and have been ordered. The
indignation of the "prince's officer" runs parallel with that of
" the poor Duke's officer," and in the latter specification Elbow
emulates Dogberry. The denouncement of Don John's false accusation as burglary, is perhaps no improvement on the hypothetical box on the ear as an instance of slander; but there is
telling irony for those days of state trials in the rule of evidence
of Dogberry. " Why this is flat perjury to call a prince's brother villain," and nothing in the comic scenes of the play before
us equals the unintended recognition of how truth makes its way
in the world; " Masters, it is proved already that you are false
knaves, and it will go near to be thought so shortly." The tediousness of Dogberry in conducting the case of the proseeution,
has again much affinity to that of the clown in Measure for Measure, wearying the "justicers" by his way of stating the case for
the defence.
The circumstantiality of the clown's description of the scene
in the Bunch of Grapes, when Master Froth sat in the open room,
good for winter, in the lower chair, and cracked the stones of his
overpaid dish of stewed prunes, when Mrs. Elbow, the constable's
wife, came in, and was seized with a longing for the two that
Wvere left in the dish, "not a china dish, but a very good one;"
this, in accumulation and in detail, has wondrous affinity to Dame
Quickly's reminiscence of the evening at the Boar Head, the parcel gilt goblet, the sea coal fire, Goodwife Keech's borrowing
errand, and her dish of prawns, and Falstaff's desire to eat some.
The clown, however, loses his way in the wilderness of particularities, while Mrs. Quickly triumphantly completes her historical exposition, and groups them all round her central factthe promise of Falstaff to make her " my lady, his wife."
Clown and hostess are equally possessed by the rage of recollection, and one assists memory by citing a point of proper
knaveryClo. For as you know, Master Frost, I could not give you
threepence again.
Frost. No, indeed.
The other strengthens her case by example of her weakness.
Host. And did'st not thou kiss me, and bid me fetch the
thirty shillings.
There is good proof that the second part of Henry IV. was
written in 1598, and I should be very sorry to think that Mea



36          MEASURE FOR MEASURE.
sure for Measure, which contains nothing that the author of
Henry IV. had not already surpassed, and much that, it must
be said, is scarcely worthy of him, was produced by him many
years later. I would rather conjecture, as a means of getting
over the chief difficulty of the more agreeable view, that " our
James," among the plays that " did so take" him, chose to take
Measure for Measure under his especial patronage, from admiration for the "fantastical duke of dark corners,"-a true description in one sense-and that Shakespeare, in a later revision, indulged the British Solomon, by heightening the resemblance he
had chosen, with whatever judgment, to own to, into a positive
and assigned portrait. This, however, is half way between conjecture and jest.
The city of Vienna is the scene of the play-it is represented
as a very sink of sensual defilement, corrupted and ravaged in
every physical and moral quality, the consequence of the suspension, for fourteen years, of the activity of most severe statutes
framed to check the national tendency to grossness and licence.
The delineation of such a state, of course presents us with images
and persons disgusting and contemptible in every sense; and this
is one great cause of the uncongenial effect of the entire play.
The progress of public demoralization is rather exaggerated than
relieved by the character of the reaction, to which it has conduced. Dissoluteness in one quarter is compensated by austerity
equally in excess in another, and the pride of unblushing and
ostentatious vice, is matched by equal parade of ostentatious
virtue. The picture is a true one of the effect on morals, of laws
or maxims too severe to be executed; and the action of the play
exhibits the farther disorder and complication resulting from the
mere revival of unamended statutes, that had never become obsolete but for their need of amendment, and can scarcely have a
better fate again. All the questions involved are brought to
issue in the play, though it scarcely leaves assurance in conclusion, that the instructive experience will have its full weight for
the future. We are spectators of a receptacle of stagnant impurities in vehement ferment, and working through stages of decomposition, but the hope of ultimate purification is scarcely set
forth so cheeringly as to compensate for the disagreeableness of
what we witness, and to interest our sympathies in the result.
The Duke, by whose fault, as he admits, and fourteen years'
remissness, the corruption had gained such head, determines at
last to check it, but averse, if not ashamed, to make the sudden
change in person, under the pretext of absence, deputes his
authority to Angelo, with Escalus as associate and second. Escalus, without any particular elevation of character, approves his
fitness as a judicious magistrate,-considerate in the exercise of
his functions of " the nature of our people, our city's institutions,
and the terms of common justice;" and, in his subordinate place,




CRITICAL ESSAY.


37


roots out the lower mischiefs and abuses, with equal vigour and
discretion; notorious haunts are abolished, the doubtful warned
and punished on confirmed proof; and the lax appointment of
the constabulary, by which the egregious Elbow had life-long
tenure of office, is corrected once for all. But my lord Angelo
flies at higher game; in a city of lax morals he hag affected and
enjoyed the reputation of being " a man of stricture and firm
abstinence," taking " pride in gravity,"
"Stands on a guard with envy, scarce confesses
'That his blood flows, or that his appetite
Is more to bread than stone."'
"Lord Angelo is precise," and he figures the precisians of the
day, of whom we hear so much ameng the puritanical magistrates at a little later date,-sworn persecutors, especially of the
deadly sin of fornication,-but who doubtless flourished already
at the date when Shakespeare was writing this play. Beneath
the mask of severity, he hides not only weakness, but meanness;
and the Duke, even when he installed him, was aware that
he had not only broken his contract to marry Mariana, when her
dower was lost at sea, but had covered his own falseness by base
imputation on her chastity.
Claudio and Julietta are guilty of the now so severely denounced frailty, but in its most venial form assuredly, the mutual
lapse of lovers contracted, and still faithful to each other, and
Claudio is adjudged to die-Escalus, in vain endeavouring to
soften the stony Angelo. Isabella, a novice of the sisterhood of
St. Clare, and sister of Claudio, is urged by his friends to try the
effect of her intercession. Angelo, inflamed with lust at the sight
of her, proposes to allow the ransom of her brother's life in recompense for her own submission. He effects his purpose, as he
supposes, but is deceived through the management of the Duke,
who, disguised as a friar, remains in the city to watch his proceedings, and causes Mariana to keep the assignation made for
her by Isabella. The Duke saves the life of Claudio, whom Angelo would have sacrificed, notwithstanding his engagement,
and, re-appearing in the last Act, exposes the hypocrisy of the
deputy, forces him to marry Mariana, to whose entreaties he accords his life, pardons Claudio, and himself marries Isabella.
What then has been done? The re-enactment of "severe and
biting laws" has broken down by the frailty of the appointed
administrator; and it would seem as if this had been from the
first the anticipation of the Duke, who exposed Angelo, whose
weakness he knew, to an overpowering temptation, from pique
at the censure of his seeming severity on his own remissness.
Certain precedents at the same time have been established, both
of severity and moderation. Mrs. Overdone is suppressed, Lucio
ha; L lesson for life, while Julietta and Mariana are treated ten



88          MEASURE FOR MEASURE.
derly, and the allowances to be made for human weakness when
really allied to affection, are sanctioned and must be continued.
One of the circumstances that serve to convince me that Measure for Measure is an early play of Shakespeare, is that at the
end he has conferred the beauty and affection of Mariana on one
so stained with falsehood and baseness as Angelo. It is a conclusion in accordance with that of All's Well that Ends Wellthe mystifying prevarication of Diana corresponds with that to
which Isabella condescends in blind submission to the friar-and
of the Two Gentlemen of Verona, but not of any of the plays
known to be of late date. Mariana, it is true, appears but little,
but her wrongs enlist our sympathies, and these are confirmed
by the warmth and vivacity of her intercession for her unworthy
husband-intercession very contrasted with the tone and spirit
of that of Isabella for her brother. " The thread of our life is of
a mingled yarn;" who should know this better than vehement
poetic natures like Shakespeare or Goethe; and Christian charity,
to say nothing of self-examination, may well plead for the limits
to be extended within which tempted and tottering virtue shall
still be held capable of regaining self-command and self-respect.
At what point the limit shall be fixed is one question in morals,
perhaps, and another in poetry; and, in respect of the latter at
least, the later works of Shakespeare sanction a severe rule, though
still with human compassion.
Isabella is one of the most important characters of the play in
every respect; when we first see her she is looking forward to
the life of a nun, and only anxious lest the austerities of the
conventual life should not be sufficiently severe. There is something in the trait that reminds us of Angelo, and she is indeed
the representative of the second form which severity assumes in
a city of licence; prudishness is paired with hypocrisy, and the
wild luxuriance of unbridled passion almost engages interest, if
not esteem, beside the puritanical gravity-gravity acquired on
the one hand by art in hiding passions that still rage within,
and will assert themselves with opportunity; on the other hand
by rigorous extirpation of the very germs of human sympathy, by
the desperate resort in fear of indulgence, to absolute deadness
of feeling, and coldness of all the affections of the heart. So it
is that the unhappy Claudio resigned to die only when death is
inevitable, and so easily recovering his interest in life when a
chance appears of purchasing it even upon most shameful terms,.that we can give but little faith to his penitence, when, on again
receiving assurance that the case is hopeless, he adds -
"Let me ask my sister pardon. I am so out of love with
life that
I will sue to be rid of it;-", X
is scarcely so far from our sympathies as his formal sister. Ycrng


J




CRITICAL ESSAY.


39


she is, and beautiful, and her youth and beauty are rightly estimated by her brother" Bid her assay him,
I have great hope in that; for in her youth
There is a prone and speechless dialect,
Such as moves men."
He adds,
" Beside, she hath a prosperous art
When she will play with reason, and discourse,
And well she can persuade."
Accordingly, in her first interview with the strict deputy, her
words, eloquent and forcible, are still far more a discourse of reason than a passionate appeal; it is only by the assiduous goading of Lucio, " Give 't not o'er so:" " to him again, entreat him:
You are too cold," " You are too cold," repeated, that she rises
to any effective warmth, and overcomes her apparent apprehension of seeming to sanction frailty in pleading for mercy to the
frail.
Lucio himself, who is evidently given up to debauchery, and
who proves himself in the sequel not merely frivolous, but wantonly and mischievously slanderous, has nevertheless a warmer
heart. No word of lamentation for the fate of her brother, or for
the sorrows of Juliet, though her cousin adoptedly, escapes the
" enskyed and sainted" Isabella, in the first instance; and it is
only the urgency of Lucio that makes her undertake the suit, in
spite of her mistrust of " her poor ability to do him good,"-her
doubt of her power, " I'll see what I can do." " But speedily,"
adds Lucio, and he departs, fain to be content with the assurance" Soon at night,
I'll send him certain word of my success."
In the interview with Claudio, she again " plays with reason and
discourse" to admiration, and, sorely tempted though he rpight
be, Claudio assuredly is not to be justified, or even excused, for
desiring to gain a disgraced life, by the disgrace of his sister;
but the heroism of Isabella in the matter, where no sacrifice on
her part was in question, is a cheap virtue; human weakness we
feel might claim more tender rebuke from a sister, and it must
be admitted that her tone is not that which would give Claudio
the best chance of recovering self-command:
" Mercy to thee would prove itself a bawd;
'Tis best that thou diest quickly."
" Hard words and hanging," are the portion her sisterly compassion gives him, and there is like to be the end.
But enter now the Friar Duke; and here he is in his element
of dark management, and behind scene intermeddling. We never
I.                      QQ




40          MEASURE FOR MEASURE.
throughout this play get into the free open joyous atmosphere,
so invigorating in other works of Shakespeare; the oppressive
gloom of the prison, the foul breath of the brothel, are only exchanged for the chilly damp of conventual walls, or the oppressive retirement of the monastery, where friars are curious as to
the motives of ducal seclusion, and are ready to intimate a guess
that a petticoat is concerned in the secret.
" No, holy father, throw away that thought;
Believe not that the dribbling dart of love
Can pierce a complete bosom."
Yet how near the holy father was to being right, will appear in
time. Isabella, cold and unimpressible, when approached through
her affections, is submissiveness itself, under the guidance of a
supposed ghostly father, and, without protest or scruple, lends
herself to the accomplishment of an intrigue, that to be consistent
with herself in the affair of her brother, she should, in the first
instance at least, have repulsed and revolted from. Her management of the meeting of Angelo with the unknown Mariana, made
her distinctly accessary to a transgression several degrees worse
than that of Claudio and Juliet, for which she can so little make
allowance; but the warrant of the "good father" keeps down
every hint of doubtfulness, and not a word escapes from her to
show that the success of the scheme has chief interest, or any interest whatever, for her, from its reference to her brother.
The real temper of virtue after this fashion, is however not left
open to misconception by any false canonization in the play. We
easily recognize something more, for once, than mere accordance
with the wish of another, when Isabella, conjured by Mariana to
add her intercession for her would-be seducer, whom, be it remembered, she still believes to have caused her brother's execution, pleads for him thus:Duke. " He dies for Claudio's death."
Tsab.             " Most bounteous sir, (kneeling.)
Look, if it please you, on this man condemned,
As if my brother lived. I partly think,
A due sincerity governed his deeds,
Till he did look on me."
So it is, cela effraie-mis cela flatte toujours. The votaress of
St. Clare adopts the theory of the pernicious deputy's conduct
that keeps affected preciseness most in honour, and is at the same
time most complimentary to her own personal charms. The
thought every way has its consolations; but, after its utterance,
it is quite without violence to our feelings that we regard her as
renouncing her project of taking the veil, and descending to that
secondary stage of virtue that finds its appropriate rewards in such
prizes as a marriage with a duke.


I:




CRITICAL ESSAY.                       41
The story of Measure for Measure came originally from the
Hecatommithi of Geraldo Cinthio, Decad. 8, Nov. 5, and is repeated in the Tragic Histories of Belleforest; from Cinthio it descended to George Whetstone, who expanded it into his double
play of Promos and Cassandra, never acted, printed in 1578, and
this, there can be no doubt, was the immediate source of Shakespeare. There is every appearance that Shakespeare was indebted
for much subordinate material to other works, as we have already
noticed his combination of an incident from Giletta of Narbon;
but the main outline of his work is clearly derived from Whetstone, and here we may trace his footsteps all through its twice
five Acts, footsteps as significant in the paths they adopt as by
signs of the incongruities they turn away from.
In Whetstone, as in Shakespeare, we have a corrupt city, severe
laws severely revived by a lord deputy, the lapse of the deputy
himself to lust and in consequence to injustice, his sovereign's
discovery of his fault, but pardon, on reparation made to the injured lady, now intercessor for him, the whole action of the more
dignified characters, accompanied by transactions of lower grade,
by scenes of gaolers, felons, tipstaves, priests, and ministers of all
debauchery. The five Acts of the first part of Promos and Cassandra concludes the iniquity of the deputy; in the second part
the Duke, now first here introduced in person, completes the process of discovery and reformation in five Acts more. By bringing
on the Duke from the very first and continually, Shakespeare has
overlapped and kneaded together the two parts of his predecessor's
work, and by the process the scene naturally becomes not a provincial city by Vienna itself. This change required and accounts
for others; the Duke, who has deputed his government, must be
present incognito, and this implies certain peculiarities, both in
the state of affairs and in the characters of the prince and his deputy-peculiarities that are amply supplied and delineated accordingly. By superadding to the character of the dtputy a
pride of gravity and affectation of austerity not entirely relied on
by prying enquirers, his fall becomes more probable, his exposure
more effective; the instarce gains all the illustrativeness that we
have seen of the state of society depicted, while a clear occasion
is given to the Duke-still encouraged again by a tendency of
character, a pleasure in prying overlook, to remain in the city
and busy himself in tracking the courses of the administration
he has put in commission.
But another and still more important and most capital change
is made by Shakespeare, in the character of the sister, Isabella or
Cassandra. In Whetstone's play, the more sympathetic Cassandra visits her brother in prison, eagerly undertakes to sue for
him,-and is even sanguine of success. At her first interview with
Promos, his passion is inflamed: at the second, he urges his proposal and is refused, as in the parallel scene of Measure for Mea



42          MEASURE FOR MEASURE.
sure; and in the ensuing, also a parallel scene, she communicates
the vile condition to her brother, and bids him prepare for death.
Had her own life been the sacrifice required, she would have ransomed him at once. But Cassandra melts at the appeal of her brother, and gives in to his sophistries, and the corrupt deputy requites
her compliance by sending her as he supposes, her brother's head
in a charger.
The firmness of Cassandra, in her interview with the deputy,
and the stedast tone of her announcement to Andrugio, that he
must die, are evidently the hints for the reconstruction of the
character as unbending and sustained throughout. Cassandra
appears to break down very suddenly; not more so, however, than
is perhaps consistent with the class of motives of which she is
represented most susceptible. Against this impulse of tenderness
for her brother, Cassandra chiefly opposes her horror at envious
and defaming tongues:
" Honor far dearer is than life which passeth price of gold.
Yet honor lives when death hath done his worst,
Thus fame than life is of far more comprise.
By envious tongues report abroad doth spread,
Despite will blaze my crime, but not the cause;
And thus, although I fain would set thee free,
Poor wench, I fear the gripe of slander's claws."
Honor, fame, envious report, despite, slander, are words unknown
to Isabella as considerations that affect her own determination;
this is fixed by abhorrence of vice and shamefulness, and the religious sanction,
" Better it were a brother died at once,
Than that a sister by redeeming him
Should die for ever."
She is far less deterred by any fear of the consequences to her
own reputation, by any shame to be incurred by herself, than by
her vivid apprehension of the shamefulness of such weakness
as her brother's-the disgrace, whether published or in private
conscience, of a life so selfishly and basely preserved. She hates
the vice as being vice, and she hates the vicious perhaps one degree worse, and, if the vicious prove to be a brother, she recoils
only with the more loathing, and denounces the more contemptuously.
It is obvious how much more naturally the virtue of the city
of the story appears in the form of austere intolerance of vice,
than in that of timorous care of reputation; and it would not be
impossible to trace, in very plausible detail, how all other alterations and additions were led up to by the requirements of contrast
and heightening relief for the chief group; but the play, on the




CRITICAL ESSAY.                     43
whole, is too thoroughly uncongenial to induce me to linger over
it longer. Omitting other gleanings, I note that the jest about
the mischance of Elbow's wife, is lineal, from a disaster in the family of the Gripax of Promos and Cassandra.
A certain interest would attach to the collation of the state of
the laws, the penal enactments and enforcement of them, suspended, irregular, or intermitting, that apply to offences of the
nature that form the argument of Measure for Measure, about the
time when it must have been written and represented. The philosophical and ethical, not to say poetical import of.the work, may
be studied independently of this information;-but the play itself
is, as a composition, an incident in the life of Shakespeare, as the
opinions it mainly addresses and influences, were important facts
in the condition of contemporary England, and realized themselves
in most palpable historical incidents in the political history of the
ensuing generation.
Those who value the parallel which Chalmers draws between
the Duke and James I. may fortify it by note of the coincidences
of his Majesty's expedition to Norway for a bride in 1589. He
slipped away privately without knowledge of the nation or most
of the nobility, leaving written instructions and exhortations behind him for the guidance of both his subjects and his ministers.
He delegated his authority to the Duke of Lennox, as president
of the council, with Earl Bothwell to assist, and remained absent
so long as to cause great uncertainty and anxiety respecting his
proceedings and return.




II




CRITICAL ESSAY ON COMEDY OF
ERRORS.
S"      HE Two Gentlemen of Verona is in the enumeration of
Meres, 1598, with plays that must have been written
d    after it; what then is the explanation of the use made
in it of the Diana of Montemayor, of which the existing translation was only published in the very year of Meres,
1598. Did Shakespeare read Italian? Had there been a previous translation? Was the scene of Julia and Lucetta, in which
close agreement appears, added after original composition? Was
there an earlier play through which Shakespeare derived the
materials that correspond with the novel?
The incident of a lady disguised becoming the page and love
messenger of the nobleman she loves herself, is common to the
novel of Montemayor, and to the story of Bandello which is the
manifest source of much of Twelfth Night. Whether Twelfth
Night has any special obligations to Montemayor also I know
not, but the Two Gentlemen of Verona has very distinct dependence on Bandello. In Julina and Silla, sister of Silvia, we
trace-noting parallelism of adventure also, the very origin of
the names of Julia and Silvia. Shakespeare then, in these as in
other instances, having found in various novels or plays the same
adventure variously treated and developed, formed still another
story for which he gathered hints from all sources, in which
the characteristic incident is reproduced in full development of
all its capabilities, and divested of all detrimental detail and encumberment. In the earlier play the poet did not fully satisfy
himself, and therefore without scruple worked up its substance in
riper works, to which the earlier minister as servants and pages;
but the more complete performance is not again degraded to
such secondary offices, and no incidents in Twelfth Night reappear in later works, in a form that allows them by any means
to be considered the same.
The relation of the Comedy of Errors to later plays, is the
same as that of the other works of the first period that we have
examined. In many respects, it is a much more perfect work
than the Two Gentlemen of Verona, inferior as it may be in




46            COMEDY OF ERRORS.
poetical value; it is more complete in itself, more entire in its
unity, more effectually harmonized and proportioned; it appears
to be worked out and finished to the full extent of the original
capabilities and requirements of the subject matter. The ground,
therefore, on which the poet permitted himself to rework the
materials employed in it, was the sense that by the nature of the
subject matter the play was of subordinate pretensions, and by no
means attaining, or capable of attaining, to the dignity of chief
rank. There was, therefore, no sacrilege committed -rather a
share of consecration conferred upon it, by incorporating portions
of its substance with constructions of more ennobled purpose and
performance.
The paternal Egeon of the Errors resembles the Egeus of
Midsummer Night's Dream, as in name so in position and function in the play; introduced with a Duke judicial in the first
scene, he supplies the place of prologue, and only reappears, after
the development of the situations he set forth into a wild succession of ingenious entanglements, to assist at and witness their
final evolution with surprise and satisfaction.
In Twelfth Night we recognize the situation of AEgeon, in that
of the sea captain Antonio arrested in a hostile town, detained in
custody while mistaken identities are causing manifold bewilderment, until he is again brought forward and all is explained.
Again, the difficulties that arise when the arrested Antonio
claims from Viola the purse he had entrusted to her representative Sebastian, are the same that help to complicate the comic
error of Antipholus of Ephesus, who sends for the money that is
to bail him, by the mistaken Dromio of Syracuse. The mentions
of the signs, the Phoenix, the Centaur, and the Porpentine; the
proposed rendezvous there, and the walk meanwhile to " view
the manners of the town, peruse the traders, gaze upon the
buildings," indicate agreements with Twelfth Night, too literal
to be due to anything else but recurrence to previous composition and reminiscence of a common source. The starveling Pinch
is in bodily presence and personal description the antecedent of
the apothecary in Romeo and Juliet, and the madness of Mal-ollo
is not unrelated to that of the exorcised Antipholus.
To these indications of early date, -a certain dramatic inferiority, and exhibition of materials reproduced in other plays
more elaborately,-we have to add the profuse employment of the
"' rhyme doggerel," which is found in other early plays, Love's
Labour's Lost, Taming of the Shrew, and Two Gentlemen of Verona,
(O jest unseen, inscrutable, invisible,
As a nose on a man's face, or a weathercock on a steeple, &c.)
and of the alternate rhymes frequent in, Love's Labour's Lost,
and Romeo and Juliet.
To these signs of juvenility of origin, I am disposed to add
one more; and that is the employment of measured blank verse
Cor speeches which do not fairly rise to poetical fervour. The speech




CRITICAL ESSAY.


47


of Dromio of Syracuse, Act. iv. Sc. 1-may serve as example;
Master, there is a bark of Epidamnum,
That stays but till her owner comes aboard,
And then, sir, she bears away; our fraughtage, sir,
I have conveyed aboard, and I have bought
The oil, the balsamum and aqua vitse, &c.
With respect to the source of the plot of the Comedy of Errors,
the Meneechmi of Plautus, is of course the great fountain-head;
and there is no absolute reason, it must be admitted, why Shakespeare may not have gone to the fountain-head himself; his
play indicates, not only in general plot, but in improvement of
suggestions, that he either had read the play of Plautus in the
original, or was acquainted with a pretty close translation of it;
-but the latter supposition is, I believe, the more likely to be
true. The translation of W. Warner dates too late, 1595, to
claim the honour of having rendered any assistance, and it exhibits none of those parallelisms of phraseology that usually
appear in such cases; but a play called " The Historie of Error"
was played before Queen Elizabeth, " by the children of Powle's,"
in 1576, and this may have been only one out of several adaptations of the work of Plautus, lost along with the vast masses of
dramatic productions that have perished. In the original copy,
of the Comedy of Errors, in the first folio, Antipholus of Syracuse
is sometimes called Erotes or Errotis, apparently a corruption of
Erraticus, and Antipholus of Ephesus is called Sereptus,-an obvious corruption, it has been remarked, of the epithet by which
one of the twin brothers in Plautus is distinguished, Mensechmus Surreptus. But how came Shakespeare's MS. to furnish such
a corruption, if he were so familiar with the Latin text as some
suppose; and in any case how came he to apply the title to his
Antipholus, whom it does not suit-who is not su-reptus, stolen
away, kidnapped like the MenTechmus of Plautus; but separated
from his parents by other hap, by the accidents of navigation
from his father, and then from his mother by open violencepiracy on the high seas. Sereptus I suspect was written down
by ear, with no very precise apprehension of its restricted meaning. It was obtained from a source which was neither the printed
Plautus, nor the translation of W. Warner. Antipholus again is
a name that has much appearance of having been a changeling
by ear for Antiphilus, a true Greek appellative; and, by its signification, as appropriate for the twin masters of the play avrt6nxia
=-mutual affection, (significant of the bessonerie of George Sands'
charming idyl, La petite Fadette) as Dromio for their servants.
Dromo is a slave's name in Terence, Lucian, and in a comedy
extracted by Athenmus. Duke Menaphon, of Ephesus, has an
odd assonance with Menephron, a name occurring on a coin of
the neighbouring Troad.
The transference of the scene of the play from the Epidamnum
of Plautus to Ephesus, is very noteworthy; the slave in the




48


COMEDY OF ERRORS.


Latin play advises his master to get clear of the town as soon as
may be; for that its character agrees with its ill-boding name,
-a town it is of dissoluteness and roguery, in forms copiously
enumerated. Antipholus of Syracuse, after the first of the Errors,
makes like resolution to be gone forthwith; " They say this town
is full of cozenage,"-and he enumerates the forms of its ill-repute; he bethinks himself and is fearful of the magical arts of
the EphesiansAs nimble jugglers that deceive the eye,
Dark working sorcerers that change the mind;
Soul-killing witches, that deform the body;
Disguised cheaters, prating mountebanks,
And many such-like liberties of sin.
The description is in accordance with various classical notices
of Ephesian practice, but inasmuch as it is still more so with the
account in the Acts of the Apostles of the exorcists in that city,
Jewish and other, we cannot argue from the passage either in
favour of the classical acquirements of Shakespeare, or against his
originality if these are denied him. We see at least the poet's
motive for transferring his Comedy of Errors to a locality where
such errors would most alarm and bewilder, and professors of
exorcism like our zealous anatomy Pinch, be within call traditionally; the play upon the name of Epidamnum, was necessarily
lost in translation, but at any rate another city was not to be
substituted without as good, and it turns out a better title to the
honour. It is scarcely worth while to note as another coincidence
with the profession of Pinch as a schoolmaster at Ephesus, the
mention in the passage of Acts referred to, of the " school of one
Tyrannus."
The entire action of the Menaechmi of Plautus is generated
by the mistaken identities and twin brothers; and of like nature
is the mainspring of the Comedy of Errors, and the importance
which a mere casualty and coincidence asserts for itself in the
action, is an original quality in the stuff of the play that would
render a varied display of fine characterization, inappropriate at
least, if not impossible. But the poet who chooses a theme of
restricted capability, is at least bound to avail himself to the
utmost of what capability it has; that this was not done by
Plautus, is proved by the comedy of Shakespeare which complicates the source of embarrassment,-the personal resemblance
of two masters, by the addition of a pair of servants equally undistinguishable; and most triumphantly overcomes all the difficulty of the double complication carried out to the most extravagant pitch of mistakes and misconception. The reader and
still more the spectator, enjoys the perplexities of a well filled
scene while he never falls into perplexity himself.
In the uncertainty that exists as to whether Shakespeare borrowed directly from Plautus,-I suspect an intermediate Italian
adaptation,-it is not requisite to trace the dependence of the two




CRITICAL ESSAY.                     49
dramas in every detail: the comparison can only be fully enjoyed by reading the two productions conjointly; and then the
completeness with which the later poet has remodelled and recast the materials of his predecessor becomes amusingly apparent
-the twin dramas have then all the resemblance and all the
differences of the twins, their heroes.
The course of the errors in the English drama is on this wise.
The twin sons of Ageon and his wife are brought up from infancy with other twins as servants; fortune by haps that are
noted when and as far as necessary, divides husband from wife,
and parents from children, and children wide away; each son,
however, retaining his proper slave and attendant, each Antipholus still followed by a Dromio; and each pair-master and
servant-grow up as like the other in persons as in names. Fortune that scattered the family has again brought them all within
short distance of each other within the walls of Ephesus, when
the play commences;-the mother settled as an Abbess, an
Antipholus and a Dromio also resident but unknown to her; the
second Antipholus with his Dromio searching in vain for his
brother; the father Ageon in quest of the Antipholus the traveller.
The traveller is first introduced to us, and as usual engages
our interest simply in virtue of the priority, as well as by the
affectionate motive (livriot'a) of his peregrination; and in
the first and second Acts he alone appears, bewildered by the
mistake of the resident Dromio whom he also mistakes, and of
his brothers, wife, and sister, and by the disavowal by his own
Dromio of the transactions of his representative brother. He receives a gold chain by one hand and money by another, both
intended for his brother; and is astonished and perplexed at
every turn by recognitions that are unintelligible, and appeals to
his part in transactions that he knows nothing about.
His brother meanwhile fares worse; he is shut out from his
home as an impostor while the traveller feasts within; arrested
for denying knowledge of the chain delivered to the traveller,
disappointed of the money that was to bail him, and wrought
into rage by Pinch and his attendants, who take him in charge
as a madman on the ground of his disowning the acts of his
twin brother; the two masters mistake their men and the men
their masters; and the imbroglio is at its height, when the last
Act brings all the participants gradually on the stage together,
and the contradictions and incongruities set forth most livelily,
as their averments and beliefs of the course of the past incidents
are brought into comparison, are naturally and satisfactorily
cleared up, and all are reconciled.
The Dromios have the likeness of twins in mind as well as
body, and the same may be said of their masters. The resident
pair are married while the travellers are single, and this is the
point which originates what contrast really exists amongst them;
E




50            COMEDY OF ERRORS.
and it is curious to notice the development which has supervened here upon the somewhat crude and motiveless hints of the
Menaechmi. The Mensechmus who answers in other respects to
the resident Antipholus, is a much less reputable married man;
he is faithless to his wife, plunders her to make presents to a
courtezan, and glories in his tricks; and so far forfeits our sympathy as to destroy all interest of the kind we feel in the final
reunion of the brothers of the Errors. The jealousy and anger
of the wife of Mensechmus are fully justified and accounted for by
her husband's conduct, which so far as appears is, notwithstanding his pretence of provocation, mere spontaneous looseness of
a Greek rake married; and it is an injustice on the part of her
father to ascribe her ill humours and uneasiness to the proverbial
exaction of a wife who brought her husband a fortune. Such
exaction is proverbial at least in Greek comedy, and the penance
for marrying a fortune, in forfeiture of conjugal subordination
and the independence dear to man, is a frequent theme and
evidently founded on conjugal facts in ancient society;-for
aught I know the facts may be the same in modern. At any
rate the modem play makes excellent use of the hint; Adriana,
like the wife of Mensechmus, brought a wealthy dowry to her
husband, and with it the complementary temper of excessive requirementsMy wife is shrewish when I keep not hours.
At her first appearance she is fretful and peevish at his want
of punctuality, and suspicious of the cause, which, in truth, as presently appears, was nothing more than a service and attention intended for herself-" to see the making of a carcanet," designed
as a present for her. Her husband, on the other hand, enraged
at being so inexplicably shut out of his own house, disregards the
sober counsel of Balthazar, and is as little practised as his wife to
assume a reason and wait for an explanation, and hastily revenges
himself by making a bachelor's party at the house of the courtezan; and though the extravagance is evidently as harmless as
such an imprudence might be; for,
I know a wench of excellent discourse,
Pretty and witty, wild, and yet too, gentle,
are not the words of a sensualist, and there is no trace whatever
of want of affection on his part, and we give full belief to his protestation, he still puts himself by the imprudence, no less in the
wrong than his wife by her fretfulness, and we are left at liberty
to enjoy the fun that arises out of their troubles and disasters.
Still Adriana, with all her shrewishness, is very affectionatenay, very amiable, and she gives an earnest of her future improvement in considerateness, by abstaining from public outbreak against
her husband's hostess. Her coolness in this respect requires perhaps more explanation than it receives, but that it is accepted by
us as at once proof and admission that she had no serious ground
for complaint, and was conscious how far she had herself to blame.




CRITICAL ESSAY.


51


The topic of the grumblings of Menaechmus against his wife, and
the expostulations which her father addresses to her" Mencech. Rogitas quo ego ear, quam rem agam, quid negotii
geram,
Quid petam, quid feram, quid foris egerim;"
and,
"Senex. Ita istec solent, quse viros subservire
Sibi postulant, dote fretse, feroces.......
Quoties monstravi tibi, viro ut morem geras?
Quid ille faciat ne id observes: quo eat: quid rerum gerat?"
-for all this and more to the same purpose, Shakespeare found a
more pleasing speaker, by the invention of Luciana, the sister,
who urges it charmingly:
A man is master of his liberty:
Time is their master, and when they see time,
They'll go or come: if so, be patient, sister.
And again,There's nothing situate under heaven's eye,
But hath his bound: in earth, in air, in sea, in sky;
The beasts, the fishes, and the winged fowls,
Are their males' subjects, and at their controls;
Men, more divine, the masters of all these,
Lords of the wide world, and wild watery seas;
Indued with intellectual sense and souls,
Of more pre-eminence than fish and fowls,
Are masters to their females and their lords;
Then let your will attend on their accords.
A fair reward is at the same time, by the introduction of this
character, provided for Antipholus, the traveller,-a pleasing scene
of love-making, although a little at cross purposes, and the prospect of a wedding at last, the only true benediction to the fortunes of a comedy.
In the present play, Shakespeare approved his power of conducting and developing a complicated argument; as the Two Gentlemen of Verona, All's Well that Ends Well, and Measure for Measure, evince his astonishing command of language and rhythmical intonation, his feeling for romantic sentiment, his unwavering
ethical purpose, deep philosophical insight, and already unrivalled
completeness of impersonation, within a range of character from
the heroic to the grotesque, from refinement that almost faints
into the sentimental, to stolidity that seems wending its irregular
way to utter incapacity of feeling at all. The time, however, had
still not yet arrived when all these powers were to be concentrated and exerted in full and harmonious co-operation to the production of one entire and perfect work.
Much more consideration is exhibited in the Comedy of Errors
than in the plays just named, for the feelings and comfort of the
spectators; the sympathies are moderately indulged throughout,
in place of being constantly opposed and disappointed; the mas



52


COMEDY OF ERRORS.


ter consents to suppress some part of his knowledge of the springs
and influences of the most plausible virtues,-he spares to vex us
by obtrusively reminding us-though the hint is still there for
the advantage of the strong and the reflective, " que ce que nous
prenons pour des vertus n'est souvent qu'un assemblage de diverses actions et de divers intdrets que la fortune ou notre industrie
savent arranger; et que ce n'est pas toujours par valeur et par chastetd que les hommes sont vaillants et que les femmes sont chastes."
The colour of the old Roman drama is still strongly reflected
upon the double twins-they are such masters and such slaves as
we are familiar with in the comedy of the ancients, Greek as well
as Latin; and, notwithstanding the indications of Christian date,
the Abbess and her priory, Pentecost, the protestation on the faith
of a Christian, and so forth, the imagination attires them, and requires that they should be attired in representation, in the more
uniform costume of classical times, that best lends itself to the misapprehension of identity. The same remark applies to ~Egeon,
and perhaps Solinus the Duke, yet not so absolutely. Angelo and
Balthazar, on the other hand, and also Adriana and her sister,
are of true Italian parentage, and might be encountered on the
Rialto at Venice at any time, or in the shadows of Palladian architecture at Padua, and should be dressed accordingly; and
lastly, Pinch, as English in all his properties as in name, might
fitly walk abroad in the gown of any pedagogue of the old free
grammar-school at Stratford-upon-Avon. Correct chronology and
geography are matters on which no part of the effect of the play
would depend, and the obligation of observing them is renounced
once for all by divarications of which the decidedness and the
consciousness are not to be mistaken; and it would be a great mistake to endeavour to obliterate in the costume presented to the eye,
the incongruities which Shakespeare not merely allowed to strike
the ear, but actually incorporated with the very structure of his
piece, marking them with a degree of distinctness which declares
them intentional, and forbids the pedantry that would refine them
away into archaeological exactitudes, or fall back on an apology
for them as oversights.
It will be recollected that Shakespeare was himself a father of
twins-but a son and daughter.
The only approach to a verbal coincidence in the play with Warner's translation of the Menmchmi, that I have observed, is Act.
ii. Sc. 1:
But too unruly deer, he breaks the pale,
And feeds from home; poor I am but his stale.
Warner translates the wife's complaint, ludibrio habeor-He makes
me a stale and a laughing-stock to all the world. In this play
as in the Tempest no more time is assigned to the course of the
incidents represented than would be occupied by the dramatic
representation of them. They follow on alike without interval or
overlap from the beginning to the end.




CRITICAL ESSAY ON MUCH ADO
ABOUT NOTHING.


HAKESPEARE'S Comedy of Much Ado about Nothing, is one of the plays of which a correct and
authentic quarto edition was published during the
author's lifetime. It was entered in the Stationers'
Register, 23rd Augt. 1600, in the 36th year of his age, and was
untouched by him afterwards. The text of the first folio appears
to have been taken from the play-house copy of this edition, as it
scarcely varies from it, except by palpable errors and lapses of the
printers, and by the substitution, in one or two instances, of actors' names for those of the persons they represented.
The commentators say nothing, and we are left to infer that
they know nothing, of any source from which Shakespeare derived
the story of Benedick and Beatrice; for that of Claudio and Hero,
with which it is so wonderfully combined, we are referred to several cognate fictions, and cannot fail to recognize among them
the true signs of its affiliation, but again without obtaining the actual work which we can believe was in the hand of Shakespeare.
The most direct coincidences are with an Italian tale of Bandello,
of which no translation of the time has been preserved; but there
are other most important agreements with a story told by Ariosto,
in details especially, which were dropped by Bandello in his expansion and alteration of it. Apart from any speculation, which
does not appear called for, whether Shakespeare read Italian, it
appears probable that he worked upon some intermediate English
tale now lost, in which, as in Tarleton's News out of Purgatory,
that was made use of for the Merry Wives of Windsor, materials
were obtained from several earlier tales, or several forms and modifications of the same tale. Whether this supposed work furnished the rudiments of Benedick and Beatrice, it is of course
impossible to say; but, in any case, it may not be too late to hope
that antiquarian research will yet recover some trace of their
earlier existence, in whatever undeveloped form. The absolute
and original invention of the pair and their proceedings, as essential elements of the play, would be by no means an incredible,
however wonderful, example of creative genius; but I should be




54       MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.
quite prepared to find, in the poet's treatment of some crude and
unpromising embryo, a still larger demand upon our admiration.
In the meantime, we shall find that the comparison of what earlier types we possess of the other portion of the plot, will lead us
most satisfactorily to a point of view that exhibits the main plan
and principle of the highly artistic composition that combines the
two, as we have now the happiness to possess it.
The earliest version of the story of the slandered Hero that is
traceable, is in the 5th and 6th books of Orlando Furioso, where
the slanderer is a rival lover, who takes, in his own plot, the part
assigned in the play to the underling Borachio. The marriage is
broken off; the true lover, prevented by a brother from killing
himself at the moment of the supposed discovery, flies in despair
to fling himself headlong into the sea; he is reported dead, but
survives to return in disguise and witness the punishment, by
other hands, of the slanderer, whose arts come to light through
his unconscious accomplice, Dalinda, and to be made happy at
last with his love.
The poem of Ariosto was accessible in English, in 1591, in the
translation of Sir John Harrington, but there is no trace of this
version, by verbalities or otherwise, in the play. A translation of
this portion of the story, which had been published by Peter Beverley, in 1565, was reprinted, it appears, in 1600, the same year
as the quarto edition of the play, but whether later, and thence
possibly in consequence, I am not informed.
The Italian cantos include more elements of the later fiction
than have been recognized, for the supposed death of the lover
Arodante is obviously the incident, that a later hand so much
improved by transferring it to the belied and injured lady, and the
double deception of the listening lover by the disguise of the waiting-woman, and of the disguised waiting-woman herself, gives a
distinctness and emphasis, by repetition in variety, to the incident at the root of the story, that constitutes it a characteristic
motive.
Uncomfortable stanzas of the Faery Queen, published in 1590,
tell a very similar tale, more briefly, Book II. Canto 4. The
treacherous friend is here no longer a rival lover, but acts from
the same ill-conditioned impulse of malice as Don John" -      either envying my toward good,
Or of himself to evil ill-disposed."
The motive of double deception is preserved, but the story is cut
short by a tragical ending.
Bandello's novel dates the story just subsequent to the catastrophe of the Sicilian vespers. Don Pedro of Arragon, after a
successful campaign and contest, is at Messina, where Timbreo di
Cardona, a cavalier in great favour with him, and, like Claudio,
distinguished by military service, falls in love with Fenicia,
daughter of Lionato di Lionati,-the lady's name is obviously sug



CRITICAL      ESSAY.                 55
gested by her phoenix-like re-appearance,-and, as in the play,
wooes by a proxy, though not the prince, but a gentleman of Messina, who thrives as successfully and speedily. The arch calumniator Girondo, a friend and comrade of Timbreo, is actuated by the
desire to gain the lady for himself. He places Timbreo on the
watch, and at the appointed hour passes by him disguised, along
with an instructed servant, who drops significant words, and is
then seen to enter a chamber window clandestinely. No person
answering to the Dalinda of Ariosto, the Pryene of Spenser, or Margaret of Shakespeare, is introduced. The marriage is broken off,
but not by Timbreo personally, as in the church, but again by the
proxy. The lady falls, it is thought, in a death-swoon, and it is
her unexpected recovery that suggests to the father the opportunity of managing her retirement to a brother's villa. Her obsequies are solemnly performed, and her father affixes a poetical
epitaph on the monument. The calumniator is now struck with
generous remorse, and voluntarily reveals his treachery to Timbreo in the church, in front of the tomb, and both take measures
in concert to repair as far as possible the injury they had done,
and restore the reputation of Fenicia. Lionato is placable, and
is content with their joint promise to admit his recommendation
-for he scarcely exacts more, when they propose to marry. After
the lapse of a year, Timbreo is introduced and married to Fenicia, now called Lucilla, but otherwise unveiled and undisguised;
and only after the ceremony, and during the marriage entertainment, is made aware that they are one and the same. The repentant slanderer, Girondo, is admitted still more mercifully to a
similar atonement, and marries her sister, the lovely Belfiore.
The coincidence in names of persons and places proves that mediately, or immediately, Shakespeare was indebted to Bandello,
and especially for the retirement of Hero, and the characteristic incident destined to be still further developed, of the wooing
by negotiation, while he retains or takes up, from the earlier
form of the tale, the intervention of the deceived Margaret, and,
with more judgment, confines the slanderer to his previous incorrigibility, and denies him the palliation of a passion, however
unregulated.
It is noticeable that neither Borachio, in his proposal to Don
John, nor Don John, in his revelation to the bridegroom, nor
Claudio, on his rejection of Hero, drops a word of the costume
of Margaret having in any way assisted in the fraud, and so far
the audience are left to suppose that the chamber window, and
the terming of Borachio, Claudio, sufficed with distance and obscurity of night, to effect the deception. Yet Shakespeare, perhaps by an oversight, assumes that the fact of this disguise,
which only comes out in the confession of Borachio, was known
all along. It is this false dress to which Borachio is alluding
when he moralizes, otherwise unintelligibly, on the deforming




66       MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.
course of fashion. This illustrates the dependence of the play on
the novels-it also had some effect on its incident. The mistakes
of the masked or fancy ball, are anticipatory of the more mischievous effect of another personal disguise-and passing over the
changing hat of Benedick, his altered costume, and the ladies'
discourse over the side-sleeves and blueish tinsel of the gown of
the Duchess of Milan, we have at last a bevy of veiled beautieswhen Claudio, who had rashly rejected a bride through deception
by disguise, now offers atonement by deliberately accepting one
in like concealment.
In the tale, as narrated with some diffuseness by the Italian,
Timbreo and Fenicia are of a more sentimental tone than their
antitypes, as depicted by Shakespeare; and it is in this point that
we have to admire the art with which the dramatist brings their
dispositions and manners into harmony, with the actions and circumstances that are the conditions of the intrigue and decide the
form of the play.
It is not every lady-1 speak under correction, who, although
disposed to be as placable as Hero under grievous insult and injury,
would be satisfied with reparation proffered in the exact form,
that appears to indicate a promptitude to be consoled, that goes
far to cancel the merit of penitence. The veil of Hero would
have been thrown down, by some, not to welcome the contrite
lover with an agreeable surprise, but to confound him by the
sight of the lost bride, who might claim a right, under the circumstances, to have at least detained his affections; and there
must, in fact, be great peculiarity in the love and engagement of
the pair, for us to be able to witness the scene, without expecting
reproaches on one side, and shame and confusion on the other. The
instance of the indignation of Hermione, and the penance she
exacts, for a similar outrage, is an extreme contrast, but exhibits
the principle of feeling involved. Some consciousness of the
weakness of his story at this point, floats before the mind of Bandello, and he fortifies it accordingly, and with some ingenuity,
endeavouring to save the amour propre of the lady, by making
the lover evidently affected by the power of the identity, though
he fails to recognize it; but, after all, he comes but halting off.
It was in the difficulty and incongruity of the novel, that the
dramatist found the key-note of a perfectly harmonious creation.
Hero has to be depicted, and is depicted, of such temper and
disposition as will accept this not very complimentary form of reparation, and yet of such susceptibilities as to feel her false accusation acutely, and to interest our esteem and sympathy. So,
again, with Claudio; for Hero's sake, and the sake of the play,
he must not be too far sacrificed; he must be, and is, deceived by
no gross and ridiculous delusion, and others, of even quicker and
less biassed perceptions, are deluded with him; to sustain our interest in Hero and her fortunes, his passion for her must not be




CRITICAL ESSAY.                       67
ce hale' -iza'td of mercenary motive, he must have so much sensibility as to. feel acutely the wound of her supposed falsehood,
and thence rg iret and penitence for his hastiness-yet for his
hastiness rather L1an for his harshness-when he finds he was
deceived, but not so much a-s to drive him to despair and distraction, as more passionate lovers liibr fare. He is not of that regulated temper to be minded to put her away privately, and
neither is he of the violent oriental or southern vein, that would
demand blood as an atonement for betrayal in love, and lay violent hands upon her or her supposed paramour, or on himself.
He shames her publicly; and even when he supposes her dead in
consequence of the shock, he exhibits but slight consciousness of
what to more delicate minds would have seemed, for all her errors, gratuitous brutality to herself and her kindred. He is not
very tender to the excited Leonato; and when he has gone out,
banters freely on the subject, and does not readily conceive that
Benedick's challenge, on such ground, can be meant in stern seriousness-in profound earnest. We are quite prepared for this by
the earlier revelation of his character, when he supposed that Don
Pedro had played him false, and wooed Hero for himself. He is
then sullen and disappointed rather than excited, and adverts to
the matter with a subdued philosophy, that provokes the rejoinder
from Benedick, "Why, that's spoken like an honest drover, so
they sell bullocks."
So, for the general course of his love:-Claudio intimates that
he had a certain inclination for Hero before the expedition, but
it was so far under his control, that, having then business on his
hands, he set it aside for an occasion of leisure. When he opens
the matter to Don Pedro, he does so with the economical inquiry" Hath Leonato any son, my Lord? " and Don Pedro, with full intelligence of the purport of such an inquiry, on such an occasion, replies that " Hero is his only heir." The attachment is one of that
class that comprehends the greatest number of convenient and comfortable matches; the greatest proportion of all matches, therefore,
that arrange themselves in an agreeable and not over-exciteable zone of society. Thus, it is the most natural and unforced
thing in life for Leonato, when he proposes the substitution of his
brother's daughter, to mention incidentally that she is "heir to
both of them," as, at the previous contract, he had said, "Count,
take of me my daughter, and with her my fortunes." Such
people do not fall in love for the sake of money; the state of the
case is simply that, with all ingenuousness, it does not occur to
them, when no property is in the case, to entertain the notion of
falling in love. So the world goes on and becomes peopled, and
each rank of social distribution keeps in its groove with no coercion, and the problems of prudence and tenderness settle themselves, and harmonize with each other, with no distasteful aid
from avowed selfishness and sordidness.




58       MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING..
The lady herself is the sweet docile creature, with.vt~ pe
portioned beauty, intelligence, and disposition for affectionateness,
that so frequently accepts her fate from the arrangemrents of other
people, and, with moderate good fortune, rma enjoy and confer
a temperate happiness in aly one of many possible engagements.
Benedick's definition of her cL _-.ience is allsufficient. She claims
no commendation in excess; yet were she other than she is she
were unhandsome, and being no other but as she is, Benedick
and such as he may not like her, but without art, or invitation,
or coquetry, she will be one of the last to go through her teens
without a husband, notwithstanding.
It is wonderful how Shakespeare has been able to interest us
by the mere attractiveness of simple, affectionate, and cheerful
disposition in a female character, with scarcely a touch of passion,
and for independent will so nearly a nonentity. When Leonato
thinks Don Pedro is the suitor for his daughter, he proposes " to
acquaint my daughter withal, that she may be the better prepared for an answer, if peradventure this be true." The theory of
the communication appears in a subsequent speech:-" Daughter,
remember what I told you; if the prince do solicit you in that
kind, you know your answer;" and Hero by her silence, or probably by the courtesy that gives Beatrice her cue, acquiesces.
Beatrice has a theory of filial obedience in these matters, that her
cousin does not, or has no occasion at least, to dream of. " Yes,
faith, it is my cousin's duty to make courtesy, and say, ' As it
please you;' but yet, for all that, cousin, let him be a handsome
fellow, or else make another courtesy, and say, ' Father, as it
please me.' Clearly, if Beatrice is to be fitted with a husband by
any will or choice other than her own, it must be managed by a
different and far more artificial process. The limits of the independence that Hero was prepared to assert, are marked by a few
dextrous touches, in her not ungraceful repartees with the masked
Don Pedro; prepared to be wooed, we suspect she is also prepared to consent, yet to indulge withal in those slighter ceremonious holdings off that are the feminine prerogative in the most
absolute surrender-their honours of war.
Marriages like that of Claudio and Hero easily ensue from wooings by proxy, and influential words of the great are powerful
aids. Certainly it appears that there is more elaborate apparatus of
ingenuity displayed than the difficulties require,-for Don Pedro
not only wooes in the name, but in the assumed person of Claudio,-and it does not appear that the point-blank proposal to Leonato, backed by Don Pedro in presence, would not have saved
the trouble, together with the little complexities and misunderstandings that intervene. This, however, would not have been
in accordance with the genius of the characters and of the play;
it is a slight tendency to take or to fall into an artificial course
rather than a direct one,-to operate on the circumference rather




CRITICAL ESSAY.


59


than the diameter of the circle, that brings on all the complication of the intrigue, and that gives us in the play so amusing a
cross web of multifarious ado about nothing at all. It is, moreover, Claudio's wooing by proxy, in the first scenes, that makes
his later conduct less grating to the feelings, than if we had seen
the mutual melting of the pair in love's own confidence. Considering the vicissitudes and mistakes through which the settlement, in the first instance, is suddenly arrived at, we cannot
wonder at a certain want of spontaneousness in his acknowledgments. In the sudden veering of feeling, there is naturally a
moment of pause; and when Beatrice impatiently prompts him," Speak, Count; 'tis your cue,"-it is in plain prose, and somewhat of the coldest, that he takes it up. " Silence is the per -
fectest herald of joy: I were but little happy, if I could say how
much," and so forth; till Beatrice, again impatient at the lagging
dialogue, suggests a rejoinder to her cousin, and hints that a kiss
on such an occasion would be quite in due place. Such prelude
defines the nature of the engagement and of the lovers in a manner to soften the violence of the ensuing breach, and to reconcile
us to the facility with which Claudio accepts a wife in substitution and on blind conditions, and to the completeness of Hero's
satisfaction in regaining him, in a manner so perfectly independent of personal compliment to herself.
Admirably and amusingly contrasted with this pair, in the
I same composition, are Benedick and Beatrice; their names are
correlative ironically, and yet with truthful rendering of an agreement in two original natures, which only understand each other,
it is true, with difficulty, but which we feel are necessarily of mutual interest, and of interest impossible to be transferred in either
case to any other being in creation. Seeondaryas they may appear in the main current of the story, they stanoo d with a
vivacity and independence, in front of the other groups and characters, that raises Them to primary importance. The other
figures occupy a broad field in various degrees and planes of relief, but these two are executed in the round, and the variation of
the composition has ever reference to their changing and fitful
positions.  tis    rfrm      firt tha  l   iof     b is possessed and engrossed by the idea of the other and   trains of
dsl   o n'H  e% h^          All the advances, \
however, though in fie Trm of petulance and provocation, come
from Beatrice; for even Beatrice cannot escape the fate which
dooms that the desire of the woman shall be to her husband, and
independent as she affects to be, it is impatience of independence that provokes to the abuse of it in mere vexation. Her
friendly acknowledgment, " Do so, good friend," to the messenger, has a colour of gratitude for the news of Signior Montanto's
return; her satirical inquiry as to his exploits, betrays her interest in his honour, and her other jests are, it must be said, mere




60       MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.
covert, however unconscious, fishing for intelligence; and her
sneer at his fickleness in companionship, is an unmistakeable expression of jealousy of his preference for friendship and the society
of men. Her attack on the man himself savours of pique at not
being noticed first; and what interpretation but one can we put
on her rejoinder to his disavowal of love, that she has like disinclination? If this had been the fact in either case, they would
not have so harped upon the subject, and certainly Beatrice would
not have been so near losing her temper, even at the home retort of
the " predestinate scratched face." When Don John is in question, she must needs bring up Benedick in contrast, and she
again protests against wedlock and its humiliations with ominous
earnestness.
Beatrice will not marry, so keenly she apprehends the ill qualities of man, and yet, when Hero is betrothed, breaks out in half
sincere complaints that she alone must be husbandless. Benedick, in his soliloquy, eulogizes the admirable qualities of women,
j but wants to find them all in combination, and yet, when Claudio
4 is in love, denounces the passion unconditionally.
Benedick's first greeting of Beatrice is as Lady Disdain, and
at the masked ball it is his charge against her that she is " disdainful," and disdain is a complaint that scarcely occurs but to a
lo er; hence it is Hero's charge,KJ           "No truly, Ursula, she is too disdainful,
I know her spirits are as coy and wild
As haggards of the rock."
He himself betrays himself, when he places his " simple true
judgment" of a lady, in opposition to his "custom as professed
tyrant to the sex." When Claudio declares his love to Don Pedro, Benedick brings in his own sentiments as to marriage, and
turns and engrosses the whole conversation on his proper sentimental idiosyncrasy, with little regard for poor Claudio's suspended communication. After a sharp encounter with the lady,
he can still indicate a full appreciation of her beauty, "an she
were not possessed with a fury;" and after one still sharper, when
she drops a word that is almost unpardonable —" the fool will eat
no supper," he advances, for advance it is, one step nearer to selfknowledge in averring, " I would not marry her if- " it matters not what follows, for conditions were indifferent after the
thought was once fairly entertained. It is,comizand t4airacterit         "t   bhe      rvant Bdi     c     atc hes a
glimpsef the. trc,.incitement.of-l hepersecution of Beatrice; he
os      a ase or bitter dispos jon,-athiithan, the
trath t  at 'theashe4"bhro ghy    fmres him, ind would be
pleeased attrf      oa4diod.ana     iended.toj turn, and
aits        e and not c9nt   uouelss that arms her tongue.
Aparntly he has himself, and his self-sufficient parade of superiority to Love-a divinity who will not be insulted with impu



CRITICAL ESSAY.


61


nity, to thank for his false and uncomfortable position..Beatrice
speaks of.itfi  le       atha      minor4 peaeeale
relations..,nd he gained a heart of her though_-it-proved4to-be_..with false dice; indifference, however, is almost as dire a crime
as treachery in a court of love, especially in the bachelor, and
therefore it is that Benedick suffers most by the mutual persecution, and, by the course of his conversion, is justly exposed to far '
more ridicule than attaches to Beatrice in her recovery, inasmuch |
as she, though with irregular weapons, was at least vindicating l
the natural rights of her beauty and attractions.
The hostilities reach their height in consequence of the encoun.ter at the masked ball, and the breach seems fairly declared \V      j
when Benedick quits the room as Beatrice enters it, and fairly
denounces her as an insupportable harpy. The seeming antipa-   \
thy, artfully wrought up to this point, is heightened still further
in the soliloquy, in which Benedick, after full deliberation, comes
to the positive determination that wedlock is not for him under
any conceivable circumstances, and that he will die a bachelor.
The harvest is now ripe for the sickle, and before the same
scene has come to an end the transformation is wrought. For
this, as I have intimated, we are already prepared, but still the
art with which it is reconciled to probability, and avoids harshness, is very wonderful. The song of Balthazar is interposed not
without purpose; the much ado with which he is induced to give
up his merely pretended reluctance to sing, has a congruity with
the theme of the play, enforced by Don Pedro's cool rebuke of his
affected disavowals -" Ha! no; no, faith, thou singest well
enough for a shift;" and the burden of his song, encouraging
ladies to sigh no more, is that of the ensuing conversation on the
desirableness of Beatrice suppressing her passion. Benedick's
preference for wind music is also a point of nature, and his sudden change of attitude, from that of a wearied overhearer of sentiment that bores him, to an anxious listener, when his proper
affections are in question, is laughable enough; but the introduction of the music has also the effect of supplying an intermediate
tone of association, that softens the transition that we witness,
from one declared condition of feelings to another. In the corresponding scene of the deception of Beatrice, the effect is obtained
by another artifice, by the tone of romance communicated to our
impressions by the sweetness and flow of the versification in which
Hero and Ursula hold their discourse.
I note incidentally that the boy who swas sent for a book by
Benedick and does not reappear, seems to have been the means
of the conspirators learning his master's whereabout, and to have
been kept away by their management.
Beatrice accepts the purport of the talk she has heard as truth
and sincerity, and in a spirit of self-abasement which we pray
may find imitation otherwhere; to Benedick the possibility does




62       MIUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.
just occur that all may be a gull,but his penetration gains small
glory by this, for he rejects the notion forthwith, and the fiction
which he gives in to was set forth with an exaggeration and
extravagance that argue in him a credulousness not moderately
exalted. The tendency to not slight self-appreciation which
betrays him is the same that had prompted his original error of
insulting the majesty of the sex by professed non-allegiance,we have a hint of it in his avowal that he was loved of all ladies
but Beatrice, yet in hardness of heart loved none, and in the
peculiar spirit of self study, in which he is curious to know, and
does not hesitate to enquire of her for which of his bad parts
she first fell in love with him.
Certainly Shakespeare, with manly gallantry, makes Beatrice
fair amends, for the balance of mirth is beyond cotputation dirted teI   -^         - -on       is no whit more positive
than hers, but the worEkng  1  i.t' Benedick shaves, dresses,
pe'rfiil s, is ' foirward,  afoge inplaan  adi'etpectant, and were
it not that 'we'now that his conceit is not without some grounds
to j utify~it,"inot geven'rifhigh mental qualifications would save
himlTfirom'flietdicutmsnessthat fastens on Malvolio, betrayed by
a like pitfall. — Malvolio, cross-gartered in the presence of Olivia,
is a companion picture-how admirably discriminated, to Benedick after he has donned lover's livery of trimness, and in his
mistakes of demeanour he only completes that one important step
which Benedick commences when he interprets the saucy message to come in to dinner into covert tenderness. Here again he
is on the brink of the absurdity that engulphs Slender when
greeting a like summons from Anne Page, and yet he must be
dangerously self-confident who is not restrained by a certain awe
from laughing at him outright. Apart from Beatrice he is mute,
abstracted, has the toothache, and Beatrice, it is true, becomes
sympathetically exceeding ill, stuffed, sick, no longer professes
apprehension, can attend to nothing, and has positively to be
waked and bid to rise by Ursula on her cousin's wedding morning. But Beatrice has learnt her power, as well as her weakness,
)          and indulges the exercise of one, with every confession of the
other.,QComedy probably never surpassed the dialogue in the
-""ehapel after Hero's disgrace, where her generous indignation at
eir cousin's wrongdimf ts up together with her willingness to
give encouragement to her lover, to test his devotion, and to assert the right of her position. The varied agitations meet and
whirl in counter eddies, and it is fortunate if her finesse do not
deceive the unwary spectator, as well as herself and Benedick,
and lead him to suppose that vindictiveness against Claudio is
her ruling motive, rather than compassion for her cousin consenting with the opportunity to mask her own avowal and to impose
a commission. On this understanding Benedick kisses hands
and departs, and when she afterwards comes to his message,




I
CRITICAL ESSAY.                       63
it is with the excuse that she would hear of the challenge,
but she is easily diverted, and though she holds off from his attempt, and will depart unkissed, she will not let him leave, but,
when they are interrupted grants a favour in her turn;-" Will  j.k
you go hear this news, Signior? " and carries him off with her. -7. /  -X Y'
Beatrice is misrepresented when actors allow to Benedick at this
point, as I saw last year at Munich, a premature success. This  Ad
is reserved for th.la..lLcene, when after manful perseverance
'eis victorious at last, over the banter of others and his own,
and seals his success by kissing her to stop her mouth; and we
may be satisfied that from that pressure the former source of bitter things, purged of all sting that would profane the sanctity of
the consecration, will thenceforth issue sweetness, and in first proof I
of self-control, she leaves to her husband the office of retort and/
speaks no more.
It was no part of the Shakespearian theory of mirth-moving
comedy to make its stuff and substance the entrapping of a pair
into marriage with no affection or capability of it on either side,
but plentiful provision for squabbles and unhappiness. Stillws
r4 i.ar.e     awitBeatrice ta           opatie with her, and
it is in this respect that ther caract eeVf-.fSective a c6nirastF orose of th e dependent Hero, which unrelieveid      ave een ua        e   Sinmen, m     ithstanding
the excitement of the calumny and its discovery. The trouble
of Hero, like her happiness, comes upon her by circumstances she
does not influence, and it is the chapter of accidents so frequently
favourable to the simply amiable, that rescues her at last. The
difficulties of Beatrice are c~larlyd eOtuar-on. aa
A reolv~~~ietO. B -lllntellectual ignV         d
a"Tebiik4Y&    30^
she is rescued from th  ernlexities of   wnervrsenes.the manag^e6teof those whose pretensions to apprehension she
might justly contemn. The aBruptness of this contrast blends
~nto harmony by the resemblance of the incidents which set it
forth. The characteristic incident of the play is much ado, aris- j
ing from misconception of an overheard conference, and ending in
nothing at all. This theme, with the forms of incident, and of
mental tendency that give it effect, is varied in the play with
endless or rather with exhaustive diversity. The prince and
Claudio, placed upon the watch by Don John, whom they mistrust, but not sufficiently, mistake the identity of one party to a
dialogue, and hence are deceived by its purport, which was moreover so artfully expressed as to deceive in another way the person it was addressed to. Hence, by fault of haste and incaution,
the much ado which causes the affliction of the fair bride, though
it ultimately comes to nothing and the broken engagement recloses without injury or scar. Again, in another form, Benedick
and Beatrice are severally placed in ambush, and the princes and
ladies carry on a discourse intended to be overheard by thb



64       MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.
without suspicion of the purpose. This is a sportive and not ill
intended employment of the same stratagem; but this time the
belief conveyed is exaggerated in form rather than false in fact,
and those who think they are deceiving are to a certain extent,
telling more truth than they are 'ware of, and reveal a fact when
they think to forge a tale; hence, again, ensueth amusing much
ado and cross purpose-but it does not end in nothing, for Benedick and Beatrice marry. Still the spirit of the play is vindicated, for we find that in their case the real much ado in truth
arose from an earlier complication, and that the plot and management of the prince was all supererogatory contrivance to originate an attachment which in reality existed long before. Claudio
and Benedick both therefore would have saved themselves the
humiliation of regret or ridicule, had they observed those they
overheard more carefully, criticised more keenly the motives of
their informants, and kept better watch over their own tenden-,r  cies to accept hasty conviction;-or rather let us say, had they
3Sj    trusted open observation rather than illicit listening, and learned
to interpret the signs of a true heart and the symptoms of a melt14     ing, whether their own or another's, by proper sympathy rather
Cx           than second hand prompting. Benedick is not more extravagant
in his belief by hearsay than Claudio in his mistrust; both are.  wretchedly inexperienced in the course and language of the afs2           fections, and learn a lesson that will go far to cure them of some
unnecessary indulgence of mere intellectual exercise and artificial
banter. The mistake of Claudio brings the course of the plot to
the very brink of the tragic, and the misconceptipns of-enedick
and Beatric to t....\l: ' [  rili    s; yet, the fearful
and the farcical are equly.evaded,-and both ~feitlencies blend
away inti o a effect of the purest comedy.
C    Minor forms of blundered overhearing follow close on each
other at the opening of the play; Antonio reports that a man of
his had overheard a conference of the prince and Claudio in a
thick-pleached alley of his orchard-a good sharp fellow he describes him, and herein blunders himself, for the man misreports
that Don Pedro is the lover. In the third scene Borachio reports
scarcely more successfully that by designed ambush he had whipt
behind the arras and overheard the project that the prince should
woo Hero for himself and then give her to Claudio, which was not
the course of the plan. At the masked ball every one is in ambush, and every one with more or less success intends to overhear,
or designedly or not, is overheard. Hero listens to a mask wooing, as whom and for whom she can scarcely know, and the
wooing is overheard and misreported by others who do not fail
to convey the mistaken news to the easily crediting Count Claudio. Bentedick and Beatrice talk of each otier, and pretend not
to know they are talking to each other, and rehearse in person
the salme deception of which they are afterwards the victims, but




CRITICAL       ESSAY.                  65
here only Benedick is deceived; " That my lady Beatrice should
know me and not know me."    Ursula's banter of Antonio-he of
the dry hand and waggling head, who would fain persist in being
unknown, is of like drift and reference.
I step aside for a moment to remark the comic value of the
character of Antonio, so often doomed to be neglected and left
out. Leonato, at the commencement of the fifth Act, is immersed
in grief for the disgrace of his child, but the spectator already
knows that this grief will speedily be allayed by the publication
of her innocence, and the additional knowledge that he is bound
to exaggerate consciously the expression of his grief by the pretence of her death, still farther checks the spontaneousness of our
compassion. Sympathy is balked and puzzled, and would rebel
in affront, but that the poet furnishes a fair excuse for the laugh
which incongruity invites, by the grotesque comicality of the indignation of Antonio. With like humanity, in the scene where
the sleeping Juliet is mourned by her parents as dead, a vent for
our importunate sense of absurdity is supplied in the ludicrously
exaggerated wailings of the nurse. In the present instance there
is great comic truth in the interchange of position by the brothers
in the course of the scene. At the commencement Antonio ministers as best he may in the character of moralist and pllilosopher to the excitement of his brother, and at the conclusion it is
he himself who has to be held back and soothed by Leonato, in a
violent outburst of passionate abuse.
To return, Claudio, like Benedick, fancies himself unknown in
his mask, and listens to the insidious intimations of Don John,
who, like Beatrice, but more maliciously, pretends to be mistaken
in the person he is addressing.
The delineation of the resultless much ado that arises when wit
and ingenuity bestir to entangle and overreach themselves, would
not have been complete without the example how correct and
chastened observation, simple straightforwardness, or even dunderheaded stupidity are competent under circumstances to set
them to rights. It is with fine irony that thie scene in which Don
Pedro and Claudio place themselves in the hands of the ill-conditioned bastard, and accept his impressions and guidance in their
ill conducted night-watch, is immediately followed by Dogberry's selection of the " most desartless and fit men for a watch "
-men for whom, being chosen of the prince's watch, salvation,
body and soul, would be a punishment much too good if they
should have any allegiance in them. The watchmen are dismissed with a merciful charge, which encourages precisely such
half-considered prying as Claudio gets into trouble by; and it is
iust as they are prepared to go sit upon the church bench till
two and then all to bed, that accident prevents them, and accidental overhearing of the drunken confidences of Borachio,-the
crowning instance of a conference overheard, places the key of
F




6G       MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHfINOG
the entire complicated intrigue in the hands of Dogblrry.  T1he
mistake about the thief Deforimed, wvlo vwears a lock, keeps up the
spirit of the theme, and this is still farther continued in wonderfil antithesis to the intellectual embarrassments of the more refined charal'tters, in the picture of Dogberry and Verges, labouring
with a discovery which they struggle in vain to grapple or communicate, and which conies before the world at last, chiefly by
invloluntary and independent expansion of a matter of fact that
will fild its own way out.
D   alts a1d a,;ss have blundered upon the truth that escaped
tlhe wise and tile Awitty, and this completes the developnment of
the play. Beatrice is caughlt by so artl   an anler as Hlero,
Benedlick is enimeshed by the Prince and Claudio, who in their
turn are the victiis of Don John, and by still continuing descent,
his instrumnents, Borachio and Conrad, are pinioned by Dogberry
and Verges.
Much niglht be said( of lBcnedick in antithetical aspect to Dogberry, but iBnedick bears his iluiiniliation too bravely for ns to
urge ungenerously, that in his pains to provide for becoming the
argumenlt of his own scorn, nid his ihallenge to be posted and
inscribed in large letters, the mlarried mlan, he must excuse us if
we are remindled of nmaster Conlst.ble's anxiety to have it remeimbered at least, in defiult of beingi wr itten down, tlhat he is an ass.
Tile exact alpprlh(llsion of an examiiple of' moral or iitellectual
ceflectioni is not obltaintlie by comparison of another or anly iinmber of others alon(, but musct ultiniately be referred to some more
absolute stailld:arl, iandi this Shakespeare never fails to provide.
The direct andl sensible Sexton, aiiinllg the infirior characters,
gives us a ba:se line to assist our eye in followving the distortions
rather than divergences of his compeers; but the supierior and
ultimate refeirence is to the toaiposed and convincilngu insight of
F't hier Francis.
In the scene in thle (hlapel, 11cro swoons, not at the accusation
aiid rejection of her bridegrooml, but at the exclamation it extorts fiomn her father,
" Iath no man's dagger here a point for me?"
which shows that his faith has failed her. When she is recovering his expressions are still more decisive; Beatrice initerposes a
question, " How now, cousin Hero? "  But the friar already can
say, " Have comnfort, lady;" and to Leonato's " Dost thou look
tp?" lhe rejoins, " Yea, wherefore should slie not?"  Even Benedick is "so attired in wonder he knows not what to say!" and
if Beatrice breaks forth at the challenge, "0, on my soul, my
cousin is belied!" she is silenced for the moment by the seeming
confirmaltion that follows. The friar alone is stedfast and confiden! t in sagacious observation, and at last we catch a steadly
beacon lilght above the rockiing waters, and amidl the fitful cortscations that have glanced only to miisguide. At last we arrive




CRITICAL ESSAY.                       67
at the instance as well as definition of the conditions of credibility.
" Hear me a little;
For I have only silent been so long,
And given way into this course of fortune,
By noting of the lady; I have marked
A thousand blushing apparitions start
Into her face; a thousand innocent shames
In angel whiteness beat away those blushes;
And in her eye there hath appeared a fire,
To burn the errors that these princes hold
Against her maiden truth:-call me a fool;
Trust not my reading, nor my observations,
Which with experimental seal doth warrant
The tenour of my book; trust not my age,
My reverence, calling, nor divinity,
If this sweet lady lie not guiltless here
Under some biting error."
This he utters while Hero is lying senseless; when she recovers he tests her with a question that might easily have thrown
her, if guilty, off her guard; he asks,
" Lady, what man is he you are accused of?"
He is satisfied with her answer, and concludes, "there is some
strange misprision in the princes," and if he a little overestimates
the effect on Claudio of Hero's supposed death and his susceptibility of remorse for his harshness, still he only commits himself to
the general principle, that success will fashion the event in better shape than he can lay it down in likelihood, and has little
doubt of the end.
" Come, lady, die to live; this wedding day
Perhaps is but prolonged; have patience and endure."
Tenderness, or even predilection fo  arice, must not prevent
our remarking how much her freedom of speec- and allusion enhance by contrast the charm and delicacy of the reserve of Hero.
Without being captious on the subject of her mythological exercitations, which gave such offence to the critics of the last century, it must be said that her interpretation of the latitude warranted by maiden modesty, is only saved to our good opinion by
the artful relief afforded by the poet, in the still less hesitating
Margaret, who is something more than free, and something more
than imprudent, and yet without the fault that follows actual
pravity. Such were the moral compatibilities which fiction, in
those days of robust morality, assumed, and society most certainly justified. Of such a social epoch we have in this play a
picture, and there is no ground for imputing to the poet that it
embodies his ideal of perfect refinement-this we must seek among
the elements of the special synthesis. The vindication of the delicacy of Hero renders the coarseness of her accusation more
touching, and on this account it is marked just previously in her




68      MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.
rebuke of the plain-speaking Margaret in the talk on the wedding morning. When Don Pedro engages her services in the
plot to make a match between Benedick and Beatrice, she replies
that she will do any modest office to help her sister to a good
husband, and let it not be thought that the reservation argues
either prudish apprehension or indelicacy in entertaining the idea
that the prince might not be over scrupulous in the trick she was
to aid in. The qualification was not gratuitous, and it was no
fault of Hero's that it was required. The tone of the society she
bloomed amongst rendered it necessary and in her, natural, and
that she makes it does not diminish our feeling of her refinement,
but simply indicates her good sense, refinement's proper guard.




CRITICAL ESSAY ON LOVE'S
LABOUR'S LOST.


HE speech of Hamlet that has been so frequently quoted
as advice to the players, is no less pregnant and important as advice to the play writer. It is clearly the intention of the poet to represent the Danish prince as refined
in taste and replete with the accomplishments of a scholar and
gentleman; and we are therefore furnished, through the lips of
the poetic creation, with certain standards and canons of dramatic criticism, that are assuredly to be recognized as those of the
poet himself. To Shakespeare's mind, then, a play was excellent,
though rejected by the million-" caviare to the general, " when
composed with no lack of ingenuity in the design and construction
of the piece, but at the same time with proportionate moderation
observed in the ostentation of artifice, and a certain orderly march
and progress of the incidents by marked division of successive
scenes; in his own words-" well digested in the scenes "-set
down " with as much modesty as cunning." The modesty that
controls the " cunning," is the ars celare artem, the caution to present results, but not to obtrude the principles of combination and
grouping. He goes onl to commend, with the sanction of still
more esteemed judgments, the rejection of ribaldry-sauce to vulgar tastes, and of the petty refinements of phrase that argue affectation, and gratify hearers like Polonius. " He's for a jig or
a tale of bawdry, or he sleeps," says Hamlet. Of such a play the
whole tone and style is equally healthy and agreeable-" as
wholesome as sweet," and replete with natural grace rather than
ornate, and by no means bedizened-it is " by very much more
handsome than fine."
Shakespeare, who has so liberally indulged his comic vein, has
himself set the mark of reprobation on the dramatist who should
degrade his art and his subject by inopportune drollery; he admits in theory, consistently with his practice, the allowed functions of the clown, but in restricting the actor to the part written
down for him, he gives a rule of restriction to the dramatist also" to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh, too,
though, in the meantime, some necessary question of the play be
then to be considered,-that's -villanous, and shows a most pitiful




70           LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST.
ambition in the fool that uses it." The author who restrained
the actors by such terms, did it at his own peril, and suffers under
his own censure, should he miscarry by overdone or intrusive
sport, no less than in the case of putting " sallets in the lines,
to make the matter savoury." It is quite certain, from these passages, that Shakespeare had a severe theory of the relation of the
comic to the serious part of the play;-that the theory was just,
and that his practice in his best plays is as severely exponent of
it, I conscientiously believe, and would fain do somewhat to set
forth and prove.
Again, the lecture of Hamlet to the players, on the true mean
between tameness and extravagance, touches the author as nearly,
who is bound to provide players with speeches which shall harmonize with the standard of correct vehemence in action. Energy is declared essential in the display of dramatic expression;
the tempest, torrent, and whirlpool of passion are admitted, and
not the less, and at the same time, all gentleness, temperance,
smoothness are equally insisted on; in all, the rule is Naturethe aim, the correct imitation of humanity, and the poet who
condemns both bombastic and tame delivery, admits his own bond
to supply neither bombast nor platitude to the actors to deliver.
Did Shakespeare respect his own canon? and had he a just conception of its application? I think so, and mistrust appearances
that are at variance.
The rule of dramatic writing, as of delivery, that Shakespeare
publishes, and that he so far invites us to apply to his own works,
is natural truthfulness;-" the special observance that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature; for anything so overdone is from
the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was,
and is, to hold as 'twere the mirror up to nature; to show virtue
her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body
of the time his own form and pressure." Unless I deceive myself, these words evince a consciousness of a very definite relation
between the forms of moral characteristics exhibited on the stage,
and those existing among the spectators, at a given time. The
better tendencies of the audience and the age, see there their reflected features, and the contemptible tendencies recognize their
own deformities; and all the images are bound to carry the very
stamp and colour of the times of the author. It seems clear that
by the Time, of which the very age and body is to be thus set
forth, Shakespeare meant the time current, and not that-remote,
historical, or fabulous, to which the story of the play might happen to belong. The same living reference is indicated in the
warning of Hamlet to Polonius to entertain the players well," Do you hear, let them be well used; for they are the abstracts
and brief chronicles of the time: After your death you were better have a bad epitaph, than their ill report while you lived."
Here we have even an indication that the expression on the stage,




CRITICAL ESSAY.


71


of the spirit and character of the age, might even descend-though
it is not indicated allowably, to personal and individual satire.
This no doubt frequently occurred, as well by incidental allusion as by more complete impersonation. The corporation of
this city treated the players ever shabbily, and the lampoons of
Tarlton told stingingly in return. And in the same way the
stage had a voice almost, it may be, as distinct as in those days
the pulpit, by avowed Lllusions to passing events, or, in some
cases, by bringing upon the stage the very events of the passing
day. But we have no authority for interpreting " the purpose of
playing," as set forth by Shakespeare, to be in expedients so
inartistic; no such authority can be derived from the most distinct references contained in his own plays, and yet we have to
assume, from his cited words, that in his plays we may really find
embodied the very genius and habit of the times that closed the
reign of Queen Elizabeth, and opened that of James. The solution of the problem seems to be this:-The dramatist must please
to live, but in order to please he must interest, he must excite;
and to do this in the highest degree, he must consider-at least
when the play-going public is a fair type of the most active and
cultivated in mind and action, that his spectators come to him,
not simply from reading other fictions and seeing other plays, but
with minds also in a particular habitual state from the tone of
most interesting public events and private habits, with capacities
of attention disposed to certain topics, with aptitudes for sensitive apprehension variously stimulated; in these peculiarities consist " the form and pressure of the age and body of the time," and
these subjective attributes of the age it is the business of the dramatist to place in view of the age objectively, and his success will
be effective, accordingly as his mimic scene, in whatever age and
country his subject matter may be found, holds up the mirror to
the age existing, and shows to it, it may be unsuspectedly, the
triumphs, the dependencies, the liabilities of its own virtues; the
degradation, the versiform palliations-in pity, too, the remedies, of its own vices; and therewithal the intermediate vagaries of less steadfast purpose, the whims, the humours, the amusements and solaces of imitated humanity. At a somewhat later
date, we might suppose the words of Hamlet to recommend that
the stage should be a picture of what are called " manners," and
present to the view of ladies and gallants, ladies, and gallants,
their counterparts; to hit follies as follies are in midflight, and
compass the function, in short, of the novelists of our own generation, or the dramatists like Congreve and Sheridan. Such an
interpretation, however, will scarcely hold, for Hamlet does not
speak the thoughts of Shakespeare himself, who is very chary of
portraits from the life, or pictures of that order of naturalness that
might cause them to be taken for portraits from the life.
The bringing present matters of state and religion on the stage,




72           LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST.
was strictly forbidden and disclaimed by Shakespeare and his fellows in their memorials; they were precluded, therefore, had they
had the wish, from exhibiting to Elizabeth her own glories and
exploits, as AEschylus set forth to the Athenians their Persian
triumph; theyweredebarredas prudent men, if not as artists,from
marked and frequent allusions to contemporary events and incidental indications of feeling, or opinion concerning them, except
in rare cases; and, lastly, it was not for them to bring on the
boards the controversies and party agitations of the time, thinly
masked and transferred to fabulous or remote history. Examples
of these modes of holding a mirror to the age will readily occur
to all, but seldom associated with works of the highest claims.
The resource still remains-the best that a true poet will ever
desire, to seek his fable in times of which the superficial manners
and details contrast strongly with his own, and yet to make it
the mirror, in which his own times shall be confronted with the
exactest moral images of their own passions, interests, and motives-their virtues and their vices. So wrought the Greek tragedians for the most part, and so wrought Shakespeare. A play
of Shakespeare then reflects, mirror-like, the very forms and lineaments of morals and manners of the date of its production,
but not by the clumsy and repulsive resort to a mere piece d'occasion, and quite as little by falsifying historical expression, and
making Frenchmen talk not like Frenchmen but like English, or
ancient Romans not like Romans, but like courtiers of the 16th
century. It is the phase and promptings of the passions that are
identical in the represented age and scene and among the spectators, and the accuracy with which these are rendered, in minutest form and pressure, is independent of the mask, and costume, and accent of the fable.
What were the relative periods Shakespeare had in his mind
when he wrote of the purpose of acting, which both before and
now, was and is? Was he thinking of the drama of the ancients,
or had he not rather in mind the moralities, the dramatic phase
immediately before his own?
A statute of Henry VIII. in 1543, prohibits "ballads, plays,
rhymes, songs, and other fantasies" of a religious or doctrinal
tendency, but at the same time carefully provides that the clauses
shall not extend to " songs, plays, and interludes which had for
their object the rebuking and reproaching of vices and the setting
forth of virtue," (Collier, Shakesp. I. p. xxxiii.), curiously accordant with Shakespeare's definition.
Though the poet or the critic, his mouthpiece, denounces tameness as well as extravagance, it is quite apparent, from the bias
of his remarks, that the besetting sin of the stage was, in his day,
exaggeration; the chief force of his satire is directed upon the
periwig-pated fellows who tear a passion to tatters, o'erstep the
modesty of nature, the strutters and bellowers, the offenders




CRITICAL ESSAY.


73


who have caused a colour of reproach to attach to the epithet
theatrical. The writer for the stage, is obviously as open to the
fault as the player. Did Shakespeare entirely respect his own
canon? Can we pass to his plays from the poems of the Greeksof Homer, and hold on, in faith unshaken, that he is ever justly
dramatic, never unduly theatrical? We are not concerned with
the Greeks at this moment; the discussion widens, and dropped
here, may be resumed hereafter or elsewhere, and thought may
be taken before a final answer.
Of all the plays of Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost is perhaps that which bears most appearance of being a definite satire
on his contemporaries. Some traces of individual satire (Florio
has been thought to be satirized as Holofernes) have been challenged, but not more than have seemed traceable in other plays;
it is in the agreement in general colour, and in detailed manners
of the follies exhibited, with those which were rife under Elizabeth, that we trace "the form and pressure" of her time. In
truth, there seems, to a reader at the present day, to be the essential weakness in the execution of the play, that it contains too
much of the very faults it would expose; he becomes weary of the
quaint verbalism, the strained affectation of phraseological acuteness, the slowness of the action, either retarded by distinctions and
divisions of refinement entirely, or when it should become most
lively and excited, losing itself in the crosspaths and byeways of
indirect and sophisticated contrivance-the sacrifice of plainness and simplicity, not unfrequently involving loss of true sensitive consideration for the claims and feelings of others. The
mirror, I suspect, reflects the age too truthfully,-at least a certain class of its faults; and the social exaggerations in language
and demeanour, true as they are to general human nature, are
still not at present so abundant in these forms, as to prepare us
to relish a still more concentrated version on the stage. It seems
supererogatory for the dramatist to set such whims and motives
in action, and to conduct them elaborately to their catastrophe,
when we turn away from them at the first instance with disgust,
and cannot have patience to sympathize with them so strongly
as is requisite, if we would completely understand them. It was
otherwise, no doubt, in the days of yore.
But we turn to the subject-matter of the tale.
A certain king of Navarre, and three of his lords, have concerted a scheme of three years' studious seclusion, struck with
the glory of intellectual culture, they pretend, but clearly, by
their tone from the very first, with less love of philosophy than
romance, and with less of the romantic in their thoughts than the
fantastical. Tastes, time of life, position, duties, all exclaim upon
the unnatural design, " for three years' space to fast, to study,
and to see no woman;" all, however, enter into the engagement
in blind affectation,-all but one, Biron, who exhibits the affec



74           LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST.
tation in its absurdest form, by ridiculing with lively, though
still wire-drawn wit and cogent reason the entire undertaking,
and falling in with it with open eyes and notwithstanding. The
scheme savours of the debased romanticism in which chivalry died
out of itself, or had execution done upon it by the satire of Cervantes;-it founds upon romance endeavouring to develope itself
intellectually;-fantasticality, conceits, ostentatious refinements,
pedantry, are its proper blooms and outbursts.
The leading and predominance of Biron in the first scene continues all through the more elevated portion of the play, and is the
key to the structure of the harmony. This character, in itself,
is drawn with a vigour and spirit equal to anything we possess
of Shakespeare's; his figure is fully relieved and attracts the eye
and detains it, and gives centre and interest to the entire composition. But the gradation of relief among the other characters
is less easily followed, and among the groups and figures around
him, some of the less relieved differences are indistinguishable, or
only distinguishable by such close attention, or in lights so glaring, that the intellectual eye is wearied, and does not care to follow them. Longaville, Dumain, and the King do not separate
themselves very markedly;-the pedantries of Sir Nathaniel and
Holofernes, the ripe fruit of study for ostentation' sake, are very
near akin, the schoolmaster being merely in better repair;-Sir
Armado, the braggart, seems not quite elaborated to the limits of
primary intention, his most characteristic speech comes late, and
takes us rather unawares, after so much that has gone before less
characteristic. Moth, the page, discovers as much genuine wit
as any character after Biron, and we are puzzled how he is
so readily put out of countenance. The clown Costard has got
an odd taint of endemic contagion, and affects the phrase at times.
Even goodman Dull picks up a phrase and spoils it, like stolen
lace worn the wrong side outward. Jaquenetta, at last, child of
nature, and listening not to a single lover alone, is a simple negation of any other tendency. The verbal affectations of the
curate, pedant, and braggart, express in extreme forms the tendency of the ostentatious study of the courtiers, of which, by this
illustration, we recognize the true nature and cognate character,
though with more true originality;-but the length to which the
llustrations extend is surely fatiguing, and the poet has scarcely
yet attained the art of exhibiting tediousness to amuse and instruct, without becoming tedious himself.
The arrival of ladies from the Court of France on a diplomatic
mission, disturbs forthwith whatever seriousness the plan of study
ever pretended to; and king and courtiers forthwith obey the
fate prefigured in the lapse of Costard and Armado, and fall severally and collectively in love. Their love-making, however,
has the constitutional flaw of their studentship, and, in place of
the voice of affection and the suggestions of the heart, the lovers




CRITICAL ESSAY.                      75
interchange repartee with their ladies, and approach them in disguises, types of the false mental guise they have assumed,
heralded by a deputed prologue and a conned address. It is
exemplar of the inveterateness of the disorder, that the lovers believe profoundly that all this artificiality is in truth a reversion to
unsophisticated nature;-Longaville, Dumain, and the King,
hampered by their oaths, had appealed to Biron to invent an apology for breaking them, and Biron supplies it in a speech of admirable eloquence and rhapsodical fervour. But the advocate is
carried away by the torrent of his own enthusiasm, and while he
is believed, and believes himself, to be providing " salve for perjury," " tricks and quillets how to cheat the devil," he utters in
his sweet and voluble discourse truths worthy of golden inscription, and principles of eternal nature. But, along with the other
votaries, he turns his eyes to simplicity and light only to be dazzled. " Now to plain dealing, leave these glozes by," says Longaville, when indeed the so-called glozes, taken literally, would
be the plainest dealing yet caught sight of, and the form of plain
dealing proposed is in reality return to triviality and grimace.
" Long. Now to plain dealing, lay these glozes by;
Shall we resolve to woo these girls of France?
King. And win them too: therefore let us devize
Some entertainment for them in their tents.
Biron.               In the afternoon
We will with some strange pastime solace them."
The device and strange pastime is the disguise of Muscovites, and
the prologue of the page; and the report of Boyet of the schooling of the page, informs the reader, as well as the princesses, how
far the lords have made progress in " plain dealing." The charming bevy of damsels have a true conceit of the dignity and spirit
of proper impassioned love-making; the characters given by them
severally of the three lords are portraits that flatter, because taken
in their more natural days, when it might be said of Biron with
truth"A merrier man,
Within the limits of becoming mirth,
I never spent an hour's talk withaL"
And the charmers, who have in their escort Boyet, a living admonition of the vice of affectation-(the Princess rates him truly,
" I am less proud to hear you tell my worth,
Than you much willing to be counted wise,
In spending your wit in the praise of mine")are, it would seem, not a little disappointed at the grotesque
transformations of their avowed admirers, as evinced by the style
they have adopted for their love-letters:" Folly, in fools, bears not so strong a note,
As foolery in the wise, when wit doth dote;
Since all the power thereof it doth apply,              4
To prove by wit, worth in simplicity."




76            LOVE S LABOUR'S LOST.
The ladies change favours, and out-disguise the disguisers, and,
moreover, out-wit the wits. Biron himself admits-" By heaven,
all dry-beaten with pure scoff;" and fairly baffled, he makes another attempt to regain the forfeited simplicity:" 0 never will I trust to speeches penned,
Nor to the motion of a schoolboy's tongue,
Nor never come in visor to my friend,
Nor woo in rhyme like a blind harper's song
Taffata phrases, silken terms precise,
Three-piled hyperboles, spruce affectation,
Figures pedantical; these summer flies
Have blown me full of maggot ostentation.
I do forswear them, and I here protest,
By this white glove, (how white the hand, God knows!)
Henceforth my wooing mind shall be expressed
In russet yeas, and honest kersey noes."
In the very next words he speaks as an example of plainness
he relapses, and admits the rebuke of Rosaline. Still the ostentatious display of super-refinement has worse results than mere
offence to taste, and, like all forms of pride, is a form of selfishness, and deadens the sympathies for the feelings, and consideration for the sensitiveness of others. Biron, despite his recantation, joins in as heartily as the others in baiting and browbeating the pedants, their unlucky rivals in masking, pursues
them with unrelenting ridicule and interruption, and especially
sets on Costard to expose Armado to public and scandalous shame.
The " merriment," as even the Princess calls it, is broken off
not too soon by the entrance of Mercado, who announces the
death of the King of France, her father; and the scene clouds, and
the action of the drama draws seriously to a close. The gentle
congress necessarily breaks up, and the King presses his suit to the
Princess in the directest terms he is able to command-still indistinctly. Biron has profited better and comes to aid, " Honest
plain words best pierce the ears of grief;" and draws forth the
plain announcement, that fantastic service had been rated but as
" pleasant jest." The suit of the King is put off for a year and
a day at least; and the interval is commended to him, as also to
Longaville and Dumain, as an opportunity for acquiring steadfastness, sobriety, and truthfulness. Of like duration is the sentence of Biron, but charged withal with severer conditions, to
eradicate the last bitter root of sophisticated ingenuity and display,-" to choke a gibing spirit, whose influence is begot of that
loose spirit which shallow laughing hearers give to fools." He
is dismissed to earn, if he will and may, a title to confidence and
sincere attachment, by a twelvemonth's term of familiarity with
the dire form of actual misery, that so he may learn the true relation of vivacious spirits and restless wit to the solemn realities
of the world, death and matrimony being among them:



CRITICAL ESSAY.


77


" Oft have I heard of you, my Lord Biron,
Before I saw you," &c.
Not all readers, I fear, will sympathize with the severity of the
fair lecturer, and I am not certain, on my own part, whether the
fault must lie with the recusant or the poet. The three years'
vow, under all the circumstances, it must be admitted, to the fair
ones was nothing better than solemn tomfoolery; but spectators
are indulgent to the vagaries that amuse them, and like to see
their benefactors rewarded with something more genial than a
grim penance, and adjournment with sour speech to that day
twelvemonth. And after all, have they displayed their title to
take such dignified ground, to assume such airs of superiority?
Are they not herein convict likewise of affectation, and noted worthily as not otherwise than the gentlemen, a parcel of geese,ladies with such gentlemen very properly matched?
We are at liberty to speak at large to this effect, for Love's
Labour's Lost is an early play-it is in the list of Meres, 1598.
It abounds in rhvmed scenes and alternate rhymes, and has examples of the doggerel. An edition of it, all but identical with
that of the folio, was printed in 1598, corrected and augmented
as it had been played the preceding Christmas before the Queen's
Highness. (This was at the time of the absence of the Earl of
Essex, in his ill-starred government of Ireland.) How much earlier it was written, or in how different a form it had appeared,
we cannot tell; but Shakespeare, at this date, had already produced Midsummer-Night's Dream in the form that we have ita much more perfect work, and it is easy to satisfy at least one's
self in perusal, that the traces of puerility and of the mature hand
of the master are very distinguishable. In the present instance,
we have positive evidence of the treatment of an early play, in
heightening but not entirely recasting by the maturer hand of
the poet, that can only be inferred-but with more confidence
from this instance, in the case of Measure for Measure. No hint
has hitherto been obtained of the source from which Shakespeare derived his story, or the materials and immediate suggestions of it.
As a developed, harmonized, on the whole genial, and comparatively sympathetic play, Love's Labour's Lost takes place among
the early plays, beside, or immediately above, the Comedy of Errors. Hence, by the reckoning we have imagined, it would be
posterior to All's Well that Ends Well; but the identification of
the latter as Love's Labour's Won, argues by suggestion of antithetical title, that it must have been of later date. The difficulty
vanishes if we assign, as we fairly may, the more mature characteristics of the "Labour's Lost" to the augmentation of its
edited date.
The order of the play, as antecedent to Midsummer-Night's
Dream, may be regarded as settled by the rule of recurrence alb




78           LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST.
ready illustrated; the bemocked and flouted mask of the worthies-bemocked in a spirit that elicits the reproof of Rosaline,
is an obvious parallel to the ridiculous play represented by Athenian clowns before Theseus, and accepted in a spirit that inculcates
the same moral of favour to well-meaning zeal that is enforced
by the ladies of France. The more complete and finished picture
was no doubt the later.
Affectation in language is only one of the forms of ostentatious
whimsicality, or pride of precision, which are set forth in action
on the stage, and not the worst form; the same vice pervaded
demeanour and action, and when we turn from the dramatist who
so profoundly appreciates the worth of mock refinement, to the
history of the age and court of Elizabeth, we feel, it may be for
the first time, how infinitely superior a spirit we have been admitted to converse with. From chancellors, and philosophers,
and statesmen, down to heads of colleges and maids of honour,
the whole social assemblage appears bent on grotesque interference with natural expression and simpleness of soul. The Essays
of Bacon sin almost as glaringly against correct and unaffected
style, as Euphues and his England; and some fantastic caper,
some crotchetty quaintness, interferes to distract attention in the
most ordinary or solemn scenes-whether a preacher is urging
repentance in a pulpit, or a hero lays his head on the block.
In 1550, Ascham wrote thus of the taste and accomplishments
of his youthful pupil, Elizabeth:-" She approved a style chaste
in propriety and beautiful in perspicuity, and she greatly admired
metaphors when not too violent, and antitheses when just and
happily opposed. By a diligent attention to these particulars(this is a hint of the tutor's own standard and method, the tests
of style he himself put forward to his pupil)-her ear became so
practised and so nice, that there was nothing in Greek, Latin, or
English prose or verse which, according to its merits or defects,
she did not either reject with disgust or receive with the highest
delight." The letters of Elizabeth, of the same date, exhibit the
turn for metaphor and antithesis, but scarcely so chastened as her
tutor boasts. In subsequent years it was in addresses designed,
and not without effect, to gratify the maiden Queen, that metaphor, antithesis, hyperbole, and bombast ran riot-ran mad. One
man in that generation, we may believe, set their true worth on
such exhibitions, and did his earnest best to indicate that the
fantastical service and complimentary mummeries and artificialities of courtiers, both grave and frivolous, would be fitly rewarded
with ridicule and scorn, in comparison with the plainest and most
uncultured attempt to please on the part of simpleness and honest
zeal. The court of Elizabeth was filled with actors off the stage,
and Shakespeare's drama would have taught them, but that such
actors cannot learn, that they were in truth more contemptible
than the worst actors upon it. The Lord Chamberlain's come



CRITICAL ESSAY.                     79
dians were not, I suspect, entirely exempt from the interruptions
of the same false wit and practical impertinence that perplex the
Worthies, and the shaft of satire would fly the fiercer, from the
impulse of a certain professional pique.
It has been conjectured with much show of probability that
Shakespeare, at the age of twelve, may have been among the multitudes attracted to Kenilworth, in 1572, a few miles only from
Stratford-on-Avon, to witness the gorgeous and fantastic reception of Elizabeth by Leicester, at that time a sanguine and encouraged suitor. The Queen arrived a huntress, like the Princess
of the play, and was greeted by the gods of mythology and symbolical moralities, each decked out with adjuncts and attributes,
each and every provided with a poetical speech brimful of flattery
and false conceits, tedious it would seem beyond all other relief
but amusement at disastrous breakdown and resort to some unconned apology perforce. The Queen herself, in her reply to the
Lady of the Lake, seems to have set the example of banter; and
it was completed by the representation of Orion " on a dolphin's
back," whose speech had got dissolved in the wine he had drunk,
and who, with frankness that reminds of Biron, tore off his mask
and swore " He was none of Arion, not he; but honest Harry
Goldingham." Incidents like these were no doubt frequent in
those days of complimentary masks and shows, and Shakespeare
might have gathered his moral of plain-dealing from any;
but I would prefer recognizing, in the drama of the masking
lovers, the early impressions of the costly fdte that was, to, the
potent Lord of Warwickshire, a work of wooing-a labour of love,
and that his renunciation of his hopes, not many months later,
made memorable as a wooing in vain-Love's Labour's Lost.
The fondness for super-refinement of phraseology at this time
had many springs-the prevalence of travel, the emulation of
continental culture, the abundance of translation, the new ideas
and passionate thoughts that, stirred by the Reformation, were
struggling for expression at this era, and breaking through old
phrase, urged by the expansion from behind of novel meaning.
The motive force took many phases, pedantry, sentiment, obscurity, bluster, and the language Shakespeare spoke was the entirely happy organization of a tendency that was thus running
wild in all directions around him.
The source of the "fire new" words was, for the most part,
Latin; and in Love's, Labour's Lost, regarded as to a great extent a juvenile work, we have proof of the furnace in which the
poet's weapons were found and forged. It proves that he was
thoroughly grounded, so to say, in the Latin vocabulary at
least, which he ever resorts to with freedom and effect, and unfailingly exact propriety. How far he advanced beyond the
Accidence, and a schoolboy's acquaintance with the few Latin
text books required for his exercises, we may still doubt. I have




80          LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST.
no doubt that he knew all the Latin Holofernes or Sir Hugh
Evans could have taught him in the time that was allowed to
them, and that this was employed very disproportionately on Latin language, while Latin literature was left to accidents of future
opportunity and chances of its own.




CRITICAL ESSAY ON MIDSUMMERNIGHT'S DREAM.


HIS play is the shortest of the collection-the least
marked in delineations of personal character-the least
charged with moral significance-the most musical or
lyrical. It is picturesque, imaginative, playful, and
droll. Still it is a drama, and not a poem-it was written for representation, and unhesitatingly the writer allowed himself all
the advantages which good representation placed at his command,
without consideration how readers might fare who should lack
the aid and comment of living personification. Yet, physically
speaking, a large portion of the characters are more difficult of
adequate impersonation than those of any other play. Before
imitation of sentiment or passion is thought of, we are met at the
outset with the impossibility of donning the costume. The words
set down belie the claim of any actor of mortal mould to utter
them; the delicate, ethereal, diminutive, yet energetic fairies,
move and speak in measures and proportions that are out of all
htrmony with any conceivable subject histrionic. Nevertheless,
with these difficulties Shakespeare coped, and not ignoring but
admitting and improving them, making them the very theme
and groundwork of his fanciful contrasts and ludicrous incongruities, he wrote a drama and not a poem, and, I have no doubt,
brought it forth with an effect corresponding to the " right happy
and copious industry" he had thereon bestowed.
The proper scene of the Dramatic Dream is by the light of a
midsummer moon, in a wood near Athens. There, streaming from
the western promontory of Europe, or the farthest steep of India,
the divided court of Faerie has common rendezvous. Oberon and
Titania, his queen, after disordering the seasons by their bickerings for nothing more than the attendance of a changeling boy,
are called to the same spot by common interest in the marriage
of Duke Theseus, for marriage was ever a chief occasion of fairy
activities and interference. The climate and the season both are
fitting for fairy spiritings. Midsummer-night, St. John's Eve,
was the traditional occasion of spiritual liberty. Then the upper
and the under worlds were nearer than at any other season, and
a




82       M IDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM.
the transition of spiritual natures from one to the other had freest
course. These notions are traceable all through classical literature and religion, upwards to Egypt itself, where not only tradition
is the voucher, but the very Pyramids, the oldest monuments
in the world, embody the idea that spiritual being sympathized
with the epoch of the year, and that Life and Death, the natural
and the supernatural, were in conjunction, when the boundaries
of Light and Darkness, of the East and the West, were reached
and defined by the summer sun at its solstitial elevation. *
Hither, then, into the very midst of the influence of Faerie, and
to the Duke's Oak, came a maid and her lover, flying from harsh
Athenian laws that would impede their wedlock, and after them
the rival whose suit has caused their trouble, conducted by a fond
maid whom he has sought but slighted. The kingly Oberon,
who designs to beguile his Queen of her fancy and her attendant,
bestows a charm to recover the fickle Demetrius for his love, but
Puck, his minister, applies it to the wrong sleeper, and makes
confusion doubly confused; with more deliberate mischievousness
he transforms and scares a crew of mechanicals met to rehearse a
play, and exhibits Titania infatuated with an ass-headed weaver.
When the end of the charm is attained Oberon releases his Queen,
and readjusts the fancies of the lovers, and all awake surprised,
rejoiced, and happy; and the play concludes with a supplementary act of the celebration of the marriages, the festivities and
the bed-blessing of the fairies, and Puck takes leave.
The cross purposes and vain strivings, impediments, and disappointments that form " the fierce vexation of a dream," are inteertwined with the stuff of all these incidents; inability to fly, inability to pursue, struggles with the difficult, acceptation as mere
matter of fact of the impossible, forebodings and sudden frights,
these are the entertainments of uneasy sleep, and when we wake
we have relief of just the same kind as that enjoyed by the lovers
when they are roused by the hunting horn of Theseus, and find
that vexation has vanished with drowsiness, and that their
troubles were all groundless, or that, at any rate, the fairies have
arranged them while they slept. Thus the play is a dream dramatized, and the fairies are introduced as the agents who transform
the real into the fantastic, and then the fantastic back to the real.
Bottom, semi-asinine, semi-virile, is a versed type of the play,
with its fairy crown and halo fitted enchantingly on the mundane
and the gross, and his oscillating identity images those of the
* I have recently had occasion to set forth elsewhere that the
pyramids, which are in true orientation, have their sides inclined
to the horizon, at an angle corresponding to the altitude of the
sun when it is due east at Memphis on the longest day; the symbolical appropriateness is of the nature indicated above.




CRITICAL ESSAY.


83


half-possessed lovers-of Lysander with the fool's head of his bewitching, and of Demetrius with that of his own original fickleness. The very incongruity of the heroic Theseus with romantic
incidents and accidents, of the classic with the Gothic elements, is
parodied and excused in adaptation of a story still more remote,
of Pyramus and Thisbe, by journeymen clowns so contemporary
to the habits of the groundling audience.
Titania has her own fool's head clapped on no less than her
lover, and Helena and Hermia lose head metaphorically in excited bickering. The similarity df Bottom's adventure to Falstaff's stag-headed disguise, and the transformation of Puck to a
"headless bear," seem to indicate the popular currency of some
milder form of lycanthropy. In any case, the efflorescence of
Bottom's own nowl into that of a veritable ass, is one of those
realized metaphors that lie at the root of the supernatural in every
form, from the Aristophanic Wasps and Clouds, as personifications
of litigious citizens and hazy philosophers, to the grandest inventions of Homer himself.
The leading movement of what intrigue the play possesses starts
from the unaccountable caprice of Demetrius, in leaving the maid he
had courted and won to pursue the betrothed of another-a whim,
a maggot of inconstancy, bred from no deeper feeling than a tendency to sudden liking, quick of change, and pertinacious-while it
lasts. It is precisely the same infirmity that makes bully Bottom
grasp at any part but that set down for him; to desire to play a
tyrant rather than a lover, to play the mistress instead of, or rather
in addition to, the lover, or to double the lion's part with that
of Pyramus, and roar in whatever key may be desired, to do any
man's heart good to hear him, or gently as a sucking dove, and
who will have great conflict of spirit before he quite determines
the colour of the beard in which he will discharger the part that
he is at last reconciled to.
As matter of fact in psychology, the assumption of fairy or other
supernatural influence is a suggestion of incidents that bear characteristics of passion, without the intervention of human or other
observable passionate agents. Joyous revelry breathes over the
fair sward of summer lit by the moonbeams, freak and prank and
frolicsome hoax lurk in the management of a harmless mishap,
testy spite in a little misfortune or personal blemish, and kindness and help in unexpected good luck and work readily got
through. Small hopes and fears, and little virtues and little
lapses, had seemed acted on and attended to often consistently,
as often with palpable caprice, and the simple-minded were content to account for such things by handing over a share at least,
in-the minor moral governance of the world, to the fairies.
As a matter of poetry, Faerie, like any other supernatural
agency, is usually connected by Shakespeare with incidents which
may easily occur naturally, but are the ordinary causes of the be



84       MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM.
lief in such agency, not effects of its reality.  If Macbeth meet
ill-suggesting witches on the blasted heath, his own ambitious
thoughts and superstitious promptings gave the hint and materials for them. So in our play the King of the fairies easily turns
the affection of Demetrius to Helena, and we acquiesce in the prospect of its permanence, forasmuch as there is no more in question
than the revival of an old passion; and as the elopement of Hermia had demonstrated the hopelessness of the new love, philosophy
might find in the companionship of Helena in the moonlight
search, sufficient opportunities and occasions for the revival of the
old. The subject of dispute between Oberon and Titania seems
one degree more serious than that of the lovers, for there is no
hint that Titania's attachment to her page was a changeful caprice; so however it turns out to be, and a charm dissolves a predilection in fairyland effectually, though in the case of mortal
lovers it is not trusted to do more than relax an infatuation by
recovery of an original sentiment.
c Bottom has a strange transformation and adventure enough,;but we have seen enough of him to be sure that if he fell asleep
iin his briery tiring-room, he was ass-headed enough naturally to
believe in a dream that he was beloved of the Queen of the fairies.
The transformation of the pansy by the bolt of Cupid,-not unsuggested to Shakespeare by the metamorphosis wrought by the
blood of the lovers in Ovid's tale of Pyramus and Thisbe,-has in
like manner a natural base in the double variety of the flower.
Such is the fine yet firm thread by which the imaginative creation is linked to our feeling and faith in nature, and relying on
this covert annexment, the invention of the poet develops the
fantastic germ adopted, with endless profusion of imagery and il -
lustration. The fairy world becomes as diversified as the natural,
and we find degrees and orders among the flimsy population,
from the robed and circleted Oberon and his Queen, the humorsome but observant Puck, the deft fairy mistress of robes and dewer
of floral orbs, to the cloud of graceful dancers, and the small elves
"not disdainful of dapper jerkins from leather of rear-mice. The
diminutiveness and delicacy ascribed to the quaint spirits are leading characteristics of the poetical ideal portrayed, and at the
same time appear most difficult of dramatic rendering. Yet the
poet appears to make no concession from consideration of the
player; he rather insists, with recurring emphasis, on the tiny
and airy essence of the beings he imagines, and demands that
details as fragile and minute as those which, in mere license of
unlimited description, are ascribed to Queen Mab's equipage in
Romeo and Juliet, shall here be bodily set forth. Peasblossom,
Cobweb, and their compeers, are as defined personalities as courtiers and gold sticks, lords in waiting, yeomen of the guard, and
gentlemen pensioners ever can be. Answering to quaint names,
but speaking little else, they execute sedulous and unquestioning,




CRITICAL ESSAY.                        85
and with no sense of incongruity, all commands of their sovereign, and with equal zeal watch round " her close and consecrated bower," or scratch the ass's nowl of any anamorphosed
fool who happens to be a roval favourite. Yet they attend and
answer with the heart of elves not too big to find a full suit in
a bat's wing, but able-bodied for warfare singly against the
red-hipped humble-bee, only wary withal of the bursting honey
bag-or even, in phalanx, against the hooting owl with its broad
wondering eyes, but scared when the voices of their sovereigns
rise in domestic debate, and happy to dive, more than two together, into the depths of a concealing acorn cup. Delicately they
can transfer and handle a dew-drop,-a fairy ring on the grass
affords space for a multitude of them, and for time, a minute requires micrometrical division-" Then for the third part of a minute hence"-for the apportionment of their most complicated
undertakings.
Such, however, is the perfect harmony bf imagery and allusion,
that, while the fairies are alone on the stage, it might be easy for
the eye to mistake the scale of the actors, with slight assistance of
sex and age in the cast. Some aid may be gained by a moderated disproportion in the forest scenery, flowers, turf, mushrooms, &c. and the trunk of the "Duke's oak." Add to this
careful attention to contrast the fairy costume with that of even
the female characters of the play, to illuminate the stage sufficiently for the play of countenance to be discovered through the
long night scenes, otherwise vexatious, and stage resources will
have done all that is necessary, and the rest may be left to the
force of the poetry, which will solicit, will exact, prompt acquiescence in all its postulates, and to the gradation of relief from
the bewildered lovers to the amateur actors and their translated
corypheeus.
It is the fault of the actors,-let it be said without reserve and
without offence,-if the refined substance and delicate outlines of
the fairy world are not heightened in representation, by the palpable contrast of the crew of patches, with far more effect than
can be achieved by the unaided imagination of the multitude of
readers. An advantage may thus be achieved that would cover
many shortcomings, and these are further masked by relief against
the grossly ridiculous personations of the boors both in rehearsal
and representation. It may be left to the last act of the play to
apologize for lapses in so adventurous personifications; this act is
of the nature and purpose of an epilogue, and inculcates the nobleminded moral of good intent received for fair performance. The
application is clenched by the play of the clowns being a travestie of the very incidents of the dream, in a luckless rendezvous of
lovers, and a scaring disturbance and flight from Bottom assheaded, or from Snug the joiner announcing his identity through
the jaws of the lionskin. What the act is to the play at large,




86       MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM.
that is the concluding fairy scene with its elfin dance, following
the uncouth Bergomask, to the act, and the epilogue itself has its
proper wind-up in the appeal and leave-taking of Robin Goodfellow.
A detailed analysis with reference to stage arrangements of the
long second scene of the third act, would best prove, were this the
place, how entirely the play was planned for representation; with
the aid of grouping and interchange of position, the play and sequence of the dialogue, which is apt to appear to the reader a
tangled skein, will be found to arrange itself into a lucid and
well-ordered web.
The harshness which might be expected to result from the
contrast of such dissimilar elements as we have considered, is obviated and resolved with wonderful art; the play throughout is
amusing, imaginative, musical, fantastic, moving with the vagaries of caprice or fitful infatuation, rather than steady purpose or
passion. The strongly marked lines which are necessary to relieve and combine the flitting shadows, are given rather py irony
than seriousness, in the mock heroic strain of the high-debating
fairies, and in the periods of similar stateliness and in the deliberate dignity of Theseus and his Queen. The airs of the Sovereigns of Faerie are in harmony with those of the Athehian Court,
while Puck is equally at home jesting to, not with, Oberon in the
land of shadows, or waylaying and misleading the gross material
of benighted handicraftsmen. Peter Quince, and his company,
are the only possible butts that could give the most amusing illustration of the quality of Puck; he is the elfin king of transformations and personations, and while in their forest greenroom
they are contriving clumsy stage makeshifts and disguises, and
anxiously planning to counteract the alarm of a too well imitated
lion by exposing the face of the actor, Robin turns loose upon
them the translated weaver, and with less consideration for the
consequences of his cleverness, he puts lovers, lion, wall, and presumptive moonshine to flight, and sets them an example of illusion that sends them home half crazy.
"I'll follow you, I'll lead you about a round
Through bog, through bush, through brake, through brier;
Sometimes a horse I'll be, sometimes a hound,
A hog, a headless bear, sometimes a fire,
And neigh, and bark, and grunt, and roar, and burn,
Like horse, hound, hog, bear, fire, at every turn."
Shakespeare found the elements of his fairy universe in living
tradition, in popular songs and tales that had passed more or less
into current literature, and lastly, perhaps chiefly, in the poemsof
Chaucer.
The belief in fairies was, in Shakespeare's time, as absolute with
certain classes as the more general belief in witchcraft. The two
superstitions together, repeat the contrast which we find in classic




CRITICAL ESSAY.                        87
mythology in nobler form, between the Olympic and Chthonian
gods. The belief in faerie was apt rather to be trivial than ethereal, as that in witches rather debasing than sublime. Both were
occasionally instruments of extortion in the hands of the cunning,
and not only did the supposed or self-supposing witches wreak
malice for pay or revenge, but other impostors were ready to bespeak, for a remuneration, the good will and fair aid of the fairies,
-nay, they would venture on such a tale as a love-message to a
lout from the very Queen of Fairyland.
The fairies of the Merry Wives of Windsor are in immediate
contact with popular belief, a picture of contemporary rather than
of idealized faery. Variously hued and named familiarly, the
small people revel by moonlight, dance in the ring, are the train
of a fairy queen, and do her behests in pinching and punishing
sluts and sluttery, in visiting the peccadilloes of the maids and
their forgotten prayers. They are generally the bringers of good
luck, of little successes and windfalls, which come none know
whence, the blessers of rooms and beds, and by their ministry are
accounted for all the fatalities that beset passion on irregular
range, and wit on ill employment. To them are assigned all natural oddities and whimsicalities, plants, flowers, and stones
that have al air of tiny mimicry; nightmares, cramps, and
dreams are under their control, and they bring about and delight
in equally the pretty and the preposterous. Still the power they
possess has more serious effects, the limitation of their mental
scope implies no very robust moral control, hence their testiness
and occasional ill humour, offence taking and quarrelsomeness;
and though rather in pet than in anger, by capricious indifference
than wanton malice, they cause trouble, vexation, and disfigurements,-nay, when they are in height of moodiness, he who
speaks to them dies. They are, in fact, wild agencies under a
constitution of the world not very exactly regulated, whom a
maid may desire to be well with, to conciliate if it may be, and
at any rate not to offend. They are a mythological undergrowth
below the broad arms and wide shade of more serious religious
belief, that was sometimes more remote from the observation of
the lowly.
The earlier records of these lighter superstitions, as set forth
by antiquaries, give little illustration of the antiquity of the
harmless and ethereal elves and fairies. Both in heathen and
monkish sources, the terrific and disagreeable imaginations, the
firedrakes, nicers, ores, and so forth, occupy chief space; and
there is little reward or interest in going back beyond Chlaer,
and the actual popular beliefs that may be inferred from his writings. Catholicism gradually supplanted the more serious personifications with terrors of its own, and in the instance of witchcraft and the rest, the original mistake became reinforced and
aggravated by the application of Hebrew and Judaical precedent;




88      MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM.
goblins and sprites found themselves taxed as devils and the kin
of Cain, and amenable to all the penalties of magical operations.
But neither classic nor sacred lore furnished types coincident with
the more delicate and whimsical tribe of the fairy race, and this
mythic population was less actively denounced or hunted down,
and escaped the still more fatal chance of being adopted. Thus
the faith continued, and though Chaucer had long before said
that it had already died or was dying out in his time under
church influences, it survived long enough to furnish life studies
to Shakespeare, and to give spirit and point to the songs and
gossips' tales from which he caught the natural music that delights us in the airs and rhythm of the play.
Next to nature and his own inspired genius, Shakespeare is
under obligations for his elfin ideal to Chaucer, in the Canterbury tales, in that of The Merchant, and that of The Wife of
Bath. Thus the latter commences in the tone of jovial irony, of
which our earliest poet was so great a master:
" In olde dayes of the King Artour,
Of which that Britons speaken great honour.
All was this land fulfilled of Faerie,;
The Elf Queen, with her jolly company,
Danced full oft in many a greene mead,
This was the old opinion, as I rede;
I speak of many hundred years ago,
But now can no man see no elves mo;
For now the greate charity and prayers
Of limitours, and other holy freres,
That searchen every land and every stream,
As thick as motes in the sunne beam,
Blessing halls, chambers, kitchens, and bowers,
Cities and boroughs, castles high, and towers,
Thorpes and barns, sheep pens, and dairies,
This maketh that there bin no fairies:
For there as wont to walken was an elf,
There walketh now the limitour himself,
As he goeth in his limitation,
Women may now go safely up and down,
In every bush and under every tree,
There is none other incubus but he,
And he ne will do them no dishonour."
Busy, innumerable lieges in a court life of their own, lovers
and haunters of the country, but visiting with their activity the
habitations of men, the elves and fairies in this passage are indicated as relics of Paganism, though rather unacknowledged than
denounced by the new dispensation, and not so much expelled
by a serious ban, as rather by simple extrusion by incursion of a
numerous and uncongenial swarm. In The Merchant's Tale we
have a scene from the Fairy Court still more definite, and combining the agency most fantastically with Christendom on one




CRITICAL ESSAY.


89


hand and Heathenesse on the other.   The Majesties of Faerie
bear the classic names of Pluto and Proserpine, and their classic
story is admitted and referred to, but still they are but fayshaunters of gardens, and who seem to be there for no other purpose than the butterflies may be; and we assume as we read that
such in truth was the essential nature of the ancient gods, and that
the contrasted tone and character they own in ancient poetry,
was superinduced by the national colour and imagination of the
poets. Proserpine then swears by her mother Ceres, as she looks
on at the progress of an adventure in Christian Italy, and she
quotes, with exegetical license that becomes her, the authorities
and precedents of Hebrew tradition. All this is highly diverting, and is in its way but a consequence of the postulates of the
serious poetry of Dante; in those days the shadows of Paganism,
and of Judaism too, fell more defined across the world's path as
they were gradually receding; the realities of their sway were
fresher in the memory of humanity, and the combination in a
group of nine secular worthies, of " three Jews, three Pagans, and
three Christian knights," expresses the equivalence of the associations. Hence there was no more harshness than is proper
to the contrasts of humour and wit, in bringing down the date
of Pluto and Proserpine as in Chaucer, or in carrying up the
scale of time as far as to the rule of Theseus, the very elfin powers
who were known in the villageries of England, as was dared by
Shakespeare.
Chaucer then, in The Merchant's Tale, furnished precedent
and suggestion for Shakespeare, in combining with the sovereignty of faerie high-sounding titles, unlimited pretensions, sententious rhetoric, the true heroic of the capricious, the gigantic of
the infinitesimal:
" Bright was the day, and blue the firmament,
Phoebus of gold his streames down hath sent,
To gladden every flower with his warmnesse.
He was that time in Geminis, I guess,
But little from his declination
Of Cancer, Jove's exaltation.
And so befell, in that bright morrow tide,
That in the garden on the farther side,
Pluto, that is the King of Faerie,
And many a lady in his company,
Following his wife, the Queen Proserpina,
Which that he ravished out of Enna,
While that she gathered flowers in the mead.
-In Claudian ye may the story read,
How that her in his grisly cart he set.This King of Faerie adown him set
Upon a bench of turves fresh and green,
And right anon thus said he to his Queen."
His Highness lectures right roundly on the lightness of the sear,




90       MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM.
provoked thereto by the peril of a blind husband, and announcing
his intent to give him critical aid by restoration of his sight, does
not spare to glance at the application of the lesson, in a tone
which finds playful echo in Titania's allusion to Oberon's credit
with Hippolyta. In strain as resolute, and still more volubly,
Proserpine replies, till the pelting storm drives her spouse to shelter, and he prays peace:
" Dame, quoth this Pluto, be no longer wroth,
I give it up, but since I swore my oath
That I would granten him his sight again,
My word shall stand; that warn I you, certain;
I am a king, it fits me not to lie.
And I, quoth she, am Queen of Faerie,
Her answer she shall have, I undertake,
Let us no more wordes of it make.
Forsooth, quoth he, I will not you contrary."
Shakespeare, as we have seen, preferred, for reasons good,
transporting the mediaeval fairies into antiquity, to transforming
the classic gods into fairies. The name of Oberon was current in
tale and legend, especially in the adventures of Sir Huon of Bordeaux. It there stands as Auberon, the French form of the German Alberic; which, again, is connected with the fairy name Alp,
and probably with Elf. The name of Titania, however, is of
classic origin, and the adoption of it, whencesoever obtained, implies a feeling formythological fitness. To this the occurrence of the
name in Ovid would give no assistance, it depends upon the analogy between the mythology of Faerie and of the classic Titans;
Titania, Titanis, or Titaia, are the titles of the feminine members
of the family of Ge and Uranus, of Earth and Heaven, a leading
group in the primeval mythology of the Greeks, and which is
placed, in the Theogony of Hesiod especially, with some qualification, in broad contrast to the family of Kronus. Personality most defined characterizes the latter, while the general
outlines of the Titans blend away into physical symbolism, or, still
farther, into mere physical energies and elemental powers. It
is in this respect that, however contrasted in scale, they combine with the elemental mythology of elves and fairies, of which
the proper seat, or fairyland, is always represented below the surface of the earth. The war and battle of the Titanian and Cronian
powers form the central subject of the Theogony, and is represented as a conflict of Heaven and Earth. It has much appear
ance of typifying the crisis, when a new form of myth overcame
and banished the old, just as Chaucer's limitour banishes the
elves; and many analogies and coincidences of northern and
classic mythology seem to indicate that Teutonic superstition and
poetry, separated off from Hellenic and Pelasgic at a time when
the earlier gods were still in possession of their full rights. However this may be, it is a curious problem, which may occupy what




CRITICAL ESSAY.


91


Robertson calls " the industry and credulity of antiquaries," to
decide in what manner Shakespeare was enabled to adopt a title
for his fairy Queen so happily in harmony with the time and
scene assigned to her activity.
Midsummer-Night's Dream corresponds with the tale of Palamon and Arcite, the Knight's Tale of Chaucer, in associating a
story of love rivalry with the state and pageantry of the court of
Theseus, who otherwise does little more than furnish the relief of
stateliness to the vivacious scene. He sweeps over the stage as
through the poem with sublime superiority, allowing himself the
princely privilege of forgetting and being reminded, is just with
an air of graciousness, is indulgent magnificently, and on his
wedding-day consents to be amused even without offensive condescension. As regards detail, both play and poem open with the
arrival of Theseus at Athens, with Hippolyta his bride; at the
crisis in either story, he appears with his ladies in a hunting
party in an opening of the forest and surprises the rival lovers,
and, lastly, the common conclusion is with solemnity and celebration at his ducal court. Shakespeare further borrowed the
name of Philostrate from Chaucer, who also supplies a precedent
for making Maying excursions to the forest an Athenian custom.
But it is in the general spirit of the description of Theseus,
with all the colour and circumstance of feudality, that the suggestiveness of Chaucer's work is most apparent. It is in vain to
protest against an anachronism, which two such poets have invested with interest and truthfulness. We shall do better to consider how it came about. Certain it is, that the cycle of mythology
and tradition in which Theseus figures has, in adventure and
achievement, remarkable agreement with the tone of feudal times,
and that classic manners blend with mediaeval more naturally at
this point than at any other. Contemporary influences, moreover, were strong on Chaucer. Athens, in his time, was strictly
a portion of feudal Europe, and the chivalry of Athenian dukes
was familiar to those for whom he wrote, and wherever chivalry
was in esteem; and when he described a fatal battle in the plain
of Thebes, the slaughter of knights, the despair of their ladies,
he recalled a great catastrophe recent in men's memories. At
the beginning of the 14th century, according to the Chronicler
Muntaner, who knew the country well, Attica was fertile and
productive, Athens large and wealthy; the Frank chivalry of
Greece was, in nobility and deeds of arms, second to none in
Europe, they spoke as good French as the nobles of Paris, and
the Duke of Athens was among the noblest of those sovereigns
who did not bear the kingly title. In 1311, Walter de Brienne,
the descendant and fifth successor of the Burgundian noble who had
founded the duchy one hundred years before, fell in a decisive engagement, fought with the Grand Company of Catalans formerly
in his pay, on the banks of Bceotian Cephissus.




92       MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREA1M.
Twice before had the cast of war fallen unfavourably to Athens
on the same plain, when Philip of Macedon conquered at Chseronea, and when Sylla defeated the generals of Mithridates. In the
present instance the Catalan leaders had diverted the waters of
the river, and converted the fields in front of their position into a
concealed and artificial marsh. Into that marsh, in headlong
confidence and at full career, Walter de Brienne charged at the
head of nine hundred knights and nobles, fully equipped in the
rich and heavy panoply of the time; the confusion was soon inextricable, and when the Catalan light troops rushed in, so unsparing was the execution of the knife of Aragon, that, of the
200 nobles who accompanied the duke, it is said that but twoBoniface of Verona, and Roger Deslau of Roussillon-escaped
alive, and were reserved as prisoners. Thus the duchy of Athens
was lost, and the conquerors speedily shared not only the fiefs of
the nobles who had fallen, but, following good Greek precedent,
their wives and heiresses; and Muntaner, the former associate of
the Spanish soldiers, declares that many a stout Catalan obtained
as a wife a noble lady, for whom, the day before the victory, he
would have counted it an honour to be permitted to hold a washhand basin.
Walter de Brienne, the dispossessed heir, retained the fiefs of
Argos and Nauplia, but failed in his attempts to recover Athens.
He afterwards became for a time general of Florence, and at last,
as Constable of France, he fell at the battle of Poictiers, in 1356,
exchanging hard blows with the very friends and patrons of
Chaucer. Reminded of these synchronies, (see Finlay's Mediseval Greece and Trebizonde,) we may account and allow for the
incongruities of the Athens of the mediseval novelists and poets.
The allusions to India in Midsummer-Night's Dream, "the
Indian changeling," " the spiced Indian air," " the furthest steep
of India," give wonderful glow and changeful colour to the fairy
groups. Whence came the suggestion? It links the Athenian
fairy with the peri of the East, and serves even, strange as it
may seem, to bring the fairies of the Athenian wood, a mile without the town, the sacred olive grove of the plain, or the groves
of Academus, nearer to our English sympathies. Such remote
yet familiar reference gives reality to the professed rapidity of
their movements,-swifter than the moon's sphere, and their revels at Athens become central and at hand either for Windsor
Forest or the Ganges. This impression is completed by the celebrated description of the archery of Cupid, which at once transport the elfin court to the meads of England and the borders of
the German ocean. There can, it seems to me, be ultimately no dispute that this figurative picture expresses, as Warburton supposed,
a contrast between Queen Elizabeth and Mary Queen of Scots. The
contrast lies between the maiden meditation of a fair vestal
throned by the west,-a soul self-surveying and abstracted, and




CRITICAL ESSAY.


93


an alluring and charming sorceress, drawing down the very lights
from the firmament,-between modest silence and coquettish if
not meretricious song; and if Shakespeare did not intend to invite a thought of the Queen of Scots, he managed very badly, for
he made it impossible for a contemporary to exclude it. With
such assistance, the mention of the dolphin would necessarily remind of her title of Dauphine, and the succeeding images bring
before us the course of her story,-her voyage from France to
Scotland through perils of seas and enemies, and her appearance
in her northern court, when her loves and her lightness of behaviour filled the mouths of slander in the court of her rival. One
is almost tempted to think that Shakespeare had before him the
description of the uncensorious Brantome: " I1 la fallait voir habillee i la sauvage k la barbaresque mode des sauvages de ce
pays: elle paroissait, sous habit barbare et en corps mortel, une
vraie deesse.......   Elle avoit cette perfection pour mieux
embraser le monde, la voix trbs douce et trbs bonne; elle chantoit trbs-bien, accordant sa voix avec le luth, qu' elle touchoit
bien solidement, de ces beaux doigts bien faconnes qui ne devoient rien a ceux de l'Aurore."
Time is, no more than space, a very strict relation with a
fairy, and there is poetically nothing incongruous in the personification of Mary including her life as Dauphiness, as newly arrived Queen of Scots, as seducer in captivity of infatuated English
lords; and we shall only lapse from poetry to prose, if we endeavour to connect the pondering of Elizabeth with the " very time"
of any particular offer of her many suitors.
We can scarcely quarrel with Shakespeare for condescending
to such a compliment to Elizabeth, or accuse him of ungenerousness in the allusion to her rival and victim. Elizabeth, of a
truth, is but an inapt type of any womanly virtue; but, with all
her weakness, the spirit of the queen triumphed in all the more
important respects over the woman, while with her cousin the case
was as constantly reversed. There is blood on the hands of both;
both were selfish and uncompassionate, even cruel; but so long
as social inability to self-govern casts so unfair a responsibility
on rulers, we must be tender towards those encomiasts of their
virtues who a little overlook the failings fostered by such unnatural conditions.
The play, as printed in the first folio, agrees with the very accurately printed quarto editions of 1600: the mention of it by
Meres, fixes its date in some form as not later than 1598; but as
Shakespeare at this time had written the Merchant of Venice and
Henry IV. the limit aids little in settling the place of the play
in the important order of composition. The allusion to an unusually disordered season, appears to furnish the limit that it was
not written before 1594, and this is the most that can be made
of it.




94      M1IDSU1MMER-NIGHT'S DREAM.
I cannot admit for a moment that this play exhibits the slightest signs of juvenility, as implying inferiority, as compared with
the Merchant of Venice and Henry IV. Comparing it with Romeo and Juliet, I think there are some marks of a more perfectly
developed taste, and of more free as well as skilful execution.
The genius of the poet is at full and open range throughout, and
not more absolute in the certainty with which it ever reaches,
than in the self-control of never overpassing the limits of the
proprieties, the requirements, and the capabilities of the theme.
The command of language, of rhythm, of versification, is perfect,
multifarious, musical throughout. Music has wedded some of its
lines to happy notes, but the passages are many more that would
seem to solicit and prompt invention as importunately.
The cadence of the couplet" And mark the musical confusion,
Of hounds and echo in conjunction,"
has frequent precedent in Chaucer; who also set examples,
scarcely to be surpassed, of Oberon's rhymes wreathing and returning like a fairy ring:
"Sound, music! come, my Queen, take hands with me.
And rock the ground whereon these sleepers be.
Now thou and I are new in amity,
And will, to-morrow midnight, solemnly
Dance in Duke Theseus' house triumphantly,
And bless it to all fair prosperity.
There shall the pairs of faithful lovers be
Wedded, with Theseus, all in jollity."




CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE MERCHANT
OF VENICE.
HHE Declamation 95 from the Orator of a French writer
Alx. Silvayn, printed in English, 1598, shows unmistakeable proof of having been used by Shakespeare,
directly or indirectly, in the composition of the Merchant of Venice. We have here the speech of a Jew " who would
for his debt have a pound of flesh of a Christian " and the Christian's answer, but there is no narrative of incidents and the declamations are left to explain themselves.
The Jew in pressing his claim tries to parry the obligation to
cut an exact pound, by referring to the terms of the agreement,
that it is to be not cut by him, but delivered to him. Shakespeare precludes the chance of this cavil by the express words,
" to be by me cut off," &c.-a condition which again is in keeping
with the spirit of vindictiveness gloating over the idea of the
actual deed of mutilation-" I'll torture him, I'll plague him."
Antonio describes death as a happier fate for him than life dragged on in the regretfor lost wealth-a hint from the declamation
where the Jew declares that the exaction of such a forfeiture is
only admirable because unusual; "but there are divers others that
are more cruel which, because they are in use, seem nothing
terrible at all-as to bind all the body unto a most loathsome
prison, or unto an intolerable slavery, where not only the whole
body, but also all the senses and spirits are tormented, the which
is commonly practised not only betwixt those which are either
in sect or nation contrary, but even amongst those," &c., &c.
There is here the germ not only of Antonio's forced comfort" Grieve not that I am fallen to this for you;
For herein fortune shows herself more kind
Than is her custom; it is still her use,
To let the wretched man outlive his wealth,
To view with hollow eye and wrinkled brow
An age of poverty; from which lingering penance
Of such a misery doth she cut me off-"
but also of Shylock's justification of his course by appeal to




96           MERCHANT OF VENICE.
slavery as in vogue at Venice. The slaves and slave-trading of
the Venetians were most extensive and notorious in the middle
ages, though some other source than this passage must have
induced the poet to refer to it.
The rhetorical construction of Shylock's answer to the intercession of the Duke" You'll ask me why I rather choose to have
A weight of carrion flesh, than to receive
Three thousand ducats"-                and so forth,
is precisely that of the passage in Silvayn, —" A man may ask
why I would not rather take silver of this man than his flesh;
I might allege many reasons," &c. Silvayn's Jew, however, evades
assigning any reason, and does not, like Shylock, admit " the
lodg'd hate and certain loathing " as having arything to do with
his severity.
Some coincidences there are in the Christian's answer, but
scarcely worth the noting-thus Gratiano's Pythagorean lecture
reproduces the idea, " to be willing to be paid with man's flesh
is a thing more natural for tigers than men, but this devil in
shape of a man "-and so following.
The old and (it must be said) rubbishing ballad of Gernutus the
Jew, printed in Percy's Reliques, has a few coincidences with the
drama, and I believe them to have been derived from it. Could
the ballad be proved to be of earlier date, we should have to
admire the discernment of Shakespeare in picking a jewel out of
the veriest garbage. Gernutus, like Shylock, masks his treacherous design by a colour of " a merry sport," and whets his knife
in savage anticipation.
A very parallel story of a choice of three caskets determining a
marriage, is among the portions of the Gesta Romanorum that were
translated by Robert Robinson, in 1577. The label of the small
gold casket filled with dead men's bones, was, " Whoso chooseth
me shall find that he deserveth." This corresponds with the
legend of the silver casket of the play, " Who chooseth me shall
get as much as he deserves "-the portrait that is, of a blinking
idiot. The legend of the gold casket in the play-" Who chooseth
me shall gain what many men desire"-a death's head, symbol
of death, has close agreement with that attached to the silver
casket full of earth and worms of the novel, " Whoso chooseth
me shall find that his nature desireth." The contents of these two
caskets in the novel it will be seen are scarcely contrasted, for
human bones and earth and worms are alike types of mortality.
I mav note here that the earlier association of earth and worms
with the motto chosen by Morocco, establishes an emendation on
his scroll-where the uniform reading of the old copies " Gilded
timber do worms infold" has long been corrected to tombs.
The leaden vessel of the tale is filled with precious stones, and
inscribed " Whoso chooseth me shall find what God hath disposed




CRITICAL ESSAY.


97


to him."  The casket of Belmont bears the portrait of the prize,
and is inscribed " Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he
hath;" thus in this instance there is entire alteration. In the
tale a lady chooses and a husband is the prize; but the general
incidents have no resemblance to anything in the play.
Another story of the Gesta Romanorum is quoted from a MS.
of the reign of Henry VI., which is merely one of the many forms
that a story, apparently of Oriental origin, took in its progress
about Europe, and through one century after another, until at
last it was told so well that all versions were forgotten for one,
or only remembered for the sake of it. I do not detect the
slightest hint that this particular version came under the eyes of
Shakespeare.
Very different is the case with the version found in a collection
of tales called I1 Pecorone, written by Ser Giovanni, and first
published at Milan, in 1558. The story as told here must have
been read by Shakespeare in the original, or in a translation, or
he must have made use of some very close adaptation of it,
whether in tale, poem, or play, now lost. There is nothing whatever impossible in the loss of al intermediate production whatever its nature; the consideration of the soures of the Merry
Wives of Windsor led us to recognize a transfusion of'Italian
fiction into English by channels of which the courses are now
obliterated. Dramatic compositions particularly have been lost
in thousands-it can scarcely be too much to say so, and there
is presumption in the present instance of much force, not only
that the story of the forfeited pound of flesh had been previously
adapted to the stage, but that it had been combined already in
one piece with the story of the caskets. Two years after this
latter story had been translated by Robinson, in 1579, Stephen
Gosson in a tract agreeably entitled " The School of Abuse, containing a pleasant invective against poets, pipers, players, jesters,
and such like caterpillars of the common wealth," found occasion
to refer with exceptional praise to a play of his time, " The Jew,
shown at the Bull, representing the greediness of worldly choosers
and the bloody minds of isurers," terms which palpably correspond with the combination under question.
Be this as it may, certain it is that motives and incidents in
the play are traceable directly and abundantly from the tale in
Il Pecorone, which readily allows the incident of the caskets to
be substituted for a less presentible adventure, and then supplies
the general succession of romantic movement very exactly.
Ser Giovanni's lady of Belmont is a true Circe, and we cannot
doubt, indeed, that the Odyssey, that prototype of all romantic
tales, furnished the stuff and suggestion of the later Italian adventure. Magic, however, does not come into question in the
later story, and this deprives it of some of the coherence and
consistency of Homer's fiction. In both the voyager is met with. H




98           MERCHANT OF VENICE.
ready hospitality, if not hope of entertainment kinder, to lurehim on to defeat and disgrace by the treachery of a drugged or
magic potion. But when this is evaded and counteracted, and
the visitor triumphs, we find a difficulty in reconciling the sudden
affection and frankness of the modern coquette, with her previous
cunning and waywardness and cruelty, which does not trouble
us-so well Homer provides, in the case of the enchantress. The
immortal and doemonian nature of Circe, and her subjection to
the order and intention of the superior gods who befriend Ulysses
and her anticipation of his ultimate arrival, all explain the exchange on a sudden of capricious tyranny for caresses and carefuil
attentiveness, but a sad hiatus gapes in the sequence of the story
between the treacherous widow of Belmont, and the tender, playful and devoted wife of the Bassanio of Ser Giovanni.
The incongruity is beautifully avoided in the play; the ordeal
of the choice, and the penalties attached, are contrivances of a
dead father, and Portia adopts them in piety, not to say by constraint, and in faith in the good inspirations which just men are
vouchsafed on their death-beds; "if you do love me, you will
find me out."
But our chief gratitude is due to the Florentine for the vigorous kindliness with which he depicted a merchant of Venice that
took possession of the imagination of Shakespeare, and incited
him to write a play of such a theme and so entitled. The ideal,
as might be expected, is wonderfully wrought out, purified and
refined in the play; but still it is interesting to observe how much
of the spirit and the general effect are scattered about the original
draught. Both compositions, it must always be remembered, are
steeped and dyed in the hues of romance. The climate, scene,
and manners, are certainly definite enough, and it may seem to
matter little that time and epoch are left vague within limits
still not very wide. Nevertheless, we cannot quite feel ourselves
without the circle of Circe, we still encounter wonders, and rely
on possibilities of fortune or of virtue, that prudence is content
only not to disallow altogether in this work-a-day world.
~   The novelist like the poet sets forth the entire affection of the
wealthy Venetian merchant for a friend considerably younger,
leading him to make the greatest sacrifices and incur all risks for
his sake, and making him satisfied at last at his worst peril if he
can only take leave of him, to die in peace. In the novel the
merchant is under obligations to the late father of the youth he
adopts, who is moreover his godson; but Shakespeare makes the
feeling more entirely personal by leaving out all reference to any
closer obligation than general kinsmanship. In the novel, Giannetto, who is in place of Bassanio, shows a certain want of frankness towards his friend and benefactor, Ansaldo-the Antonio
of the piece, in misrepresenting his mishaps as due to shipwreck,
and not as they were, to ill success in the conditional enterprise




CRITICAL ESSAY.


99


at Belmont, and at last it is by his sheer thoughtlessness that
Ansaldo is endangered. Hence there is communicated to the
character of Ansaldo a certain shadow of weakness and dotingness, which detracts from the value of his sensibility to friendship. From such derogation both Antonio and Bassanio are
carefully protected. From the representations of Antonio to the
protesting Bassanio it was no fault of the latter that such perilous
forfeiture ever was incurred, as indeed it turns out from results
that Antonio himself had good reason to be sanguine. The novelist manifestly furnishes the elements of the acute moral equation
of the presumably staid merchant being pleased to furnish means
gratuitously for the pleasures and social enjoyments, displays and
exercises of a gallant and accomplished young man in whom he
is interested, and the same spirit of liberality casts a warm Venetian glow over his narration at large; thus the brothers of Giannetto, who is omitted in his father's will, make voluntary offer to
yield him his proportionate share, and when he has afterwards
made two ill-fortuned ventures and jeopardied his godfather's
estate, his Venetian companions volunteer to assign the proceeds
of one lucrative voyage to Alexandria to aid him in restitution,
and all through the story we have the adventures and transactions of commerce associated with the gay and lively entertainments and free friendly intercourse, and unhesitating expenditure
that harmonize so happily with the bodily vigour, flowing spirits
and social tendencies of flourishing and unsuspicious progress
through youth and manhood. From these and other sources,
from observation and his own mind, Shakespeare bodied forth a
conception of friendship, but deeper and more mutual than that
produced by the winning manners of the universal favourite in
the novel, and depicted the tastes, pursuits, and sensibilities that
were compatible with mercantile pursuits, at any rate among the
frequenters of the Rialto. Hence the hint at least to set forth
the cheerful intercourse, the free and unconstrained yet refined
and considerate flow of thought among the changing and intermingling groups that circulate, divide, and recompose about the
central figure of Antonio. Dinner parties, suppers and masques
are rife, banter and raillery assert their privileges, yet there is
no hint of vulgarity or debauchery, whatever may be said of some
liability to extravagance, intellects are clear notwithstanding,
imaginations brisk and even bright, and without ostentation,
yet ever acknowledged, there is no lack of warmth, and, on
occasion, of tenderness of heart. The wealthy Antonio is surrounded by acquaintances who are attentive and complimentary;
but who give place to each other with such polite consideration,
are so frank in their speech, manifest such admiration of what is
truly admirable in his character, such tenderness for his feelings
when trouble is to be announced, and such sympathy with his
peril, that no shade or stain of subservience or sycophancy fals.




100


MERCHANT OF VENICE.


across their intercourse. At the beginning of the third Act they
talk a little in the tone of gossip as men will, of the mishaps of
acquaintance, but the moment after they go promptly to his
message, leaving Shylock with his countryman, Tubal, alternately
comforting his malice and wounding his avarice in something
more than mere ignorance or mere indifference as to the agony
produced by mingled news thus blurted out-in fact, we half
suspect he invents his more unwelcome announcements.
Shakespeare has given emphasis to the alliance between Antonio and Bassanio, not merely by removing all secondary solicitations, but by giving depth and definition to the contrast of their
characters, and moreover, by exhibiting the truth of the attachment at a time when that contrast was still further enhanced by
the current of accidents. Portia, it is true, assumes that between
dear friends
" There must be needs a like proportion
Of lineaments, of manners, and of spirit,"
'atoll truly, no doubt, in respect of certain essentials, but it is pre(isely in the pair she adverts to, that we are shown to how great
an extent, of two dear friends one may be unlike another, and
how the proofs of attachment may be most absolute when this
unlikeness is at its height. Perhaps we may suspect in the violences of Antonio towards Shylock, perhaps in some indications
of imprudence in "squandering adventures forth," a chord of
sympathy with the vivacious and sanguine Bassanio, but at least
when the play opens and when he falls in so zealously with his
friend's proposal, his spirits are under a cloud; Gratiano declares
him marvellously changed-even so much that, with a freedom
that only Venetian friends could not misinterpret, he taxes him
with assuming the gravity, which Salarino more politely imputed
to natural constitution, in order to catch with melancholy bait the
fool-gudgeon opinion of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit.
Gratiano's liberties are allowed and laughed at-in such eyes
as ours, says Bassanio, they appear not faults. Bassanio himself
has need of and receives like indulgence for the faults which are
his own belonging; by living at a more noble rate than faint
means warranted he has embarrassed himself with debts; he declares however that this is over, that his only concern is to satisfy
all claims, and Antonio does not hesitate to recognize that he still
stands "within the eye of honour," and to accept the sincerity
with which he proposes to free all ultimately by means of a present addition to his obligations. In coarser terms, from a less
favourable point of view, Bassanio has lived like a prodigal, run
in debt with his friends, and now coolly proposes to his chief
creditor to make a serious addition to his debt, on the speculation
that it will give him a chance to pay all by that very precarious
as well as undignified resort of making up to an heiress. Iow
if it that in reading the play we never withdraw our sympathies




CRITICAL      ESSAY.                101
from the hero of transactions that affect us in conmmon life with
the unpleasant associations of dissipation, imprudence, impudence,
and meanness?   The reason, I apprehend, is partly because, as
I said before, we are reading a romance and we accept the compatibility of whatev, r phenomena the poet chooses to group in
the moral as in the material world. Portia has faith that the
lottery of the caskets will give her infallibly the husband who
deserves her, and we are not disposed to check agreeable sympathy with the generous liberality, in mind and purse, of the
Merchant of Venice by any mistrust, shabby it would seem to us,
of the desert of his friends or the co-operation of natural chances
with his free intentions. Character gives confidence; truth is
bondsman for troth. We believe Bassanio on the same ground
that Antonio does; we approve of the consent of Antonio on the
same grounds that made Bassanio think it not wrong to ask it.
The character of an act or a proceeding founds at last on the
motive, and the motive is the man, and poetry and romance are
allowed to invent perfections of humanity that may yet be unattainable, and thus in a poetic drama we admire and sympathize
with a debt-burdened suitor to a wealthy lady, because there is
no moral impossibility in the nature of things, of such a suit, even
when the contingencies of dowry are recognized, being in truth
unsordid-though, practically speaking, it will usually be a fool
who allows himself, or herself, to think it can be otherwise.
In brief, we look on with unhesitating, unalarmed confidence
in the power of a pure spirit of unselfishness to pass untainted
through the very dens and haunts of selfishness, and to vindicate
its purity in a transaction which only selfishness makes wrong.
Soundness at heart in a recipient makes imprudence prudent,
and our faith is made happy when Bassanio, who has nothing
either to give or hazard, chooses the casket of least promising
exterior, which neither flatters the self-glory, the noble infirmity
of Morocco, of being an object of envy to mankind, nor appeals
to the self-complacency, that betrayed the Prince of Arragon, by
referring the chooser to the measure of his deserts; but repelling
rather than inviting demands the resolution of self-sacrifice" Who chooses me must give and hazard all he hath."  Even in
setting forth his project to Antonio,-" In Belmont is a lady richly
left" —the leading tone of his description makes her wealth but
one accessary of her attractions, and, as a lover should, he passes
on with more fervour to observe-" and she is fair," and yet again
to the crowning praise which no lover of Portia could overlook
and be worthy-" and fairer than that word, of wondrous virtues."
Hence we confide most absolutely in the ingenuousness of
Bassanio, and if he appears to engage his friend somewhat inconsiderately to a bond, or even to the merest transaction with
Shylock, we are prepared to ascribe this to the eagerness of a
lover who has such cause to love as encouragement from Portia.




102


MERCHANT OF VENICE.


His is a spirit of that rare stamp which fortunate persons even
now meet with in the world, to conciliate good will, to attract
kindness, and excite among those around a very rivalry of liberalities and good offices, and yet not to grow selfish, unsympathetic and heartlessly incapable of conceiving, much less of returning the affection it is proper to them to inspire. He is struck to
the heart when he reads the sadly tender letter of his benefactor
announcing his peril, and so clearly do the operations of his spirit
look through his outward man that Portia not only notes the
stages of his agitation but reads at once the very class and title
of his trouble" There are some shrewd contents in yon same paper,
That steal the colour from Bassanio's cheek;
Some dear friend dead; else nothing in the world
Could turn so much the constitution
Of any constant man. What, worse and worse!-"
She proposes his instant departure even on his marriage morning,
and he hurries away with such anxiety that we perceive that he
is not merely content with but grateful for the permission. Antonio taking leave of him as the moment of forfeiture seems to be
arrived alludes to his wife; at this moment his two ruling affections, friendship and love meet in conflict, and we cannot be
surprised under the circumstances of the moment and with the
thought that his happy days were purchased at such a price, he
should break forth with the declaration that to rescue his friend
he would sacrifice life, wife and all the world. The touch is
true to nature and was not to be avoided, and we shall mistake
greatly if we suppose it was introduced simply to provoke a
laugh out of harmony with the main purpose of the play then
going forward. Both Portia and Nerissa put away the interjections more sensibly, and we may observe that neither of them
in the last Act —not even Nerissa, who is reminiscent of the
' scrubbed boy," takes the pains to remember or advert to the
seemingly unconjugal wishes of ransom at their expense. For the
rest the piquant interruption gives lively force to the situation,
and prepares for the change of tone in the scene in the contemptuous confounding of the baffled Jew.
Writers of fiction have never been backward in exhibiting a
picture of errors of character in the direction of excessive cheerfalness, liberality, sociability and spirit, as contrasted with the
less engaging type of saturnine, morose, unfeeling, or sneaking
misdeeds and short comings. Selfishness, however, is ultimately
the root of vice of every class, and the question is merely relative
-and this is too often forgotten, at what point the dashing becomes as mean as the crawling sinner. Hence too frequently the
high-spirited hero is as contemptible as his mean spirited antagonist, or we are called on to assent to combinations of amiability
and mischievousness that revolt the sense. It is of course the
privilege of romance to strain all possibilities to the uttermost




CRITICAL       ESSAY.                103
when the effect demands it; still there are gradations of dignity
in the romantic ideal, and those forms are the most dignified
that exhibit an elevated type of mental qualifications and moral
constitutions, faulty it may be and defective, but clearly possessed
of such an internal germ of healthiness and vitality as to warrant
reliance on self-control within certain limits, and on ultimate selfrecovery. These are conditions of the character of Bassanio, and
it is on these grounds that we admit and approve Antonio in
admitting, that he still stands within the eye of honour, that his
errors have been external to the nobler parts of his nature, and
that liberal reliance on these in defiance of appearances will
ultimately justify itself. That there should be uncertainty how
far these grounds of reliance exist is one of the most painful
difficulties of life, and hence the delightfulness of a fiction that
flatters us with the possibility that it is not insuperable but may
yield to calm sagacity, if not to simple sympathy of souls. All
the conditions however are present in Antonio and Bassanio, and
in their mutual confidence we see honourable disposition discerned amidst imprudent expense, and warm affection below a
staid if not habitually depressed demeanour.
The power however of distinguishing the essential from the
accidental in action, intention and character, is incomplete unless
it can not only discern the valuable below unpromising hull and
binding, but also detect the mischievous that lurks behind alluring shows. In this respect Antonio appears less perfect even with
a warning. Shylock exhibits the fault in its most besotted form
when with the tenacity of the written letter so fatal to his race,
he quotes a Scriptural precedent for the blessing of embezzlement
-of thrift gained not actually but certainly potentially by theft.
Here Antonio can speak distinctly enough:" The devil can quote Scripture for his purpose.
An evil soul producing holy witness,
Is like a villain with a smiling cheek;
A goodly apple rotten at the heart;
0 what a goodly outside falsehood hath! "
And yet the moment after, melted by a profession of kindness
from the same Jew, he can say:
" Hie thee, gentle Jew,
This Hebrew will turn Christian; he grows kind."
The thoughtful rejoinder of Bassanio marks apprehension" I like not fair terms and a villain's mind;"
and this is the very cautiousness that besteads him in his venture on the caskets, when he comments on the deceptiveness of
ornament" The seeming truth, which cunning time puts on
To entrap the wisest."
The aptest recrimination does not justify villany, and a sound
conclusion is not impugned by the justest objections to the grounds
it is incautiously rested on, or the process by which it is illogi



104          MERCHANT OF VENICE.
cally deduced. Shylock might well smile at Antonio's reply to
his citation of the frauds of Rachel and her son, but as long as
neither was capable of rising to a true apprehension of the premises, at least it was better-and this has been the history of the
developement of Judaism into its Christian manifestation, to misinterpret the text to accommodate it to a just and sympathetic
conclusion, than to hold hardly by its strictness, to whatever injustice and selfish restriction it conducts. The usury of Shylock
is not so vile a sin as the slave-trading of Antonio, but who can
doubt that Antonio, with his principles and disposition, will sooner
arrive at a sense of the wrong, though textual authorities are
abundant to aid and sustain the injury in its most definite terms,
than Shylock, with only an analogy to bear him out, will give up
his avarice and fraudulent exaction.
In the case of Bassanio, as we have seen and said, the mind
glides pretty easily over extravagance by confidence in his nature and motives, but many have been staggered, by  hat is only
another enunciation of the same principle, in the flight of Jessica
with her father's ducats and jewels. A chief difficulty has arisen
from the maudlin sentimentality that has been bestowed on the
doings of the murderous Jew, and this involves a statement of
the quarrel between him and Antonio,
"There is no vice so simple, but assumes
Some mark of virtue on his outward parts,"
and Shylock is ready to impute his disgraces to antipathy to his
~ace and envy of his gains, but the poet leaves us in no uncertainty that his gains were those of a usurer, in the sense which,
under any dispensation of political economy, involves at least dishonesty, dishonour, cruelty, and fraud. The arts by which a
victim is enmeshed and ruined by a usurer are even now not obsolete, and, under defective laws, might have flourished tenfold.
Antonio declines interest from a friend, on the reasonable ground
to one so sensitive of friendship, of generosity; otherwise his
objection simply lies to the taking or giving of excess, and the
main offence he had given, even beyond personal insult, was the
timely aid that enabled the debtors of Shylock to clear themselves
from his claims. Shylock was played by Burbadge, in Shakespeare's time, with the outward signs of hatefulness, a long nose
and red beard; and these, with the notoriety of his practices, and
the contempt of Antonio, sufficiently marked the character from
the beginning. The impression is enforced by glimpses of his domestic life; his very servant declares him a "devil incarnation," he
makes his house a hell to his daughter, he joins a social feast to
feed on the prodigal Christian, gloats over the idea that Launcelot's appetite will hasten his ruin, and forced to leave his daughter
in charge of his house, relies for her attention on the hint, " perhaps I may return immediately."  He goes with the words on
his Ii:,s,


1




CRITICAL ESSAY.


105


" Shut doors after you: Fast bind, fast find;
A proverb never stale in thrifty mind-"
in mistaken preference of material to moral securities, at the very
moment that both were about to fail him.
The Jew is thus the very impersonation of avarice, meanness,
and cruelty, as Antonio of generous and sympathetic liberality,
and the hellish intention of his treacherous bond is already patent. The same principle which Shakespeare sanctions in The
Merry Wives of Windsor, of the limitable nature of filial subordination, here applies with tenfold force; the pretty and enamoured Jessica, whatever may be the restrictedness of the wisdom
her lover gives her credit for, is ashamed and justly of being her
father's child, and a daughter of his blood is revolted at his manners. Elopement in such a case, it must be said, is a virtue; and
the elation at exchanging freedom for degraded oppression, explains and excuses the dry eyes-nay, laughing lips, with which
she departs. If we care to apologize for the casket she carried
off, we may say she helped herself perhaps not exorbitantly to her
dowry; but we shall do better to mark the incident as the last seal
of the truth worth laying to heart, how utterly unkindness, cruelty,
sordidness, and distrust can at last erase the faintest tracks of natural duty and affection, in hearts that by nature are disposed to
be their hallowed home.
Launcelot Gobbo's questioning of the fiend and his conscience
as to running from his master the Jew, and the exhibition of his
very peculiar but not in reality unkind pranks with his father,
bring before the mind, in an immediately preceding scene, all
the ideas and considerations that we have to deal with, when the
relation between Jessica and her father is brought before us.
The trespass of Jessica against the letter of the law of filial
duty is justified, no less than Bassanio's infringement of the fair
requirements of friendliness by essential rectitude and good faith,
the same principle that guides the true lover to the happy decipherment of the riddle of the caskets. The grand incident of the
forfeiture of the bond and its cancelment by the simple exhibition of the spirit of the law and the essence of justice solving a
difficulty at once that seemed inextricable when only the letter
was regarded, is thus prepared and led up to; while in the last,
the epilogue act, the bewilderment of the missing and restored
rings is a comic parody of the preceding action; again an engagement is broken, a bond is forfeit, and yet the spirit of the
original compact is not infringed, and gay explanation reunites
and reconciles all.
The plea of the Jew, in exacting forfeiture of the bond, is the
epitome of the very history and genius of Judaism regarded from
its most unfavourable side, bigoted reliance on the fulfilment of
precept by the letter, and disregard of spirit and purpose, and
obstinate claim of privilege by interpretation of terms in covenant




106


MERCHANT OF VENICE.


or bond, to the neglect of the foregone intention of the bond, in
subjection to which alone it can be reasonably valid. All are familiar with the spirit of Pharisaism to claim privilege by natural
descent from the favoured Abraham, and to disallow in others the
value of the very qualities to which the favour of Abraham was
ascribed; to cleanse the outside of the platter and to be scrupulous of days and meats, but take little thought of the impurities
of the heart. Those only, however, can have full conception of
the degradation of the human mind by slavery to written text,
who have had some glimpses of the Rabbinical literature that is
a monument of a tyranny, in comparison with which Egyptian
bondage was enfranchisement. The iron of this slavery has entered into the very soul of Shylock, and his appeal to his bond,
as identified with justice, embodies the very soul and being of
ceremonialism. The bond is signed, is sealed, is admitted, and
he rests upon it as on a rock; borne out by this he fears no
judgment, as doing no wrong. The word of law is to him sanctity, and he has no sense of the ends for which law was framed.
So he has an oath in heaven, he has sworn by the sacred Sabbath; bonds and obligations again invalid, by incongruity of purport, with all the ends for which oaths are sacred. Such oaths
are air, such bonds are waste paper; even the very rights of nature and paternity are dissolved by cruelty and malice, and no
amount of wealth can purchase the happiness or power of which
the moral conditions are forfeit; the ark of his trust and veneration is, like the gilded casket, but a painted sepulchre, and within
are dead men's bones.
Portia appears to owe her name to the sympathetic alacrity
with which, like the wife of Brutus, she advances her claim to
share whatever agitates her husband's mind:
" With leave, Bassanio; I am half yourself,
And 1 must freely have the half of anything
That this same paper brings you."
In some respects, this character has always appeared to me the
most wonderful of all Shakespeare's feminine creations. The part
she was to play in the scene of the trial gave the leading condition of her character, the possession of the highest intellectual
endowments that are compatible in woman, with the age and the
susceptibilities for tender and romantic love. The power of the
poet, however, is less wonderful, even in the wondrous trial scene,
than in the exhibition of the blending of the logical and intellectual element in the very web of rapture and passion, when
Bassanio stands before the caskets. A spirit of inference, a sequence of deduction, run through the very confusion of her agitated hopes, and govern and correct by apprehensive standards
the comparisons that crowd upon her imagination. In her meet
apd adjust themselves all the perfections of all the other less per' feit characters of the play. She is as sympathetic as Antonio,


I




CRITICAL ESSAY.


107


but, with equal abhorrence of cruelty, she avoids an outbreak of
vituperation against the Jew, and zealously gives him every
chance of retiring, appealing first to the finer chords of humanity,
and, when those fail to respond, to the coarser motives of lucre;
and when the Duke, with precipitateness which he has afterwards to qualify, remits part of'the fine, she reserves the rights
of Antonio, " Ay for the state, not for Antonio," not merely by
way of sustaining her assumed character of legal accuracy, but
to allow him the opportunity, which he only employs when she
still more directly furnishes him the cue, to render some proportion of mercy. Nay, I may here add, in her first declaration of
the consequences of shedding a drop of Christian blood, she only
names the forfeiture of lands and goods. Whenever again the
play is worthily represented, I believe that, during the intermediate speeches, the changing demeanour of Shylock would give
reason to apprehend that, as he had already subjected avarice to
revenge, he would even have risked all to glut his cruel purpose,
and that it is therefore that Portia now adds other consequences,
" thou diest, and all thy goods are confiscate," and so pursues his
sentence to the end. In the novel the Jew's defeat turns entirely
upon the matter of the bloodshedding, which in itself is little
better than a quibble; Shakespeare wisely retained and put this
first to degrade the literal principle of the Jew to the uttermost,
by exhibiting him foiled at the weapons of his own cunning,
when wielded with simplicity and straightforwardness; but the
dignity of the moral, which is that of Portia's character, required
and supplied the more substantial reference to criminality of murderous intent.
In the house, servants, and magnificence of Portia, we cannot but
recognize the same appreciation of noble state that adorns rather
than disgraces Bassanio, but in her it is associated with all the selfcontrol and steadfastness of manage and husbandry. The intermediate authority of Lorenzo and Jessica, whom she leaves in
charge without according them the confidence of her proceedings,
which from their slighter characters was not called for, displays
these habits of administration. The youthful substitutes have no
dignity to conserve in a colloquy with Launcelot Gobbo, who certainly attends at last to their instructions to cause dinner to be
served, but after full assertions of his free will by bantering misconstructions. The scene is a parody of that which precedes, in
which Portia's commission to Balthazar is delivered in terms that
are a model of injunction, strict and urgent, but cheerful withal,
and engaging zealous obedience, and contrasting with her equally
appropriate tone to Lorenzo and Jessica on the one hand, and on
the other to the confidential companion Nerissa.
The moonlight scene of Jessica and Lorenzo follows after the
trial at Venice, with soothing and romantic sweetness bringing
back the tone of the play to harmony with the associations of




108          MERCHANT OF VENICE.
Belmont. It is worth giving a note to the hints the act contains
of the stage management of what is so apt to be tedious, a long
darkened scene. In the first speech we have " The moon shines
bright," and again, " how sweet the moonlight sleeps upon yon
bank," but by the time that Portia enters to converse for some
time in front, unobserved by Lorenzo and his wife, the moon is
overcast. "When the moon shone," says Nerissa, "we did not
see the candle," and consistently Lorenzo had said just before,
" Come, ho, and wake Diana with a hymn," now Portia, with a
parallelism that should have saved the line from a bad reading,
exclaims" Peace, ho, the moon sleeps with Endymion,
And would not be awakened."
When Bassanio approaches, however, the cloud again withdraws.
" Por. This night, methinks, is but the daylight sick,
It looks a little paler; 'tis a day,
Such as the day is when the sun is hid;"
and Bassanio accordingly, unlike Lorenzo shortly before, recognizes Portia by sight, and not by voice alone, and the stage remains fully moonlit to the end.
Portia has made good a claim abundantly to a poetical and
imaginative element in her character, but it is the fact that it is
subordinated that gives a stateliness to her being, when placed in
opposition to such creatures of instinct rather than impulse, and
sentiment rather than imagination, as her housekeepers Lorenzo
and Jessica, and in the words of her own characteristic reflection,
" So doth the greater glory dim the less.
A substitute shines brightly as a king,
Until a king be by; and then his state
Empties itself, as doth an inland brook
Into the main of waters."
The impressibility of Jessica appears in her observing, " I am
never merry when I hear sweet music;" and to make an ungallant use of her husband's reply, we may observe that sensibility
in this form is no more than is shared by a race of youthful and
unhandled colts; how much he is misled by the tendency of his
nature in the not very obvious syllogism, that a man whom music,
that affects everything, however hard, stockish, and full of rage,
does not affect, is not to be trusted, appears from the effect of
music on the approaching Portia. She does not recognize, until
advertised by Nerissa, her own music of the house, and then it
suggests the moralization:
"Methinks it sounds much sweeter than by day.
Ner. Silence bestows that virtue on it, madam.
Por. The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark,
WVhen neither is attended; and I think
The nightingale, if she should sing by day,




CRITICAL ESSAY.


109


When every goose is cackling, would be thought
No better a musician than a wren."
Mrs. Jameson has drawn attention to the close parallel between
Portia's arguments in the enforcement of mercy and those employed by Isabella. The attentive consideration of them confirms the view that Measure for Measure was the earlier play,
since it is in the circumstances of this that we find the directest
suggestion of some of the common illustrations. The reference to
the place and dignity of Mercy among the prerogatives of kings,
and " the ceremony that to great ones 'longs," is more obviously
to the purpose when addressed to the deputy of a king exercising
committed sway, than when set before the eyes of a Jewish usurer
in a commercial republic.
Since the time that the Merchant of Venice was represented,
twice within a single Ember week, before King James, it has been
a popular acting play, and so it will always, under whatever disadvantages, remain. True it is that the audience of Shakespeare,
" the best and happiest hearers of the town," is now no morean audience sensitive to the finest limits and lines of moral gradation, and as little disposed to tolerate as to require didactic
pointing by the ways of sympathy, or the spurs of exaggerated
emphasis on characteristics with which exaggeration was inconsistent. True it is that we have outlived the century in which
Shylock was made a conmic character, only to reach one in which
he has been dressed out in cast-off sublimities of martyrdom and
magnanimity, still there are those yet living who remember the
better type of the impersonation of Edmund Kean, and who are
sanguine enough to hope that a Portia will yet appear to assert
and exhibit the unsullied dignity of genudine elevation of heart
and purity of soul, as weil as of vigour and vivacity of intellect,
and thus display the true centre of this wonderful work, and combine the diversified groups and incidents into one composition of
sustained harmony from the commencement to the end.
The enumeration of Meres, in which this play comes last, and
the books of the Stationers' Registry carry it up to July, 1598.
and no other hint of date appears that is worth adverting to. It
is amusing to observe, on collating the records that have been
gleaned of the thrifty poet's life, that about this very time he was
himself to all appearance a lender of monies, at least applied to
by friends and connections for loans, as flourishing men are like
to be. The letter of Abrah. Sturley, printed at large in Halliwell's Life of Shakespeare, interweaves the interests of body and
soul in a sort to remind of Shallow's transition from the Psalmist
on death to the current prices of stock at the cattle-fair. Another
is shorter, and may be inserted at length, for the sake of comparison with Bassanio's propositions to Antonio.
" Loving countryman, I am bold of you, as of a friend, craving




110         MERCHANT OF VENICE.
your help with xxx li. (valued as equivalent to 1201. at the present
time,) upon Mr. Bushell's and my security, or Mr. Mytten's with
me. Mr. Rosswell'is not come to London as yet, and I have
especial cause. You shall friend me much in helping me out of
all the debts I owe in London, I thank God, and much quiet my
mind, which would not be indebted. I am now towards the
Court, in hope of answer for the despatch of my business. You
shall neither lose credit nor money by me, the Lord willing;
and now but persuade yourself so as I hope, and you shall not
fear but with all hearty thankfulness I will hold my time; and
content your friend, and if we bargain farther, you shall be the
paymaster yourself.
" My time bids me hasten to an end, and so I commit this [to]
your care, and hope of your help. I fear I shall not be back this
night from the Court. Haste.
" The Lord be with you and with us all, Amen!
"From the Bell in Carter Lane, the 25 October, 1598. Yours
in all kindness.                       " RICIH. QUINEY.
"To my loving good friend and countryman,
Mr. Wm. Shackespere, deliver these."
Would that time had spared us also the poet's answer.




CRITICAL ESSAY ON AS YOU LIKE IT.
HAKESPEARE'S fancy was certainly deeply taken
when young with the picturesque and piquant effects
and situations that might ensue from the masquerading of a damsel, whether from necessity or frolic, in
masculine attire. Such a disguise gives liveliness to his earlier
dramas, and is reproduced again and again in others that were
the offspring of the very maturity of his powers. With Julia the
disguise is in truth little more than external, with but slight
attempt at assuming a personation in aid. Viola ventures but a
little way across the boundary beyond which the characters of the
sexes become distinctive in earlier youth, but Portia and Nerissa
step boldly into the very circle of serious business and public
life, and with assured face and firm tones command attention and
respect from all, while Rosalind, with almost equal daring and
but for a flutter at heart iwihei her lover was endangered, with
equal success paces about among lords and courtiers, and shepherds and shepherdesses, with a self-possession and volubility that
idealise rather than overdo the nature she has chosen to assume.
Rosalind is more of a man in her doublet and hose than even
Portia in her barrette and lawyer's gown, though perhaps only
after all because a moonish youth must always be much more
like a woman than an average doctor of laws. Shakespeare's
creation of Rosalind I suspect followed that of Portia and pretty
closely; As You Like It does not appear in the list of Meres, of
1598, in which the Merchant of Venice comes last, yet it contains, in the figure of "weeping for nothing like Diana in the
fountain," what seems to be an allusion, notwithstanding inexactness in detail, to a matter that was a novelty in 1596, proceeding in 1599, and out of date so soon as 1603. The cross in
West-cheap was adorned according to Stow, at the first date,
"with an alabaster image of Diana and water conveyed from the
Thames prilling from her breasts."  This he tells writing one year
after Meres, but in 1603 he has to report that the heathen goddess, too nearly placed to idolatries proper to the monument and




112               AS YOU     LIKE     IT.
obnoxious to puritanical idolaters of formlessness, was seriously
damaged and for the most part dry. WVe cannot forget again
the terms in which Portia sets forth her scheme of impersonation
so different from that she really carried out:" I'll hold thee any wager,
When we are both accoutred like young men,
I'll prove the prettier fellow of the two
And wear my dagger with the better grace;
And speak between the change of man and boy
With a reed voice; and turn two mincing steps
Into a manly stride; and tell quaint lies-&c.-&c.
That men shall swear I have discontinued school
Above a twelvemonth."
As You Like It improved the dramatic capabilities of what remained in the first play but a spirited description, simply modifying the manifestations of liveliness, sauciness, and self-confidence,
as required to give the best finish and effect to the circumstances
of the scene.
The quaint name of the play seems given in the same spirit of
idleness that pervades and informs so many of its own scenes; it
seems to reply carelessly to such a question as "How shall we
entitle it?" asked by men who are fleeting the time after the
fashion of the golden world. " Laud it as you like it," it seems
to say, or " as you like it allow it," and this is the tenor of the
epilogue of Rosalind, " I charge you, 0 women, for the love you
bear to men, to like as much of this play as please you," and so
with little more strenuousness of exhortation it is left to its fate
that could not be other than a kind one.
This play is one of the instances in which we are fortunately
in possession of the leading source from which undoubtedly Shakespeare directly adopted the chief hints and incidents for his plot
and the conduct of it. There can be no doubt that Euphues
Golden Legacie, by Thomas Lodge, first published in 1590, was
carefully gone through by the poet, and it is not improbable that
he had also in his hands the Cook's Tale of Gamelyn, falsely
ascribed to Chaucer, which furnished Lodge with so much. Still
in this case, as in others, we must not rashly conclude that we
possess all the sources. We have only negative proof that Shakespeare was the first to dramatize Lodge's Rosalynd, and in
those days of originality we shall make a great mistake if in
eagerness to elevate Shakespeare we disable the inventive resources of his predecessors and contemporaries. Hence we tread
but on uncertain ground when in comparing novel and play we
too broadly assume that the improvements in the latter are necessarily more than adoptions from another source, an intermediate mind. Still duly guarded the value of comparison remains;
the glory of Shakespeare rests in any case not on the taste or
judgment of particular alterations, but on the completeness with




CRITICAL ESSAY.


113


which among multitudes of alternatives he has gone right where
he might so easily have been tempted wrong; and in the comparison of the finished work with the remoter rudiment, however
many links of intermediate development are lost, the attention
is invariably guided to the spirit in which irregularities were
corrected, relief supplied, and crudity or coarseness refined or
suppressed. In some details the play deserts Lodge for the tale
of Gamelyn. It is not known that this tale had been printed so
early but it may have been nevertheless, and if not Shakespeare
may have found it in a MS. form as well as Lodge, or if he did
not it is just such a tale as may have been already introduced to
the stage over and over again.
The tale of Gamelyn was written for an audience that sympathized highly with manly or rather muscular prowess, and was
glad to find their favoured champion with a plausible excuse for
exerting a heaviness of hand that even in the excused cases is
not unfrequently mere brutality. To such an audience it was a
preparation for enjoyment for heirs and elder brothers, justices,
sheriffs, and jurors, abbots, and grey friars to be fairly placed so
far in the wrong as to j ustify-so they thought, any outrage from
younger brothers and outlaws. The spirit of Gamelyn rises like
that of Orlando against the ill-treatment from his brother in
contravention of his father's will, and we trace Orlando in his
reply to an insult:"Then saide to him Gamelyn
The childe that was ying,
Christ his curse mote he havin
That clepeth me gadling (vagabond).
I am no worse gadling than thee
Pardee ne no worse wight,
But born I was of a lady
And gotten of a knight."
"I am no villain: I am the youngest son of Sir Rowland de
Bois; he was my father, and he is thrice a villain who says such
a father begot villains..... thou hast railed on thyself."
Gamelyn is pacified for a time by a promise, but on his return
from a wrestling match where he has approved his vigour he is
shut out; he forces the door with his foot, overtakes the flying
porter, breaks his neck and taking him by one arm flings him
into a well; he then makes a wild festivity, but at last is bound
by his brother to a post in the hall and kept without food. Adam
le Dispenser, an old servant, relieves him and at a concerted signal
releases him, and after cruelly maltreating the tyrannical brother
and the scoffing abbots and priors his guests, they break away
together to the forest. Old Adam's reflections on arrival are
manifestly the origin of those of the equally disinterested Touchstone:-" Well now I am in Arden, when I was at home I was
in a better place, but travellers must be content."




114              AS YOU     LIKE    IT.
" Gamelyn into the wild wood
Ystalked is full still,
And Adam le Dispencer it
Yliked but right ill.
"Tho Adam swore to Gamelyn,
And that by Saint Richere;
Now I say that it is merry
To ben a dispencer.
"That much liefer me werein
The keyes for to bear,
Than walkin in this wild wood
My clothes for to tear."
Weary and in want of food they encounter the outlaws and
their captain, or as he is called their crowned king, who gives
them liberal entertainment. Within three weeks the master of the
outlaws quits the forest-his peace being made, and Gamelyn
takes his place, and by the aid of the band rescues at the assizes
his second brother from the elder, whom he hangs by the neck
with the whole court, sheriff, judge, and a corrupted jury. Thus
ends the tale; he makes his peace with the king who appoints
him "chief justice and rider of all his free forest," pardons and
gives places to the outlaws:"And Sir Otb his brother dear
Ymade him hath his heir,
And sithin wedded Gamelyn
A wife both good and fair.
They lividin together wele
Whilis that Christis wolde,
And sithin that was Gamelyn
Ygraven under molde.
"And so shalle we alle here,
May there no man yflee;
God bringin us unto the joy
That ever shall ybe."
This story of wild not to say savage justice was greatly
softened and humanized in the Rosalynd of Thomas Lodge, who
combined with it an entirely new series of incidents; whether by
adaptation or from his own pure invention may remain uncertain,
but at least with very happy effect and great refinement of taste.
The author himself appears from glimpses of his biography to
have combined accomplishment, enterprise and originality in a
manner that is characteristic of the period that includes the reign
of Elizabeth and the Commonwealth before the hardness of professional type took an obstinate set. He studied at Oxford in
1573, became an actor and dramatic author, then appears to have
entered the army and accompanied Captains Clarke and Cavendish




CRITICAL      ESSAY.                115
in their expeditions; at a later date he writes himself " of Lincoln's Inn Gentleman," and before his death, probably about
1625, we find him translating from both Greek and Latin, and
practising as a physician. In dedicating his Rosalynde to Lord
Hunsdon, as " the work of a soldier and a scholar," he gives this
account of it: " Having with Captain Clarke made a voyage to
the islands of Terceiras and the Canaries, to beguile the time
with labour I writ this book; rough as hatcht in the storms of
the ocean, and feathered in the surges of many perilous seas." It
occupies some 120 octavo pages in Mr. Collier's reprint, and notwvithstanding its length may still be read through by a generation
less tolerant of prolixity than that which welcomed the Arcadia
and the Faery Queen, with pleasure and entertainment from beginning to end. He not seldom goes astray in sentimentality and
not seldom-yet for his age and class not so very often either, in
pedantry, but unaffected liveliness and pregnant fancy predominate and give refreshing charm to his page.
The Rosader of Lodge is like Gamelyn, a stalwart younger
brother who wakes up betimes to a sense of his injuries; during
a temporary reconciliation he allows himself to be excited by his
brother to take part in a wrestling match with a champion who
has been bribed to kill him in the struggle. Both tales have this
incident, but in the earlier the heir only wishes what il the later
he takes overt means to bring about. In this point Shakespeare
followed Lodge, but in another he preferred the ballad which
describes the pitiable distress of the father of two sons killed by
the challenger, whom Lodge describes as a man of courageous
resolution taking up the bodies of his sons without outward show
of discontent.
There is great ingenuity in the manner in which Lodge connects his additions with the old tale; the king of the outlaws he
makes a banished king indeed, and King of France, - Shakespeare restricts him to a dukedom in deference to the modest
limits of the story. It is then at the court of the usurping king
that the wrestling takes place, and there Rosader sees Rosalynde
who, after his victory, " took from her neck a jewel and sent it
by a page to the young gentleman."  The usurping Torismond
then banishes Rosalynde, "for, quoth he to himself, her face
is so full of favour that it pleads pity in the eye of every man,"
and to his interceding daughter Alinda, he replies-" In liking
Rosalynde thou hatchest up a bird to peck out thy own eyes;"
and when she still perseveres he banishes her also, and she cheerfully accompanies and encourages her friend. How much better
in detail this is managed in the play is evident; the assumed
names of Aliena and Ganimede are the same, but there is no hint
of Touchstone here, or of Jaques afterwards. Saladyne, the brother
of Rosader, is banished by the king on the pretext of his injustice
to his brother, but in reality in order to the confiscation of his




116


AS YOU LIKE IT.


lands. Shakespeare preserves the latter motive, but adds others.
Saladyne's repentance comes when he is still in prison; he afterwards appears in the forest, and passes through the same perils
of life and love as in the play. There in the forest also we find
Rosalynde availing herself of her disguise to intermeddle with complicating effect in the love passages of Phebe and Sylvius (Montanus), and to amuse and interest her own lover Rosader. We
have the same masquerading courtship, and the same mockmarriage, much prattle and banter, and sonnet writing, and love
song, and at last the rediscovery of the lively princess in completion of the same set of compacts that unite the couples in the
drama. Enter now Fernandine, the third of the brothers, on the
same message as the brother Jaques, to announce the approach
of the usurper, but with this difference that in the novel he
actually advances in arms, and the conclusion and happy restoration of the banished king is the result of a battle in which his
enemy is conquered and slain. This catastrophe has the great
inconvenience of involving the distress of the affectionate Aliena,
who is worthy of more tender treatment and receives it by the
arrangement in the play.
These are the chief differences and agreements in the course of
the incidents, but on almost every page we meet with words
and sentences that have borne fruit in the drama, or else are remarkable from directing attention to the suppression in the play
of the feelings they bring forward.
One very remarkable difference is that Shakespeare has kept
so distinctly in the background any filial manifestations on the
part of his heroine. Her father is banished, and she is in truth
silent-silent that is for her, and a little sorrowful at court, and
yet it appears pretty clearly that her depression arises not so
much from the anguish of personal concern for her father's fate
as from the general incongruity of her position with the lively
tendencies of her nature, and especially from lack of the leading
interest of love. It is even Celia who suggests in answer to her
question, " Why, whither shall we go? "-" To seek my uncle in
the forest of Arden," and when they are there we hear little of
the search from either, and there is no haste whatever in discovering themselves. In fact, when Rosalind encounters her
father in the forest and he questions her, she reports as a satisfactory consequence of a page's answer that he " let her go." It
seems however that she must have been young when the usurpation occurred; Celia says that at that time she was too young to
value her, which at least gives us this impression, and as Shakespeare, unlike Lodge, keeps the Duke in ignorance of his daughter's
banishment, he guards her from the imputation of indifference to
his affectionate anxiety, and we are left at our ease in the temporary
suspense which was an indispensable condition of the chief interest on which the character and delightfulness of the play was
to depend.




CRITICAL ESSAY.


117


The story of Lodge suggests the effectiveness of a broad contrast between the passions of the court and courtiers and the
cheerful carelessness of the woodland, but the contrast, as he sets
it forth, has a disposition to be harsh as well as broad, which is
a sin in a composition where the prevailing character after all is
to be playfulness and reflectiveness. Shakespeare omits entirely
a grating episode of an attempt by " certain rascals, that lived by
prowling in the forest, in fear of the provost-marshall, to steal
away the fair shepherdess Aliena," and give her to the vicious
king for a present, and so purchase their pardons. In Lodge's
episode Saladyne comes to aid and rescue, and his passion follows
in due course, which in the play springs up on far milder provocation, and appears to be a mere result of the natural influences
of woodland scenery and simplicity of life. So the last incident of
the novel the battle with the usurper and his slaughter, is also
set aside, and again the mere approach to the glades of Arden,
and the pure influences of its breezes, seem to have sufficed, with
slight aid from ghostly suggestion, to reclaim the humorous Frederick. These changes preserve the tranquil harmony of the forest
and shepherd life and scenery, in which moral dispositions appear
to bear the creative impress of the locality, as markedly as the
shading trees and jumping herd of stags full of the pasture.
Looking attentively, we may see in the earlier scenes how unerringly Shakespeare adjusted the conditions that gave possibility
to the conclusion he aimed after. In both the unnatural brothers,
Duke Frederick and Oliver, we perceive hints that their aberrations arose less from the deadness of the sympathies, than from
their irritability,-less from hatred of better harmonized minds,
than from uneasiness and fretfulness under the sense of their own
unamiableness. Thus Oliver, searching his mind for a motive of
antipathy to Orlando, can only come at last to the fact that he is
" of all sorts enchantingly beloved; and indeed so much in the
heart of the world, and especially of my own people, who best
know him, that I am altogether misprised." The rough and envious disposition of the Duke, again, is excited by the favour and
affection that accompany Rosalind," Grounded upon no other argument,
But that the people praise her for her virtues,
And pity her for her good father's sake."
And the motives that govern him appear again in those he suggests to his daughter, when he banishes her cousin:" Thou art a fool, she robs thee of thy name;
And thou wilt show more bright, and seem more virtuous,
When she is gone."
This is the spirit which the banished duke has in his mind, when
he refers to the " envious court," and that old Adam justly characterizes:" Why are you virtuous, why do people love you?....Your virtues, gentle master,




118


AS YOU LIKE IT.


Are sanctified and holy traitors to you.
O, what a world is this, when what is comely
Envenoms him that bears it."
So at last it was exasperation at finding himself deserted by the excellent, one after another, that spurred Duke Frederick on to his
expedition; he addressed his mighty power, provoked by " hearing
how that every day men of great worth resorted to this forest."
But the envy of virtue implies a certain recognition of its excellence, and this, under favourable circumstances, may bring
forth its natural fruit of admiration.  The motive is given by
Lodge in passages already quoted, but only incidentally, while
in Shakespeare it is a governing idea. Oliver grasps at his brother's legacy, as the Duke gives good leave to the exiles to roam,
while their lands and revenues enrich him; still neither can be
easy to forfeit, and to know it is deservingly, the honest favour and
admiration of the world. The Duke breaks out in gusty violence
in loss of all self-command, Oliver is more sullen, but both are
haunted by a consciousness that their struggle is with a power too
strong for them; they do not believe in the might of the wickedness they practise, and by that very fact they are reclaimable.
That Duke Frederick is not constitutionally cruel, is indicated
in his endeavour to stay the wrestling, " in pity of the challenger's
youth," first by personal dissuasion of Orlando, then by suggesting to the princesses to use their influence, while he stands considerately aside, and then by restricting the encounter to one fall;
and thus, tyrant as he is, he is in sympathy with the assembled
crowd, who so deeply compassionate the bereaved father. Again,
he is better than his class in his care of the gasping and disabled
prizer-" How dost thou, Charles? " and " bear him away." Ambition and avarice control his better nature, which regains its
elasticity, however, when he is brought under the genial influences
of a clearer air and an altered scene. Certain it is that such a
change has a healthy moral, as well as physical influence; it is
one of the rescuing energies of nature, and if in actual nature it
has not always the permanent vigour that is desirable, and loses
its force when we return again into the circle of old local influences and associations, the more delightful is it for a time to revel in a fiction which exhibits one of the most beautiful resources
of nature, operating with a vitality that brings aid to faltering
virtue and corrects the flaws of fortune, and turns the odds of the
great combat of life to the side of the excellent and the admirable.
In the meantime the usurper pays the penalties of a falsely assumed position; his very lords characterize him justly when they
speak in an under tone, and warn away from the range of his passion those whom he is fitfully incensed against. His very daughter
disowns the ill-bought advancement he would provide for her,
and slips from his side to accompany in peril and privation a victim of his jealousy. Thus in every form of loyalty, compassion,
duty, and affection, whether spirited, tender, sentimental, or gro



CRITICAL ESSAY.                      119
tesque, the better spirits fly by natural attraction to a more congenial centre, and in all happy companionship. The lords, Amiens,
Jaques, and the pages, tender free duty to an exiled master; Celia
proffers companionship to her banished cousin without ostentation.
and it is accepted without set acknowledgment, because in the same
sympathetic spirit in which it was made; Old Adam with limping gait, but with the best heart he may, goes on with his young
master; while Touchstone follows his mistress as devotedly as
the best, perhaps the most devotedly of all, for he is the only one
of them all who, as he is carried along by the current of his attachment, has still the faculty of contemplating his wanderings
philosophically, of appreciating his sacrifices, whether in friendship or marriage, correctly, without making them one whit less
willingly. Perhaps Jaques, in his parody of Amiens' song, approaches the critical vein of Touchstone pretty closely, but he is
inferior in that mixed vein of self-observation and self-knowledge,
which approximates Touchstone at one time to Mr. Pepys, and at
another to Michel de Montaigne.
Jaques and Touchstone are the two figures that ser e chieiv
to blend and harmonize the two masses of light an t shade, of
court and country life, of which the play consists, )n which its
great effectiveness depends. In the anecdotes. reflections, and
declamations of the pair, we have the very corruptions of affected
or vicious society, brought into immediate contrast with woodland
habits, with far more force than in the remoter descriptions of the
Duke and his sociable attendants.  Both are characters with
which nothing under the greenwood tree could be supposed to be
congenial, both are the creatures of highly sophisticated society,
and both, accordingly, talk largely in a vein that takes no colour
from the locality they are in; and Jaques in his panegyric of
Motley, and comparison of life to the stage, speaks as he might
in an ante-room, where Touchstone's illustrations of the punctilios of a challenge would be equally in place. When Jaques
comments on the stricken deer, he does so to gird at the dishonesties of civil and crowded life, at the same time without drawing any exception in favour of country nature, which, in his eyes,
furnishes but too fit a type of the wickednesses of the world elsewhere. Touchstone recognizes the analogies of court and country
life with as quick an appreheision, but with an aptness to find
amusement in them, and while he contemplates with shrewd observation all the coarseness and unhandsomenesses of the life of
a shepherd, he gives way, sympathetically at least, to the local
influences with wondrous alacrity; and in the alliance of Touchstone and Audrey, we see the grossest exposition of the hold that
wild uncultured nature, whether in scenery or society, can assert over the most sophisticated mind-the most illustrative preparation for the love of Oliver for Celia, and for the altered and
subjugated temper of the converted Duke.




120              AS YOU LIKE IT.
Jaques assuredly is wonderfully imagined; his recurring title is
the melancholy Jaques, but his melancholy, as he intimates him) self, is the most wondrously original. We hear that he has been
a libertine, and he has seen too much of the worser side of the
world and of mankind, and is not too hopeful of the world in any
form; he gives a sour and saturnine picture of its people and
their proceedings, and even of the course of nature's dispensations. His faith has received too severe a shock, for it to be harmonized and braced again even by the influences of the forest of
Arden. But, perhaps, his restoration is merely proceeding. He
can already so far compassionate, as to weep while he makes satirical application of the sorrows of the sobbing deer; he can so
far sympathize as to mightily enjoy the satire of Touchstone, and
to come in merrily after the excitement, and in high intellectual
exaltation. Again we find " him merry, hearing of a song." In his
advances to Orlando first, and afterwards to Rosalind, he seems
to have a certain craving for sympathy, and to seek it among the
young, but he gets no encouragement; and with these cheerful
souls his despondency and censoriousness seem the habits of either
a fool or a cnDher, or a very abominable fellow. We may not unnaturally think that they do him injustice, the banished Duke found
more matter in him than that; but those of his temperament
may never hope'to fare better from the young, the lovely, and who
are moreover lovers. Still I would fain put in a good word for the
humorist, who, whether from his own fierce though now exhausted
passions, or from the world's cold manners and hard treatment,
has conceived a disgust for society as it is for the most part to be
met with, will never venture deep into its treacherous waters, but
is content to skirt the margin, within reach of retirement at any
time, and the more crowded company of his own thoughts. Much
of this temper remains with him to the last, but we see that, if
little disposed still for cheerful sociability, at least the venom has
left the wound that he bears with him, when the tenor of his
parting speech evinces his recognition and belief of the practical
reality in the Duke of patience and virtue deserving the happiest
restoration, in Orlando of love and true faith, when he wishes
good speed with a sympathy that is unaffected to the marriage
blessings of Oliver and Silvius, and reserves his only barbed shaft
for Touchstone, his companion, and ally, and fellow-satirist, and
in more than one respect a representative of himself.
Rosalind, however, is the most interesting character in the play,
as Shakespeare indeed seems to have recognized the principle,
that the central place in comedy was of right assignable not to a
hero but a heroine. His comedy is to his tragedy a fourth proportional with the sexes, male and feminine, that comprise mankind. Certainly we must say that of all his heroines, after Portia, Rosalind is the most highly gifted. Her character includes
and harmonizes, perhaps, a greater number of essential qualities


-1




CRITICAL       ESSAY.                 121
than even Portia. She is intelligent, reflective, serious, when
there is need and occasion; she is witty, and could if it so pleased
her, but it does so rarely, be satirical; she is playful, mimetic,
airy, sportive, and adventurous; her tongue is apt for terse expressions, and her fancy ministers the smartest sayings and the
most fantastic imaginations; she is capable of feeling, and, still
more rare, of appreciating friendship, and she loves with truth
and, what gives truth its charm, with zest. Perhaps the quality
which some of her rivals may boast, and which in her is chiefly
subdued or in abeyance, is imagination of the more poetic spirit
and of the higher vein; in this respect she yields to Viola, for to
vie with her would have been to forfeit the distinctiveness of her
character, which depends on predominating fancy.
To appreciate the force and value of the delineation of her character in the play, we must look back through the long but never
lagging ever buoyant scenes, which are informed with her spirit
and liveliness, and with that alone, for in them we can scarcely
note a trace of action, of advancing plot, proceeding story. Lodge
writes his tale with an expansive fulness natural to a man who
has long days before him, and intends to make his book last out
to the length of his voyage. Something of the same feeling is
transfused into the play. The exiles, expelled or refugee, have
left tyranny in possession of its ill-got gains, and are away to the
greenwood to pass the time innocently and cheerfully withal, until
nature works round her remedy by proper curative energy, and
things come right of themselves. These are processes that will
not be precipitated, and there is time, therefore, for playful mystifications, and make-believes, and delays; and then, when the
crisis declares its own approach, all the revelations are made conveniently and with more sportive effectiveness at once. In this
interval Rosalind has room and scope for her vivacity, and we are
presented with the varied aspects of her rich and nimble nature
without haste or interference.
The songs with which the forest scenes are interspersed, en-i
hance the expression of careless and unreproached idleness; and
the short scenes, in which they are three times introduced, have
a further purpose above that of being mere stop-gaps, to account
for lapse of time before a later re-appearance of Rosalind or Orlando. This purpose they serve in addition, for it is note-worthy
how seldom Shakespeare avails himself of the privilege of opening consecutive scenes, which imply a lapse of considerable interval, in the presence of the same character. Such a case occurs in
the first act of the Merry Wives of Windsor, where one scene
closes with Sir Hugh Evans retiring to join Falstaff at the pippins and cheese of Mr. Page, and the next opens with Sir John
at his quarters at the Garter Inn, in a committee of ways and
means with mine host. This exception, however, rather confirms
the principle, for though no change of scene took place, the stage




122


AS YOU~ LIKE IT.


had been twice empty before the knight re-appears, and Master
Slender's episodical whims and punctilios had given prolixity to
the interim.  In a representation of As You Like It, such as we
may at least imagine it, these changes of scene would give excellent opportunity of varying the silvan picture, and thus giving
the impression of the free range and dispersed haunts of the gentle
foresters. The play, it may be remlnrked, is altogether an out-door
play; not one scene has place, or need have place, under a roof.
Even in the first act we only catch a glimpse of the manor-house of
Sir Roland de Bois, through the thick and laden boughs of the
orchard, and at the court, the chief scene of the wrestling match
takes place of necessity on a lawn near the palace; and in the one or
two instances where no hint is furnished either way, we mentally
remain under the open sky, and come no nearer to the palace
apartments than the broader garden walks and stately terraces.
The introduction of palm-trees, serpents, and lions into the forest
of Arden, lifts the material scene just so much nearer to the region of romance, as the good and the gifted, and even the grotesque and satirical, the simple and the rustic beings who people
it are beyond the strain of every day encounter. Dr. Johnson,
in his comments on the play, refers it to the ladies to explain or
excuse the facility with which Rosalind and Celia give away their
hearts. It was scarcely worth the while for the Doctor to go out
of his way to suggest an incongruity; there is none to our imagination when we are absorbed in the spirit of the play, and I
have yet to learn that lovers are treated so leniently as to threaten
a mischief, just at present, by the examples gaining ground. The
dissatisfied may solace themselves with the coquettishness of
Phebe, and take note at the same time of the course and the end
of it. Phebe, in her pride or indifference, groups with the old inhospitable carlot of whom we catch a glimpse, the moral antitypes of the glistening serpent and the hungering beast of prey.
These are the tyrants of the woodland, as Duke Frederick of the
court. The old carlot vanishes, but Phebe, like Frederick and
like Oliver, is reclaimed by the touch of natural affection, by
that knowing " what 'tis to pity and be pitied," that enforcement
of gentleness, that is indicated over and over again throughout the
play, as the germ and promise of recovered humanity, the purifier no less of the vices and vile passions than of the foibles of the
heart.
That As You Like It was written after 1598, is inferred not
only from its omission by Meres, and from the allusion to the
Diana of the fount, but also from the quotation of a line from the
Hero and Leander of Marlowe, first printed in that year. That
this was a posthumous work gives additional emphasis to the allusion to the author:
" Dead Shepherd, now I know thy saw of might,
'He never lov'd, that lov'd not at first sight.'"


1




CRITICAL ESSAY.                     123
We should approach still closer to the exact date, within the interval between this year and 1600, when it was (apparently) entered at the Stationers' Company, could we ascrite, as I think we
may, any force to the conjecture of Tieck, that the character of
Jaques bears traces of that of Asper, Ben Jonson's portrait of himself in his play of Every Man in his Humour, first acted in 1599.
To complete these personal associations comes in the tradition reported by Oldys, that a younger brother of Shakespeare recalled,
in his old age, having seen his brother Will act a part in one of
his own comedies, which from the description, must have been
that of Old Adam..i




3




CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE TAMING OF
THE SHREW.
O contemporary notice of this play has been recovered
and no impression of it anterior to the first folio. The
omission of it in the enumeration of Francis Meres
proves that that list was incomplete, for it contains
the titles of plays that we may be certain on critical grounds
were written after this.
The play occupies a very subordinate position among the comedies of Shakespeare, but there are points of great interest
connected with it, chiefly dependent on the curious relation it
bears to a comedy still extant, the work of another hand. The
first edition of this, under the title of The pleasant conceited
History called the Taming of a Shrew, was printed in 1594, and
there were two later in 1596 and 1607. The entries in the Stationers' books furnish no ground for supposing that any edition
of Shakespeare's work was ever printed, although in the entry for
the folio of 1623 it is not recited in the list of those " not formerly entered to other men." The connection between this play
and Shakespeare's is of the closest kind, and there is not the
slightest ground for supposing that any intermediate modification
had taken place. This is important, because the comedy of Shakespeare abounds in verses of the doggrel measure which are not
borrowed from the play that he worked upon, and in this case
therefore, as in others-as for instance in the Comedy of Errors,
we are precluded from ascribing the doggrel portions to another
author as a matter of course, and must accept them as even characteristics of the poet's manner at a certain period. This doubtless, from the plays to which the remark applies, was an early
period and to that we must assign The Taming of the Shrew.
The fact, however, of the play as it now stands having been in
the main an early production would not preclude the possibility
that it may bear the traces of revision at a much later date.
Indeed, considering what we know so absolutely of the successive
corrections to which Shakespeare subjected his dramas, I have
sometimes thought that when his first editors speak of having




126         TAMING OF THE SHREW,
received his papers without a blot, they must be referring to revised copies preparing by the author himself for the publication
which his friends and fellows regret that he did not live to superintend. In the present instance however this conjecture applies
less than in some others, and I suspect that we have the play
much as it was first brought forward.
The date of the earliest edition of the old play does not give
us a fixed limit for the rifacimento, as it is impossible to say how
much earlier it may not have been played and in the hands of
the players. Shakespeare's own productions are examples how
long a play may have been popular on the stage before it was
printed, and hundreds were never printed at all. In the meantime there is proof that at one period the same play was not, at
least in many cases, confined to a single company, and also that
nothing was more frequent than to bring out old plays with
recent changes and additions very frequently by other hands
than those of the original author.
Mr. Knight has advanced the opinion that the original Taming
of a Shrew was the work of Robert Greene and the passages
adduced in comparison of style give strong confirmation. Six of
Greene's dramas, one of them written in connexion with Lodge,
have been identified and collected. He died in poverty in 1592,
and in a posthumous pamphlet published by a fellow author,
Chettle, he reflected on Shakespeare in terms that have been
construed as a charge of literary plagiarism, and that are at least
interesting illustrations of the position and character of the poet
at this time, which could not be very far from the production of
The Taming of the Shrew. As Greene's pamphlet and death date
in 1592 and the first edition of his supposed play two years later,
the adaptation of it by Shakespeare, if alluded to in the passage to
be quoted, would imply that it came to his hands as hinted above
by some channel independent of the press.
In the Groat's worth of Wit bought with a Million of Repentance then, Greene thus addresses his brother dramatists, Marlowe, Peele and Lodge. " Base minded men all three of ye, if
by my misery you be not warned; for unto none of you like me
sought those burs to cleave; those puppets, I mean, that speak
from our mouths; those antics garnished in our colours. Is it not
strange that I to whom they have all been beholding-is it not
like that you to whom they have all been beholding-shall (were
ye in that case I am now) be both of them at once forsaken?
Yes, trust them not; for there is an upstart crow beautified with
our feathers, that with his tiger's heart, wrapt in a player's hide
supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the
best of you; and being an absolute Johannes Factotum, is in his
own conceit, the only Shake-scene in a country. Oh that I might
intreat your rare wits to be employed in more profitable courses;
and let these apes imitate your past excellence and never more




CRITICAL ESSAY.                     127
acquaint them with your admired inventions. I know the best
husband of you all will never prove an usurer, and the kindness
of them all will never prove a kind nurse; yet whilst you may
seek you better masters: for it is pity men of such rare wits
should be subject to the pleasures of such rude grooms."
Much of this complaint is of the staple of all authors, dramatic
or others, dissatisfied with the division of the profits of combined
exertion between themselves and speculative managers or booksellers; somewhat more is expressive of jealousy at the success
of a rival who by rapid advancement and untiring versatility has
secured both player's profit and poet's glory, and has thus reduced the usual suppliers of the stage to still more galling dependence; but there is even more in it, and it is impossible not
to perceive that the assumption of stolen plumes is brought into
such connexion with the poetical displays of the actor author as
to imply piratical encroachment. This is the impression they
conveyed to the author of Greene's Funerals, 1594, who seems to
have this very passage in his mind in the lines:" Nay more, the men that so eclipsed his fame
Purloined his plumes, can they deny the same?"
Sooth to say, it is no impossibility that Shakespeare in the full
exercise of his talents for business as well as poetry, may have had
no more consideration for those by whose very deficiencies he rose
than men usually have who are engrossed in the successful pursuit of fortune; still the general spirit of this pamphlet is so bad
-a scald trivial lying pamphlet it was called by Nashe, a friend of
the writer, that we may disregard the base charges and be simply
thankful to learn that at this date Shakespeare was on a par at
least with the most renowned playwriters of the day, while Marlowe was still living, as well as an actor of repute, and that with
no lack of self-reliance and originality he had made extensive
use of the productions of others not necessarily illicitly, but with
a success that provoked some irritation.
Other testimony that indeed is pleasanter and perhaps as important is given in the apology of Chettle which followed the
imputation within three months in Kind-heart's Dream. We
gather from this, without difficulty, that Shakespeare felt natural
offence, and appears to have taken the frankest means of asserting his self-respect by personal communication. " With neither
of them," says Chettle, " that take offence was I acquainted; and
with one of them [this appears to be Marlowe] I care not if I
never be; the other whom at that time I did not so much spare,
as since I wish I had, for that as I have moderated the heat of
living writers, and might have used my own discretion (especially
in such a case, the author being dead) that I did not I am as
sorry as if the original fault had been my fault, because myself
have seen his demeanour no less civil, than he excellent in the
quality [that is of an actorl he professes; besides divers of wor



128         TAMING OF THE SHREW.
ship have reported his uprightness of dealing, which argues his
honesty, and his facetious grace in writing, that approves his art."
In 1592 Shakespeare was 28, but already three years earlier
he was a sharer in the Blackfriar's company; in the following
year he dedicated his poem of Venus and Adonis to Lord Southampton in terms that are sufficient to evince his acceptance with
" divers of worship," and in the year preceding a passage is found
in a poem of Spenser, The Tears of the Muses, that will suit none
but Shakespeare and show plainly what proofs he had at that
time given of his poetic and creative power; he is:"The man whom nature's self hath made
To mock herself and truth to imitateWith kindly counter under mimic shade,
Our pleasant Willy."
He is,"That same gentle spirit from whose pen
Large streams of honey and sweet nectar flow."
On all these grounds I entertain little doubt that The Taming of
the Shrew dates at least before the year 1592.
It is observable that if The Taming of a Shrew were really
Greene's he was himself not quite clear from the transgression he
imputes, for his play contains a number of passages evidently
taken from Marlowe's Faustus and Tamburlaine, and these minor
borrowings are much more of the nature of stealing than an
avowed adaptation on a large scale where there can be no pretence of disavowing or concealing an obligation.
Shakespeare then took up the earlier play, captivated apparently by the excellence of a fundamental idea, and rewrote it
from beginning to end. As regards the story and conduct of the
piece he retained and expanded the Induction; in the play proper
he followed the scenes and incidents in the course of Katharina
and Petruchio very exactly; but in the wooings of Bianca he made
very extensive changes for which he derived the motives from
The Supposes, a play translated from the Suppositi of Ariosto, by
Gascoigne, and acted at Gray's Inn in 1566. From this source
he also took the names of Petruchio and Licio.
With respect to the execution of the play, so entirely is it recast that even in the scenes of which the matter is closest to the
original there are but few lines transferred literally. Still we
must do justice to the earlier writer and incomparably superior
as the adapted scenes undoubtedly are in every respect, the best
scenes of the new play are precisely those that correspond most
closely with the older production, and manifestly owe their excellence largely if not to its example to its inspiration.
We lose Sly at the end of the first scene of the play, and it has
been doubted whether the rest of the character has not been lost,
but there was an inherent weakness in the attachment of the part,
and it seems most probable that Shakespeare felt this and was




CRITICAL       ESSAY.                129
content to let it drop off, though not to spare it altogether. The
story of a drunkard bewildered out of his identity is found among
the Tales of the Thousand and One Arabian Nights', however it
came there. Nearer at hand in time and place it is told as a
freak of Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, in Goulart's Admirable and memorable Histories translated by E. Grimestone
ill 1607, but said to have appeared in English as early as 1570,
a collection of stories by Richard Edwards, and likely enough to
have been transferred to the stage many times no longer to be
traced. The remarkable point in this version is that as part of
the routine of a ducal day and verging to its conclusion, they play
before the artisan, a pleasant comedy. It is after this that a
banquet with store of precious wine sends him soon back into his
drunken sleep. There certainly was something witty and ingenious in the notion of bringing the drunkard on the stage, representing him as deceived in his own person by Lords turned
players, and then as the spectator of a play which again was
contrived not without reference to his position and made him look
on at an intrigue like that of which he was the subject, to laugh
and be amused at a plot to outface a bully and persuade a lady
out of her own nature and character, and at a scheme to personate
a Duke that breaks down by the accidental confronting of the
false and the real. But the primary play will not bear the
weight of the secondary; new wine is put into old bottles too
weak to retain it, and thus the entire perspective of the piece is
taken in reverse, foreground and background change places and
when this has occurred the less important cannot be too soon
covered up and forgotten. That this was Shakespeare's intention
appears I think from the last words addressed and given to Sly;
after a single scene he is already as might be expected falling
asleep; he " nods and does not mind the play"-'tis a very excellent piece of work he says, " would 'twere done." This seems
notice early and plain enough that he was not to burden the
stage to the end, and that literature and not " Ipocras" was to be
guilty of his second deep sleep. The absence of stage direction
for his ultimate removal is no difficulty, for it would be still
more requisite if he remained to the last. The end of his existence
has been already fully attained when he has been passed through
all the stages of astonishment, perplexity and hesitation, until
he rests fully at ease in his new conviction, a perfected counterfoil to the converted Katharina.
The players themselves do not escape a touch of satire in the old
play; the stage direction on their appearance bespeaks the narrow
appliances of a company travelling; " Enter two of the players with
packs at their backs and a boy"-and the low comedian has an
earnest purpose when he puts in the word:
" And I'll speak for the properties: My Lord, we must
Have a shoulder of mutton for a property."
K




130         TAMING OF THE SHREW.
Audiences such as they were when the groundling element
that Shakespeare contemned predominated, have also their mirror
set before them. Sly's anxiety when the play is proposed, is to
enquire " Is there not a fool in the play?" and it is evidently
with relief that he exclaims in the progress of the play, "Look,
Sim, the fool is come again now." There is indeed much appearance in the construction of these old plays, that the alternation of scenes of strongly contrasted style was partly a necessity
in order to gratify the various tastes of a mixed audience in turn,
before Shakespeare found the way to blend them with such refined art that the alteration was an enhancement of effect and
enjoyment to the most refined. There is much humour again in
the indignation ofSly and the difficulty with which he is pacified,
when at a crisis of the play two of the characters are in peril of
prison:" Sly. I say, we'll have no sending to prison.
Lord. My lord, this is but the play, they're but in jest.
Sly. I tell thee, Sim, we'll have no sending
To prison, that's flat; why, Sim, am not I Don Christo Vari?
Therefore, I say, they shall not go to prison.
Lord. No more they shall not, my lord, they be run away.
Sly. Are they run away, Sim? that's well
Then gi's some more drink, and let them play again."
Spoken like one whose ancles had been erewhile sore with the
stocks.
Sly's transformation in belief which is developed so naturally
by Shakespeare, is very inartificially managed in the old Induction, where he believes that he is a Lord at once on the strength
of a single assurance and his fine apparel. The versified portion
of Shakespeare's Induction has great merit; but it is, nevertheless, unequal and betrays at times a weakness and uncertainty of
hand unknown in his better works. There are lines that get their
complement of syllables, or regular accentuation, by charitable
indulgence; " Prose strained to verse, verse loitering into prose."
Thus "It would seem strange unto him when he waked "-and
" Balm his foul head with warm distilled waters "-and " Full of
rose-water and bestrewed with flowers." The best passages of
the Induction however stand for and go far to attain the rhythm
of the Two Gentlemen of Verona. In the following quotation the
lively spirit and the tremulous faltering are in immediate opposition: -
" 2 Servt. Dost thou love pictures? we will fetch thee straight
Adonis painted by a running brook
And Cytherea all in sedges hid,
Which seem to move and wanton with the breath
Even as the waving sedges play with wind.
Lord. We'll show thee lo, as she was a maid,
And how she was beguiled and surprised,
As lively painted as the deed was done."




CRITICAIx ESSAY                    131
The scene of the old play is at Athens; but Shakespeare, in
adapting an Italian play for the underplot, transferred the scene to
an Italian seat of learning, Padua, with which the entire action
is in far better harmony. The accuracy with which he has caught
and transferred the local manners was, probably, simply due to the
intuition with which, in so many other cases, a few true characteristics enabled him to follow forth all their conditions and consequences. In the decrepit lover Gremio, he has reproduced the
proper pantaloon of the Italian stage, and the very term is once
applied to him, while Grumio is a representation of the more
boisterous buffoon.
Looking over the play at large it must be thought that the
leading subject is scarcely of a calibre to correspond with the
length of it, and, as in the Comedy of Errors, not only is blank
verse bestowed on matter scarcely worthy, but the theme (at
least as it is treated) seems more akin to farce than comedy. Part
of this weakness is no doubt due to the comparative tameness
and disparity of the underplot. This, the wooing of Bianca by
lovers in disguise and masquerading servants, is a characterless
tale of intrigue, and however successfully its incidents may be
interwoven with those of Petruchio's enterprise, this does not
overcome the essential discordance in tone and spirit. The tale
of Katharine and Petruchio stands in unsupported isolation, bold
spirited, lively and exciting in itself, and requiring doubtless
some more sober relief, but a relief not dependent on tameness or
mere difference of incident, but with contrasted geniality of characterization that would not only relieve but refresh. A masterpiece of such combination is the Comedy of Much Ado about
Nothing, but for this the time was not yet.
The contrast of the passive Hero with the vivacious Beatrice
is set forth in a manner to interest as well as amuse us; but there D
is something more of the epigrammatic than the comic in the1
smartty invented antithesis of the termagant Katharina, whop
accepts pretty readily the husband provided for her and becomes
a submissive wife, and the meek submissive Bianca, who with all'
her tranquillity of spirit helps herself to the husband that suits
her own fancy, and has her own will when she is married. There
is also something uncomfortable and ungallant in the direction of\
the chief current of ridicule upon the weakness of the sex he
realm of Comedy, to be agreeable, must be ruled by the milder
laws of the drawing-room, and be subject to the'same constitutional allowances, with whatever irony tempered, of the infallibility of the fair.
Apart, however, from considerations of plan and principle, nothing can be better in its way than the execution of the whole
story of the Taming. The general outline and also the tone of
execution are in the old play; but it is after all but anl arid
channel compared with the overwhelming flow of humour and




132        TAMING OF THE SHREW.
language that breaks along in a perfect outburst of exuberant
invention. When the play commences, Katharina appears instated in the character of a shrew, rough, peevish, petulant,
irritable, and therefore, however she obtained the character, in a
false position which aggravates itself. Her younger and milder
mannered sister is beset with suitors, and upon her she vents her
petulance in terms which show how far her continued single state
reacts upon the testiness that already deprives her of suitors, and
the mischief reproduces itself. To such a state of things Petruchio
was born to put an end; there is thus much sympathy between
the two at starting, that well provided married state is their
common object with secondary interest in the individual to be
chosen. The simple difficulty to be apprehended of cross purposes,
and repulsion at first encounter, is happily obviated by positive
determination to take and admit of nothing other than as desired;
and accordingly, after a scene of the strangest pertinacity, in which
Petruchio mingles a fair proportion of flattery with banter and
defiance, he makes such progress that my lady takes refuge in the
sulks, and with protesting grumblings and compliant gestures she
gives her hand when he asks it for the ceremonious betrothal,
nay without protesting or resisting so far gives a parting kiss
when he asks it that he takes it without ceremony and then she
withdraws silent, but by that very token not ill satisfied.
We may guess how far the pair are suited when we find her
still more disappointed than piqued when he is unheard of on the
day fixed for marriage. He arrives at last, and rough as he is
and rudely accoutred she marries him notwithstanding, and no
declared and obstinate opposition do we hear of until they are
surely tied. Then for the first time resistance openly appears;
she will stay for the bridal dinner will he or not, and now the
true conflict and the taming begins. The moral of the contest
proves merely this, that with equal spirit and determination on
either side, the balance of physical power, of muscular strength,
of capability of watching, of fasting, of enduring fatigue, so far preponderate on the side of the husband that the weaker sex has no
chance in a protracted opposition and must ultimately be wearied
and tired out. The matter however does not rest there; if we
might apply the moral of the tale generally, Shakespeare would
be an authority to back the adage:" A spaniel, a woman, and walnut tree,
The more you beat them the better they be."
Katharina at last does not remain in mere compelled obedience;
her very spirit is subdued to the quality of natural subordination.
With spaniel-like subservience she now turns on Hortensio's
widow, when she hints that Petruchio is not absolute, and at last
delivers a homily with no hint of insincerity, on the law of nature
as illustrative of feminine subjugation:



CRITICAL ESSAY.                    133
" Why are our bodies soft and weak and smooth
Unapt to toil and trouble in the world,
But that our soft conditions and our hearts
Should well agree with our external parts."
If this be the truth one may venture to ask whether it be quite
the whole truth; whether in the terms of the treaty by which the
matrimonial conflict gives place to capitulation and alliance, the
weaker sex does not come less favourably off than nature would
sanction, in consequence of unfair advantage of law and custom.
Be this however as it may, there is still more to be said, and without it the history of Katharina and Petruchio is as incomplete as
the anamorphosis of Christopher Sly. In that particular phase
of the battle of life, the married state, there are other powers and
influences employed than can be met by any power of fasting,
watching, and fatigue. The plaS y furni.sihjes no hint or adumbration of the,rocess and result in which the weaker c]iar'acfei ' t1...
upon the stronger In tnhe wedded stateie' comnpilyrng upon the
'obsfinate, themild upon the self-willed, the submissive iupoti the
self-onfi-dent or, let it be whispered, the teazing upon the terrifyr
ingounod asfor ill, tastes and habits,
associations and even most de nlte'purpo~es are fmodifi  d and 'evolutionized, and now the hour of dinner, and now religious
belief or at least religious behaviour take new adjustments; until
the minds and manners of the partners are as palpably blended
in themselves with variable balance either way, as in their offspring. Thus the exhibition in this play of the rights and the
powers of man remains onesided, and therefore unsatisfactoryan anecdote and not a proper action, not to be completed however
on such a scheme as Fletcher's Tamer Tamed, by marrying Petruchio to a second wife who could wield his own weapons. It is
just possible that the confession and consciousness of the requirement of a sequel may be contained in the last lines of the unbalanced composition we have considered:" Hortensio. Now go thy ways, thou hast tamed a curst shrew.
Lucentio. 'Tis a wonder by your leave she will be tamed so."
At any rate Sir John Harrington, Queen Elizabeth's "witty
god-son," with the old play before him in 1596, was not convinced
that the tale was at an end when he noted in his Metamorphosis
of Ajax: —Read the book of Taming;aShrew, whic ihaJWl4e
a number of si so perfect that now every one canrule a shrew in
our country, save he that hath hexr."'




I S
1I




CRITICAL ESSAY ON ALL'S WELL THAT
ENDS WELL.
S      NHE chief outline of the Story of All's Well that Ends
Well, came to Shakespeare from Boccaccio, through
the translation of Painter, who published the story of
Giletta of Narbona, in his Palace of Pleasure, in 1566.
The characters of the Countess, Lafeu, Parolles, and the clown,
and the incidents of the secondary story, are unknown to the
Italian novel; with regard to the leading action, we may discern
in the original certain vigorous lines and regulating points that
were respected by the dramatist, and influenced him both in what
he added and what he altered.
The story of the novel and the drama are to this extent identical: Giletta, or Helen, the orphan daughter of a physician of
great skill, is in love with Beltramo-Bertram, the youthful and
handsome heir of Rossiglione-Rousillon, in whose father's house
she has been brought up; Bertram, being under age and a ward
of the king, proceeds to Paris after his father's death, whither he
is followed by the maiden, who, by aid of a receipt of her father's,
cures the king of a dangerous disease for the stipulated recompense of a royal ward for her husband, and chooses Bertram.
Bertram is indignant, but gives way; he is married, but steals
off immediately afterwards to the Italian wars. Two gentlemen convey his determination to his wife to see her no more till
two supposed impossible conditions are fulfilled: upon this she
quits her home on the pretext of pilgrimages, and by the intrigue of the play fulfils the conditions, presents herself to her
husband with proof, and is received and cherished.
Giletta is wealthy-Helena is poor and a dependent, obviously
an improvement. With equal judgment Shakespeare suppresses
the circumstance that Gerard of Narbonne had been domiciled at
Rousillon to tend the sickly father of Bertram; the recent death
of both physician and patient would detract from faith in his receipt. The king of the novel is loath to grant Beltramo to his
preserver, but the unceremonious proceeding in the play is much




136    ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL.
more accordant with the unhesitating agreement to the plan
when first proposed. The military service of Beltramo is related
with no particular note of his distinguished gallantry, the redeeming quality of Bertram; on the other hand, the Beltramo is
spared the stain of Bertram in his proposed seduction of Diana
Capulet, and in the prevarication it leads him into. The popularity of Giletta on her husband's estate, which she governs in his
absence with rare wisdom, and the intercession of ladies in favour
of the wife at last, are the nearest approach to suggestions of the
affection of the Countess, and the admiration of Lafeu and the
king.
Giletta presents us with the lineaments of Helena in the combination of tone and warmth in her affections. Giletta " fervently
fell in love with Beltramo more than was meet for a maiden of
her age."  Beltramo is sent to Paris, "for whose departure the
maiden was very pensive."-" Now it chanced that she burned
more in love with Beltramo than ever she did before, because she
heard tell that he was grown to the state of a goodly young
gentleman":"'Twas pretty though 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."
The personal beauty of Bertram is far more constantly set forth
than is usual with Shakespeare-" Is't not a handsome gentleman? " is the testimony of Diana Capulet, and this seems the
meaning of Lafeu's rejoinder to the king on the entrance of Bertram, " He looks well on't;" and the king himself:" Youth thou bear'st thy father's face,
Frank nature, rather curious than in haste,
Hath well composed thee. Thy father's moral parts
May'st thou inherit too."
There is the. same thought in the benediction of the Countess:" Be thou bless'd, Bertram! and succeed thy father
In manners as in shape."
So it is; the beauty of the boy count engages the passionate admiration of Helena, who, far his superior in all moral qualities,
idolizes his image, and correctly characterizes her devotion as
idolatry, the submission of the living to the dead, though she
suspects not her own aptness:" Thus, Indian-like,
Religious in my error, I adore
The sun that looks upon his worshipper,
But knows of him no more."-Act i. Sc. 3.
" But now he's gone, and my idolatrous fancy
Must sanctify his relics."-Act i. Sc. 1.
The spirit of perseverance, self-reliance, and intelligence that




CRITICAL ESSAY.


137


are associated with this passion are common to drama and tale
by the identity of incident, but the tale supplied characteristics
when its incidents were rejected, and we readily give Helena
credit for the capabilities of Giletta, who, " perceiving that through
the count's absence all things were spoiled and out of order, she
like a sage lady with great diligence and care, disposed all things
in order again."
There is far more original development in the character of
Bertram, but the suggestive hint is still found in the tale. The
action of the play at large is due to the conduct of Bertram when
his marriage is proposed; what are the characteristics of mind
implied in his yielding to the anger of the king and marrying
Helena notwithstanding his disdainful repugnance, and in then
having spirit enough to brave the king's anger by stealing away
to the wars, though he had not enough the moment before to
persist in his determination? Such conduct implies mental tendencies and circumstances co-operant which are not accounted
for in the novel, but which the play supplies. Shakespeare took
the incident bare and unfurnished as it stands, associated with it
the circumstances required to render it consistent with nature,
and supported it by an exhibition of a series of consequences
from the causes it implied.
In the play Bertram's determination to steal away is made
before there is any question of his marriage, and he already declares his vexation at being detained at court, "the forehorse to
a smock," till honour be bought up, and Parolles, vapouring and
plausible, is provided to help on his suggestions and ease him of
scruples slender at best. The command to be married forthwith
as it comes most unceremoniously from the king, whose egotism
finds sufficient reason in his own convenience," Know'st thou not, Bertram, what she has done for me?"
comes therefore also most inopportunely; another bond is laid upon
a prisoner burning to be free from ties far slighter. Impatient
for honour he is constrained to idleness and to marriage, odious to
him in any form, and still more so when it outraged his pride of
noble blood. Outspoken enough in his first refusal, Bertram yields
— not to the lecture on the nobility of merit as contrasted with
that of blood, but to the king's threat of severe and instant displeasure in terms implying the privation of the chances of distinction he is so disposed to value:" Or I will throw thee from my care for ever
Into the staggers, and the careless lapse
Of youth and ignorance; both my revenge and hate
Loosing upon thee, &c."
Thus urged, the double weakness of his character appears,first in giving way to a threat, and then in the facile employment
of a certain glozing glibness in the terms of his recantation, betraying a deep deficiency of innate truthftilness and hardy self



138 ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL.
respect. The consent is a concession to immediate pressure, and
on the first escape from this, his earlier project is embraced; and,
with Parolles to aid and abet, he makes off from his neglected
bride for the Tuscan wars.
The Bertram of this scene is evidently the same young nobleman who pursues with promises of unlimited profusion the honour
of Diana Capulet, and who to extricate himself from a difficulty, invents and pours forth one lie after another with a volubility of
tongue almost gratuitous, and with every charitable allowance for
his embarrassment, sufficiently repulsive.
The comparison of the novel, which was his source, shows how
deliberately Shakespeare darkened the shades of the character of
Bertram, till in truth he leaves him no claim upon our interest
but the gallantry for which credit is given him as a soldier, and
ardour in pursuit of active distinction. But beyond this, there
lie the presumptions in his favour derived from the affection he
has inspired in Helena,-though it is much if this escapes lowering Helena rather than elevating Bertram-and then the claim
upon indulgence on the ground of large possessions and nobility
of birth.
Lofty position has its special temptations, and it is well if it be
not allowed too liberally its special indulgences. It is the way
of the world to extend the interpretation of morals in favour of
the noble, wealthy, youthful, and handsome, and this form of
adulation above all others encourages and confirms the germs of
egotism which probably nothing but shame the most humiliating
can ever perfectly cure. In Bertram the pride of race disowns
and disregards the gifts and nobilities of nature, yet he overrates
the worth of the lowest born Parolles, who has crept into favour
by assentation; he places himself above all regard either to
delicacy or honour in pursuit of gratification at the expense of
the happiness of others, and makes hollow professions to high
and low unscrupulously, when an annoyance is to be averted or
an advantage gained. Those who appreciate the weakness and
baseness of his conduct most clearly, stand cap in hand respectfully as he goes by, and in comment among themselves palliate
too much by generalization on the weakness of human nature,
and find on such an argument that even vice has its advantages
-to whip our virtues into humility.
Such is the tendency of feudalism, and struck with its effects,
men in the middle ages and even later wrote romances to assert
the primal claims of nobility of nature, but seldom rose higher
than to range it with the factitious nobility of society, and
Griselda, who has no nobility but that of nature, is held sufficiently rewarded by acceptation with those who lack every nobility but what must be inherited. To what point reaches the
moral of All's Well that Ends Well? The charming character of
the old Countess exhibits the most refined and elevated sense of
the dignity of goodness:



CRITICAL      ESSAY.                139
"Be thou blessed, Bertram! and succeed thy father
In manners as in shape! thy blood and virtue
Contend for empire in thee; and thy goodness
Share with thy birthright!"
In noble sentences the king discourses to Bertram on the superior
perfections of the obscure Helena:" From lowest place when virtuous things proceed, &c."
On what ear this falls is found in the answer; not by appreciation
of true worth does Bertram profess to be convinced-but:" When I consider
What great creation and what dole of honour
Flies where you bid it, I find that she, which late
Was in my nobler thoughts most base, is now
The praised of the king."
It was not the court that had corrupted Bertram-such pride
is born of circumstance; in the first scene he twice diverts the
conversation when from its course it was natural that the fair
Helena should be referred to or take part in it, and his good
wishes at parting are worded with chilling coldness, accompanied
by an allusion to her position supercilious enough.
Parolles is a counterfoil of Helena, inasmuch as like her he is
ambitious of consorting with a higher rank, but unlike her is
destitute of claims to honour of any kind. Lafeu characterizes
him as an empty upstart, with a distinction worthy the admirer of
Helena: " You are more saucy with lords and honourable personages than the commission of your birth and (note the annexation) virtue gives you heraldry."
The mistake of Bertram, in his estimation of Parolles, is counterpart of his disregard and disdain for Helena, and one error
promotes the other, as the vapouring scoundrel is chargeable with
some part of the Count's misconduct by encouragement and suggestion. While one error lasts, the other has little chance of
being recognized; and it is shrewdly remarked, in the conversation of the Lords, that the wronged wife would have a better
chance of justice, when her husband should be taught, in the exposure of Parolles, to be mistrustful of his sagacity of character.
" I would gladly have him see his company anatomized; that he
might take a measure of his own judgments, wherein so curiously
he had set this counterfeit."
But from another point of view Parolles is a counterfoil, if we
should not rather say a counterpart, of Bertram himself. It almost seems as if the conception of the bescarfed poltroon were invented to follow up the contrast with Bertram, the handsome but
false, whose " moral parts" are far from being, as the King would
have them, in agreement with his prepossessing outside. The
weak point of Parolles, in respect to personal courage, places him
in contrast so distinct to the soldier-like Bertram, that the latter
escapes some of the disgrace of correspondence on other points




140 ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL.
with his worthless protege, who is not only " a most notable
coward, but an infinite and endless liar, an hourly promisebreaker, the owner of no one good quality worth your Lordship's
entertainment."
It is the completion of the humiliation of Bertram, that the
follower he had exposed and laughed at is brought in as a witness against him, for misconduct we can hardly say less degrading;
and Parolles with his petition to his arch-enemy Lafeu, " It lies
in you, my lord, to bring me in some grace, for you did bring me
out," is really provocative of comparison with Bertram crying for
pardon to Helena.
The name of Parolles is, of course, allusive to wordiness; it is
played upon indeed in this sense, 'and he is called " the armipotent linguist. The command of tongue that justifies his name,
is wonderfully reconciled with his being, though not solely as he
is a coward, but" a great part," fool. It is very satisfactory to observe how Lafeu, the old courtier, who has all the principle, and
experience, and consideration that the youthful Bertram lacks, is
disgusted with Parolles, but tolerates, not to say enjoys with
gusto, the gossiping pleasantry of the idle clown.
All's Well that Ends Well makes its appearance first in the
folio; but it is that one of Shakespeare's plays that, by its subject, suits best with the title of Love's Labour's Won given in
Meres' list, and it has many marks of having been, in one form
or other, an early work.
One of these signs is the frequency of rhymed couplets, not only
at the termination but in the body of speeches as well as of
scenes; but a sign more important is the general character, by
reason of which the play, notwithstanding considerable elaboration and technical finish, still drops in rank to a second stage, and
is among the less delightful productions of the master. Of these
it has, in common with Measure for Measure, the incident of the
substituted bride, an intelligent but somewhat arbitrary and ever
fantastic monarch, and prolonged prose scenes. With the Two
Gentlemen of Verona, we may perhaps say with Measure for Measure equally, it has in common the continued sacrifice of the chief
male character, up to the verylast scene and almost its last moment,
and the oppressive demand upon interest in the fate of a perjured
or a cold natured lover, for the better sake of an enamoured mistress. Such affection doubtless is in nature, but it is far from
being the most agreeable to contemplate; affection in such forms
verges on infatuation, and when fickleness and superciliousness
are rewarded with the treasure, what remains for those qualities
that are of higher desert?
All's Well that Ends Well is, then, among Shakespeare's less
genial plays, and a sincere confession would declare that many a
reader admired it with some degree of effort, and read it in less
frequently recurring turn with some self-approval on the score of




CRITICAL ESSAY.                      141
resolution; even commentators are disposed to retreat from enthusiasm to defence, not to say apology, and the most staunch
defenders of its faith are happy to take refuge in authority or a
phrase.
Yet does the play, strange to say, abound with, it is even pervaded by, the fruits of the very ripeness of Shakespeare's intellect. It contains sentences that are of the very purest ore of his
wisdom, scenes even that stream down with his most racy English. Is it possible that the change of its title from Love's Labour's Won to All's Well that Ends Well, was made when the
juvenile performance received in later years all the refinement it
was capable or thought worthy of? I think I have suggested before, that the so rarely clean copy which the editors of the first
folio vaunt, in proof of Shakespeare's ease of composition, was revised MSS. for a collected edition; that Shakespeare never blotted or revised is a thing disproved, and through such revision it
may have occurred that some of the earliest plays in original
date,-All's Well that Ends Well among them, received a portion
of the very latest poetry that fell from Shakespeare's pen.




Af                          I I




CRITICAL ESSAY ON TWELFTH NIGHT.
IOLA, fair and youthful, separated, she fears for ever,
fi 'om her twin-brother Sebastian in a shipnwreck, is
cast on thle coast of Illyria, and assuming the cosIt is just intimated that the reputation of the Duke may already
have so far touched her fancy, as to have made it one motive of
her disguise to approach nearer to him. She is speedily in high
favour, and as speedily enamoured of her master; but his discourses of love ihave the Lady Olivia for their theme, and to her
he dispatches Viola as an envoy. Loyally she performs her embassy, not without a reflection on the complication of her position, but never hinting at, never dreaming of, a thought to play
false with the coimmission by retarding the suit, or by raising a
prejudice where she is sent to contiiliate love.:I the same still
spirit of candlour antd rectiitule she feels pity for Olivia when entangled in a passion forl herself, not unfeeling amusement, and
not selfish lmalice at an additional obstacle to the passion of the
Duke. For her own fite her winning maniers, reflective sentinent, and serene imagination, find their way, a way of their own,
to his heart, and she seemis content to trust to the bias of nature
for the renainder; anid at the most iiidulges in expressions which;
should discovery arrive, must, whether she anticipates the result
or not, expose to view the condition of her own affections. But
her disguise has other consequences besides her day-dream of
languishing enthusiasmi, tand though iher light pinnace is buoyant
on the billows, it is grievously tossed and shaken when she has to
abide collision with the boisterous characters of the comic portion of the play.
While Viola is trusting to, or hoping in, time and impression
and the force of genuine sympathy to find a place in the heart of
her lord, when all accidents consent, and while Olivia in passionate self-abandonment is wooing she knows not what, roguish
conspirators are taking advantage of the self-conceit of a churlish
steward, to possess him with a dream of greatness, and lure him
into a monstrous self-exhibition, under the notion that he is be



144


TWELFTH NIGHT.


loved by his mistress. Not however entirely unavenged; Sir Andrew Aguecheek, one of his betrayers, is made a cat's-paw oi a
wooer by Sir Toby and trips up over the heels of his own fatuous vanity as grossly as Malvolio; while Maria, patient and bhoqpefu as Viola, but more active in her strategy accordig to her
nature and circumstances, lays siege to Sir Toby, who is fairly
taken off his legs at last, after laughing his fill at Viola. Mrlvolio, and Sir Andrew, and captured, in all openness of hacirt by
mere congeniality of jest, by his niece's chambermaid.
Viola and Sir Andrew, cowards both, by right of sex or privilege of carpet knighthood, yet each believing the other a very
devil by backing up and suggestion of mischievous comrades,
form a group which comprises the very essence and substance of
the laughable; and it is a companion picture to Olivia looking
with eyes of wonder on Malvolio, who misapprehends her as much
as he does himself.
It is in the last scene that all the embarrassments cross and
culminate; here the circuit is completed, and the shock and discharge of general explanation restores all to happy equilibrium.
Time and favourable chance bring all round happily and easily,
for all we are interested in, and only allow difficulties to become
painful at the moment of indicating the way of escape. In this
last scene, then, Viola is first exposed to the bitter charge of her
brother's friend Antonio challenging recognition, then to that of
the Duke for supplanting him with Olivia, then to the complaints
of Olivia for beguiling her, followed by the exclamation of all
when the priest confirms the statement, and, lastly, by the incredible accusation of Sir Andrew and Sir Toby of breaking their
heads; and all these complicated knots thus brought into one
space are cleared and divided at once by the simple entrance of
Sebastian, to claim the faith which Olivia had pledged to him
in happy mistake for his sister. The vagaries of Malvolio are as
easily explained, and the spring of the dramatic action has then
fairly run down.
Before proceeding further, be thus much premised on the title
of the comedy of Twelfth Night.
On Egyptian monuments we still see depicted the celebration
of the discovery and re-appearance of Osiris, and the fixed anniversary of this was taken possession of in the Eastern Church to
commemorate the revelation of Jesus to John the Baptist by the
descent of the dove, and in the Western for the Epiphany or Manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles, as represented in the starguided Magi. In the middle ages the Magi became kings, Caspar,
Melchior, Balthasar; and hence, by various descent, derived the
custom of selecting a king and queen by lot, with attendant court,
and drawing characters, as the peculiar amusement of -Twelfth
Night. The time is one of merriment, the more decided from
being the proper close of the festivities of Christmas, and gaminw


I




CRITICAL ESSAY.


145


of chance were traditionally rife, and the sport of sudden and casual elevation gave the tone of the time. Of like tone is the
play, and to this apparently it owes its title. The sudden fortune of Viola and Sebastian, the disguises, and discoveries, and
alternations of character agree. The prizes of the play are given
by fortune. Sebastian lights by merest hap upon fortune, and a
wife who is more than riches, and fortune befriends Olivia little
less than Sebastian; Viola the page becomes in an instant " Orsino's mistress, and his fancy's queen," and we may even descend
to note that Maria has her windfall in Sir Tobv. Others are in
inferior luck, and are as ill satisfied; Sir Andrew is quit for a
broken coxconb and a few words of plain truth from a false ally,
but Malvolio drains the last dregs of foiled cupidity and selfconceit. " Fortune forbid my outside have not charmed her! "
says Viola, and her conclusion is merely" 0 time, thou must untangle this, not I,
It is too hard a knot for me to untie!"
And to the like effect is the exclamation of Olivia" Fate, show thy force, ourselves we do not owe,
What is decreed must be, and be this so."
" lis lbut fortune. all i fortune," istJeorv M  ia, a  nd
hoE-uiucchltruth there is in his  w a pears wen  basti  has
fortune so liberally thrust upon him.  ut  estin  i   lay
isnto represent a certain natural anmty between thei   orti le and the m  al characterist^s-f the rec ent  y wcl
wat is happy and easy is drawn, by spont eous attraction, towards the disposition that deserves, can use and appreciate it.
Thi-e topf forttune's wheel has a balance of chance in.,faaur of
the simple, guileless patient, candid, and compassionate. It is
pleasant to dream, as we may in a ciii~i y, of so genial a compromise of Nemesis, by which the gifts of fortune and the aptitudes of nature spring forward to meet each other and kiss in
harmony. In tragedy, as in tragic events, the end comes by disposition and character wresting and dragging down their proper
fate and fortunes. Yet the contrast is rather in the elements and
the end, than in their course; far too often the force of merest
accident seems to be determined by as direct propensity in the
development of evil passions as of good, and the single temptation drops precisely in the path of him who would be singly
tempted by it. Happier influences, the good angels of the dreaming, watch over the more happily constituted, or we indulge ourselves to think so, and Viola and Sebastian drive over the waves
of their misfortunes as safely and surely as they were saved from
the splitting or foundering ship. Olivia is on the brink of the
very vexation that stings the poor fool her steward, "Ah me,
detested! how am I beguiled!" but she is borne, as if from the
edge of a precipice, by lifting and salutary airs. Antonio and
the Duke both likewise touch the edge of the gall-dropt cup of
L




146              TWELFTH NIGHT.
love and friendship unrequited, but only in either case to be prepared to enjoy the revulsion to delight in recognizing truth and
not duplicity, and lovely congeniality in place of apprehended indifference and oblivion.
Good fortune does not alight on Sebastian himself more unsolicited and unmanaged than on Viola. After her firsgexertion
of willn assuming male dress,Pan& is       d rceai ~,.tfe
Duke, she can no more than Rosalind, though in a more pensi e
spirit, deny herself the luxury of uttering her passion when secure
that her expressions cannot be applied; but otherwise the loss of
a brother rests on her heart as on Olivia's, and she has not yet
recovered courage to attempt to steer her fate. She is simply
face to face with Grief, and conquers it by being able to tranquilly
smile at it. She does ereJi nba age to Olivia  t    h diretnsfiatn   itasakthe nconseq e.e             r loyalty.
She sees quickly a probability that she is mistaken for er prother, yet she leaves this too for the course of events to bring to
light; and even when the hasty speech of the Duke seems to
threaten her destruction, she turns to meet her fate "jocund, apt,
and willingly."  Her conduct throughout is consistent with the
fcatgaer, for which the type and key-note was given by the
conIditions of the embassy. Had her nature been more active,
less contemplative, and less conscientious, she could not have
undertaken to intercede with her rival, without making some use
of her position to influence her own fortunes, and vet in what
direction could she urge them, consistently with delicacy and
honour? A stronger character would have been far more embarrassed; and thus the position creates the necessity for the only
combination of feminine qualities, that could be placed in it without disagreeable difficulty and without degradation. It is with
lie tnc itical, though not unwondering, acquiescence that Selbastian receives his good fortune; and it is the naturalness of
this, as a point of twin likeness, that reconciles us to it, and thus
saves him from any appearance of dullness on the one hand, or
duplicity on the other.
With teneness o a chc the onfiding tenderness of iola's character, there is
combined a tranquil reflectiveness that rescues it from weakness,
and is very engaging. Thus, in her first scene" There is a fair behaviour in thee, Captain,
And though that nature, with a beauteous wall,
Doth oft close in pollution,-yet of thee...."
Again, when she perceives the direction of Olivia's infatuationc" Disguise, I see thou art a wickedness,
Wherein the pregnant enemy doth much."
This touching self-accusation, the very key of the character, has




CRITICAL ESSAY.


147


been, I am sorry to say, left out when I have seen the play profaned upon the stage, to give the actress a false and foolish point
in a strut of exultation and a tapping of the cap, at the words " I
am the man.-"
The same fine spirit breathes through the lines" I hate ingratitude more in a man
Than lying, vainness, babbling, drunkenness,
Or any taint of vice whose strong corruption
Inhabits our frail blood."
Viola loves tenderl      e gt unwooed, but this sobriety of
t hoig  relleves her from any tinge obevity. Olivia is like her
in both regards; and though more wilful, as her own mistress, we
see enough of her, in the scene before the entrance of Viola, to
be assured of her steadfast and. valuable disposition.
Nothing less than the refinement and beauty with which this
pair are depicted, could so far rivet our interest and attention to
the sentimental portions of the play, as to enable them to make
head against and countervail an overwhelming influence in the
riotous fun and exuberant animal spirits of the secondary plot;
nothing less would have kept this down in secondary place, both
from the richness of its subject matter, and the diffuseness that is
permitted to it.
The manner in which the delicate little figure of Viola, the
false boy page, gets involved and entangled among the mischievous pranks of this subordinate group is highly diverting, and the
exhibition was due to the world from Shakespeare. He who had
already depicted with such geniality the disguises of Julia, Rosalind, Portia, and Imogen, owed the world yet this play. Without it the full amusement and interest derivable from the situation
he so much delighted in, and had portrayed at once with such
vivacitv and such modesty, remained imperfectly expressed. The
masquerading damsel in all her changes had yet escaped the
most perplexing, the most ludicrously embarrassing situations,
but the time came at last, and in the play of Twelfth Night.
The disguise of Rosalind leads, it i; true, to the same false positions as that of Viola, but in the latter case the difficulties are
more exaggerated, to harmonize with the uproarious spirit of fun
introduced into the piece. If Rosalind is wooed by Phebe, so is
Viola, but still more importunately, by Olivia; and the more
markedly, that Olivia is no country girl, but a countess. If Rosalind finds her doublet and hose in the way of the promotion of
her own love interest, still more so Viola, who has to thank them
for making her an envoy to her rival to her own prejudice; and
if Rosalind is unable to bear herself manly when the blood-stained
napkin is exhibited, Viola is indeed in a difficulty when hedged
in before and behind,-an antelope in toils that would hamper a
bear, she is called upon to strip her sword stark naked and defend herself.




148             TWELFTH NIGHT.
There is an amusing retribution in the sequence of the scenes,
when Viola having just brought a lady, however unintentionally,
into a vain passion for a fictitious manhood, finds herself called
upon immediately after to undertake manhood's serious responsibilities.
i The bus   nventive ener,te mischievousn.eso ' T     d
his ases, contrast as strongl y.  Lqmusing fancies ofDke
conr as     s e as stron.9iY-eS  ip, atatheir iSt s ifvqstering songs wlth  refned music
and sBentise4.ataia.t. st- l;'t e  very soul off    situde in his court. The two groups t'lend 'tleir tones in the
mingled sentiment and vehemence of the passion of Olivia, and
intellectually they are reflected brightly and clearly from the
mind of Feste the jester.
/     _ Tle Clow.in this play, who, I am inclined.,iln,,.skould.'be.ariame         ugh a by      as goodj a Touchstone, is j: remarkable creation, and very essential to the knitting a,,c.lc ei rence.of. the general play. Hia. musical taTi i O's m diveri| fiqd_,giesas. eadily andywith,e          the tender            1
song suited to the dreamy and poetical being of the Duke or the
noisy catc  i  E     tl$.ta   ftters and callsupNJalvol o  mldniglit. Thus catholic in.hia artistic range he has a not less wide
A  i inTlet U   ope.,,He.p-lumbs 'the depth accurateliyof his mis\t     /    tress's exhausted,,Srrow, penetrates the destiny f Maria ani dir
}       ' Toys weak pie mater, holds up a mirror to the opale's  umours.     ie.Duke d7and  ies emarkably goodgcre oaf.is own
economical resources, by asking on every occasion when lie is
safe to obtain,-yet free from slyness withal, genial and enjoyable, as he is free of speech. Still, apart from a certain degree
' of loyalty to his mistress, he-knows the worldtoa-well,-this it is
-c be wise and to suffer for it, to remain very long in society of
the same tone, orto, ftel wch. symp.athy.fr,any dyo rIsy etqu eln..:h i.x tarn. With no great interest in the
practical jests and bear-baitings that are rife around him, he does
not refuse, however, to gratify his pique of profession, by lending
a helping hand in duping the churlish steward.
Malvolio's name expresses his ill-conditioned nature. Olivia
interprets rightly his crabbed criticism of the Clown when acquitting himself of his functions very creditably, and for her
state of mind usefully. " Youaresal iof self-love," she tells
him, when he allows himself to be put out of temper by the not
unprovoked retort of the allowed fool. She holds up before him
so clear a mirror of his weakness-" There is no railing in a known
discreet man, though he do nothing but reprove," is castigation
of his railing reproof, and impeachment of his notorious indiscretion, that it is monstrous in him to imagine thereafter that he is
enthroned in her fantasy as a demi-god. -
So engrossing, indeed, is his self-love, that there seems to be
even a touch of jealousy in his attack on the Clown; and he




CRITICAL ESSAY.


149


thinks in his profoundness that he could combine functions, that
have been united ere now, of fool and chamberlain, for nothing
less appears in his attempt at fooling and word-corrupting, at wit
and word-catching, in announcing and describing the Duke's
young messenger.
Surely it is gross vanity and foolery, at best, for a man to bel. ie.      idoled   aiid yet such; belief seems implied in the
happy enthusiasm of confiding passion, and is not, therefore, the
most romantic and best requited lover subjectively in the same  l
position as Malvolio? The difference, however, lies near enough  /
when we seek it, and is definite enough to console the rashest. /
Had Malvolio been really loved-to suppose such a thing possible-he would have been scarcely less ridiculous, for his laughable weakness resides in his egotism; and a lover or a suitor who
is engrossed not with Jis own love for histes, but wth the
— h-utt a e l wirob  itn
anpcase. The9ludicrousness, of course,. i-enhanced. rhen. the
supposed infatuati.i is witliout all conceiva e aapsibiiity4 but  ",t
the enhancement o frm  is ur ethris urce islight,.in proportion to the,
origina absurdity. Thus the prompting of single-hearted, and
usualIy most successful, passion in a lover is not in the first instance to captivate, to make his mistress love him, but to convince
her that he truly desires and worships her with such simplicity
and faith that argue a sympathy of nature and a necessary dis-  /
position, an innate capacity and direction of her nature to respond.
" The power of beauty, I remember yet! " and thus may the sanguine of the flowery path of life be comforted, thus they will hope
to wear love's rose untainted by the slimy trail of absurdity. Selfsacrifice entire, and so entire as to be unconscious, is the pledge
and seal of sincerity, and of thriving, too, where to thrive is to
be fortunate. Malvolio, the count, promises unbecoming reminiscence of Malvolio, the steward; and Olivia, " left in a day-bed
sleeping," is forgotten for the enjoyment of the branched gown,
the state, the rich jewel, and the opportunity of being surly with
servants, and snubbing his old enemy, and now his kinsman,
Tobv.
Thus we admit and acquiesce in the cool confidence of being
loved, which is justified and founded on a nature and adornments
truly loving and loveable, but rypj.t,;Qm a vainQ _iaoejaot
simrply as an errorii dngment but as a monstrous miscreation,
— a   oral an material coiiunFers  ~t~tseems ars  tthat
love t-at is liodcr6~iisiiever true love, that love unrequited is
by the result condemned, that victory alone justifies an enterprise
and certainly crowns desert alone. Failure, however, argues fault
or flaw, or deficiency somewhere; and hopes disappointed, or yet
in jeopardy, will plead that a lapse may in favourable instances
be ascribed to the imperfect and irregular status of a slowly
developing world, wherein no portion can be quite in harmony




150              TWELFTH NIGHT.
while a single discord is unresolved elsewhere,-a world it is
wherein nothing will come exactly right,-at least at present.
But we are not driven to refinements in the case of Malvoliohe is the ass of the apologue thrusting a bunch of thistles in his
owner's face in emulation of complimentary nosegays from other
petitioners, or attempting fawning gambols that are acceptable
and amusing only with the condition of a graceful devotee.
In Charles the First's copy of the second folio, which it appears
is preserved at Windsor Castle, the title of Twelfth Night is
altered in his own handwriting to "Malvolio." The change implies a rather strange misconception of the leading interest and
central beauty of the play, but in other respects the importance
of the character of the gulled steward to defining and brightening the general effect can scarcely be over-estimated. The twin
passions of the disguised page Viola for her master, and of Olivia
for the seeming servant Viola or Sebastian, derive at once illustration and apology from the contrast, and all the ridiculous
aspects of such adventurous outbreaks over the pale of rank or
circumstance are exhausted in the fool's paradise, wherein Malvolio
walks complacent and alone. Malvolio is right enough in his
hypothetical solution of the false position of Olivia relatively to her
youth, beauty and fortune, the suit of the Duke and her waning
melancholy,-he only errs egregiously in the qualifications of the
hero of the release. The object of Olivia's love is as mere a
phantasm as that of Malvolio, but with her passion is truly love,
not self-love, and nature draws to her bias and corrects chance by
good chance at last. And the great contrast of the entire play
lie between Malvolio, griniing and cross-gartered before Olivia,
and Violafe h      her dissemblature,  as g     deetruthulnfiess of woman's heart tIo..LtJ Z..
Olivia has three suitors, The Duke, Malvolio, and Sir Andrew
Ague-cheek. Malvolio;ooes prompted and wrapt up in absurd
9-i-.. -                  --— "-se a
presumption and sela-'conceitiand  hrusts hlimselT annobynglv and
lauffhaBrIy-E ifimrFan ge of her susrise an Tlndangtion. The
Duk e      wooes y proxi y  raphle in a dream of passion, and entertaining it to heighten contemplative 4elmau i n, aInd th e  Qciations
of poetrv mu~lcsong sweet airs dand oours, andslmpathetie
conversation.  A lover more impassioned would have wooed as
Viola suggests in personal attempt, nay residence at her very
gate, and with such importunate persistence as gained for Viola
entrance and almost her suit. The__u ke muses and dwells on
the ideal prfetin              M alil  nivoliowo rsipt   oncelptio,- "nso.n.  As to Sir Andrew Ague-cheek, his zea in
wooings sentireiyb  to  tX3Q    pulslo  je Uioes-not address
a wor{.to. QOiia fromgbeggin.ngto fiend,; he det 'ermi tijo.retire
or perere   aslA'e i jluence he..iuBuectea to rallies or falls.
His vanity and self-conceit are as ii -nate i a.i".
the direnenitlrat itn- m thni se qualities require the excitement




CRITICAL ESSAY.


151


of sustained encouragement and flattery to become and continue
ac.tive. This supplied, he adopts any scheme of recommending
imlself that is proposed to him, and thus both knight and steward
are enmeshed by the same rogues in the same net, and amusing
it is to see one of the victims shaking his empty head out of the
box-tree at the other. Viola, travestied in male attire in the
presence of him she would win, and fain to talk in covert enigmas,
is a picture of delicacy and refinement at disadvantage, that is
strained into the ridiculous when the vain but otherwise intelligent Malvolio talks, gasping in yellow stockings, unintelligible
riddles to his mistress, and when the equally vain but fatuous Sir
Andrew gives up policy to found his love fortunes on valour.
The speedy passion of Oliviai for Viola receives much relief andr.
justification from the ensuing scene, where we find the twin-brother Sebastian to have conciliated as unconsciously as effectually
the affectionate friendship of the generous nature of Antonio. This
scene interests us in Sebastian on his own account, but even more,
by indicating the sympathy of his nature with that of Viola,-it
prepares us to witness and take pleasure in his accidental succession to her favour with Olivia. There is also another common
trait which in this respect is far from unimportant Viola in the
first scene,-her shipwreck notwithstanding, and from funds
which we do not impeach poetical omnipotence by inquiring into,
pays the captain bounteously for cheering hopes, "for saying so
there's gold."  The incident has its use in removing from her
from the first the unpleasant associations of necessity, and leaving
us at ease in the freedom of her actions and inclinations; but it
also enables us to recognize in the "open hand" of Sebastian,
when he gives money to the troublesome clown, the expression
of twin disposition with his sister.
The leading incidents of the play of Twelfth Night had been
combined into a story many times before they happily fell into
the hands of Shakespeare; but among the various versions of the
tale that have come down to us or have been discovered by the
zeal of antiquaries, we cannot fix upon one which bears positive
marks of having been principally used by Shakespeare, or perhaps
of having been in his hands at all. Still there is much to interest
in examining the earlier forms of the tale, whether that form which
is the true link with the play be among them or not.
The Italian Bandello in thie 36th novel of his second part told
a tale of twins, of whom the brother Paolo was lost by his family,.and the sister Nicuola, with the aid of a relation, assumes boy's
dress and the name Romulo, and engages as page with a former
lover, Lattantio, who had ungratefully forgotten her. Thus disguised she is employed in bearing Lattantio's love messages to
Catella who rejects them, but only to become enamoured of the
messenger; and her brother Paolo inherits the passion by mistake, and takes willing and speedy advantage of the good fortune




152


TWELFTH NIGHT.


he cannot account for. The refinement which is the germ of the
character of Viola does not appear in the novel. Nicuola encourages the advances of Catella, and has a scheme to provoke
her to break off finally with Lattantio by discovering to her her
own sex. Catella again is so far from considering her dignity
like Olivia when she enquires of Cesario his parentage, that she
at once exclaims-" lo non ricerco chi tu ti sia, ne se povero
o ricco sei, ne di qual sangue nata:"" What shall you ask of me that I'll deny
That honour, saved, may upon asking give?"
are the words of Olivia, o'erswayed by what she calls her headstrong potent fault, but no saving restrictions check the course
of Catella more than that of the rest of the heroines, whose proceedings Bandello dedicates to one noble Italian lady after another
with such amazing serenity. Apart from mere incident the most
remarkable passage in the novel in reference to the play is where
Romulo turns the conversation to the subject of her master's
falsehood to a previous love, and probes his conscience for past
ill faith with reflections like those of Viola, when she is referring
to her own concealed feelings. "Chi se che quella bellissima
fanciulla anchor non v'ami, e viva per vol in pessima cortentezza;
conciosia cosa che io molte volte ho sentito dire, che le Fanciulle
ne i lor primi amori, amano assai pia teneramente e con maggior
fervore che non sanno gli huomini." Even the conclusions of the
two conversations agree; Orsino breaks off at the mention of
Olivia-" Ay, that's the theme," as Lattantio, " Ma torniamo a
parlar di questa ladrona di Catella."
Bandello's work dates 1554; in 1572 a French version of this
novel, somewhat abridged both in conversations and incidents,
was included in the collection of Belleforest; how exactly it may
have transferred the scheme of discourse just adverted to I am
not aware and am a little curious, as it seems that Shakespeare
did not obtain it from any of the other conjectured possible sources
of his plot. These are two Italian plays and a story by Barnaby
Rich. A memorandum in a diary of a member of the Middle
Temple, in the British Museum, discovered by Mr. Collier, runs
to this effect:-" Feby. 2, 1601 (2). At our feast we had a play
called Twelfth Night, or What You Will, much like the Comedy
of Errors, or Menechmi in Plautus; but most like and near to
that in Italian, called Inganni. A good practise in it to make
the steward believe, &c."-and so following with details that
identify the play of Shakespeare.
The play Gl'Inganni has since been traced, but though derived
from Bandello's story, varies from it widely and even yet more
widely from Twelfth Night. Another play Gl'Ingannati is nearer
to both, but so far as can be judged from abstracts and extracts-(the Shakespeare society do not appear to have yet redeemed their promise to supply us with reprints of these plays)




CRITICAL       ESSAY.                153
the footsteps of our poet are not to be tracked in this direction
either. The case I think is somewhat different with Barnabv
Rich. This worthy was brought up a soldier, but became an
author voluminous and various, and between the years 1578 and
1581 published his Farewell to the military profession, containing
among others a novel entitled Apolonius and Silla. As r'gards
mere story, Shakespeare follows Bandello as closely as Rich, arl
we must assume had access to Bandello or some other closer
versions of the tale, as Rich would no more than the Italian
plays have helped him to the coincidences of the scene we have
remarked upon. But there are other obligations more important,
and among them this is chief; the first hint of the spirit in which
Viola performs her mission and receives the first indications of
the passion of Olivia. AIpolonius, who is in the place of the
Duke of the play, despatches Silla, as his page, on love messages
to the lady Julina,-" Now gentlewomen, pursues the confident
narrator, do you think there could have been a greater torment
devised wherewith to afflict the heart of Silla than herself to be
made the instrument to work her own mishap, and to play the
attorney in a cause that made so much against herself. But
Silla, altogether desirous to please her master, cared nothing at
all to offend herself, followed his business with so good a will as
if it had been in her own preferment......... and on a time
Silvio being sent from his master with a message to the lady
Julina as he began very earnestly to solicit in his master's behalf,
Julina interrupting him in his tale said; Silvio, it is enough that
you have said for your master, from henceforth either speak for
yourself or say nothing at all. Silla abashed to hear these words,
began in her mind to accuse the blindness of love that Julina
neglecting the good will of so noble a duke, would prefer her love
unto such a one as nature itself had denied to recompense her
liking."
But the glimpse of a better world of imagination which was
here vouchsafed to Rich is clouded and veiled immediately after.
When the brother Silvia is accosted by Julina in error, lie " could
not tell what to make of her speeches, assuring himself that she
was deceived and did mistake him, did think notwithstanding it had been a point of great simplicity if he should forsake
that which fortune had so favourably proffered unto him, perceiving by her train that she was some lady of great honour, and
viewing the perfection of her beauty and the excellency of her
grace and countenance, did think it impossible she should be despised and therefore answered "-cunningly enough. He snatches
the advantage that Julina is but too eager to bestow, and then
" for fear of future evils determined to come no more there," and
withdrew from the city. The consequences urge the lady to
challenge the engagement of Silla, whose repudiation, like that
of Viola, exposes her to the indignation of the Duke. The pain



154


TWELFTH NIGHT.


fulness of the compromise of Julina, who becomes the leading
personage in the latter portion of the story, is heightened by the
discovery of Silla's sex, until all is accommodated by the reappearance of the brother and the union of Silla and Apolonius.
In the absence of any intermediate adaptation, Shakespeare
wouid seem to have gathered hints from Rich which he applied
in the later complications of his plot. The same source also brings
about the original destitution of the heroine, though not her separation from her brother, by a shipwreck, and has the incident of
the severity of the Duke to his page,, extending to more than
words, on suspicion of supplanting him with Julina, and even the
threat to put him to death. Among various verbal coincidences
we may compare Julina's-" that have so charely preserved my
honour," with Olivia's " laid mine honour too unchary out." Rich
himself again makes use of a word in an application that seems
to have tickled Shakespeare's fancy by its ridiculousness, and
Sir Toby, who mischievously entraps Sir Andrew into describing
the voice of Feste as " very sweet and contagious, i'faith," may
have had in his thoughts the odd expression that, " Silla the
further she saw herself bereaved of all hope so much the more
contagious were her passions." The metaphor, however, is corrected and ennobled in Olivia's exclamation:" How now,
Even so quickly may one catch the plague."
In the Two Gentlemen of Verona the disguised Julia is messenger from her own false lover to Silvia,-in what spirit as compared with Viola, Silla or Nicuola appears in the lines:" Yet I will woo for him, but yet so coldly,
As heaven it knows, I would not have him speed,"and the agreement both of incident and names indicates how
early Rich's book was in Shakespeare's hands. Traces of its influence are, I think, also to be found both in Romeo and Juliet,
and in the Tempest. Compare the following: Silvio is impatient
for his appointment with Julina, " and the day to his seeming
passed away so slowly that he had thought the stately steeds had
been tired that draw the chariot of the sun, or else some other
Joshua had commanded them again to stand, and wished that
Phaeton had been there with a whip:"" Juliet-Gallop apace ye fiery footed steeds
To Phoebus' mansion, such a waggoner
As Phaeton would whip you to the West
And bring in cloudy night immediately.
Rom. and Jul."
And in the Tempest:"Ferdinand-When I shall think, or Phoebus' steeds are foundered,
Or night kept chained below."




CRITICAL ESSAY.                     155
Nothing has yet been discovered of any source from which
Shakespeare derived the comic portion of this play.
Twelfth Night is perhaps as fine an example of finished taste
as any other play of Shakespeare; it is wrought to the full length
and limit of the subject matter, and no thought overweighted
beyond. Within itself every part has received its complete and
appropriate finish, is worked and polished to its proper perfection.
Wit and intellect and humour, sentiment and passion and imagination are in turn, and all in concert stimulated and gratified,
exercised and relieved, and the whole congrees in a full and
natural close like music. It is this organic perfection that makes
the play a jewel; otherwise it is of inferior grade and dignity to
the longer of the perfect conmdies, The Merchant of Venice, As
You Like It, or Much Ado about Nothing, from embracing a
scope of character less elevated, accomplished, or diversified, and
consistently, never verging so nearly as in those instances upon
a tragic interest, but bearing in fact very decidedly towards the
opposite pole of the purely humorous, as Midsummer Night's
Dream tends to be absorbed il the sphere of the fanciful and
fantastic.
There are many rhymed couplets in the poetical parts of
Twelfth Night, but they bear no colour of archaism; blending
naturally with the general style, they give the blank verse a
heightening embellishment as the blank verse heightens the
prose.
I have already had occasion to cite the notice that proves the
play to have been written, at least, as early as February, 1602,
and that it was not written before 1598, is argued not merely
from its omission in Meres' Palladis Tamia in that year, but more
conclusively from Maria's allusion to the many lined map with
the augmentation of the Indies, which was published with an
English version of Linschoten's Discourse of Voyages in that
vear. Ben Jonson's Every Man out of his Humour contains a
sentence or two parallel to words of Viola, but not sufficient to
prove an obligation, and still less on which side it lay.
In the year 1600 the puritanical city magistrates obtained an
order from the Privy Council restricting stage performances, which
whether enforced or not must have been an interruption and an inconvenience. It has been thought that some retaliation is apparent
in the portrait of the sour mar-mirth Malvolio who, according to
Maria, " is sometimes a sort of puritan."  If such were intended
it is good humoured and gentle enough, and of a very different
tone to the satire of Ben Jonson on the same class, so far as I
have had the perseverance to read. It is however remarkable
in another sense that a play written at this precise period should
indicate so clearly a disposition to moderate the abuses of contemptuous retort. Olivia's rebuke of the touchiness of the starched




156             TWELFTH NIGHT.
steward states the general principle in one direction, and on the
other it is poor imbecile Sir Andrew, who with no reason at all
professes to have reason good enough to beat a Puritan like a
dog, who had as lief be a Brownist as a politician, and with more
truth than he wots of distinguishes his own witlessness from the
wit of a Christian or an ordinary man.




CRITICAL ESSAY ON WINTER'S TALE.
HE Winter's Tale stands alone in the class of Shakespeare's finished plays to which it is justly assigned, in
the peculiarity of its composition, made up as it is of
two, for the most part, highly contrasted portions; the
first highly tragic, the second as properly taking place as comedy.
The contrast is still more distinctly marked by the interval of
sixteen years that is announced by Time as Chorus, as elapsing
at the very point of juncture, between the third and fourth acts;
the babe that suffers by tragic violence in the first scenes being
the fair and happy object of romantic love in the last. This
balance and division seems further enforced by the tragic section
of evil passion and poignant suffering, being as nearly as possible
equal in length to the agreeable and amusing scenes and happy
evolution that make up the latter half. Such a division in the
abstract appears like an experiment and a dangerous one; it is
rare, if not unprecedented in any art, to find an effective whole
resulting from the blank opposition of two precisely counterbalanced halves when not united by common reference to some
declared third magnitude. Nor is such a uniting power wanting
in the present instance, whatever may appear to external view.
The leading masses are contrasted with a breadth and boldness
that strain the very limits of coherence, but it still holds on without crack or fracture to the perfect and rounded conclusion.
The central figure and interest of the play is the dignified,
highly endowed, matronly yet graceful Hermione, the wife of
Leontes, king of Sicilia, and mother of his flourishing and hopeful heir Mamillius. We see her but for an instant in the enjoyment of the dignities which she did not accept with the hand of
her husband till after persistent wooing, when a sudden storm
breaks. At her husband's instance she has succeeded where he
had failed in persuading their guest Polixenes, king of Bohemia,
to prolong his stay. Jealousy at her better success is one weak
thought, the next is the more wicked jealousy of his wife's honour.
The idea once conceived is fixed; he tampers with Camillo to
poison Polixenes, and when they fly together lashes himself into




168           THE WINTER'S TALE.
rage and challenges the proof of their mutual guilt; he brutally
charges and imprisons Hermione, who gives birth prematurely to
a daughter. The infant is brought to him with bitter reproaches
by Paulina. He scarcely withholds from burning it, but causes
it to be exposed; and Antigonus, the too yielding spouse of Paulina, becomes the instrument and perishes upon his deed. Hermione nobly defends her honour and that of her offspring in the
court of the absolute king, who is merely set on rancorous vengeance; the oracle of Delphi which he had caused to be consulted
pronounces her innocent, but this only provokes a rash outburst
denouncing its falsehood. The bolt of the God now falls. The
sudden death of the child Mamillius, broken-hearted for his mother, is announced-fulfilling the threat of the oracle, and Hermione falls as dead. Leontes is at once crushed; he recognizes
and admits the absurdity of his suspicions, explains the flight of
Camillo that he had made the chief argument for his vindictiveness, and sinks in despair, and when Paulina announces the death
of the Queen with fierce upbraiding, he gives in at once. Paulina
is touched as suddenly by his repentance, and he vows a lifelong
memory of the dead. The tragic section concludes with the death
of Antigonus and wreck of his ship, and the discovery of the exposed infant Perditaby Bohemian shepherds, subjects of Polixenes.
After the lapse of sixteen years, Perdita appears a shepherdess,
yet a princess in mind and beauty and beloved with honour by
Florizel, son of Polixenes, who visits her in disguise. Not however unwatched; Polixenes and Camillo appear disguised at a
sheep-shearing where she is queen of the feast, and which is exhibited with the liveliest and loveliest colours that ever pastoral
poesy commanded. At the height of the enjoyment the angry
father discovers himself; denounces the degradation of the attachment with violence and threats, and breaks away. The part of
Florizel is taken at once; as determined as his father he resolves
to give up all for his affection. Camillo who once by just appre
ciation of the passion of Leontes rescued his father, now performs
the same duty for the son, and guiding the passion he cannot
oppose, directs him to Sicilia. Thither he also directs the pursuit
with no ill mind to Florizel, but to see his country again is the
wish of his heart, and fortune is now friend to all. The reception
of Florizel and his princess, by Leontes, is dashed by announcement of the arrival of the pursuing father, who then encounters
the old shepherd and his son, and in one of his accesses of choleric
rage scarcely can listen to their tale. This, however, is heard at
last, and Perdita is recognized as daughter of Leontes, and the lost
is found.
Perhaps there is a slight hint in the earlier acts" If you can bring
Tincture or lustre in her lip, her eye"that Hermione may not be dead after all; still this is for memory




CRITICAL ESSAY.


159


to recal, not to guide anticipation, and it is only at the commencement of the last act that a reader of the play for the first time
can be expected to gather from the words of Paulina that Hermione still lives, and that it is by her reappearance that the poet
intends to fulfil the promise implied in the altering tone of the
play, of a conclusion happy and satisfactory to the sense of even
justice.
In the last scene the miracle is wrought. Hermione is brought
again to the eyes of the husband whose cruelty had killed her
sixteen years of wedded life and hopes and joys of motherhood,
but in the guise of a painted statue of rare and lifelike imitation.
Before this Leontes, in words and passion words cannot reach, makes
all the reparation that can evince a recovered and chastened and
now tender nature, and to the sound of music accordant with
according souls, the seeming statue assumes life and descends,
embraces her husband, and it is at the interposition of the kneeling
daughter-the recovered Perdita, that at last she speaks, and
hope and amazement are delighted certainty. The bereaved
mother returns to life only on the recovery of the child, of which
until recovered, Leontes must ever have remained to her heart
the murderer.
In the character and story of Hermione noble reparation is
done to the claims and dignity of wedded woman. Shakespeare
has drawn more than one true picture of a gifted woman subdued
to the quality of her lord's temper and passion, partly by natural
effect of the more sustained compass of masculine effort, and partly
by the force of factitious circumstances depriving original nature
of full chance and fair play —the weaker thus becoming in some
degree the sycophant of her mate, and naturalized in spaniel-like
submission. Our ancestors admired the conduct and character
of patient Griselda, and in married life and also beyond that
sphere the sense of full exposure to arbitrary power has been the
sign too often to cast away at once all weapons of defence, and
abdicate all self-respect and independence. But even prudence
in the face of overwhelming odds may not, with self-respect, be
tame beyond a certain point, and submissiveness afterwards, it
mustbe said, is mere slavishness. It cannot be right to acquiesce
in and still less to flatter arbitrary power in its vile abuse, merely
because the wrong is directed against ourselves. True it is that
indulgence may be accorded in charity to the timid bending before a blast that they cannot resist; but it may be right to pity
when wrong and even absurd to admire. True it is again that
the liability of our nature is too much to recognize injustice chiefly
when it attacks ourselves, even if not blind to its existence elsewhere; ever to overrate the heinousness of the injustice to which
we are exposed in unmeasured indignation, and that it therefore
becomes most dangerous to admit a slackening of the reins of
self-control in this direction. The world, it may be rationally




160


THE WINTER'S TALE.


deemed, requires encouragement to admire and respect the forms
of virtue allied to humility, patience, resignation, and self-devotion, while the other contrasting and defensive types will in the
meantime take care of themselves or may be thought on afterwards. But eternal truth and sempniternal taste overrule such
considerations, and the true theme of highest admiration is that
tone and temper that touches the exact mean, the true intonation
of moral sense,-therefore among some other forms and above
most that ordered self-possession that is never too indulgent to
tyranny on the one hand, nor too indignant at it'on the other,
simply because personal suffering is in question. There is much
'in the expressions of Sir Thomas More towards his oppressor,
whose nature he knew thoroughly in all its distortion, that we
are sure is not due to fear, and call only refer to the false principle
I advert to, and to give in to which is little less than to be an
accomplice as well as a victim. Therefore Hermione, with nobleness of heart is self-supported in her patience, and at the same
time not only asserts her innocence with firmness, but justly denounces the tyranny and lawless rigour of her accuser and judge,
and when he has filled up the measure of his wrong gives way to
no weak and insufficient suggestions to relieve the penalty he
justly suffers, until the gods in their good time bring round a
conjuncture of circumstances which invite and allow her to raise
up the penitent guilty, without degrading her own dignity and
injured innocence.
The contrast of the character and jealousies of Leontes and of
Othello has frequently been remarked upon; it lies between the
vice self-sown, self-born, and self-developed, and that which, however springing from a native germ, is only forced and ripened to
venomous germination by the heat of tending malice, and the
fostering of all unlucky moral and external circumstances. The
jealousy of Leontes is the headlong plunge of the beast of prey
that he is named after, and thinking of him with the lightly
limbed and fine-thoughted Othello, we are reminded in a general
way of the difference:" The headlong lioness between
And hound sagacious on the tainted green."
Leontes is chiefly affected by the insult of the fate that he
stupidly and groundlessly hugs to himself. He thinks not,-not
he, of the pity of the supposed fall of so complete a paragon, but
pursues her as an enemy with rancorous and publicly proclaimed
animosity. Such temper shows most grossly when the object of
it is a lady whose nature is not only alien to such falsehood but
unsuggestive of it,-a lady who with clear and steady intellectual
light illuminates every perversity in her husband's course. HIad
the victim of Leontes been a wife in whom conjugal affectionateness and not matronly dignity and the grace and pride of motherhood prevailed, his conduct would have seemed too intolerably




CRITICAL ESSAY.


161


brutal for any reconciliation, and the reuniting link of common
parental affection would have been wanting, to render it acceptable to our sympathies and convictions. Neither would it have
been natural for such a heart to have remained in seclusion so
long, feeding on the hope of a daughter's recovery, not brooding
over the lost love of her husband. Desdemona, affectionate and
devoted, is the object of love of a husband whose bitterest trial
in jealousy, sensitive as he is in honour, is still the loss of her
trusted and tender heart. The submissive love of Desdemona
faints into a tint of the weakness that invites misfortune, and is
the worst of all fatalities; the graceful majesty of Hermione is
inclined to the side of sober self-command, and for this, when
attempered with tenderness and truth, fortune has ever in reserve
a happiness at last.
The character of Paulina is a necessity to the play; without the
support derived from her constant presence, it would not be intelligible how such a mind as that of Leontes could have the force and
freshness of feeling, after sixteen years elapsed, that are required to
give interest to the recognition, and to satisfy our sympathies with
the honour of Hermione. She is the thorn in the flesh that may
irritate, but only to preserve it from callosity; the spiked girdle
of the penitent that forbids him to omit his vigil. How necessary this might be appears from his momentary sportiveness with
Perdita, and from the urgency of the interests by which he is
surrounded in his court. Surely at last it is not only reward for
Paulina, but relief to the reader, to know that she is safely remarried. Her house affairs may retain her at home, and give
her subjects to be troubled about; and her husband is Camillo,
as much more worthy of her than Antigonus, as Leontes, after
his long suffering, has become superior to the headstrong tyrant
of the earlier acts. But it is the very harshness of the virtue of
Paulina that gives effect to the more delicate strength and graceful vigour of the virtue of Hermione, and saves by contrast the
coolness of her temperament from the thought of coldness-nay,
gives to it a glow of nature's warmth; while the softening and
humanizing that her character has undergone, encourages our
faith in the mellowing traits of Leontes, whom her care and comfort has reclaimed.
The logical and metrical structure and diction of the play sympathize with the temper of the leading characters and incidents.
The versification starts, breaks, and divides as in no other play
of Shakespeare's, and is in most marked contrast to that of the
Two Gentlemen of Verona, which, as we have seen, shuns a cadence unless at the end of a line, the very position where it is here
more constantly avoided.
The Alcestis of Euripides, both in treatment and incident, has
msny points of analogy with The Winter's Tale; the play is one
of those favourable specimens of the genius of the Greek, that
M




162            THE WINTER'S TALE.
would have placed him much nearer to the dignity of AEschylus
and Sophocles, had they been preserved alone in numbers equal
to theirs, and without the drawback of association with his inferior performances. It has points of singularity among even the
plays of Euripides. The ancient critics noted it as partaking rather of comedy than tragedy, as it starts from trouble and misfortune, and concludes with general satisfaction; and having
regard to the tenor of some portions, the proper effect of comedy
was thought to approximate to the satirick tone. Admetus, fated
to die, is by favour of Apollo permitted to prolong his life by
furnishing Death with a voluntary substitute. He urges the
duty upon his aged parents, who repudiate the proposal with
very marked reflections on its unreasonableness, and on his coolness in the proposition, but they fail to bring home to him this
view of his conduct; and when his wife Alcestis becomes the
volunteer, he grieves at her fate as he would at an inevitable
blow, is inconsolable at his bereavement, would fain accompany
her, but, wrapt up in blind selfishness, never once contrasts her
conduct, which he so much admires, with his own. His position
is placed before him most forcibly by his father, but he can only
see his father's selfishness not his own, and drives on in dark
obstinacy upon the path that must end in his being undeceived
to humiliation the most degrading.
No word of reproach passes the lips of Alcestis; but her parting appeal to him, to spare her children the unhappiness of a
stepmother, speaks expressively. If she says a word to set forth
her sacrifice and the contrast of her self-devotion to the coldness
of others, it is to urge a claim to this consideration for those she
leaves behind, and she places them solemnly in his hands upon
formal declaration of the stipulation. There is no mistaking in
the comparative coldness of her adieu to him, a sense of the forfeiture he has incurred of that respect without which love lives
not. She dies on the stage like Hermione, and her sorrowing
husband forthwith prepares her solemn funeral, rejecting his father's contribution, as he regards him as the impersonation of
cowardice and selfishness. It is when he returns from the entombment, and stands before the doors of his widowed household, that his nobler heart recovers, and he passionately avows
that too late he learns his wife has the nobler and the better fate;
he has forfeited happiness and fame together, his dwelling must
henceforth be unbearable, and elsewhere he can only hope for the
vituperation he utterly deserves. The Chorus comfort him, and
urge the reparation of funeral honour. In the meantime Hercules brings back Alcestis veiled, rescued by his arm from the
already closed clutches of Thanatos, hateful to God and man.
Hercules pretends that his companion is a prize won in games,
and offering to leave her with Admetus and even referring to
renewed wedlock, draws from him expressions soothing to his




CRITICAL ESSAY.


163


revived qaeen, as those that Paulina draws from the penitent
Leontes. Yet, like Leontes gazing at the statue, he looks till the
force of resemblance raises him to the highest pitch of agitation.
At length, by gradation like that in Shakespeare's play, the
form of his wife is unveiled, and he recognizes her and falls on
her neck. But she still stands speechless; the purifications due
to the infernal gods must first be performed, and a three days'
interval elapse before he may hear her voice; and thus in her
silent presence the play concludes.
The elevated dignity and majesty thus expressed in the figure
of Alcestis, the vindication of the self-devoted womanhood from
the selfish neglect of a stronger power but an inferior nature is
admirably realized, and is parallel to the reparation accorded to
Hermione, who suffers with dignity as well as patience, and preserves herself not from consideration for a husband who has forfeited his nobler title, but for the sake of her daughter lost, but
promised by the oracle to be found. The silence of Alcestis is
not more satisfactory and expressive than the circumstance that,
in the single short speech of Hermione, her words recognize and
address alone her recovered daughter. She extends her hand to
Leontes, and when he embraces her in joyful astonishment, full
forgiveness is sealed by her frank embrace and entire reconciliation. " She hangs upon his neck;" but it is when the recovered
Perdita kneels that her mother's voice is heard again, and then,
as if in the same awe of the powers of death from whom Hermione
and Perdita seem, like Alcestis, to have been recovered, the scene
hastily closes and the play is at an end.
The title of The Winter's Tale-in the account of the revels it
is called the Winter's Night's Tale-suggests that it is in some
manner a pendant of the Midsummer Night's Dream. The
classic and romantic, the pagan and chivalric, are huddled and
combined here as there, and still more glaringly and unscrupulously. In this play, however, we have no night scenes; the
sea-side storm is wintry; there is a hint of season once at the
fall of summer, and more significantly in the words of Mamillius,
that note a tale of sadness as fittest for winter. Perhaps, again,
the length of time covered by the story is in the spirit of a winer's tale, when time is to spare for unstinted narrative; but the
main appropriateness of the title depends, after all, on the certain
abruptness and violence of transition and combination that pervade the play, of which the anachronisms already adverted to
are minor types, associated with incongruities to the full as startling in the province of History's other handmaid, Geography.
The passion of Leontes bursts with the sway of a sudden tempest, with no note that during his previous years he had erred
either in tyranny or jealousy; and there was previously something harsh even in the suddenness with which, at the suggestion
of her husband, Hermione exchanges the silence more accordant




164


THE WINTER'S TALE.


with Homer's better rule to speed the parting guest, for urgent
entreaties to Polixenes to stay. The intention to remain is then
again as suddenly reversed by Camillo's revelation, and the guest
flies in secrecy and haste. The sudden changes and abrupt transitions which disorder the course of Leontes, communicate a reaction to the wiser of the heads by whom he is surrounded. Camillo at first opposes his absurd infatuation, but sees immediately
the hopelessness of uprooting the fixed idea of a really obstinate
man, who can only change by a catastrophe. Polixenes is as quick
to catch the conviction of the truthfulness of his informant, and
good expedition without leavetaking saves them both.
As sharp a line is drawn when the insult to Hermione and her
accusation ensue, upon the happy picture of her engaging son
and sympathetic court. The vehemence of Leontes is even within
himself discordant with his character,-it is the cataleptic rigidity
of an impotent, a strong determination of a weak will, the moveless prejudice of a vacillating judgment. Hence, when the shock
arrives, and the first threat of the oracle is fulfilled in the death
of Mamillius, his worser genius is prostrate at once; his obtuse
intellect brightens in an instant to sagacity, his callous affections
are renewed and again are feeling and alive, but only for selfreproach and torture.
Paulina's imprudent exposure of the babe to his glowing fury,
is a violence like his own, and punished in the consequent death
of her unstable-souled husband Antigonus. Her mind seems
little better harmonized than that of Leontes, when she expresses
her hopes that " he may soften at the sight of the child," on the
fair ground that " The silence often of pure innocence persuades
where speaking fails," and is at the same time intending to assault
him with her tongue, trumpet habitual of her " red-looked anger," and advocate the prisoner " to the loudest." Afterwards
the storm of her loud objurgation, when she tells the death of
Hermione, is succeeded in a moment by self-corrected tenderness, when a word conveys to her that Leontes is already touched
to the nobler heart.
Shakespeare, therefore, adopted here a principle of treatment
entirely different from that by which he so frequently and so admirably blends the lights of character or incidents into lights,
and gradually loses the shadows of his groupings in the graduating masses of shades. The principle was not adopted capriciously to display mere mastery of hand and execution, but by
the artistic sense of the conditions for displaying with full effect
the difference and the collision of the characters of Leontes and
Hermione. The incidents implied to his poetic mind certain
mental conditions, and both conducted him to and dictated, the
character of effect to be realized. The relief which such treatment demands is gained in a most masterly manner, by extending the principle of sharp contrast to the general massing of the




CRITICAL ESSAY.                     165
whole. Thus the pastoral scenes and incidents come upon us by
as quick and startling a turn as the jealousy of Leontes upon his
exaggerated hospitality.
The discord would have been complete and intolerable, but
that it is prepared by the sudden melting of Leontes, and by the
softening of the scolding Paulina in the previous scenes, as well
as by the scene so effectively interposed, of the confidence of
Polixenes and Camillo. Still even here, in this so contrasted
region, the ruling tendency to interrupted sequence and rash outbreak asserts its command. The happiness of Perdita is as suddenly overcast as was that of her mother, and the outburst of
the irascible Polixenes is as sudden and violent as the jealousy
of Leontes, and the manner in which he interrupts the happy
betrothal and breaks away, fully bears out Camillo's account of
him:" Then till the fury of his highness settle
Come not before him."
The same temper appears in the description of his meeting with
the shepherds in Sicilia,-stopping his ears and threatening them
with divers deaths in death.
The passion of Florizel is equally decided; resting at first in
unapprehensive happiness, when a check occurs he does not waver
for an instant, but gives up father and kingdom to inherit his
affection, and takes his course at once to tug for the time to come
with fortune only to aid. Such resolutions ever find their reward in fiction and not unusually in the world; but after all, the
course of the play could scarcely have made it a comedy but for
[ the interposition of Camillo and Autolycus. Critics have started
at the reference of Autolycus to a life to come, but it is quite
consistent with his nature; it expresses a latent superstition or
conscientiousness that is still more decidedly marked in his last
scene, and that gives contrast and counterchange to his roguery,
even as in the case of Camillo we trace a line of prudence darkening almost into duplicity, that permeates the very purest and
most single-hearted of natures. His virtue, which is his character,
is the very growth of the trying circumstances by which he is
surrounded. He is frank and bold to the fullest extent that is
consistent with prudence and usefulness; he carries prudence and
management to the fullest extent that consists with self-respect
and honour. In truth he is as virtuous and direct as a man can
be who is fain to live among the hard conditions of a court, and
this perhaps is as much as to say that Autolycus retains as much
rectitude as a pedlar may who is tempted by dupes thrice over,
and not often has the chance of evincing a leaning to virtue by
taking her bid when roguery only makes an equal offer. But
this is unfair to Camillo, though it might be so to few others, and
we must approve and admire the sagacity with which he proves
the strength of unreasoning prejudice, and hoodwinks and eludes




166


THE WINTER'S TALE.


the power he can neither disabuse nor contend against. This is
the wisdom that ere now has saved a nation as it saves the fortunes of the play, but may the world soon lack those tyrannous
necessities that reduce the best virtue practicable so nearly to the
equivocal.
The current of the story breaks by another hard unsoftened
interruption of the self-announcement of Florizel to Leontes. The
finely written prose scene of the conversing gentlemen smooths
the transition to the concluding scene by presenting the agitating
incidents of the recognition of Perdita in narrative form, and this
is also a concession to the superior dignity and interest of the
revelation of Hermione. Here all spirits are attempered to modesty and reconciliation; the weak are strengthened, the vehement subdued, the wise contented; and although a change more
startling than any in the play is to take place,-the revival of
the very dead,-the moving and speaking of a statue, yet so
easily is all conducted, with such orderly and tender sequence
does the discovery take place, in such tranquillized purity of mind
is all set forth and received, that the full discovery takes place at
last rather with motion than speech, is acknowledged with embraces rather than words, is for contemplation rather than discourse.
In this as in the other romantic comedies, the wished result
comes round at last from much falling out just in that way that
alone would suit the conclusion; but the introduction of the retributive edict of the Delphic oracle harmonizes admirably with
the staid and solid glory of the nature of Hermione. With any
character less exalted, sober, earnest, and impressive, this would
have been hopelessly out of keeping, an interference too solemn
for the rescue of a fantastic heroine, or for any other who less excellently exerted her proper powers of self-rescue. The god of
the oracle directs the path of Antigonus to Bohemia to expose the
infant, and we assume in course that the same power directed the
hawk of Florizel in the ripeness of time across the walk of the
gentle shepherdess, and aided and governed the track of fortune
to the end.
The self-collected dignity of the entire character of Hermione
s in harmony with her appearance as a statue,-painted though
t were supposed to be, in the last scene. She is there not more
tatuesque than in the trial scene, and in both combines the
)eauty of repose with that of the sensitiveness of life; Perdita,
n the other hand, is fitted to be Painting's own favourite subject,
nd like the scenes in which she appears is not only bright with
aried colour, but moving with breezy motion, and bends and
undulates with every graceful impulse like the flowers she distributes with such delicacy and daintiness.
It is observable that the language and manners of the old
shepherd, and even in some degree of the clown, become ennobled,




CRITICAL ESSAY.                     167
assume rhythm and refinement in the scenes where he is closely
approximated to Perdita. She seems to shed the rich light of
harvest around her. Thus the outspoken innocence of her references to the ways and dealings of great creative nature are
the very seal not only of her sense, but of her simplicity and
purity. The poet knew the country too well to ignore the inevitable instructions of farm-yard life, and it is the distinctive
superiority of his poetry to the factitious pastoral that he could
admit an indication of all the familiar associations that are required for the true portraiture of pastoral experience, and yet
suppress every hint and suspicion of coarseness.
The carriage of the native princess declares itself not only to
the old shepherd who recalls the rustic heartiness of his bustling
wife on such occasions, but to the disguised courtiers who recognize the refinement of her beauty and gestures. Yet is not the
responsibility of furnishing out these cast entirely on the reader
or the actress; expressive words flow from the poet's pen and
embody more than can be presented or imagined. She even
follows without difficulty the intricate argument in which Polixenes engages her, and it is injustice to her to say that she gives
it up, as woman sometimes will, merely to skip back to a first
thought. The ingenuity that will get one out of a maze, is renounced in favour of the good sense that declines getting into
it; and Perdita leaves the complicated argument to take care for
itself, while she disposes of the sophistical conclusion by bringing
up a still apter analogy.
The unhesitating selfishness of the old man and his son at the
approach of danger, though otherwise they are creditable rustics
enough, the singleness of their anxiety to save their own skins
from royal vengeance, by proving the foundling none of their
blood, without any thought of her fate and fortune, belongs to
the revulsions that characterize the play; it also finally detaches
her, in our associations, from the class she has been reared
amongst, and thus she is acquitted of ingratitude as well as presumption in moving easily towards the superior rank due to her
nature as to her descent. Her own courage and collectedness
at once place her in contrast to the bewildered and frightened
hinds, and bring her worthily into sympathy with the patience
and self-support of her brave mother Hermione.
In this play we have the same employment of speakers numbered but not named, lords and gentlemen, that occurs in Henry
VIII. and Cymbeline, and corresponding with the blank distinctions of first and second mob in other plays, is expressive of
the suppression of individuality among the great vulgar and
the small, under the superior control of class tendencies, or the
repressive power of individual and absolute sway.
The novel upon which this play was undoubtedly founded was
published as early as 1588-Pandosto, the Trimnph of Time; or,




168            THE WINTER'S TALE.
as it was afterwards entitled, the History of Dorastus and Fawnia,
by Robert Greene, Master of Arts in Cambridge. Fourteen editions of it are known to exist, and such popularity argues that it
would soon find its way to the stage. There is an entry in the
Stationers' Register, under date of 22d May, 1594, of the Wynter's Nighte's Pastime; and it appears open to question whether
this may not have been Shakespeare's play, which appears in a
less uncertain record to be named The Winter's Night's Tale.
A play thus entitled was represented at Whitehall by the
King's players, on 5th November, 1611, as it is entered in the
accounts of Sir George Bucke, Master of the Revels at that
time. But an entry of a successor in the office proves that
" The Winter's Tale" of Shakespeare must have been a new play
in 1611, for it was licensed by Sir George Bucke, who was not
in office until October, 1610; and in May of the next year,
there is positive proof that Shakespeare's Winter's Tale was
acted at the Globe, in the abstract of the diary of Dr. Symon
Forman.
The anniversary on which it was performed at Court, that of
the powder plot, is only noteworthy, as perhaps indicating an
intention to fit the time by the speech of Camillo respecting the
fate of assaulters of anointed kings.
In reading the novel on which this play or any other was
founded by Shakespeare, we notice a double spring of invention.
Sometimes he adopts the character which the novelist or historian indicates, or adumbrates and modifies the incidents in order
to display the character more livelily, or invents new incidents
for the same purpose, either taking materials from other parts of
the same novel, from other works of fiction, or from his own pure
brain. On the other hand, the incidents of the story may be
the leading suggestion, and give the hint of a character which
straightway mingles with them, and combines all of them into
a consistent web, which without such intervention would flow
away like water, fall down like a rope of sand; and the germ of a
finished character is thus often found in an action very inconsistently, or at least loosely, assigned in the novel.
Notwithstanding the defects of style and affectation of classical
allusion, which are not the worst faults the author might have
brought from his university, the novel has a certain freshness or
liveliness that quite explains and justifies its popularity; and
hence, in perusing it, we are struck with the abundance of the materials that it supplied to the dramatist-materials, however,
after all of the rudest and crudest, and little worth, indeed, when
estimated relatively to the art bestowed upon them.
The romantic geography that made Delphi an island, and gave
a seaboard to Bohemia, Shakespeare took from the graduate of
Cambridge. He interchanged, however, the two kingdoms, apparently from a feeling that Bohemia carried better than Sicily




CRITICAL ESSAY.


169


the associations of deserts and remoteness, that apply to the exposure of Perdita and death of Antigonus. I cannot, however, but regret a change that deprived Sicily of scenes of pastoral poetry, that
would have blended so happily with her memories of Theocritus.
The chief difference in the conduct of the story by Greene, is that
Bellaria, the Hermione of the play, dies at her trial suddenly,
when the death of her son is announced; and Pandosto (Leontes)
at last, after the unpleasant incident of becoming enamoured of
his own unknown daughter, destroys himself; no characters are
employed corresponding to Paulina or Autolycus. The invention of the living statue is therefore entirely new, and new, of
course, are the poetic adornments, and chaste execution, and vigorous characterization. Greene calls the passion of Pandosto
causeless jealousy and witless fury, but he nevertheless admits
some incautiousness on the part of his wife, which Shakespeare
cancels as weakening and detrimental. Again, there is much
nobleness of mind in the words and bearing of Bellaria that is transferred readily to Hermione, in her care for her offspring rather
than herself, her fear of infamy rather than death, her undismayed
impeachment of herhusband's course as "rigour and not law." But
Hermjione does not feel doubt, or condescend to pretend so, as to
the origin of the charge, nor, like Bellaria, demand " that those
perjured wretches, who had falsely accused her to the king,
might be brought before her face to give in evidence," nor fall
down upon her knees to solicit him, by his love for his son, to admit her appeal to Delphi. Shakespeare made the reference to
the oracle originate with the accuser, and this proof of respect
for it, on his part, renders his sense of his impiety in insulting it,
and consequent confession of guilt and subjection to its predictions, consistent and natural. The similarity of the operations
ascribed to Franion the cupbearer, in effecting the escape of Egistus (Polixenes), and to Capnio in managing that of his master
Dorastus (Florizel), suggests the assignment of both to a single
person, Camillo, and gives the hint for his character. The " wily
trick" of Capnio, in inveigling a simple shepherd, was hint enough
to produce in Shakespeare's imagination the former servant of
Florizel, Autolycus.
In the loves of Dorastus and Fawnia, we have an adumbration
of much that is most charming in Florizel and Perdita, but again
the novelist as surely introduces a discord as the dramatist avoids
it. Perdita is depicted with a native consciousness of being worthy of her destiny, yet free from ambition as from pride; but,
interposed among better traits of Fawnia, we read-" She, poor
soul, was no less joyful that, being a shepherd, fortune had favoured her so as to reward her with the love of a prince, hoping
in time to be advanced from the daughter of a poor farmer to be
wife of a rich king."
Ben Jonson's challenge of the absurdity of a shipwreck on the




170           THE WINTER'S TALE.
coast of Bohemia, we have seen, might be shuffled off upon more
learned shoulders, but this would profit little, while Shakespeare
still remains responsible for making Julio Romano and Apollo
contemporaries-Julio Romano, who died within half a century
of the date when the play was written (1546). The case appears to be, that the Delphic god and oracle could not be spared
from the action of the piece, which still repudiated the obligations of Greek scenery or costume, and quite in accordance with
the prevailing tone of the play, the poet boldly broke with consistency at once, and defied it absolutely.  Hence, with the
Greek and Latin names, that unite with the classical allusions,
he associates Italian, which are in place in such a description
as that of the gallery of art in Paulina's house, and the rarities
that introduce the figure of Hermione.
Among other personages of Greek relationship, Autolycus comes
in with oddly apt significance. Whence did Shakespeare take
this antique name of a rogue, and type of all roguery that is
practisable by false oath, and asseveration, and underhand subtraction? The name is native on Mount Parnassus that the fane
of Delphi brings before us. Here it was Ulysses visited Autolycus, his maternal grandfather, who, rich in wiles by the friending
of Hermes, made all men who were concerned with him remember him unpleasantly, and gave a name to his godson, no unworthy emulator of his ways, to commemorate that fact. The casque
which Ulysses wears in the night expedition in the Iliad, lent
him by Meriones, had passed by many forms of transfer through
many hands, among others those of his ancestor Autolycus; it
had passed from host to guest, and from father to son. Autolycus himself had parted with it in gift; but then he alone, of all
its owners, came into possession of it without the knowledge or
consent, privity or permission, of the antecedent enjoyer.


A




CRITICAL ESSAY ON PERICLES, PRINCE
I                      OF   TYRE.
"   HE play of Pericles does not appear in the first folio
edition of Shakespeare's plays, nor indeed in the second.
It was included however in the third folio collection,
that of 1664, but together with others of so slender
title as to forbid us to found any argument upon either the judgiment or the tradition of the editors in a question of authenticity.
It would be sufficient for them that Pericles had been printed in
quarto as Shakespeare's during his life time, 1609, with his name
in full on the title page; and in this form it had been frequently
reprinted at intermediate dates. The play of Sir John Oldcastle
however was also printed as Shakespeare's in 1600, and this is
known to have been so ascribed in fraud or error, for the diary
of Philip Henslowe, preserved at Dulwich College, contains note
of a payment on account of it to three other dramatic writers.
Pericles is mentioned as Shakespeare's in a poem published in
1646, and again in verses dating 1652; but this may have been
merely on the strength of the current quarto editions, just as the
lines of Dryden in his prologue to Charles Davenant's Circe, 1675,
may merely echo the authority of the third folio:"'Your Ben and Fletcher in their young first flight
Did not Volpone or Arbaces write;
But hopped about and short excursions made
From bough to bough, as if they were afraid,
And each was guilty of some slighted maid,
Shakespeare's own muse his Pericles first bore,
The Prince of Tyre was elder than the Moor."
The external evidence against the high authorship of the play
is perhaps to the full as nugatory. By the title page of the first
quarto it appears that it had been then recently acted sundry
times by his Majesty's servants at the Globe, Shakespeare's
theatre; but it does not necessarily follow that the right of his
fellow shareholders to act it carried with it a right to print it,
and therefore they may have had to omit it perforce. It appears
again that even Troilus and Cressida ran narrow risk of being




172                   PERICLES.
excluded from the first folio; it is not in the table of contents,
and arrangement and pagination indicate that it came in by
afterthought or after arrangement, and another play may have
been less fortunate. That it does not appear in the list of Meres
is a circumstance that, as we have already abundantly seen, would
prove nothing against its claims, even if it were necessary to
assume it earlier in date than that list. For anything that can
be made out of evidence of this class alone the play may or may
not have been Shakespeare's, and we must look further. Preparatory to doing so it would be very satisfactory if we could
determine a proximate date of the first production of the play.
Here again industrious antiquarians offer materials various and
useful, if they can only be made to cohere into a stable hypothesis.
A prose novel was published in 1608, founded on the play of
which this is the title page: " The painful Adventures of Pericles,
Prince of Tyre. Being the true history of the play of Pericles,
as it was lately presented by the worthy and ancient Poet, John
Gower." In the title page of the first edition of the play which
was entered at Stationers' Hall in the same year, and published
in the next, 1609, it is called, " the late (i. e. the recent) and
much admired play," and in the same year it is referred to as a
highly popular and new play, in a metrical pamphlet entitled,
"Pimlyco ":" Amazed I stood to see a crowd
Of civil throats stretched out so loud
As at a new play, all the rooms
Did swarm with gentles mixed with grooms:
So that I truly thought all these
Came to see Shore or Pericles."
Now it is very true that a still earlier impression of Pericles
may have been lost, for it appears from other examples that entry
at Stationers' Hall is no voucher for date; the first edition of some
plays preceding the first entries of them by ten years. The implication of the title may be merely a copy from an earlier, as it
was itself literally recopied in an edition ten years afterwards,
and true it is also that inasmuch as Shore is proved to have been
rewritten in 1601, there is a presumption that Pericles bracketed
with it may have been no whit more recent. Still for the latter
instance I am disposed to think that if one example out of two
of the popularity of a new play was a little remote, it is in favour
of the other at least being within modern recollection. Apart
from this, granting all the drawbacks to the fullest inference from
these consenting testimonies, they certainly lead us to this, that
Pericles in 1608-9 was brought before the public, for the first
time or not, with a degree of effect that excited great attention,
and made its success and its story generally interesting and
notorious. The evidence of this I think induces an impression
that the notoriety was of that nature that could scarcely have




CRITICAL ESSAY.


173


originated but by the aid of entire novelty of a first production,
at least in the form in which we have it now. The chief significance however of these indexes of a date may appear, when
we are in a position to compare it with some points of internal
evidence.
Of Shakespeare's skill in the creation of individual character
I think we may agree that the play contains no indications whatever, nothing therefore of his best excellence; but in this respect
it is not much inferior to the Comedy of Errors, and it is perhaps
not more destitute than that play of the effusions of his vein of
impassioned and fanciful poesy. Still the play has characteristics
which have led critics, without exception, to recognize the hand
of Shakespeare, and these have been found in style and execution,
and principally in the fifth act. With this verdict I cannot disagree, and I do not know that I can give the grounds of it more
definite expression than they have hitherto found. But the indications are quite as distinct of a different pen or at least of the
same at a different time, and perhaps the choice between these
alternatives is the most difficult problem connected with the play.
Speaking from impression, I am disposed to think that Shakespeare remodelled a play of another writer from beginning to end,
and that the discrepancies we observe are due to his sometimes
contenting himself with lopping and abridging, sometimes taking
the trouble to alter and insert words and lines, and sometimes
recasting speeches, and perhaps scenes entirely. We do not meet
in the play with the doggerel verses that are so frequent in his
known earlier plays, and what rhymed couplets occur are scarcely
introduced with the judgment and system that are observable
where he even is most lavish of them, but they seem rather interspersed and scattered like vestiges of an earlier half and only
half obliterated creation. Again, the play is quite free from his
youthful tendency to redundance, and various and manifold as
are its materials and incidents, its characters and combinations,
its scenes and speeches have, to my mind, little of the goutiness,
so to speak, and unwieldiness that are so contrasted with the
correctness and sweep of outline, the cleanness of limb and mastery of the articulations that were realized by his pencil in his
finished works. The style of the play is indeed remarkable for
elliptical expressions that may in some instances have been the
necessities of another writer in his metrical difficulties, but in
others appear to result from a ruling feeling for conciseness sometimes carried to an extreme, terseness defying grammar in reliance on energy of thought. Looking, therefore, at those parts
of the play where the hand of Shakespeare declares itself most
markedly, I find that of all other of his plays The Winter's Tale
is called most forcibly to my mind, by the combined effect of
style, metrical tendencies and principle of versification, and the
current of association generally. The Winter's Tale we have seen




174                   PERICLES.
reason to date about 1610-11, and if there be any value in the
appreciation of their points of resemblance, this is a matter of internal evidence which corroborates what we have seen of the presumption from external sources, that Pericles, Prince of Tyre,
was a new play in 1609.
If indeed Shakespeare put his hand to the play at this so late
date in his life of dramatic authorship, it is clear that he must
have done so much in the same way as he appears to have altered
an earlier Timon, with the intention to render a production that
he did not care entirely to recast, moderately attractive and stageworthy. Indeed it may be taken as helping our date that, with
more self-control than he might have exercised when younger, he
bestowed most labour where it would be most worthy, and in no
part wrought his materials to a finish that is much beyond what
they were worthy and capable of bearing through. The scenes
of coarser comedy among the fishermen and panders are, perhaps,
as far beyond the capabilities of any other dramatist of the day,
both in what they set forth and what they abstain from, as any
other portion of the drama. After these I would indicate as
another unapproachable characteristic, the steady flow and unfaltering progress by which Shakespeare could conduct a scene
unflagging from its commencement to its end, with none of those
flaws of unrhythmical hastiness and tardiness that mar so much of
the otherwise fine music of the secondary Elizabethan dramatists.
And more I think of this harmonizing power is observable in the
general distribution of the subject matter of the play at large
than has hitherto been supposed.
A play which has such various and frequently shifting scenes
as Pericles must always be read to a certain degree of disadvantage beyond the fortune of others of less diversified stage accident.
These changes furnish a source of fatigue and refreshment to the
spectator, which an experienced dramatist knows how to manage
and control, and makes the most of by corrections which are lost
or go counter in the closet. Even a reader, who is also a playgoer, finds much difficulty in saving these effects, and they slip
from others entirely. Taking however, as well as one may, the
point of view of the parterre, I confess I find much to admire in
the skill with which the play of Pericles is constructed and put
together. Whether we take the outline of the story in the form
of argument, or read it in the verses that furnished it to the playwriter, we may be honestly struck with the ingenuity that could
group, divide and connect it for dramatic purposes, with the requisite clearness and facility that are successfully attained. The
story rambles dispersedly in various countries and by sea and
land, and the incidents are of every degree of importance and insignificance; but the stages of the story as enacted are cleverly
made to correspond with the relief of the divisions of the acts. Old
Gower interposes in each case, like the guard and sign and bound




CRITICAL      ESSAY.                 175
of the compartment, and his narrative both bridges intervals and
renders them defined, while the dumb show that he interprets is
an intermediate term of the narrated and the enacted.
The single source of the play of Pericles is the story of Appolinus of Tyre, as told by Gower in his Confessio Amantis. A
long worthless story in prose, borrowed largely from the same
source, is reprinted in Shakespeare's Library, by Mr. Collier, but
(Edipus knows why, for nothing can be clearer, after the painful
adventure of even an attempted perusal, than that the author of the
play neither used it nor had read it, while in Gower we trace his
borrowings and track his footsteps from beginning to end.
Gower was a contemporary of Chaucer, and in one respect at
least fully worthy to be so. His strong point is his versification;
in the composition we are concerned with at least, we find none
of Chaucer's sympathy with external nature, none of his sense of
the humorous and little of his diversified natural passion; the
proper poetic vein of Gower it must be said is dry, and in default
of this it is not much to say for his reputation as a poet, that he
could adhere to and pursue a story with more conscientiousness
than Chaucer in his idle moments compelled himself to; and he
has the merit, not slight in itself, though one capable of large
enhancement by addition of gifts that Gower had not, of a correct
ear and happy power in guiding with tightened rein the paces
that may be even stately, but that may so easily degenerate into
the shambling of the rhymed verse of eight syllables. Hence
came the inspiration of the spirited numbers in which the lines
run that are assigned to Gower as Chorus, and this circumstance
alone gives importance to Pericles in the history of English
literature, for it is impossible to read them without perceiving
that from this intermediate basin Milton drew the sweet waters
of Gower's early English rhythm, as those of Chaucer from Midsummer-Night's Dream; that hence it was he caught some of
those tones that complete the perfection of what I must call unaffectedly his most perfect poems-poems that are as entirely satisfactory as the art of Shakespeare and the Greeks however subordinate in scope, the Allegro and Penseroso. In acknowledgment
of such obligations it is worth while to make the following extract, as well as for an interest of its own. It is the original of
the recognition of Pericles and Thaisa.
" With worthy knights environed
The king himself hath abandoned
Into the temple in good intent;
The door is up and in he went,
Where as in great devotion
Of holy contemplation
Within his heart he made his shrift,
And after that a rich gift
He off'reth with great reverence,




176


PERICLES.


And there in open audience
Of them that stooden all about,
He told them, and declareth out
His hap, such as him is befall,
There was no thing forget of all.
His wife, as it was Goddes grace,
Which was professed in the place,
As she that was abbess there,
Unto his tale hath laid her ear,
She knew the voice and the visage,
For pure joy, as in a rage,
She straught (stretched) unto him all at once
And fell aswoon upon the stones,
Whereof the temple floor was paved.
She was anon with water laved
Till she came to herself again.
And then she began to sayn,
" A blessed be the high soonde (qy. gift or sun)
That I may see mine husband,
Which whilom he and I were one."
The king with that knew her anon,
And took her in his arms and kissed,
And all the town the soon it wist.
Tho (then) was there joy manifold,
For every man this tale hath told
As for miracle and weren glad;
But never man such joy made
As doth the king, which hath his wife.
And when men heard how that her life
Was saved, and by whom it was,
They wondren all of such a case.
Through all the land arose the speech
Of master Cerimon, the leach,
And of the cure which he did.
The king himself so hath him bid,
And eke the queen forth with him,
That he the town of Ephesym
Will leave, and go where as they be,
For never man of his degree,
Hath do to them so mochel (muckle) good.
And he his profit understood,
And granteth with them for to wend;
And thus they maden there an end,
And tooken leave, and gone to ship,
With all the whole fellowship."
There is every appearance in the story, and some from tradition, that the original invention was of Greek derivation, a novel of
probably the late Byzantine period. Gower himself referred to



CRITICAL ESSAY.


177


" A chronique in days gone,
The which is cleped Pantheon;"
that is, to the Pantheon, or Universal Chronicle of Godfrey of
Viterbo, compiled, it appears, at the latter end of the twelfth century, though not printed until 1569. This was only one of many
sources from which he might have obtained it; Latin MSS. of it
as early as the tenth century, are said to be in existence, and an
Anglo-Saxon edition of it has, within these few years, been passed
through the press. Wynkyn de Worde printed the romance,
under the title of Kynge Appolyn of Thyre, in 1510, as it had been
translated from the French by Robert Copland. Late in the fifteenth century it found place in the Gesta Romanorum; and what
is more immediately to our purpose, Belleforest, who inserted it
among his Histoires Tragiques, in course of publication 1564, set
forth as the authority he followed a manuscript that he had met
with purporting to be tire du Grec. Whatever may have been
the relation of Belleforest's authority to that which guided Godfrey and Gower, it is not easy to believe that it could have borne
more distinct internal evidence of Greek parentage and descent.
Omitting lesser points-thus the mere occurrence of the name
of Simonides in such a story, reminds of him who sung so tenderly the lullaby of Danae, exposed and rocking in her ark on the
wild waves with her infant Perseus; but passing over this and
other like, a point that we may safely regard as decisive is the
description of the games of Pentapolis, where, correctly to the use
of classic Greece, the king and all the court and flower of the
town are assembled to witness public games, not otherwise specified, in which according to the contest, and the custom and use
of the place, the competitors strove, like the youths of noble blood
whom Pindar celebrated, clad alone in the glory of Nature's first
and own apparel, entirely naked. The play changes these games
as Chaucer would have done, and in like cases did, into a tourney,
and Pericles becomes a harnessed knight.
The variations of the drama from the old metrical narrative in
point of incident are wonderfully few, but all judicious. Thus
the regency of the realm of Pericles is provided for in his absence,
by the elevation of Helicanus to permanent dignity, who in
Gower's tale is a simple citizen of Tyre, who warns the king at
Tharsus of the designs of Antiochus, after the apprehension of
those designs had already caused his flight. Linking motives are
supplied for other incidents, and the most important addition is
the first interview of Marina with her future husband in the establishment of the leno. This may be a disagreeable necessity
enough, but a necessity it is to vindicate her condition there in
the minds of others from the uncertainties that attend obscurity,
and could not possibly be managed better than we find it. It is
in compression, however, that the greatest power is exercised;
and a comparison of the adventures at Pentapolis especially, in
N




178


PERICLES.


the two forms is remarkable, and in a certain sense amusing,
as an example of dexterous as well as resolute subjugation of irregular, undisciplined, material poetic-of abbreviation without
abridgment.
'Thus the rambling and straggling story is brought to the best
order its nature is susceptible of. The first act comprises the suit
of Pericles for the hand of the daughter of Antiochus, and its immediate consequences; his flight from Antioch; and then, for
more assured security, from his own kingdom and his arrival at
Tharsus. In the second act the scene is, with one Tyrian episode,
at Pentapolis, possibly the Cyrensean was in the original author's
mind and its coasts. Pericles arrives here in contrasted guise,
shipwrecked and destitute, but attracts the attention of the king,
Simonides, and gains the heart and hand of his daughter, Thaisa.
The fortunes of Thaisa occupy the third act; prematurely confined in a storm she is supposed dead, and from the superstition
of the sailors hastily cast overboard. She is borne, however,
ashore by the waves in her caulked and bitumined coffer, and restored to life by the leach Cerimon, who finds hex rafup s as priestess at Ephesus. The fourth act contains the adventures of her
child, who left by Pericles in charge of the sovereigns of Tharsus, excites their envy, is carried off by pirates, extricates herself from foul harbour, and supports herself by her graceful accomplishments in the isle of Sappho at Mitylene. The fifth act
re-unites Pericles and his daughter, and then restoring Thaisa to
her husband and her child, now nobly betrothed, all ends in happiness. Thus Gower epilogizes:" In Antiochus and his daughter you have heard,
Of monstrous lust the due and just reward:
In Pericles, his queen, and daughter seen,
(Although assailed with fortune fierce and keen,)
Virtue preserved from fell destruction's blast,
Led on by heaven and crown'd with joy at last."
Thus the moral function of the old rhymer comes in aid at last,
as he picks up and pieces the fragments of a broken story, and
recals the beginning that was like to be forgotten at the end, and
marks a moral. Morals are apt to be looked at mistrustingly
when they point to happy denouements, that are not very obviously
dependent on the exertions and character of the rescued, and when
the main difficulties vanish by indispensable agency of a goddess
out of a stage machine, like the visionary Diana of our play.
The poet is master for the time of the laws and order of nature,
but when he brings all so smoothly to a close, we start and ask
whether he be not laying flattering beguilement to our hopes, already sufficiently apt to be over sanguine? Is it nature and nature's
truth that we look on at, or is it merely that the favourite of the
creative genius is saved, by a favouritism that the order of accidents in daily experience is far from showing or bearing out, and




CRITICAL ESSAY.


179


that we shall only betray ourselves by trusting to? Not so entirely: miserable indeed were man, if his right intentions and
best endeavours were seconded by no aiding sympathy in the essential nature of things, and if the same law of harmony, or harmonizing tendency, between external nature and sentient being,
which finds expression in the structure and the needs of every organization, and furnishes the river for the fish, and the air for the
bird, ceases its agency at the very point where its solicitude be -
comes most wanted. Poetry at least has always illustrated, as
devotion has ever relied on, such saving guardianship, which
leads the worthy to the meed they hope for, or gives them another less welcome but more worth, and completes the beneficence
by making them worthy that. In the happier and in the distressful aspects of life, whether in reality or reflected on the stage,
this dispensation to the humbled view is a ministration of the
kindly Providence that saves or rewards, or of the Avenger that
prepares the downfal of pride, the punishment of wrong. What
know we, and wherefore are we proud? The Greek who peered
into the void beyond, and connected the wreck of a royal house,
or the salvation of the oppressed, with the same law that originated the respective characteristic types of guilt or deservingthe Greek called the ultimate coincidence of the tendencies from
without and within the accomplishment of destiny, the ultimate
will of Powers who urged the helm of existence against the very
force of Jove himself-the triform Fates, and the dsemonian Erinnyes; a myth to beguile imagination, when thought was weary
and bewildered in the attempt to grasp an abstraction, to conceive or even to argue definitely of an idea that implies and postulates infinity.
To return to the play, then; not alone our desires, but somewhat also of our experience, is gratified when justice that is
poetic, but not therefore utterly unreal, is fulfilled in the fate of
Pericles. His original difficulties spring from his suit to the
daughter of Antiochus, a suit unblessed by any better passion
than deceptive beauty stimulates, and the politic desire to furnish
his realm with an heir. His error, for by the standard of Shakespeare's moral feeling so it must stand, is recognized soon, but
not so as to evade all its consequences; hence his exile and wanderings and vicissitudes; prudence and noble sensibility, and patience when fortune admits no better, help and preserve him, and
weariness and melancholy are roused at last to renewed enjoyment of affection and prosperity.
All through the piece we encounter from time to time reminiscences of other Shakespearian works-reminiscences, or it may be
anticipations, but I think most frequently the former. Among
the anticipations, however, I am disposed to class some remarkable adumbrations of The Winter's Tale. Not only in the style
of writing, but even in the treatment of the plot that corresponds




180                    PERICLES.
with it, are these distinguishable; from the commencement where
the position of Pericles opens upon us, as unusually and with as
little preparation as the passion of Leontes, to the concluding
triple re-union of husband, wife, and child. For The Winter's
Tale, of course, there is another source of story in the Dorastus
and Fawnia, which forbids us to ascribe the suggestion of its plot
to the Confessio Amantis; but I am not the less prepared to suspect that the vigour and vivacity with which Shakespeare addressed himself to the task of dramatizing the tale of Greene,
gained something of their force and brilliancy from the effect on
his imagination of comparison with the parallels and contrasts
abundantly ministered by the romance of Gower.




CRITICAL ESSAY ON KING JOHN.


gr  HAKESPEARE derived the subject of ten historical
2q    plays from the history of his own country, which in
J    consequence possesses in the series a monumental work
which Greece indeed rivals, and-I speak my thought
-surpasses, but such as no modern nation has anything of the
kind to compare with in dignity and extent. The sequence of
incidents of eight of the plays follows in close and unbroken connection from Richard the Second to Richard the Third. The last
of these closes with the accession of Henry VII. whose reign is
omitted, and the play of Henry VIII. closes the series by bringing it as far down towards the age of the writer as was practicable,
or perhaps from his point of view desirable; for the chief morals
to be drawn from the reign and character of Elizabeth are sufficiently salient in a truthful representation of those of her father.
The omission of the reigns immediately preceding Richard II.
puts aside a period that might seem especially dramatic and
picturesque; but references to it serve to enrich the play of
Henry V. which lies nearer to the time of the poet and his
audience, and has an effect that we cannot wish divided or anticipated. Thus there is a break of four reigns between Richard
the Second and King John, the first of the properly historical
English plays; and the reign of this monarch marks with great
appropriateness the epoch at which English nationality, as it was
known in after ages, and as distinguished from the coarse crudity
of Saxon times which is alien to our sympathies, and from the
unblended disorder of the early Norman which is repugnant, became first identified and consolidated.
It is an observation of Schlegel's that these two terminal plays,
King John and Henry the Eighth, are in the position of prologue
and epilogue to the other eight, and thus in the first we are introduced to all the political and national motives which play so great
a part in the succeeding pieces. Regarding then the series as a
connected whole-not composed, it is true, in the order of the
history, but each later work carefully adjusted to each earlier
performance, we must look for a governing idea which in the whole




182


KING JOHN.


and even in each play is dominant over that which is indicated
by its separate title. The true hero of the series, heroic either
in access of suffering, or height of action, or scope of aspiration, is
a nationality; is the conception of the poet, which in the case of a
true poet falls into identity with the natural essence, of the
honour and dignity, the truest worth and interest of the English
nation,-of his native land.
The play of King John then embodies the fortunes and destinies
of England as affected by the character and position of this special monarch, and of like scope is each succeeding history bearing
the title of the several kings. The poet fixes and realizes monarchical England, and all the accidents and liabilities, so far as
developed to his time, of such a combination. It will prove accordingly that the personal element of the play owes its chief
interest to its bearing on the national, of which it becomes the
direct or indirect exponent. However the pomp of the swelling
scene may appear to illustrate an individual, however our attention may be riveted by a picture of suffering or passion, the action
is ever so conducted that the idea continues ever present, of the
mightier interest that is behind. A national historical play necessarily excites, and therefore wisely considers and appeals to, the
sentiment of patriotism, of nationality. Thus the main effectiveness of the play results from the fact that the spectators are
animated with, or for the nonce assume, the spirit and instincts
of Englishmen, and watch with concern the unfolding how the
fortunes and fate of the country are affected for good, or ill, or
uncertainty, by the character and position of the occupant of the
throne, the prime influence on the country's resources and energies.
The hope of a nation rests on internal peace, prosperity and justice, on power and respect externally, and on the resulting of these
blessings from such conditions as guarantee that they are not
precarious; and the best warranty of those conditions is the actual
sense and experience of the nation of the dependence of them on
its own will and capacity the most intimate assurance of consciousness of proper power to govern and sustain them. These,
however, are blessings to be prayed for, hoped for, struggled for,
for they are not spontaneous; and in the series of historical plays
that we consider, we have a grand exposition of all forms and
degrees of deficiency in the desired conditions, the evils and complications that are consequent, and the tendency at least of the
mischiefs to work out their own cure,-to exhaust themselves or
provoke extirpation.
Apparently the most frequent and pregnant theme is the unhappy consequence of disputed succession to the throne, but we
trace without difficulty the origin of the troubles and disasters
that fill the chronicle, still deeper to the unsettled and semibarbarous state of society. Custom, and indeed the very necessities of the case, gave in those days authority to a king that no




CRITICAL ESSAY.


183


human being can be trusted with and remain uncorrupted, and
which in any case it required first-rate qualifications of intellect,
resource and vigour to exercise. The lack of these, not unaided
by some loose impressions of the law of succession, infallibly led
to depositions and transferment of allegiance, and thence in the
same generation, or the next, various lines of rival claimants to
the crown, with all the aids of factions and parties; and now the
prestige of tradition and legitimacy sustained the pretensions of
one every way incapable, while the stigma, and still more unfortunately the consciousness of usurpation, was attached to the
administration of the accomplished and efficient prince. Hence
the fierce passions, and hence the frightful crimes of which it would
never have been suspected that human nature was capable, but
for its exposure to a combination of exciting and corrupting influences which hamper the better nature, and give license and
stimulus to all that is inferior and faulty in man's constitution.
The defective legal title of the able, the weakness of the imbecile, and the enormities of the vicious, are alike disastrous and
damaging to the nation in honour and happiness, and if ever a
happy coincidence of admitted title, of vigour and ability, and of
adequate self-control does once come round, it briefly passes away,
and when a single happy element is wanting the rest are neutralized-are nullities.
The monarchical, however, is not the only though the most conspicuous power that is out of joint for the well-being of the
country; all the other political influences, whether of the turbulent military barons, of the accused and perhaps envied clergy, of
the impetuous and ignorant commonalty, are alike undefined and
irregular; and it is in the midst of such a chaos that some hope
and promise of ultimate order is found in a manifestation of that
spirit which the nation has always proudly asserted as its own.
The drama of King John prepares for the full development of
all these complications, and at the same time expresses an epoch
by marking them in one particular phase. A certain power of
independence is the first condition whether in a man or a people
for individuality as a self and for self-respect; and the exhibition
of the concern of English honour, in regard to invasion or interference from abroad, is properly the leading point in the first of
the English series. The dramatized reign of John excites and
disciplines in every form of excitement, the repugnance to foreign
intermeddling whether civil or ecclesiastical, in internal affairs.
The shamefulness and mischievousness of admitting it whether
with the best or worst of motives, is set before us most livelily,
and the moral is even authorized in set words at the conclusion,
that for glory and safety equally our own concerns must be in
our own hands, and that the condition of this, indispensable and
all-sufficient, is internal union,-that England to itself should rest
but true.




184


KING JOHN.


The subsequent plays show England not only independent of
France but even, though but for a time, successfully aggressive;
in the last England stands with France in well guarded peace
and cordial alliance, while it has finally made good the step of rejecting and repudiating allegiance to Rome.
There is a degree of uncertainty allowed to rest in the play,
on the true claim of John or Arthur to the crown, which expresses, not so much the hesitations of historians with which a
poet has nothing to do, but an actual condition of things. John
is found in strong possession, strong in itself in his personal
qualities and in national support; beyond this, Queen Elinor, it
is true, hints at a will in his favour barring the claim of Arthur
of Brittany the representative of the elder branch, but she scarcely
cares to insist on it. Although, however, Elinor whispers a protest of conscience when John appeals to his right; though even
Faulconbridge over the dead body of Arthur recognizes some
sacred sanction of his prior claim, while it is assumed by the allies
of Constance as self-evident; still there is in the abstract such
superior fitness of John for his position, and backed by willing
English barons, he appears to such advantage in opposition to
the allies of Arthur, that we are left with the impression that with
such allegiance he had in truth a better claim, had he understood the just principles of sovereign claim, than even he himself
supposes.
Such however is the sickness of the immature time; his conscience is touched and defiant, and hence he is disposed to means
of force rather than those arguments of peaceful negotiation in
which even his mother saw a possible settlement of all.  His
enemies and those of England again are prompt to take advantage
of the reputed flaw, and thus the action commences. The disputed title to the crown gives opportunity to the French king to
intermeddle in the domestic affairs of England, by acceding to the
solicitations of one claimant for support; then John in the interest of his usurpation sacrifices the national interest which he
otherwise represents, by easily surrendering the provinces to conciliate peace. His surrender goes for nothing from the interference at this moment of the Pope on a quarrel of his own; the
provinces have been given up, yet his right to the rest still impugned, his rival still supported. He grapples however with his
difficulties manfully, and with equal courage, alertness and conduct conquers the French king and defies the denunciations of
the Pope.  But again mistrust of his title and consciousness of
his own motive confound him; he is tempted to the brutal crime
of destroying Arthur, and brings upon himself by the suspected
fact a domestic rebellion, which allies itself unadvisedly but
dangerously with French power, and to escape from the difficulty
thus brought on he submits himself without reserve to Papal
dictation. By this time his failing energies would make wreck
of the whole fortune of the state, but that better powers are athand




CRITICAL ESSAY.


185


in the true nationality and sound spirit and energies of a subject.
The fair front and bold bearing of Faulconbridge despite disaster,
and the returning allegiance of the barons whose better tendencies
are recovered by accidental discovery of the treachery of their
unnatural allies, bring all into position to take fresh and more
promising commencement, and thus encouraged his successor is
inaugurated:" Be of good comfort, prince; for you are born
To set a form upon that indigest,
Which he hath left so shapeless and so rude."
The title of national interests and national honour to over-ride
inferior considerations of personal sympathy, devotion to an individual and class interests,-the dignity, that is of the historical
or national motive, is set forth by exhibiting its preponderance
when the opposite scale is weighed with the antagonist impulses
in their most effective form. We are drawn towards John, that
is, towards England and Faulconbridge, notwithstanding our personal sympathy is engaged so strongly for Constance and her
haplessson. John and Elinorare selfish-guilty, but their fortunes,
whether by accident or no, are those of nationality, and receive
some consecration from the alliance. Usurpation, however, in
availing itself of the indulgence accepts the bond to have like
measure meted to it when it transfers itself to the false position
of its now prostrate enemies, nor can legitimacy escape the law.
In Richard III. we find again a murderous usurper, as later history
furnishes an hereditary tyrant, opposed to pretenders invading
with foreign aid; but in both instances the foreign power or interest is decidedly in subjection to the domestic, and gains neither
immediate nor implicit ascendancy.
John therefore, however he attained his position, is able, energetic, and the spirit of nationality sides with him against a
claimant under the tutelage of France and gaining aid by condonation to a treacherous poltroon of the death of Cceur de Lion.
Still it is not the less revolted at his cold blooded cruelty to his
nephew, and indignant at his concessions to France and cringing
to Rome, and casts about with anxiety for some way out of the
labyrinth-losing its way like Faulconbridge in a moment of dejection, amazed among the thorns and dangers of the world.
In the future historical plays, as in this, we shall find the
weakening of the royal power that results from informal title,
gives the aiding or accomplice barons inordinate power and presumption dangerous to the peace and to the united power of the
state. Pembroke and Essex and Salisbury are antecedents of
those who made and unmade kings, of the Warwicks, Northumberlands and Hotspurs, who rid the country of one tyrant only
to endeavour to tyrannize over or virtually dismember it in the
name of a puppet, and when he is contumacious, to tear society
to pieces by rebellion.
Hence the expedients of the kings recorded in other plays to




186


KING JOHN.


employ the rash spirits of the nobility in crusades or wars with
France, always disastrous in the end with whatever glory accompanied; or to decimate and destroy, at least to weaken the
order to a degree not more injurious to its dignity than to its
proper usefulness which will not be prematurely spared.
This however is for future development, in the present piece, as
we have seen, the evil set forth is that unpatriotic concession to
foreign powers from motives personal to the king, that reached
its height under the later Stuarts, not till long after Shakespeare
had exposed it for reprobation; but that was abundantly rife
in our earlier chronicled history, and contrasted most strongly
with the genius of the government of Elizabeth. Before and after
the time of Shakespeare, the contested titles of the English kings,
deriving from the dethronements caused or even necessitated by
their vices and tyranny or by their general incapacity, induced
the betrayal of the national interest or glory for the sake of protection against subjects, or to escape from contests which such
weakness disabled them from carrying through.
The source of a remedy for these difficulties in the working of
a monarchy, and they are as salient in our century as ever, is
adumbrated in King John where the Bastard of Faulconbridge
is an impersonation at once of loyalty to his sovereign and of
truth to the national honour; and having committed to him, by
the failing John, the delegated government "'Take thou the
order of the present time," is at the head of that scheme of administration that becomes possible when a nation at large or the
efficient majority of it, is as sound at heart as Faulconbridge.
This is the promise of that happier form of constitutional government, barbarous and bewildering though it may be in its fictions
and anomalies, that relieves monarchy from the cares and consequences of undue responsibility, and allows the conduct of
national affairs to proceed, if not entirely at least to a very great
extent, uninfluenced by the defects of age, of ability, of disposition and caprice, that are incident to the convenience of hereditary succession; which gives an arm of youth unchanging,
because ever changing to wield the vigour of the nation, and has
ever the opportunity to mark the man that expresses the clear
sense of the nation when its mind is resolved, or that it is prepared to follow with most confidence when doubtful and at a loss,
or when action must respond to exigent emergency.
The character of the Bastard and its progress are most effectively realized, and contrast with the successive phases of the
spirit of John. From the beginning to the end he is uniformly
bluff and outspoken, but at first with a certain affectation of
bluffness that smacks of the country and wears off without in any
degree impairing his hearty sincerity, when he has seen more of
the world, but never could be mistaken for bluster. Though not
embarrassed by delicacy he preserves a principle of conscientious



CRITICAL ESSAY..


187


ness; and when, transferred to court, here cognizes the genius of
the place, it is in self-defence alone that he proposes to cope with
it. Interest and influence and power are the stakes on the board,
the gamesters are unscrupulous, and he will cultivate the wit he
does not lack to make sure he is not cheated.
In the scenes in France he is the brave soldier and little more;
a looker-on in scenes of general treaty, and blurting out indignation with no cautious regard to his relative diplomatic position.
Only when a course is to be adopted in active management he
frames a plan that, in his own words, " smacks somewhat of the
policy." After the unprincipled convention of the kings indeed
he professes allegiance to gain in his personal capacity, but he
does not graduate far; his ransacking the abbey chests is not
noted as affected by private peculation and he rises by nobler
means.
What we call in compliment to ourselves an English spirit,a spirit of independence, of fair play in hard fighting and of
directness in negotiation, hatred of cruelty and meanness, and
disgust at the pursuit of secular purposes under a religious pretext, especially in a foreign interest,-this is the spirit that
animates the other English barons, but especially the Bastard,
expressed casually and intermittently at first, but when the heart
and health of John decline together he rises at once in consistency,
dignity and force. He gains in elevation and composure, without relaxing one whit in energy; and sparing no exertion to keep
the country together and place the quarrel on an open and
healthy footing, he entertains the shrewd and only safe conviction that preparation for hard knocks will best support negotiation if unhappily too late to supersede it. He presents a
prototype of the loyalty of which our history furnishes so many
examples, loyalty to the ideal qualities that would best become
the throne, and that it persists in assuming,-such is the assistance of personal association, to sustain its enthusiasm and for
the encouragement of the cause that should be in itself motive
and stimulant enough. Thus there is still nothing slavish in his
loyalty: the older dramatist, to whose work we must presently
advert, allows him to appeal to the divine right:" I say 'tis shame and worthy all reproof
To wrest such petty wrongs in terms of right
Against a king anointed by the Lord.
Why, Salisbury admit the wrongs are true,
Yet subjects may not take in hand revenge
And rob the heavens of their proper powers,
Where sitteth he to whom revenge belongs."
But the Faulconbridge of Shakespeare directs his eye to a different point of right entirely, and loyalty is enjoined because
patriotic, not patriotism on the ground of loyalty:



188


KING JOHN.


" And you degenerate, you ingrate revolts,
You bloody Neroes ripping up the womb
Of your dear mother England, blush for shame."
The introduction of Peter of Pomfret, and the indication of the
popular agitation and uneasiness with which he is connected,
could not be spared in a play that is to be introductory to the
histories in several of which popular commotion was to play so
large a part. We may recognize in these delusions the seed-bed
of the wild and foolish sects, as in the indicated position of the
clergy, the confiscation and plunder, that came on with the better
consequences of the reformation. In this earliest play and remotest action it was easy to indicate without offence the necessity
for harmonizing the influences of Church and State, so far at
least that they might work if not together not in opposition.
For the rest the play presents a picture of almost chaotic turbulence; England and its body politic rocks and tumbles in
disruptions, return and subsidence. In the first part in the war
with France we have war and peaceful treaty and war again, in
a sequence of scenes divided by no extended interval; in the
second portion of the play allegiance, rebellion and reunited
fealty succeed and alternate with like rapidity, and the relations
with Rome change as quickly from open defiance to cringing
submission, and from covert to declared antipathy, rendering
altogether a wonderfully true impression of the history as recorded.
The picture of Popish interference and power makes the play
peculiarly the picture of an epoch. The kingdoms of modem
Europe are still in the gristle, and the remains of ancient Roman
civilization is potent among the irregular communities which are
yet unprepared to make terms of compromise or boldly to assert
independence. The degraded position of both John and Lewis
successively,-degrading and disastrous, provokes appeal to a
national spirit which the centuries ripen. Thus is stated the
problem that is scarcely solved at present, the harmony and
identity of national sympathies with the true as distinguished
from the counterfeit, cosmopolitan.
Pandulph, the legate, stands in group with the feudal princes
like the representative of the adult fraud and heartlessness of
priestcraft; the inheritor of high faculties cultivated to refined ill
purposes from the old Roman pontifices; the root of evil living
among the ashes of the empire and springing up amongst and
poisoning the better and unsophisticated tendencies of the northern
nations, apprentices in civilization it is true but also novices in
deceit. In his elaborate explaining away of perjury, his authorization by religious sanction of secret, treacherous murder and
revolt, and in his cold-blooded complacency as he speculates on
the certain murder of Arthur if dextrously provoked and the advantages to result to Holy Church therefrom, we have most




1 0(


>D- T r-T-    A T   -ll A I.


ULKI'I  UAH J lr5AY.             AUo
striking contrast to the spirit of honour, of hatred of cruelty, and
of compassion for the weak and afflicted, that characterizes the
English Barons. The power of the natural affections over a rude
nature is expressed most glowingly in the relenting of Hubert,
but scarcely more touchingly than by the tears of Salisbury at
the distress of Constance, or in his bitterness of heart at his false
position as an enemy:" Where honourable rescue and defence
Calls out upon the name of Salisbury,"
and by the generous indignation of the barons his companions,
and of Faulconbridge no less, at the jeopardy and murder of
Arthur. Formal religion is arrayed in the person of its official
minister against the religion of humanity and sympathy; and
the corruption of an artfully organized administration offends the
spectator by assuming the honours and prerogatives of devotion
and piety, when at war with all the feelings that by their essential
qualities and in their own right are properly devout, moral and
pious; and hence neither in falling off from their allegiance nor
in returning to it do the barons admit the slightest weight, or
even refer to the authority of Pandulph, a sign of the future which
is quite as significant as the hankering of the kings and nobles
after ecclesiastical hoards, which seconded the popular movement
so efficiently at last.
Magna Charta is omitted in the play, and the obtaining of it
from the reluctant and speedily recusant John was, in fact, as regards the leading movement of the reign, an episode, and omitted
of necessity. The struggle that Magna Charta symbolizes awaited
still its grandest manifestation when Shakespeare lived and wrote;
and it was on the very day that he breathed his last at Stratfordupon-Avon, that a chief person in the action which is still undramatized, Oliver Cromwell, at the threshold of manhood was
entering his name as a student at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. Still the genius of Magna Charta is infused into the
play, and in the concession which John is forced to make to the
barons in the interest of humanity and conciliation of his subjects,
we recognize the seal of the cause of justice against arbitrary
administration.
It is observable that after the legate, the excess of unscrupulousness and cruelty is the patrimony of the kings,-to some extent
of Philip of France, though he is not utterly incapable of compunction, but chiefly of King John and his rival the Dauphin.
The atmosphere of high place and isolated dignity hardens their
hearts and deadens their nature so far as to render them entirely
different to the nobles who otherwise are stern enough.
For the rest it is of course natural enough that a national
poet should give a national advantage, and accordingly Shakespeare is not guilty of unduly ennobling the French. Their interested desertion of Constance and Arthur, after holy and con

*




190


KING JOHN.


scientious professions, is placed in contrast to the pity of Salisbury;
and not even John himself, suborning Hubert not without conscious shame and agitation, is so hateful as Lewis entertaining
and seconding the Macchiavellian prophecy of the Cardinal; even
more degraded is the nature that appears in his misconception
and mean consolation of the noble emotion of Salisbury:" Lift up thy brow, renowned Salisbury,
And with a great heart heave away this storm.....
Come, come; for thou shalt thrust thy hand as deep
Into the purse of rich prosperity
As Lewis himself."
Shakespeare's play of King John is immediately founded upon
and follows an earlier play in two parts of the same subject and
title. There is so much of sterling gold in the old, or rather say
the earlier, King John in language and versification, in poetical
ideas and expression, in humour, in power of dramatization, so
to express the digesting of desultory narrative into an orderly
series of scenes, and in adumbration of character, that the author
has good claim for some trouble to be taken to identify him. This
must be bestowed by others; here be it simply noted that this
case of adaptation is parallel to that of The Taming of the Shrew,
and we are guided first to examine the claims of those whose
names, as we have seen in speaking of that play, are connected
loosely though it be, with hints of discontent at Shakespeare's
freedom with their productions. These are Greene, Marlowe,
Peele and Lodge, and I can only wish success to the investigator
of the most likely claimant, for the work appears still to do. I
cannot admit for a moment the possibility that Shakespeare
really wrote the earlier form of the play. Three early editions
are known, the first anonymous in 1591, the next in 1611 bore
on its title as index of the author W. Sh. which on that of the
following year, 1612, was boldly advanced to W. Shakespeare.
This is only one of many equally and still more evidently false
ascriptions. Both the character of the defects of the play and
the treatment of it in Shakespeare's adaptation, point to the conclusion that he was not completing and polishing a youthful
conception, but simply breaking up the ruder workmanship of
another hand and extracting what was valuable in it by the
virtue of his own precious amalgam. An allusion in the prologue
to the first edition indicates that it was first acted after Marlowe's
Tamerlane, which seems to date about 1587.
King John appears among the plays enumerated as Shakespeare's by Francis Meres in 1598. No entry of it is to be found
in the Stationers' books either separately or in the enumeration
of pieces "not formerly entered for other men" for the original
folio in 1623, nor is any earlier impression of the play known.
Nevertheless an early unentered impression may have been printed
and have perished for anything we can tell, such are the uncertainties that hover over these statistics.




CRITICAL ESSAY.                      191
Internal evidence in the form of allusion helps us no way. The
passages of marked emphasis which invite such reference are invariably lineal from the earlier play which is strongly imbued
with the antipapal purpose and interest. The parallel has constantly been remarked of the transactions between John and Hubert and those between Elizabeth and secretary Davison, to say
nothing of her still viler tampering with the keepers of her unhappy prisoner. Doubtless we may be more familiar now, from
the revelation of private documents, with the detailed meanness
and cruelty of the Queen's Highness than even her contemporaries;
but still so much was notorious at the time from Davison's defence, of the cajolery brought to bear upon him and his treacherous requital, that it seems impossible that the royal villainy of
John could ever have been exhibited on the stage without receiving its application from every beholder. The application is
salient even in the earlier play, but in Shakespeare's elaboration
it is ten times more so. Could the play with these scenes, we ask
ourselves, have been represented, like so many others of the
author's, at Court. Scarcely, one would think; the King in Hamlet, as the inserted play proceeds, inquires, " Have you heard the
argument? is there no offence in it? " and we know that Queen
Elizabeth herself was jealous of the application to herself of the
argument of the play of the deposed Richard II. But if the play
might be obnoxious at Court, how came it to be written at all for
players so directly connected with the Court? The difficulty, perhaps, admits only of this as its nearest solution:-The fervour of
invention may have carried the poet further than he would have
designed in all deliberateness, though he might not be disposed
to mutilate his work on prudential review. This is the secret of
the publication of much that is free spoken before the Epistle to
the Pisoes, and thence downwards. The familiarity of the town
with the earlier play gave some cover; the very absence of all
attempt to mask the application gave an appearance of innocence,
and the self-evident truthfulness of the natural picture would at
once put an objector in the wrong. Some discretion may have
been exercised in representation, but still, after all these possibilities weighed, the play remains as an exponent of the fact which
is largely corroborated by the history and literature of the time,
that under so powerful a monarch as Elizabeth, the tendencies of
monarchy, and the characteristics of human nature as affected by
the accident of royalty, were canvassed and set forth with such
simplicity of speech and exposition, as to make the observances
of the present time wear much the look of undignified adulation
in comparison. A French writer, Philarete Chasles, could say of
this play, in 1851-" Le Roi Jean est une revelation si poignante
de la politique des camps et des cours qu' a moins de vivre dans
une republique, on ne peut, sans une espbce de crime de haute
trahison, exiger qu' elle soit reuresentee."  But matters are not




192                 KING JOHN.
come to this pass with us yet, and were still further from it in
the days of Elizabeth. The Chronicles of the Kings of England
are dedicated by Raphael Holinshed to Lord Burleigh in all
humble and admiring devotion, but whether in quaint parenthesis
or solemn paragraph, he speaks his mind of kingly and courtly
no less than popular ways as religiously as Shakespeare himself,
and to the best of his insight calls a spade a spade, with an honest
unconsciousness of a necessity to call it anything else, that would
have gratified Philip of Macedon.
The general course and outline of Shakespeare's play is that of
the " Troublesome Raigne of King John of England," and very
interesting it is to follow the comparison, and note what he adopted,
what rejected, and what modified, ever with self-evident propriety
and reason. He adopted in its fullest sense the moral of the story
thus expressed in the last speech of the Bastard:" Let England live but true within itself,
And all the world can never wrong her state.
Of the differences in general conduct, it is not expedient here
to give more than occasional illustrations. In the earlier play
the two Faulconbridges are brought before King John by the
Sheriff, as offenders against the peace by rioting, and their mother is present during the whole discussion of the grounds of contested claim. Shakespeare alters this; and, with like judgment,
he varies from his precedent in managing that Constance shall be
absent when the match is made up between Lewis and Blanche,
and thus the touching scene between Constance and Salisbury is
entirely his own. A jocund scene, the single comic scene of the
old play, in which the bastard searches an Abbott's money chests
and presses, and turns out a " smooth skinned nun" and a lively
friar, who pleads that he is hiding her from laymen, is indited
with much vivacity; and we must appreciate Shakespeare's selfcontrol in cancelling a scene, that was no doubt very popular and
expected, in deference to the main purpose of his play. Compression and omission are liberally exercised at every stage of the
story; but the relation between the original genius of our poet
and the stimulating suggestion, will appear best by an example
of development. In this, as in so many other instances, we must
admit no inconsiderable glory to the writer who furnished the
rudimentary motives susceptible of such elevation. From these
few lines, then, sprung the long scene that closes the third act
with the despair of Constance, and the devilish sagacity of Pandulph:" Enter CONSTANCE alone.
K. Phi. To aggravate the measure of our grief,
All mal-content comes Constance for her son.
Be brief, good madam, for your face imports
A tragic tale behind, that's yet untold.




CRITICAL ESSAY.


193


Her passions stop the organ of her voice,
Deep sorrow throbbeth mis-befallen events.
Out with it, lady, that our act may end,
A full catastrophe of sad laments.
Const. My tongue is tuned to story forth mishap
When did I breathe to tell a pleasing tale?
Must Constance speak? let tears prevent her talk.
Must I discourse? Let Dido sigh and say,
She weeps again to hear the wrack of Troy.
Two words will serve, and then my tale is done,
El'nor's proud brat hath robbed me of my son.
Lew. Have patience, madam, this is the chance of war.
He may be ransomed, we revenge his wrong.
Const. Be't ne'er so soon, I shall not live so long.
K. Phi. Despair not yet, come Constance, go with me.
These clouds will fleet, the day will clear again.  [Exeunt.
Card. Now, Lewis, thy fortune buds with happy spring,
Our Holy Father's prayers effecteth this.
Arthur is safe, let John alone with him,
Thy title next is fair'st to England's crown.
Now stir thy father to begin with John;
The Pope says, ay; and so is Albion thine.
Lew. Thanks, my lord legate, for your good conceit,
'Tis best we follow now the game is fair,
My father wants to work him your good words.
Card. A few will serve to forward him in this,
Those shall not want; but let's about it then.  [Exeunt.
In the old play the feud of Faulconbridge with Austria is very
distinctly marked as having reference to the death of King Richard,
his father; but Shakespeare merely indicates this indirectly, and
the bastard seems to quarrel quite as much on the ground of general repugnance, natural between a bluff brave man and a
blusterer.
Again, in the old play the motive of the monk who poisons
King John, is distinctly set forth as malice against the plunderer
and opponent of the Church, but Shakespeare leaves the inference
to be made by the spectator.
In the old play, the poisoned monarch recognizes his torment
as punishment for his grievous sins; in the later, there is but a
faint glimpse of such sensitiveness of conscience;"Within me is a hell, and there the poison
Is as a fiend, compelled to tyrannize
On unreprievable, condemned blood."
With respect to exhibition and delineation of character, the
earlier play is the same unwecded garden that it is in respect of
rambling and disproportioned scenes.  In most instances the
writer evinces an intention to give speciality of character by
0




194


KING JOHN.


predominance of certain elements, but he always damages consistency by following a passion at the expense of the speciality. Thus
Arthur to the scolding Constance:" Good mother, cease these hasty madding fits
For my sake, let my grandame have her will;
0 would she with her hand pull out my heart,
I could afford it to appease these broils."
In the two last lines we find the key-note of Shakespeare's conception of the royal boy:" Good, my mother, peace,
I would that I were laid low in my grave,
I am not worth the coil that's made for me."
But what follows is quite out of harmony with this tenderness
and simplicity:" But, mother, let us wisely wink at all,
Lest farther harms ensue our hasty speech."
Yet given certain degrees and certain conditions, and the inconsistency may become consistent; and these Shakespeare supplies,
when we perceive in Arthur's appeal to Hubert how danger and
despair will quicken a certain degree of skilfulness, not to call it
dexterity or artfulness, in a mind that is most artlessly disposed
but still of good natural capacity.
Similar inconsistencies weaken the delineation of the Bastard
of Faulconbridge, which nevertheless remains a very masterly
sketch. He is described by Chatillon:" Next them a bastard of the king deceased,
A hardy wild-head, tough and venturous;"
and all the motives of his person and nature as found in Shakespeare are supplied, though with much ill management and false
combination. Thus, at his first appearance, he allows his brother,
the legitimate Robert, to take the first word and open his exposition. His bantering spirit is well expressed in his application
to his mother:" Mother, be brief, 1 long to know my name.
Is't not a slackness in me worthy blame,
To be so old and cannot write my name;"but this is followed up by threats that are simply brutal. The
original hint of the personal contrast of the two brothers is thus
conveyed in the bastard's words:" His constitution plain debility
Requires the chair, and mine the seat of steel."
Of the still more remote sources of the character of Faulconbridge
there is more to be said; but in illustration of the reference of
the contest of the brothers to the political play, it may be noted
that Robert and Philip Faulconbridge are like John and Arthur,
rival kinsmen claiming an inheritance on grounds where right
and equity, possession and personal qualifications, are strangely




CRITICAL ESSAY.


195


contrasted and complicated; and the tendencies of lucre and ambition as interfering with the delicacies of natural affection or
domestic sympathy, are prepared for by one brother's cool exposition of the lapse of his mother, and the off-hand appeal of the
other to the lady herself.
I cannot satisfy myself that there is positive proof that Shakespeare applied to Holinshed's Chronicle, or any other, for assistance or suggestion. But even if he did, the merit will still remain
with the earlier writer, of inventing the main scheme of the dramatic digest of a disorderly period. He it was who recognized
the effectiveness of making the murder of Arthur the very hinge
and turning-point between the high-spirited success of the commencement of the reign, and the disgrace and dejection that ensued; and he it was who gave such heightening emphasis to the
indignation excited by the death of Arthur, as to place the selfish and heartless policy of the princes and legate in the most obvious and odious light; and who, lastly, had the clearness of
sight to fix upon the assertion of national independence against
invading Frenchmen and encroaching ecclesiastics, as the true
principle of dramatic action of the time. Time and the hour do
not allow me to follow out all his footsteps, but I have seen
enough to convince me that he diligently consulted not only Holinshed but the more varied and remote authorities.
Confining, however, our attention to Holinshed, there might be
some reason to suspect that he had been read carelessly in one
chief matter, were not the artistic motive for the interpretation
adopted so evident. The sympathy for Arthur was chiefly among
his own subjects or allies in Poictou or Brittany, the Britains, as
they are called by the Chronicler, and the term may have been
applied too extensively. John, after the capture of Arthur,
caused himself to be re-crowned and then returned to Normandy,
where " true it is great suit was made to him to have Arthur set
at liberty, as well by the French King as by William de Riches,
a valiant Baron of Poictou, and divers other noblemen of the Britains, who, when they could not prevail in their suit, they banded
themselves together and joining in confederacy," and so forth,
p. 274. Presently after follows the account of the relenting of
Hubert de Burgh, and the reluctance of the meaner instruments;
and lower down the murmurs of John's own knights, not however in the pure disinterestedness of the play, but in apprehension that, if taken by the King of France, they would be " made
to taste of the like cup." The nearest approach to this motive in
the old play is in the words of Essex:" What hope in us for mercy on a fault,
When kinsman dies without impeach of cause."
But this, perhaps, may be enough to assure us that it was in deliberate preference that the dramatist invented the nobler motive,




196


KING JOHN.


or rather its unusual and exclusive force, and thus brought another group into happy composition with that supplied to him by
the historian, of the lamenting and supplicant Arthur.
I think we must note it also as a happy error or equally happy
thought of the first dramatist, to unite Austria and Lymoges
into a single character, and thus concentrate the odium both
of the imprisonment and death of Coeur-de-lion on the antagonist of Faulconbridge. The research into the materials and
hints that suggested the creation of the stalwart Englishman is
interesting, but I can give the results of only a cursory examination. Holinshed has this passage which is usually cited, and, as
far as it goes, is to the point:-" The same year also (the first of
John) Philip, bastard son to King Richard, to whom his father
hau given the castle and honour of Coynack, killed the Viscount
of Lymoges,:n revenge of his father's death, who was slain as ye
have heard in besieg-ng the castle of Chalus Cheverell."  The
meagreness of this notice was remedied by the dramatist with
fair dramatic skill, by combining the characteristics of another
contemporary bastard who makes great figure for good or ill,
but ever for energy as servant of King John. This is Foukes de
Brent, or in the Latin of Matthew Paris, Falcasius, or Falco de
Brenta, easily modified to Faulconbridge. At his first introduction he is mentioned as a knight who had been placed by
King John in charge of the march of Wales, and then summoned
to assist against the barons, A.D. 1212, and this is added-"Erat
autem ruptarius nequissimus, Neuster natione et spurius; sed et
ipse multo crudelius quam ei jussum fuit in ipsos descevit sicut
dicetur inferius." The promised notice recounts his taking various
castles, especially that of Bedford which was given him by the
king with a housekeeper to boot, the noble lady Margareta de
Ripariis, or Margaret de Rivers, for a wife, together with all her
possessions and the lands of many of the Barons. Hence in the
old play Faulconbridge appeals to a half promise that he should
wed the Lady Blanche and have a fair dowry of lands; and Shakespeare retains at least a hint of his sense of the aid that knighthood gives the match and money seekers, "Well now I can
make any Joan a lady." Less questionable activities are recorded of the worthy in the operations under Henry III. which
resulted in the expulsion of Lewis from the country. A considerable detachment of the French party were in possession of
Lincoln city and pressed the siege of the castle, which was held
against them valiantly by a noble lady Nichola. The Earl of
Pembroke invested the city and assaulted the gates and was
opposed from the walls. In the meantime Foukes de Brent
entered the castle at the back by a postern gate with considerable
force, and rushing thence into the city took the defendants in the
rear. On this diversion the gates were presently forced, and after
a severe battle within the walls the French party was defeated




CRITICAL       ESSAY.                197
with great slaughter, and the day, which was Saturday in Whitsun-week, was called thereafter in derision, Lewis's fair. I am
quite prepared to expect that the scheme of Faulconbridge to
attack Angers simultaneously on opposite sides, which is indicated in the earlier play, was in fact borrowed from this exploit.
Restless and unquiet he was afterwards accused of disloyalty
himself, made a dash at a whole bench of justices who had condemned him in a heavy fine to the king, anid confined one of
them in his castle of Bedford, which he caused to be defended
against the king in person. His brother William de Brent and
a garrison to the number of eighty were hanged. He himself obtained pardon of life but was exiled, proceeded to Rome, and
persuaded the Pope to move for his restitution to his wife and
his goods, but died abroad, it was said by poison, " making so an
end of his unconstant life, which from the time that he came to
years of discretion was never bent to quietness."
There is yet another and earlier play on this reign which it is
sufficient to mention, as there is but the faintest appearance that
it influenced either Shakespeare or the author he followed. It
was entitled Kynge Johan, and was written in vehement Protestant interest, by John Bale, Bishop of Ossory, as the conclusion
indicates in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, but near its commencement. In construction it is halfway between the moralities and the
historical plays for which it prepared. The King, the Pope and
Stephen Langton among others supply the tardiness and scantimess of action by argument and discourse with such personages
as England a widow, Sedition, Civil Order, Usurped Power, and
so forth. The wars with France and claim of Arthur are not in
any way introduced, and the whole force of the writer is directed
to promote the reformation by a forcible comment on John's defiance of Rome, and the circumstances of his surrender of his crown
and death by poison at clerical hands. Thus it has ending:"Civil Order-Pray unto the Lord that her Grace may continue
Thie dlays of Nestor to our soul's consolation,
And that her offspring may live also to subdue
The great Anti-Christ with his whole generation,
In Elias sprete to the comfort of this nation;
Also to preserve her most honourable council
To the praise of God and glory of the Gospel."




i
I
I
I
F
t
I




CRITICAL ESSAY ON KING RICHARD II.
N 1597 Shakespeare's tragedy of King Richard II. was
published in 4to. but without his name; this was followed by three other editions in the same form, each
with his name on the title, and dated respectively
1598, 1608, and 1615. The two last of these editions contain
new matter, set forth on the title page as " with new additions
of the Parliament scene and the deposing of King Richard;" in
fact, the 154 lines in thefou t from Bolingbroke's command
to fetch the king, down to Richard's last speech and exit. In
other respects these editions correspond with the elder, as they
appear to have been copied again, though with much carelessness
in the matter of omission of lines that may not be spared, in the
original folio of 1623.
Was this scene coeval in authorship with the rest of the play,
and omitted by accident or design from the first editions? Certainly though not necessary to its continuity, the interest of the
act seems to require it, and we cannot recognize in its style any
such diversity from other portions as would argue later date.
The question of design leads us to enquire what may be the date
of the composition of the play.
The first edition falls in the same year as one of Richard III.
and precedes by one year only the enumeration of Francis Meres,
which avouches the existence and popularity of such plays as The
Merchant of Venice, All's Well that Ends Well, King John, and
the quarto edition of the First Part of Henry IV. The internal
evidence of style may make us confident that Richard II. was
written before all these,-scarcely, therefore, written only a single
year earlier. Three years earlier, that is in 1595, Samuel Daniel
published the portion of his Civil Wars that contained the reign
of Richard II. at great length, and Mr. Knight has indicated certain parallelisms with Shakespeare, who he thinks was the later
writer. My own impression is different. Of the description of
the entry into London of Richard and Bolingbroke, Dryden said,
" The painting of this description is so lively, and the words so
moving, that I have scarce read anything comparable to it in any




200             KING     RICHARD      II.
other language." Daniel, in recounting the same incident surmounts himself, inditing thus:" He that in glory of his fortune sate,
Admiring what he thought could never be.
Did feel his blood within salute his state,
And lift up his rejoicing soul to see
So many hands and hearts congratulate
The advancement of his long desired degree;
When, prodigal of thanks, in passing by,
He re-salutes them all with cheerful eye.
Behind him, all aloof, came pensive on,
The unregarded king, that drooping went
Alone, and but for spite scarce looked upon:
Judge if he did more envy or lament.
See what a wondrous work this day is done,
Which th' image of both fortunes doth present:
In th' one, to show the best of glory's face;
In th' other, worse than worst of all disgrace."
On turning to Holinshed and Stow, we find the original suggestion of all,-slight, it is true, yet sufficient, as we know by
abundant parallel and precedent, for the responsive imagination
of Shakespeare; but I believe it will be hard to find a like instance of the poetic fire of Daniel blazing up so brightly from such
stubble, and therefore must infer that in the present instance he
drew not immediately from the Chronicles or his own resources,
but caught reflected beams from the previous poetic rendering of
Shakespeare. Thus, however, runs the plain prose of the historian:-" After this they rode forth (that is Richard and Bolingbroke, quitting Newcastle and Stafford) and lodged at these
places issuing..... and so to London. Neither was the king
permitted all this while to change his apparel, but rode still
through all these towns, simply clothed in one suit of raiment,
and yet he was in his time exceedingly sumptuous in apparel, in
so much as he had one coat which he caused to be made for him
of gold and stone, valued at 3000 marks; and so he was brought
the next way to Westminster.
" As for the duke, he was received with all the pomp and joy
that might be of the Londoners... it was a wonder to see what
great concourse of people and what number of horses came to him
on the way as he passed.... and such joy appeared in the countenances of the people, uttering the same also with words as the
like not lightly been seen." He then relates that it was not
without difficulty that the king was protected from the mob the
next day when he was carried to the Tower. The demeanour
of the duke, after his proclamation as king, is thus described a
page forward:-" These things done, the king rose from his seat,
and with a cheerful and right courteous countenance regarding




CRITICAL ESSAY.


201


the people, went to Whitehall, where the same day he held a
great feast."  Stow found in a contemporary MS. the following
account of the departure of Richard from Conway Castle-" The
duke, with a high, sharp voice, bade bring forth the king's horses;
and then two little worthless nags, not worth forty francs, were
brought forth; the king was set on one, and the earl of Salisbury
on the other, and then the duke brought the king from Flint to
Chester."  I think, then, it is probable that the original transmutation of this metal is due to Shakespeare, whose work will
therefore be carried back beyond 1595, the date of Daniel's poem,
to a period when we have little aid. Richard the Second may
have been written at almost any date between 1589, when Titus
Andronicus seems to have been already produced, or 1592, when
Greene's posthumous libel attests the position and pretensions of
Shakespeare, and the date of the first quarto, 1597. It is highly
probable that, as in the case of King John, so in this play, Shakespeare wrought upon some earlier play, though none such has
come down to us; and in this case we have to entertain the possibility considered in previous essays, that the carping of Greene
imputed plagiarism on the ground of the alterations that resulted
in this work.
To the researches of Mr. Collier is due the recovery of a notice
of an old play on the reign of Richard the Second of considerable
interest in itself, and, from a certain point of view, iil illustration
of Shakespeare also. Dr. Symon Forman, quack and astrologer,
and otherwise of ill reputation, saw a play of Richard II. at
Shakespeare's own theatre of the Globe, on 30th April, 1611, and
entered an abstract in his note book of plays and the hints of
caution and conduct thence deducible, or, as he styled it, " A book
of plays and notes thereof for common policy." This play comprised the tumult of Jack Straw and the death of the duke of
Gloucester, and the intrigues of John of Gaunt to create discord in
the country and make the king unpopular, with a view to his
own son achieving the throne. The notice is loosely expressed,
and scarcely implies that the actual deposition of Richard was
represented. Besides, therefore, giving a different version of the
character of John of Gaunt, this play comprised the earlier portion
of the reign, which Shakespeare passes over, and appears therefore to have been a first part, introductory to a second, which
would set forth the conclusion, and which, it is likely enough,
was supplanted by the entirely revised version now in our hands.
The caution which Dr. Forman deduced from the play he saw,
is sensible enough, I dare say; but he failed to act upon it. He
wrote down, "Beware, by this example, of noblemen and their
fair words, and say little to them," and so forth; but it was very
shortly after that he was implicated in the conspiracy of a nobleman to murder Sir Thomas Overbury, escaping public accusation,
however, by sudden and opportune death.




*202


KING RICHARD II.


There is still another contemporary mention of a play of
Richard II., which it is not without the limits of possibility may
have been that of Shakespeare. The circumstances are well condensed by Mr. Knight, from whom I transcribe them, with the
mere omission of the inferences that I claim to disallow. On the
afternoon previous to the insurrection of the Earl of Essex, in
February, 1601, Sir Gilly Merrick, one of his partisans, procured,
to be acted before a great company of those who were engaged in
the conspiracy, " the play of deposing Richard II." The official
pamphlet of the declarations of the treasons of the Earl of Essex,
states, that when it was told Merrick " by one of the players that
the play was old, and they should have loss in playing it, because few would come to it, there was forty shillings extraordinary given to play it; and so thereupon, played it was." In Bacon's account of the arraignment of Merrick, it is said that he
ordered this play " to satisfy his eyes with a sight of that tragedy, which he thought soon after his lord should bring from
the stage to the state."  In a passage in Camden's annals, it is
charged against Essex that he procured by money the obsolete
tragedy (exoletam tragwdiam) of the abdication of Richard II. to
be acted in a public theatre before the conspiracy. Bacon hints
at a systematic purpose of bringing Richard II. "upon the stage
and into print in Queen Elizabeth's time." Elizabeth herself,
in a conversation with Lambarde, the historian of Kent, and
keeper of the records in the Tower, going over a pandect of the
rolls which Lambarde had prepared, on coming to the reign of
Richard II., said, " I am Richard II.; know ye not that." This
was soon after the insurrection of Essex and Southampton in
1601,-but even before that time, Haywarde, in 1599, very narrowly escaped a state prosecution for his " First Part of the Life
and Reign of King Henry IV.,"-the bringing Richard II. " into
print," to which Bacon, in the passage cited, alludes. The jealousy respecting the application of the precedent of deposition to
the Queen was therefore in existence, and popularly known before the attempt of Essex, and was a cause and not a consequence
of the use made of the play on that occasion. This, therefore,
perfectly accounts for the omission of the deposition scene, whether we suppose it to have been already written and acted or not,
in the first quarto edition only two years or less before Haywarde's publication and jeopardy. There is nothing inconsistent
with the play Sir Gilly Merrick engaged being Shakespeare's,
that the players pleaded for a consideration to boot, or that it
was considered old, or even obsolete. The playgoers of the day
were used to constant novelty; and it is ever by length of run,
not length of days, that a piece becomes at last unattractive, and
to their satisfied apprehensions, provisionally obsolete; but of
course it remains quite possible, and I think is far more likely,
that the earlier play,which it is so probable furnished the ground



CRITICAL      ESSAY.                 203
work of Shakespeare's, the assumed sequel of the play reported
by Dr. Forman, that presents both nobility and royalty so obnoxiously, was still more susceptible of the factious interpretation
sought after, and is the play in question.
There is, however, assuredly nothing in the deposition scene
that Shakespeare might not have written at the date of the first
quarto edition; but on the contrary a great deal, in my opinion,
that is quite in keeping with both the strongest and weakest portions of the play, and could scarcely have been written by him
later. The circumstances altogether seem to indicate that players
might consider it safe to act what publishers did not think it safe
to print; and this may account, as well for the suppressions in the
quarto editions of Shakespeare's Richard II., as for the absence of
any edition of King John which we have already remarked upon.
The position of Essex, with his popular manners and popularity, returned from Ireland against his sovereign's will, complaining of calumny, despoiled of his valuable patents, and appealing the royal councillors of disloyalty or treason, was quite
susceptible of comparison at this time with that of Bolingbroke,
at least to partizans and partial hearers; but it must have been
at some earlier conjuncture that Elizabeth first started at the
parallel to her own position, and there would be some interest in
the recovery of the circumstances. She told Lambarde with
bitterness, "This tragedy was played forty times in open streets
and houses;" and as this certainly was not the case in 1601, we
are carried back to a time when the play that was the groundwork of Shakespeare's Richard II. was a novelty. I leave others
to examine whether political records of popular discontent furnish any hint when this time might be.
It is clear to me that Shakespeare's play pre-supposes the
familiarity of the audience with the earlier portion of Richard's
reign, and that it is in truth a second part, of which the first was
such a play, whether Shakespeare ever corrected it or not, as Dr.
Symon Forman reports of. On this account the report at large
deserves transcription.
"In Richard II. at the Globe, 1611, the 30 April, Thursday.
"Remember therein how Jack Straw by his overmuch boldness, not being politic nor suspecting any thing, was suddenly,
at Smithfield Bars, stabbed by Walworth the mayor of London,
and so he and his whole army overthrown. Therefore in such case,
or the like, never admit any party (qy. parley) without a bar between, for a man cannot be too wise nor keep himself too safe.
" Also remember how the Duke of Gloucester, the Earl of Arundel, Oxford, and others, crossing the king in his humour about
the Duke of Erland (Ireland) and Bushy, were glad to fly and
raise a host of men. And being in his castle, how the Earl of
Erland came by night to betray him with three hundred men;
but having privy warning thereof, kept his gates fast and would




204             KING RICHARD II.
not suffer the enemy to enter, which went back again with a fly
in his ear, and after was slain by the Earl of Arundel in battle.
" Remember, also, when the duke (i. e. of Gloucester) and Arundel came to London with their army, King Richard came forth
to them and met them, and gave them fair words and promised
them pardon, and that all should be well if they would discharge
their army: upon whose promises and fair speeches they did it;
and after the king bid them all to a banquet, and so betrayed
them and cut off their heads, &c. because they had not his pardon under his hand and seal before, but his word."
This, I apprehend, formed the catastrophe of the play, in the
conduct of which we may recognize the same free handling of
materials that distinguishes the old King John. The other notes
of Dr. Forman refer to incidents anterior in the course of the action, and that were introduced as premonitory of, and to prepare
for, the dramatic action of a second part, on the plan that is as
familiar to the Greek dramatists as to Shakespeare.
" Remember therein also how the Duke of Lancaster privily
contrived all villainy to set them all together by the ears, and to
make the nobility envy the king and mislike him and his government; by which means he made his own son king, which
was Henry Bolingbroke.
" Remember also how the Duke of Lancaster asked a wise man
whether himself ever should be king, and he told him no, but his
son should be a king: and when he had told him he hanged him
up for his labour, because he should not bruit abroad, or speak
thereof to others. This was a policy in the commonwealth's opinion, but I say it was a villainy and a Judas' kiss, to hang a man
for telling him the truth. Beware, by this example, of noblemen
and their fair words, and say little to them lest they do the like
to thee for thy good will."
Dr. Forman's last moral, though of wider application, had a
special reference to his own functions as a prophetical wise man;
and the temper of his note betrays pique at the " commonwealth's
opinion," which I take to mean the approving applause of the
theatre, which must have touched him closely enough.
The variation from the Chronicles here is very considerable.
Gloster escapes a trap which seems copied from the very one into
which he fell when attached by King Richard in person at Plashy.
The Duke of Ireland was not slain in the battle of Radcot-bridge,
but escaped before it was joined. The circumstances of the arrest of Arundel are transferred from an incident in the reign of
Henry IV.; and Gloster was not beheaded, but, it appears by
usual accounts, smothered or strangled at Calais. King Richard,
however, is distinctly charged with his death, and could scarcely
be represented otherwise in any version of the dramatized history.
Shakespeare makes Hereford charge Mowbray with " sluicing "
out Gloster's soul " through streams of innocent blood," and York




CRITICAL      ESSAY.                205
speak of him as beheaded —thus following his brother dramatist
i; the form of his death. When therefore the play opens as a
sequel and continuation, Richard is understood as guilty of his
uncle's murder, and the spectator is not left to learn it for the
first time in the second scene. Hence Mowbray is the accomplice of Richard, and his instrument; and Bolingbroke attacks
the reputation of the king through him, and bullies him through
his proxy. Hence, even in these earlier scenes, where the demeanour of Richard is at least kingly and dignified in appearance, if not vigorous, there is indicated the taint of weakness, of
facility in yielding to a bold front, as of insolence when the
front is withdrawn or out of sight. The accusation would appearl
the more shameless, if the first play followed the Chronicles in
setting forth how Bolingbroke had himself been in arms against
the king, with Arundel who suffered for it after pardon revoked,
and Warwick who was exiled, and with Gloster who was murdered. The very boldness of public defence of the memory of
Gloster, apart from allusion to the circumstance of his death,
expresses to the spectator familiar with the circumstances a spirit
of most resolute effrontery, inasmuch as Gloster had at least been
in arms against the king, whether justifiably or not.
The next scene, between Gaunt and the Duchess of Gloster,
states the issue distinctly of divine right and private wrong. It
might seem that the action would gain in clearness if this scene
preceded that which now opens the play, and thus informed the
spectator of the relative position of the persons; the complicity
of Mowbray and Richard, the conscious reluctance of the loyalty
of Gaunt, the effrontery of Bolingbroke and the mere hollowness
of his pretended attachment to Richard. But Shakespeare exhibits tone and character in speech and action, and leaves them
-with what the spectator already knows-to tell for themselves.
In the combat scene we can, however, with all this enlightenment, fully appreciate the dissimulation of Richard in folding
Hereford in his arms, and that of Hereford in requesting to kiss
his sovereign's hand before engaging his sovereign's accomplice.
Hence is also intimated the timidity of Richard, as well as his ill
counsel. He takes pains to reconcile wrangling lords, whose
disagreement is rather to his interest; exposes the weakness of
his will and power by having to permit his injunctions to be disregarded; deserts his instrument or accomplice by laying on him
the heavier penalty of banishment for life, and thus discourages
all adherents; opposes to the high pitched resolution of Hereford,
whose ill-will he knows, but vacillating measures,-severe without reason ostensible, and then as unreasonably lenient, and suggesting treason by exacting the engagement to withhold from
foreign plotting.
In the fourth and fifth  cts, Bolingbroke has changed places
with Richlid, and has to play a part in very similar circum



206               KING RICHARD II.
stances.  He, like Richard, stands as arbiter while turbulentspirited barons give each other the lie, and challenge proof by
combat. But Henry speaks little, and then decisively; he looks
on with that pause and taciturnity that the chroniclers more than
once remark of him, and is evidently not ill pleased at the dissension. No aside is introduced to indicate this,-no dialogue
specially to explain it. Shakespeare set the fact before the eyes
of the spectators, and presumed that to them it would be selfevident. This policy of a sovereign at the head of a confederacy
of powerful allies, whether kings or nobles, is indicated as current
kingcraft by Homer himself, both when Jove looks on quiet and
with complacency at the gods debasing and vexing themselves
by personal conflict, and when Ulysses and Achilles quarrelled,
and Agamemnon looked on well pleased. Already the spirit of
Henry IV. was bodied forth in this earlier play, and the action
of Bolingbroke here corresponds with the policy that is constantly
pursued but only coldly stated by him in his lecture on kingcraft
to his son,-his inculcation of the necessity to keep the barons
exercised in foreign war, to prevent them indulging their spirit
of violence against himself and his weak title.
In the last act, again Henry has to entertain the charge of his
loyalest and best ally against his disloyal and dangerous son;
and York urging the punishment of Aumerle on Bolingbroke is
in the same relative position as Gaunt giving a party verdict in
the council of Richard for the banishment of his own son Bolingbroke. Richard takes Gaunt at his word too eagerly, with little
thought or consideration for his true feelings, and still does so in
a manner to gain no influence by decision. Bolingbroke is so far
stern as to assert his vigour, and though intending to relent from
the first to the prayers of the duchess, enforces persevering supplication; while, by relenting at last, he rewards York's loyalty,
granting his true hopes and wishes, in denying his suit, and
we do not doubt obtains thereafter an attached adherent in Aumerle. In the last scene of all, we see him among friends and
enemies, bold, -promising, clement, and dissimulating, as occasion
asks. The realm of England assuredly has passed from a child's
caprice to the vigorous sway of a grown and exercised man.
In this play as in King John the central interest, despite the
special title of the individual king, is still strictly national;
national as expressing the difficulties of the country in the special
conjuncture of such a reign as that of Richard, and combating
as best it may, but at best only to fall again into turmoil and
desolation. Richard II. is in all his circumstances a contrast to
John. His title is undoubted in seniority of birth and through
long generations and successions; and acceding to the throne a
boy of eleven years old he occupied it for twenty years and
more, strong in the prestige of descent and sanctioned right.
Weakness, wantonness, and extravagance are unable to resist the




CRITICAL      ESSAY.                207
temptation of his position and opportunities; and private rights,
common justice, public wealth and public honour, are at last
compromised to an intolerable extent. The murder of the Duke
of Gloucester, the administration by upstarts to the disgust of a
nobility too powerful to be neglected, the blank charters, the
seizure of the inheritance of Hereford, the Irish war slackening
for want of funds nevertheless, possessions won by the Black
Prince basely yielded upon compromise, the realm itself let in
farm, alienate alike commons and nobles; and crowning all, an
individual enemy is wrought to the highest exasperation, and
that one is most injured who has all the personal and political
qualifications for wielding and ordering the gathered discontent,
to take advantage of a favourable moment like the absence in
Ireland, and the consenting chances of delaying winds.
The national aspect of the quarrel is fairly brought forward by
Hereford's proud assertion of his nationality though banished,
and by Gaunt's eulogy of England, by much of the plaint of
the discontented Lords, and by the reflection of the last scene on
the murder of Richard bringing obloquy on this famous land.
The conscientious hesitations of York and Gaunt bring the difficulty to its plainest issue. Gaunt is bewildered; he bows to the
right divine; and when the deputy of heaven administers injustice, he sees no outlet but to leave the remedy to heaven.
Here the strongest exposition of the right divine of the anointed
king is recognized by the subject, as claimed by the king himself.
This repeated emphasis is laid on the virtue of the consecrating
balm by Richard, his adherents, and partizans. This is a trait
suggested by the detail of Richard's coronation; the traditional
anointing which has been solemnized, in deference to weak minds,
as gravely, if not quite so grotesquely, in our own times. Not till
he is on his death's bed, and at his death hour, and belonging
more to another world than this, does the old duke give full way
to his indignation, and then in language only of prophecy, or at
most of reproof and rebuke, addressed to the king himself, by no
means in sanction of resistance in any form.
York, on whose narrower mind the weakness of age tells more,
would restrain even this-the blindest loyalty is the essence of
his very nature; he has borne every form of most exaggerated
injustice, but the mere cumulative power of a last instance
turns the scale, or sets it on the turn, and outstepping Gaunt,
he entertains at last the idea of cancelled allegiance. He allows
himself to admit the thought of trying royal rights and private
by the same standard, and pleading the precedent of the king's
own act against himself. When the last step is fully taken, the
servility of his nature subjects him as absolutely to Henry as to
Richard before. The instinct of simple self-defence is sufficient
for the other lords, and they rush at once into rebellion.
The results of this alternative are fairly set forth. Remedy is




208


KING RICHARD IT.


sought altogether irregularly, and through broken oaths and laws.
The country, to rid itself of a tyrant, flies to a deliverer who is
utterly unscrupulous, who will make those who take part with
him accessaries to deception, fraud, and ultimately murder. Thus
have tyrannies ever been founded; whenever national self-control
and self-administration are out of the question from mere ignorance, credulousness, sloth, or general passion and self-seeking,
or from faction disabling the otherwise capable, the first great
emergency or terror drives public support at full tide to some unprincipled man of vigour, who is able to stem the difficulty he
may have had more or less hand in fomenting; and whose crimes,
or the mere falseness of whose position relatively to a section of
his subjects, prepares for a succession of the same evils that he
was called in to put an end to.
Thus the tyranny of Richard is brought to an end by a catastrophe that introduces a broken succession, and entails the long
horrors of the wars of the Roses. This is solemnly and pointedly
foretold in the protest of the Bishop of Carlisle. The knot of the
story is handed over, therefore, by the play unloosed; or, more
correctly, it is loosened by a catastrophe that necessarily induces
new entanglements. The play accomplishes the fate and fall of
Richard II. that gives its name; but it is left to future histories
to show how far the general course of England's weal has been
permanently advanced, or what new evils are to take their rise
from the verv efforts that abated the old. The strong vitality
which the play exhibits as belonging to the feeling of legitimacy
and divine right in England, is announcement of the difficulties
that must arise from infringing it, however urgent and even unavoidable may be the necessity. Such blind royalism as that of
Gaunt and of York does not vanish with a generation, or with
two; and whether reasonable or not, its existence is an element
that cannot be neglected when the policy of a public course is in
question. The continuance under such rule as that of Richard is
set forth by the poet as clearly out of the question for men with
the spirit of Englishmen; the shamefulness and degradation to
the island of such a reign is painted vividly; yet the available
means for escaping from it are such as to entail most serious evils.
Certainlv there is no inculcation in the play of tame submission
to tyranny; we honour, and we are incited to honour, Gaunt and
York most when their spirits rise highest, nor can we discern a
course which York, with his wretched capacity and in his position,
could follow with more advantage to the nation. The agency of
such rescue as comes by the unjust Bolingbroke brings however the
curse of injustice with it, and thus much is at least thoroughly
worked out in the plav;-the tyranny that is fostered by the
rulers' overweening conception of divine right and hereditary succession, mischief of which subjects who admit and encourage the
idea are plainly parties and accomplices, and the certainty that




CRITICAL ESSAY.


209


this tyranny will drag down its own destruction by whatever
instruments, good or bad, though with no security that the mischief will end there. The political philosophy of monarchical
institutiors is illustrated by dramatic example to that point at
which the theory of constitutional government has birth;-to the
recognized duty of the governed and those who can instruct and
influence them, to fix a solid and respected government on a base
independent of such vain and delusive superstitions as divine right
or indefeasible claim to false prerogative right in the governors,
and to harmonize the conditions of tranquil demise of power with
efficiency and probity in its exercise. It is a conclusion for weak
King Richard,-                                        }
-     whate'er I am,
Nor I, nor any man, that but man is
With nothing shall be pleased, till he be eased
With being nothing.                               N
Individually, or associated in states, it is well to have be ter hope
for humanity, and struggle in faith for some sounder'ultimate
out-come at least than this, and much is to be learnt from the
play before us of the true course to be given to exertion.
Thus Shakespeare, drawing from nature, exhibited as forcibly
as possible the natural fact of the tyranny that results from the
assumption and admission of divine and indefeasible right in an
hereditary sovereign. With like copy before him he set forth as
true a model of the national miseries that are to be expected
when the deposition of such a tyrant is carried through by a confederacy of selfish ambition, meanness, cruelty, and murder.
Contrasted with such enemies, imbecility is compassionated, and
errors are palliated, and the superstition of slavish submission
grows respectable or honourable, and the contest can only be lulled
to be again renewed, and give matter for a series of hurtling dramatic histories.  But one clear discovery overgleams all other
false and lurid splendours, and it is conveyed not doubtfully
that the primal mischief lies in the conditions of society which
engender both tyrant and slave, or worse still sycophant, and
which cause the task of abating the nuisance when no longer
tolerable to be left for guilt-acquainted hands to undertake.
What these conditions are a child may understand from the
dilemma that is set forth in the play, and a political philosopher
can only enlarge on, for they are nought else than the defect and
absence of the Virtues, of Justice and Courage, of Prudence and
of Moderation, thoroughly diffused among the population and developed not merely in private but in public efficiency.
In the meantime, with a prospect for a nation and for the
world of ages of instability and conflict, there is something not
nncheering for the present in the mere triumph of vigour and
apprehensiveness; for the way of the world shows that the fierce
and the active are sooner disciplined by the force of varied events
P




210


KING RICHARD II.


and their capacity of profiting by experience, than the torpid and
the lax are braced and excited to energy.
The best commentator on the character of Richard would be
a great actor; and the same remark applies to other Characters
in this play.  It is scarcely possible, in reading the play 'c,
oneself, to appreciate the exact feeling which dictates words
that in literal acceptation are at variance with the feeling of
the speaker. Henry speaks words of truth and repentance when
he purposes to wash off his guilt in the Holy Land, and yet his
speech is dictated by politic hypocrisy; precisely as at the commencement of the ensuing play he smoothly opens the council
with happy words on the end of civil conflict, while he all the
while has letters in his pocket and the messenger waiting his
summons, to announce the contumacy of the Percies.    The
reader, or the spectator, must form his own judgment how far
a character is to be understood as wilfully deceiving others, or
unconsciously deceiving himself; and the poet appears to desire to reduce the positive indications of insincerity to the lowest degree, and leave as much as possible to the sagacity of his
audience, recognizing motive in the flow and rhythm of lines
which in purport are at entire variance with these motives. Thus
the hollow loyalty of the challenger, Bolingbroke, in the first act,
is expressed, but not in words; by what he does not say it appears, rather than by what he does; or by what he says as betraying by tone and occasion, that it must be interpreted by reverse.
I am inclined to think that this refinement is sometimes overwrought, even for the spectator, now the actors are gone who
enjoyed the author's own instructions, or could dispense with
them; but of course we cannot impeach Shakespeare, who wrote
for the stage, for not considering a reader. The interpretation
of many scenes can only be correctly obtained by the same study
that an actor must give of his entire part, and that only an accomplished actor is capable of giving. His rendering and intonation of one scene is governed by those which he knows must
follow, but that the reader for the first time is of course ignorant
of, and gaining no aid from previous scenes, is unprepared for
when they arrive. So refined is the finesse that I believe that,
in some instances, the clue to the spirit of the speaker is only
obtainable from the impression of the flow and rhythm of his
words in actual recitation.
Simply on this account the purport of much of the first act of
Richard II. is obscure to the reader, and the difficulty is enhanced
by the assumption of his familiarity with circumstances that
perished for him with the earlier play; and if Richard II. is ever
to be successfully revived on the stage, I think that a chorusprologue should recite these-but who shall write it?
It is curious to extract from the chroniclers their views and
statements of the character and feelings of Richard. The general




CRITICAL ESSAY.


211


tone of Richard after the invasion is derived from the account of
an eye witness-the author of the metrical history that was
accessible in Stow. Thus, at the meeting with Salisbury-" At
the meeting of the king and the earl, instead of joy, there was
very great sorrow. Tears, lamentations, sighs, groans, and mourning quickly broke forth. Truly it was a piteous sight to behold
their looks and countenances, and woeful meeting." The germ of
another fine scene is thus expressed-" The king went up again
upon the walls and saw that the army was two bowshots from
the castle; then he, together with those that were with him,
began new lamentations."
The account that Froissart gives of these contemporary events
is full of inaccuracies, all set forth with that easy and entertaining circumstantiality that sometimes marks truth, and sometimes
the designed imitation of it, and sometimes nothing more than
a lively imagination that goes partners with memory, share and
share alike. He makes the earl place himself in the power of
Richard with only eleven attendants. " Consider," he pleasantly
proceeds, " the great risk the Earl of Derby ran, for they could
as easily have slain him when in the castle, (which they should
have done, right or wrong,) and his companions, as birds in a
cage." The ensuing conversation, as he gives it, respecting the
journey to London, is traceable in the play, and then an anecdote follows of a favourite greyhound quitting the king to fawn
on his enemy, that is not unrelated to the groom's description of
the pride of pace of the transferred roan Barbary.
The free speech of the Bishop of Carlisle is from Holinshed,
and so also is his arrest; his pardon I do not find, but the spirit
of it is given in the reception to favour by King Henry of Jenico
Dartois, a Gascoigne knight, the last of Richard's servants who
obstinately persisted in wearing his cognizance, the white hart,
still seen in his hall at Westminster, and suffered prison in consequence, and all men thought would have lost his life. This is
the type of the one faithful groom, whose attachment vindicates
at least the instincts of humanity, in- he-Tsscene o' tm weak
an      y, u t stl compassionable kin.
H,      w    inder TWdZVIV, and is one of the authorities of Holinshed, describes the king in the Tower as " being
for sorrow withered, broken, and in a manner half dead,"-" desperate, pensive, and full of dolour, so that, in only hope of his
life and safeguard, he agreed to all things that of him were demanded."
Shakespeare sufficiently intimates this motive for Richard's
submissiveness, but he spares him the humiliation of admitting
it, and, in the words of Hall, "of beseeching the duke to grant
him the safeguard of his life, and to have compassion of him now,
as he before that time had been to him bountiful and magnificent."




212             KING RICHARD II.
So, again, the pusillanimity of the deposed king is somewhat
relieved in the added scene by his repulse of the base-minded
Northumberland, and his rejection, however indirectly, of the
last indignity of reading openly the confession of his grievous
crimes; but this is distinctly in contradiction to the histories,
where he submits to all, " and then, with a lamentable voice and
a sorrowful countenance, delivered his sceptre and crown to the
Duke of Lancaster, requiring every person severally by their
names to grant and assent that he might live a private and a
solitary life, with the sweetness whereof he would be so well
pleased, that it should be a pain and a punishment to him to go
abroad."
Sooth to say, there are few of the historical personages whom
Shakespeare has brought upon the stage whom he has not found
it necessary to represent more favourably than history bears out.
Another example from the present play may be adduced, referring to the sentiment of honour and loyalty which the idea of
the drama required to be at once embodied and idealized.
The sacred indignation of York at the treason of his son Aumerle is found in the chronicle in no more venerable form than
this:"Thou traitor thief, thou hast been a traitor to King Richard;
and wilt thou now be false to thy cousin King Henry? Thou
knowest well enough that I am thy pledge borowe and mayneperner, body for body and land for goods, in open parliament, and
goest thou about to seek my death and destruction; by the holy
rood, I had liefer see thee strangled on a gibbet."
Hall again, and not his abbreviator, Holinshed, is very exactly
followed in the death scene of Richard; even the very words are
preserved-" The devil take Henry of Lancaster and thee together; " but the poet substitutes a beating of the keeper for a blow
on the head with the carving-knife, and reduces the number of
assassins slain from four, out of eight, to two. The chronicler,
in his own reflections on the story, and in those he ascribes to
the French king, correctly strikes that note that was to be made
by Shakespeare the key of his composition-the astounding downfal of a consecrated monarch; but how much the advantage lies
on the side of the poet, both in fairness and consistency, will
appear by the extract:" What trust is in this world, what surety man hath of his
life, and what constancy is in the mutable commonalty, all men
may apparently perceive, by the ruin of this noble prince; which
being an indubitable king, crowned and anointed by the spiritualty, honoured and exalted by the nobility, obeyed and worshipped of the common people, was suddenly deceived by them
which he most trusted, betrayed by them whom he had preferred,
and slain by them whom he had brought up and nourished; so




CRITICAL       ESSAY.                213
that all men may perceive and see that fortune weigheth princes
and poor men all in one balance."    Ad
The sudden change of Richard's demeanour, thevconversion of
his character. Qp;jeu on danger and disaster, as tltiof John on
temptation and crime. aThe crisis expresses the re flsion of a
life and death, a progress of body as well as mind in their most
intimate and corresponsive dependence. Res sacra est miser, and
the offender who is so far subdued as to be utterly wretched, is
felt to have vindicated the better tendency in his nature, and to
have made some compensation, and to claim a commiserating
(tear; and Richard, in his abject self-abandonment, acquires a
\ touch of dignity from the appearance that he is not so much ac-)
nuated by alarm or caution, as divesting himself in hurried shame/
and self-disdain, of all the trappings and recollections of a course
that was a mistake, and an absurdity, and a falsehood throughout, and is irrecoverable now by any aid from earth or heaven.
The preparation for the continuation of the history through
the reign of Henry IV. appears in the prominence given to
Northumberland, the introduction of Hotspur his son, and the
prophecy of Richard, and in the allusions to the excesses yet
promise, of the Prince of Wales, the future Henry V.; lastly,
in the allusion to the penitential crusade, a topic that recurs
more than once in the succeeding play. These anticipations
are paired with as marked a reminiscence in Henry IV., where
Hotspur recals the very words that are put into the mouth of
Bolingbroke-of "gentle Harry Percy," and "fair cousin," and
"when my infant fortune comes to years."
It is in the first act, and in the conclusion of the latest scene,
that we trace the chief indications of early origin in Richard II.
in couplets, alternate rhymes, and an occasional limp, an occasional stiltedness and formality of the verse, that remind of the
first King John, and confirm the conjecture of a similar antecedent here. In these respects, as well as in a certain desultoriness in its conduct, and a flatness of effect, dependent on the
large space occupied by weak, however well defined characters,
the play is secondary to King John, and in general force, variety,
and balance, cannot be considered on a par with it, still less, notwithstanding all its excellencies, can it be placed in the most
distinguished rank of the Shakespearian collection.




I
I




CRITICAL ESSAY ON FIRST PART OF
KING HENRY IV.
HE subject matter of this play is the fulfiilmnt of the
prophecy of the deposed Richard in the preceding hiL -
tory. In the theological language of antiquity, the
Gods punished the crimes of Richard by the hands of
Bolingbroke, and now exact from Bolingbroke the penalty for
the crimes by which he wreaked their wrath and vengeance; this
judgment again is inflicted through the crimes of others, from
whom punishment is again requirable: and this is fate, and thus
is continued the endless chain of wrong and wrong in vicious selfreproduction, and the theory has no more prospect of solution forwards, than in its vain retrospect through a vista of successive
iniquities, branching out from antipathies among the gods themselves, and discord even in heaven. Hatred of tyranny scarcely
reaches its height, when pity for the deposed tyrant directs our
aversion upon his subverter, and sympathy with the liberator is
forfeited by the crimes of the insurgent.
Such may, in fact, be very much the appearance of the world's
history, if we glance at the conflicts of dynasties and nations,
their crimes, and contests, and exterminations-such, if we take
even an extended section of mischief and political retribution;
but if we look wider and further, it may not be so, and in this
case, a poet who, in a work-a composition, has to concentrate
a moral, and is allowed and is even bound to give intimations of
wider scope and deeper penetration than mere unelaborated detail
of events can furnish-who must give his picture completeness, and
roundness, and satisfying conclusiveness, by bringing all actions
more completely to a close and independent determination than
belongs to any set of incidents in nature, with their numberless
annexments,-the poet working under this bond is constrained
to comprise in his abstract of a period, some hint of the general
tendency-some glimpse of the ultimate direction and settlement
of the whole, if such indeed there be.
In Richard II. the ruin of the country was averted by the only
available means at hand, the substitution of the energetic Henry




216


KING H ENRY IV


IV.; but the new system has disadvantages that promise to rival
those that have been given up. The title is weakened by consciousness of deceit and murder, making it in fact a usurpation;
and then by the discontents of the aiding instruments, who are
all the more importunate from the very baseness and wickedness
of the acts they assisted at, or were art and part in. It is difficult to bring home to confederated rogues the moral of self-denial,
or any other rule, in dividing the plunder, than the simple rule
of share and share alike, or in proportions rateable according to
villainy; and it is well if each does not consider that his own
claim is preponderant above all-and the principal may overclaim
as grossly as his meanest confederate. The destinies of the country are tied to the accidents of an individual's disposition, and it
escapes from those of a frivolous character only to hang in dependence upon others, scarcely less dangerous, of a strong character.
Hence the difficulties of irregular succession; tho Liberator
struggles to be a Usurper and a Tyrant, or he must subdue his own
supporters whom he cannot satisfy, whether these are a few almost
independent Barons, or a numerous soldiery. The form the contest takes depends not only on the circumstances of the usurpation or conquest, but also on the personal disposition and talents
of the monarch. The moral aspect of the case depends upon how
far he identifies his own interests with those of the nation, and
aspires to more power or gives up more, than national interests
require. History furnishes abundant varieties, and perhaps even
an example of the best. Usually kingdoms are gained by pretexts that render the subsequent administration of them a counter-sense. Power grasped by vicious plans refuses to yield itself
to virtuous purposes, or power gained by virtuous efforts and cooperation is turned to vicious aims. False or even impossible expectations have been wilfully excited, and the sown wind is harvested in whirlwind; thus turmoil arises, and sometimes the
difficulties are surmounted, and sometimes not. The conqueror
gratifies his aids to the ruin of his conquest, or it may be to the
sacrifice of his own power; or he succeeds in rendering himself
independent of them by means more or less violent, more or less
fair, or a compromise is arranged; and, according to these circumstances, the country falls under an energetic tyrant instead
of an unstable one, relapses into civil discord, or really acquires
BqOa step in the direction of stability and freedom.
Yin the present instance we see the able, energetic, and crafty
king vexed by the pride of the powerful nobles, who had helped
him to the crown and are reminiscent of the time when he himself,
a powerful noble, stood in hardy opposition to his king. There
is jealousy, and distrust, and provocation on either side, but Henry
stands as the representative of the kingdom, of the injuries or
discontents of which we hear nothing; and the Percies take thus




CRITICAL      ESSAY.                217
the unfavoured part of disturbers of the public peace, whose private wrongs, even as they state them, do not claim much sympathy, as they are at least as guilty as the king. The description
of civil war at the beginning assists the imagination, and also
helps the reason to true judgment of the disorder and its origin.
In Richard II. the crown is borne down by the resistance of
an injured and high-spirited nobleman to general tyranny; the
same contest is now to be renewed, but on more equal terms; and
vigour, precaution, and kingly spirit are now matched in opposition
against nobles, high-spirited, and it may be injured, but representing no national injuries-no public cause.
As these plays were originally represented, it must be repeated,
the audience heard and looked on one with perfect recollection of
that which preceded it; thus the representation of an historical
crisis had the full advantage in effect which is realized in actual
experience, when the popular appreciation of present events is
influenced by the recollection of the dangers, sufferings, or triumphs of the epoch that introduced them. Hence the resolution
with which Henry grapples with the contumacious Percies, would
be fully appreciated by minds fresh from the spectacle of Richard's
weakness. The King and Hotspur, Prince Henry and Falstaff,
are the principal characters of the play; Hotspur is the centre
and soul of a band of associates on one side, as Falstaff on the
other. Hotspur and Falstaff are both represented with such liveliness and vigour, are such exciting and exhilarating personages,
that both appeal strongly to our sympathies, and both have been
such favourites that even critics, who should know better, have
grumbled at the fate assigned to them, as defeated and disgraced
by characters into which calculation enters so extensively as into
those of the king and prince. But neither one nor the other has
fair claim to any other treatment than the course of the playtrue figure of the way of the world, allows them. Each gets for
a fair time allowance of the sort of enjoyment that his desires
are directed to, and each must take the consequences of his way
of pursuing it.
King Henry and Hotspur, contrasted as they are, have still
some points at which they approach more nearly than others. In
the first scene we have an example of the conscious and prepared
self-counsel of the king. He opens the counsel with a studied
enunciation of a plan which he knows must stand over, implying
piety while policy is his motive, and asks, with air of innocence,
for obsolete news, while he has a recent messenger at his back,
ready to be produced, and closes the scene with a promise of that
very angry discord which he opened so smoothly by declaring to
be at an end.
Hotspur, on the other hand, professes to have denied no prisoners, and yet still sticks for a consideration for surrendering
them. He repudiates the charge of revolt made against Morti



218               KING HENRY IV.
mer, supports it by lively declaration of his bloody contest witil1
Glendower, and yet when this conflict is flatly denied, he has
nothing to say for it.  " Art thou not ashamed?" is King
Henry's challenge of his silence, and after the king goes out there
is no indignation at having the lie given him, but what amounts
to an admission that Mortimer is really the head of a party
against the king, and that therefore of course his application for a
ransom of him was a mere evasion. He cannot even deny that this
rival is further committed by alliance with Glendower, and thus at
last, in the repeated enumeration of grievances and injuries, apart
from the wrongs of King Richard, which Hotspur and his family
were not entitled to resent, all others are merely personal; and
the gist of the quarrel, the spring of the ill-blood, simply comes
out at last, that any partnership with Bolingbroke would be
against the grain, that his spirits are eager for any bustling and
dangerous fray, and that he will gather alliance from any quarter,
Welsh or Scottish, to embroil the kingdom in a personal struggle
for single and unrivalled honour.
It is only doubtful, in the case of Hotspur, how far he is conscious of his own insincerities in the scene. He is hurried on by
passion, he has been prompted, as the first scene tells us, by Worcester, and his silence-perhaps blush, at the rebuke of the king,
may be simply a sign that then, for the first time, it struck him
that he had been rather too hastily enforcing and embellishing
what he had but slender authority or information for. Hotspur,
by natural disposition, would always tell truth and shame the
devil; but passion and violence mislead him, and in his anger
and jealousy at the kilg's interference and assumption of authority in demanding his prisoners, he snatches at the retaliatory
weapon offered him of demanding the ransom of Mortimer by his
natural enemy, and blinks the insincerity that necessarily is inyed in this.
Assuredly there is a flaw, quite as serious, in the honesty and
clear sincerity of Falstaff, though the strongest enunciation of this
s left for the second play, which concludes with the retribution.
tHe and his compeers are caterpillars of the commonwealth, as
detrimental at their end of it as Hotspur and the rest at the other.
Idleness and the support of gross living by robbery, pilfering and
swindling, is the soul of the alliance, and all are just as false and
just as friendly to each other as thieves may be. Shakespeare
has wonderfully painted how such a society is held together, despite mutual distrust and falsehood-Falstaff undermines Poins,
Poins makes Falstaff, to the best of his power, ridiculous; even
Bardolph, currying favour with the prince, like the rest, on his
own account, falsifies his master's appeal to him to bear him out,
and the Hostess is imposed upon at all hands; yet there is a certain degree of attachment among them all by force of habit,
which recurs when temptations otherwise are entirely suspended.




CRITICAL ESSAY.                     219
t'hus we are led to absolve the prince of the grossest treachery,
though we are still at liberty to think as we please of his deliberate scheme of politic stage effect in a sudden reformation. The
blindness of Falstaff and the rest, in misapprehending the nature
of the hold they had upon the prince is so egregious as to deprive
them of the sympathy that only is given to the self-protecting.
Falstaff relies, it seems, on his kind feeling, and is uncoinscoii]i
how slight this is when coupled with contempt, and he seems~
unaware how entirely contempt survives the repartee that for the
moment diverts the thoughts from the immediate contemned
trait. None are animated by any more steady purpose than providing from hour to hour for the comforts and amusements of the
hour; they cheat and calumniate mutually and are friends again
-to bear malice, or to embrace caution towards each other, would
be much too serious and burdensome, and they are quite unsuspicious that the prince looks upon them a whit more steadfastly
and reflectively than they do upon each other.
The comic portion of this play occupies so much space, is so
unmatchably racy, lively and exciting, that readers who come
to the perusal of it in an idle spirit, are apt to consider that
the comic portion is the most important, the serious but subsidiary
and perhaps not very well united with the rest, sometimes even
a little tedious. But the very theme of the play is the con —,
trast between wild and thriftless pastime and the prosecution of
serious business with energy at least, and if possible with prudence and with chivalric liberality, and the reader who allows his
interest to be absorbed by the gay companions of dissolute Eastcheap, starts with false tone, and takes a point of view that throws
all into distortion.
As we have said already, if not repeatedly, Shakespeare s audience came to see an historical play, with lively impressions of
the dramatic sequence to the preceding reign, and with thoughts
alert to the leading interest of the story, and loyal to the national
interest of which the vicissitudes were exhibited. The entrance
of Henry IV. commanded therefore, with them, the respect and
attention that clung to the ideas he represents and must continue to represent until his reign ends with his life. This is rendered quite easy and natural, from the relief given to the serious
portions by the brilliant qualifications and dramatic force of Hotspur; and the reader must make up for himself, by familiarity
with the previous plays, King John and Richard II., and especially with the characters of the latter, as common both to that
drama and to the action of Henry IV., for the false position in
which he stands when it is his fate to see the play on the stage
in isolation, as well as with all wrongs and defects of mutilation.
When the disposition is gained that gives apt importance to
that which in itself is most important, the various portions of the
play fall at once into unity and orderly subordination. The




220               KING HENRY IV.
position and qualities of King Henry, relatively to his former confederates, gain the fullest distinctness by the relief of the secondary groups, his son Prince Henry in connection with his idle and
unthrift comrades. Both king and prince take counsel of their
own single hearts and thoughts, and placing various degrees of
reliance on various men, entrust no one with their full confidence.
The king is reserved even towards Westmoreland, and Prince
Henry is not betrayed by a certain kindness for Ned Poins into
excepting him from the judgment that embraces all the kindred
set. King Henry has already separated himself from those who
were his assistants in ambition-the necessities of a humbler
time; the prince has still his necessities to serve, necessities of
excitement that heirs apparent are troubled with, and that they
about Falstaff administer to beyond the rivalry of later times and
Carlton imitations; but he is already as determined as his
father as to their merits and the due requital of them, and will
be quite as little hampered, in deserting them, by gratitude, kindness, or respect.
The king lectures his son with the spirit of a parvenu culminant, and sets before him and commends to him the arts of subtle
solemnity by which he himself rose from a noble's place to a throne,
as though they were equally applicable to the position of an heir apparent of a powerful monarch, even if mere difference of disposition
would not make any attempt to practise them break down. The
policy of the king had been to place his own dignified demeanour
in contrast with the common frivolity of Richard; but studied solemnity fits not all actors equally, and is but one mode of many,
perhaps as good, of gaining influence over king-making or kingpreserving opinion. His son's design-not without filial similarity-is also to command respect by contrast to a foil; but with
more originality and daring, and-what is the immediate motive,
with more spirit and vivacity in the interim, he will be his own
foil-himself to himself/bright metal on a sullen ground. " Do
not lecture me by your precedent," said the son of a Greek tyrant to his father, " you were the child of some unknown poor
wretch-J am the heir of a mighty despot!" and so the rule
holds. Caution, anxiety and care, are the lot of the crowned
Bolingbroke, (in his son, Prince John, we have equal assiduity,
with a certain coldness and hardness,) tut we perceive the indications in the prince of a freedom and directness in his vigour,
that consort better with the chivalry, which was to give the,
colour of his reign, and indeed prepare for it.
It is with very happy effect that the scene of the confederates
at Bangor is followed up by that between King Henry and his
son. In the first the monstrous business of the tripartite partition of the English realm, is debated and concluded amidst
all manner of unprofitable chat and frivolous digressions. Hotspur taunts and baits the large boasting Welsh Glendower, who




CRITICAL ESSAY.


221


only to escape from this reverts to the partition and the map.
Then the childish cavil of Hotspur about turning Trent, pursued until it becomes a jest outright, runs again into the original
banter of the mountain-prince, who now makes his escape to
bring the ladies, whom a few moments before he proposed to
leave without leave-taking, to spare delay and watershed, and
gratifying thus his own tendency to dreamy sentiment, he chides
the languor of Mortimer, which he has done all ill his power to
indulge and encourage. In such a scene Hotspur, unless he jeers
his ally, must either be silent or jest by fits and starts, and beyond this he can only wait, and it is much if he can do that,
until all is ready for him to mount and be moving.
Such a confederacy is an ungirt faggot against an opposite
like Henry, who in the next scene addresses in turn the pride,
the emulation and the affection of his son, and rousing him to
such expressions as bespeak sincerity, concludes by manifesting his confidence in his ability and faith and entrusting him
at once with responsibility and power. The scene ends with
indications of the prompt and accurate information and well combined movements that concentrate the power of the realm upon
the uncertain appointments of the disturbers of the peace.
Totspur, Glendower, and the rest, sharing the kingdom yet
unwon, are highwaymen of the empire and the rule, and have
their antitypes in fact in the thieves upon Gadshill, sharing the
purses of the travellers and set upon in the midst of their security
by the counterplotting allies, the prince and Poins.
Good faith and mutual confidence well founded, are the bond
and tie of alliance, but when the time of muster comes, the presage of earlier scenes of appointments ill kept, is fulfilled. Northumberland absent sick-crafty sick it turns out; Owen Glendower, not come in in deference to his prophecies; and Mortimer,
the very pretext of the rebellion, away also; while of those who
arrive, Vernon and Worcester falsify the royal proposals, and
misdeliver the result of the embassy, to no availing end at last.
Lightness, superstition, ill-faith, over-confidence, precipitancy,
and some bluster are thus in alliance with no more firmness than
might be expected, and this against the steadfast and deliberate
power of Henry Bolingbroke.
These are much the same elements that combine in the society
of Eastcheap, with the difference that in one case the prime
spirit of the confederacy is young, active, restless, impatient of
repose, contemptuous of ease and sociality; in the other the leading spirit is advanced in years, corpulent to the limits of possibility, solicitous of ease and bodily comfort, and highly susceptible
of the excitement of society in wit and humorous retort.
Falstaff, Bardolph and Poins intend to partition England, like
the allies at Bangor; they look to obtain full share of the power
of the future Henry V., impunity in all plunder and excess, and:




222               KING HENRY IV.
robbery legalized or honourable. For this they calculate on their
hold on the prince, of which it must be clear to all that Falstaff
is the main stay. The primary misconception is gross enough,
an ti-t ewori Ts now familiar with it; but men who know Horace by heart, have still been astonished at the treatment of Tom
Moore or Sheridan, Mrs. Jordan or Lady Hamilton, by royalties and nobilities-to say nothing of the Brummels of meaner
stamp. The prince never forgets that he is a prince, and evidently expects that others shall bear in mind that he is merely
content to keep his dignity out of sight, and is playing at forgetting it.
Familiarity accepted under such conditions, whether from the
first page in the peerage or the latest hanger on upon the
lowest round of the scale of titular honour, can have but one
ending. Falstaff recognizes the condition and accepts it; he
shows that he is fully aware of it by turning his allusions so
repeatedly to the contrast of the princely dignity and the circumnstances of the Boar's Head; but he is weak enough not to see the
consequences. Like the rest he betrays his proper selfishness, by
calumniating and undermining the others in the prince's favour;
and thus each gives him the sanction from precedent in their
own conduct for sacrificing an associate,-which he fully applies.
Jack announces Poins as he approaches, for an omnipotent villain;
Poins curries favour for himself by a plot against Falstaff, who
again seizes the occasion of the play extempore to suggest exclusive attachment of the prince to himself, and therefore fairly
enough Bardolph and Peto tell the tale of the hacked sword with
relish, and Bardolph betrays the threat about the copper ring.
Lightness and frivolousness, however, as I have said, are dominant even over their insincerities. None of the group think it
worth while to resent an attack, and in truth it is the last expression of idleness and shallowness of design and purpose, that while
they backbite they still retain a certain attachment to each other,
despite mutual injuries of this kind, that might be expected to
create entire coolness at least, if not enmity. But an infidelity
in friendship, as in wedlock, meets with easy condonation from
minds of a certain vulgar type, which, deficient in self-respect,
do not severely, or with animosity, judge others who fail to respect them. There is among natures of the lower grade, the same
readiness to heal after a wound, that is found among the lower
organizations, and the tendency in truth, if not rather a vice
than a virtue, is rather a defect than a faculty.
On the other hand, Falstaffs intellectual quickness is unrivalled
-he far surpasses the prince, who is even less practised than
Poins; he suggests half the wit that seems the prince's; his
bulk seems the ground tone of his character; it has overlaid a natural capacity of activity, and now his wits are the faculty that
t acquire abnormal vigour in compensation.




CRITICAL ESSAY.                     223
In the second part of Henry IV. Falstaff lets out the principle
and secret of his sycophancy. "0 it is much, he says, that a lie
with a slight oath and a jest with a sad brow will do with a fellow that never had the ache in his shoulders." The rogue infallibly divines the prince's rejoinder to every remark he makes,
grossly as he mistakes as to the main point of the ultimate hold
he supposes himself to possess on his habits or sympathies. To
supply the prince with mirth is his business and his enjoyment,
and he gains his ludicrous points by exaggerating his personal
unwieldiness and vices of mind and habit, ever with full reliance that the prince will fall into the trap and never discern
the trick. When wit and mirth and nimbleness of ifiiaglra-;
tive suggestions are in question, Falstaff is as superior to the
prince as the master to his instrument, and it is the very use
of this superiority that misleads him into the belief that he has
equal sway over his earnest purposes. The prince is even inferior to Poins in the imaginative design and conduct of a jest,
and has to be led step by step over one obstacle after another in
the scheme of robbing the robbers; the best he can do in this
way is the perplexity of Francis, which by no means satisfies the
Esthetic requirements of a pregnant jest as conceived by Poins,
Poins who contrives the double robbery only as introductory to
the amusing lies of Falstaff-" the virtue of the jest," and is
fain to enquire of the bad imitation, " What cunning match have
you made with this jest of the drawer? come, what's the issue? "
The prince is never so witty as at the beginning of his first
scene, and even there our future knowledge of the knight teaches
us that he asked the time of day with mock purposeful concern,
with design to provoke the sense of an incongruity. After that,
every one of the prince's rejoinders is fairly laid in his way by
Falstaff, and he would have been dull indeed to miss them, as he
is still dull enough to take all credit with himself for quickness and
originality. When after Falstaff's avowal that he will be damned
for never a king's son in Christendom, he responds briskly to the
prince's proposal to take a purse, "Where thou wilt, lad, I'll make
one;" of course he perceived the incongruity, and put on the
utmost unconsciousness in order to heighten it; and so throughout, as when with lips scarce dry he protests that he is a rogue
if he has drink to-day-a lie with a slight oath, or when he professes the vigilance as of a cat to steal cream. He has succeeded
in exciting the prince to the perception of certain points of ludicrousness, and to these sensitive centres he addresses himself unremittingly; and the delicacy of the delineation consists in the
exact expression of this finesse on his part, in endlessly diversified forms on the part of the prince, and of that precise form of
apprehensiveness that enables him to find a relish in wit that he
can scarcely be said to properly appreciate. Hal is keen enough
to form a not inaccurate estimate of motives and character but




224


KING HENRY IV.


not to suspect or penetrate to the secret of the management by
which he is played upon and amused.    Thus the prince in
truth loses a large proportion of the wit, and that of the better kind, that the reader or spectator enjoys in the contemplation -of.tbetprinci a  ndll'i og~he.- In fact, we may
suspect that to Prince Hal, Falstaff was rather ludicrous than
Pwitty. Thus in the Tavern scene after the robbery, he is amused
at the gross bravadoes of a fat liar whom he anticipates the
pleasure of surprising with exposure and conviction, but he
loses the point of the jest that is salient to the spectator,
who is amused by the wily quickness of Falstaff, who beforehand with his expectations, goes on with daring presumption
on his gullibility, to multiply two rogues in buckram into eleven
with accumulative rapidity that one would say it argues dulness
in the prince not to perceive to be conscious, but that so many
readers since have been as blind as he is. In fact, we are left at
last witha suspicion that the knight verily recognized the two
rogues through their buckram, and ran and roared more heartily
in order to hold the good jest up, and not only bragged so outragepusly because he was aware of the effect he was producing,
but hacked his sword and made his companions stain their clothes
with blood from their own nose tips, on the certain calculation
that he would -betbrayed. rlststaff in this scene is to Prince
Harry-"'thiu claybraine guts; thou knotty pated fool"-but,this is a false estimate indeed of the spirit of the fat knight, and
the prince himself was much more of a butt than the fool that
he despised as a fool and laughed at. Falstaff may underrate the
prince as grossly when he rates his capabilities as to be a pantler,
"he would have chipped bread well;" but assuredly his wit is
but of royal calibre, and such are the conditions of this quality
that evidence of flatterers apart and deducting for the wonder of
rarities and approximations, wit-sterling wit, is perhaps the
single mental power and accomplishment that has most rarely
been found on a throne, or approached so near to it as an heir
apparent.
Between the double groups of enemies, the frivolous and dissolute idlers who would inveigle and engross his son, and the
wild companions of the fiery Hotspur who strike directly at his
crown, the king stands watchful, collected and determined. The
brilliant qualities of the renowned array against him meet their
overmatch by the united discipline and efficiency of circumspect
combination that are joined with his vigour. The subtle politician Bolingbroke, is not destitute of military talent nor of
military courage, but still his discretion and caution accompany
him to the field, and even at the last he would forego many
chances in his favour, to defer the quarrel rather than conmmit all
to the capricious arbitrement of the fight.
In the battle itself there is the slightest possible hint of slackness in the words of Prince Henry:



CRITICAL ESSAY.


22.'


" I beseech your majesty, make up,
Lest your retirement do amaze your friends."
The stratagem for which Sir Walter Blunt pays dearly is also
brought home to the king himself as the promoter:" The king hath many marching in his coats."
When engaged by Douglas he half lets fall a thought that
younger hands would as well have been there to cope with him,
but still he speaks with fair boldness, and bears himself worthily
as a king and accepts the dangerous combat.
Contrasted with valour thus qualified, on one side are the figures
of Lord John of Lancaster, brave as his sword, and hard and
blunt as he returns it to the scabbard; then Hotspur, eager for the
fray, for the fray when soonest, the fray where thickest; with all
the sense required for the cool judgment of a Captain, but easily
swayed by daring and confident ardour, and by any counsel that
falls in with the promptings of his boiling blood. A third and
more distinguished place is given to the Prince of Wales, combining the bravery of Hotspur himself with much of the selfpossession of his father, but with a generosity of thought his
father would scarcely attain, and a regulated spirit and tempered
and feeling gentleness that denote a nature of essentially higher
order than that of Harry Percy.
Douglas is a creation that adds wonderful force to the scene,
and aids in giving dignity and relief both to the king and to
Hotspur. There is somewhat barbarous and uncivilized in his
traits that speaks of a nation remoter from refinement than Northumberland.  He asserts and dwells upon his own boldness
with as little delicacy as he imputes fear and cold heart to
Worcester, and is more petulant and inconsiderate in urging on
the battle prematurely than Hotspur himself. Brave and most
efficient he is as a soldier even to excite the enthusiastic admiration of his ally, but when he finds himself overmatched he runs
away without hesitation, though it be to look for an opponent he
can better cope with, and in the rout he is captured by most undignified catastrophe: " upon the foot of fear, fled with the rest,"
the hero who professed that the word fear was unknown in
Scotland:" And falling from a hill he was so bruisedThat the pursuers took him."
This accident is historical, like his military renown, and in the
seeming incongruity Shakespeare found the key of the character.
The Douglas of this play always reminds me of the Ares of the
Iliad-a coarse exponent of the mere animal propensity to pugnacity, delighting in the circumstances of homicide, but when
pierced by the spear of Diomed, hastily flying from the conflict
and bellowing aloud.
But courage has still one more form and phase exhibited in the
play, and this is realized in Falstaff; valour in himaaLDuas
^ —^ —                           /



- 226               KING HENRY IV.
and King Henry, is mingled with discretion; but he holds dis1   cretion by far the better part, and feels no shame at escaping by
>     trick which the runaway archfiend Douglas, or even King
Henry of the many coats, would repudiate with disdain. Falstaff
fights when he must, and only then so long as he sees reason;
but the readers of Shakespeare made a sad mistake, who enjoying, like Prince Hal, the humour of a character which they were
unable to fathom, they took him for a coward. Whatever else he
may be, he is always indifferent or self-possessed, whether attacking the travellers with the full gusto of frolic, or preoccupied with
his play extempore and struggling to continue it, amidst the interrupting announcements of the sheriff and a monstrous watch
at the door. He runs away of course at Gadshill, because it is
safest to run when he is left to cope singly with two, younger and
more active, but there is no nervousness evinced in falling fast
asleep behind the arras when the officers are in the room claiming him on a charge of capital consequences. He leads his rascals
where they are peppered, but prefers to withdraw himself as well
from the heat as the danger of the action, and finds time and
spirits for a dallying jest within the din of a battle that disposes
of the lives of princes, with as much ease as when idle at Eastcheap or interrupting the negotiations with Worcester. Valiant
Jack Falstaff does himself no more than justice by his title, but
the quality and use of his valour, as of that of the other characters
of the play, result from his general spirit. He states his own
view of the matter in his self-catechizing on honour with such
force and brilliancy, and the value of his argument is so pithily
illustrated by the counter deviations of Hotspur, to say nothing
of the grinning illustration of Sir Walter Blunt, that it is hard
if with many whose habits or predispositions disturb that clear
balance of the moral sense that Shakespeare ever assumes and
appeals to, he be not too far forgiven in his essential baseness
of spirit. Falstaff with the mangled Hotspur at his back in false
claim of exploit and service, is the crowning antithesis of ambition
and ingenuity equally misdirected. Both contribute to give
dignity to the manly and generous bearing of the princes and to
heighten our respect for them; though so grateful is a world
wearied to death with tediousness, for lively amusement, that it
is much if false energies and sprightly vanities get condemned
at last as they should be.
For this play Shakespeare availed himself of materials and
Suggestions from two very different sources, the compilation of
the Chronicler Holinshed, his contemporary, and the old play of
the Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth. The Prince Henry of
the Famous Victories is both worse and better than the Prince
of Shakespeare. The base company that he there consorts with
is of the very basest and vulgarest type, mere coarse-spoken
strikers and vile purloiners; their faults unenlivened by any wit,




CRITICAL ESSAY.


227


nmmour, or frolicsome liveliness of their own, or by any that they
give occasion to, and he consorts with them with no better relish
than belongs to a spendthrift dissolute bully. On the other
hand, while his reception of his father's rebuke, and his sympathy with his sickness, have quite as much colour of sincerity as
in Shakespeare's portrait, there is no hint of the hypocrisy prepense with which Prince Hal falls into riot and frivolity with
only a half heartiness, in order to prepare, or at least anticipating,
an effective surprise of reformation at his accession to the throne.
So, again, the prince of the old play dismisses his mean associates at last, with decision it is true, but with neither harshness
nor coldness, indeed with kindness and sympathy. I will not
say that the earlier picture is thus far unnatural in itself, but it
is neither so true to history as that of Shakespeare, nor so consistent with peculiar development of kingly qualities that come
at once to ripeness in Henry V. As a matter of execution the
old play, but for the proofs of some sterling metal in the use made
of its hints by Shakespeare, must have been brushed aside as
utter and irretrievable rubbish. Never before did genius ever
transmute so base a caput mortuumn into an ore so precious, if indeed there were not, as there so easily may have been, an intermediate drama now lost, in which the traits that we recognize
in both, received some prior elaboration. At it stands, however,
a portion of the first scene is the shortest extract that can be
given to illustrate its tone and quality:" Enter the Young Prince, NED, and TON.
Prince. Come away, Ned and Tom.
Both. Here, my Lord.
Prince. Come away, my lads. Tell me, sirs, how much gold
have you got?
Xed. Ifaith, my lord, I have got five hundred pound.
Tom. Faith, my Lord, some four hundred pound.
Prince. Four hundred pounds; bravely spoken, lads. But tell
me, sirs, think you not that it was a villainous part of me to rob
my father's receivers?
Ned. Why, no, my Lord, it was but a trick of youth.
Prince. Faith, Ned, thou sayest true: but tell me, sirs, whereabouts are we?
Tom. My Lord, we are now about a mile off London.
Prince. But, sirs, I marvel that Sir John Oldcastle comes not
away. Zounds I see where he comes.
Enter JOCKEY (i. e. Sir John Oldcastle).
How, now, Jockey, what news with thee?
Jockey. Faith, my Lord, such news as passeth; for the town
of Deptford is risen with hue and cry after your man, which
parted from us the last night, and has set upon and hath robbed
a poor carrier.
Prince. ZoundsI the villain that was wont to spie out our
booties."




228


KING HENRY IV.


Once again:" Prince. How, now, Sir John Oldcastle, what news with you?
Sir John. I am glad to see your grace at liberty; I was come
I, to visit you in prison.
Prince. To visit me; did thou not know I am a prince's son?
Why, 'tis enough for me to look into a prison, though I come not
in myself: but here's such ado now-a-days, here's hanging,
whipping, and the divel and all: but I tell you, sirs, when I am
king, we will have no such things; but, my lads, if the old king
my father were dead, we would be all kings.
Sir John. He is a good old man: God take him to his mercy
the sooner.
Prince. But, Ned, so soon as I am king, the first thing I will
do shall be to put my Lord Chief Justice out of office, and thou
shall be my Lord Chief Justice of England.
Ned. Shall I be Lord Chief Justice? by gogswounds, I'll be
the bravest Lord Chief Justice that ever was in England.
Prince. Then, Ned, I'll turn all these prisons into fence schools,
and I will endue thee with them, and lands to maintain them
withal," &c. &c.
Ned, Gadshill, the old tavern in Eastcheap, the hostess, the recognition of Sir John Oldcastle, or at least his horse, down even to
the " race of ginger," that was to be delivered as far as Charing
Cross, meet our eyes as we turn over the pages, and their dulness
is relieved by the sense that we tread, though in a wilderness, the
footsteps of the poet in quest of living water among barren places.
The deviations from the course and order of real historical
events are wonderfully few, to a great extent in consequence of
the small space of time embraced by the argument of the play.
Owen Glendower defeated and captured Mortimer in June, 1402,
the battle of Holmedon was fought 14th September the same
year, and that of Shrewsbury 21st July, 1403. Of two slight
personal mistakes, one, the calling the Earl of Fife son to beaten
Douglas, arose, as Steevens pointed out, from the omission of a
comma in Holinshed (III. 21.), the other was already matured
in Holinshed, who was himself misled by Hall; but how much
higher the error is traceable, which was adopted by Hume and
even Malone, I cannot say. It consists in confounding the Edmund Mortimer, prisoner, and afterwards son-in-law of Glendower, and second son of the first Earl of March, with his nephew
the Earl of March, entitled to the throne by legitimate succession, who was at this time a child, and in close keeping at Windsor Castle. A trace of the confusion appears in Lady Percy
being correctly styled Mortimer's sister in one place, and in another spoken of as his aunt.
These deviations were matters of accident; but another more
important was to all appearance boldly adventured by Shakespeare, against his knowledge of literal history, for the sake of




CRITICAL ESSAY.


229


the moral and resthetical advantages that would not be gainsaid. We cannot look through the Chronicles that he read so
attentively, without meeting with repeated notices that must
have advertised him of the great disparity of age between Henry
Percy and the Prince, whom he nevertheless makes coevals.
Not only are the notices of Hotspur spread over a length of time
that sufficiently indicate his more advanced years-in fact, he
was of the same age as Henry IV.-but it is pretty clear that
Shakespeare of deliberate purpose, as with most fortunate effect,
completed his contrast and ideal of " this Hotspur Mars in
swathing clothes, this infant warrior," by transferring to him
the remarkable precocities in warlike exploits of the Prince of
Wales himself, who was only sixteen when he distinguished himself at the battle of Shrewsbury. Others of his characteristics
are marked clearly enough in the story, as well as those of his
father and uncle. In Northumberland, Shakespeare embodies
the vacillating and equivocal tenor of his proceedings from first
to last; and for Worcester, we find the notice, "his study was
ever to procure malice, and to set things in a broil." Of Hotspur, besides the restless activity that gained him his border
title, we have a distinct suggestion of temper given most forcibly
by Hall, who it is evident from other passages, especially the articles of the rebels, was studied by the poet in addition to Holinshed:-" But with the publishing of the cautel that the Earl of
March was willingly taken, they (the Percies) ten times more fumed
and raged, insomuch that Sir Henry Hotspur said openly, behold
the heir of the realm is robbed of his right, and yet the robber
with his own will not redeem him. So in this fury the Percies
departed," &c. Again, before the battle-" Forthwith the Lord
Percy, as a captain of high courage, began to exhort the captains
and soldiers to prepare themselves to battle, sith the matter was
grown to that point," &c. &c. Commentators lacking occupation have inquired laboriously who wrote the letter that he reads
so testily, but the suggestion of it lies simply in the notice, that
of " those moved to favour their purpose, many of them did not
only promise to the Percies aid and succour by words, but also
by their writings and seals confirmed the same," yet failed at the
day of trial. But how short a way do such hints extend to the
creation of a character such as Hotspur stands in the drama,-no
impersonation of a single characteristic, no unsupported abstractioj, but living and breathing before us endowed by poetic
mothler-wit inexhaustible, with every faculty of mind, every pecaliality of speech, habit, gesture, and disposition, even sleeping
as well. as awake, and from morning to night, in forms and degrees
alone cnsistent with each other and the genius of his existence.
In this character, indeed in every character in these three Lancastrian plays, we recognize that fulness and rich reality of poetic
power that is capable of exhibiting in a single scene the impress




230              KING HENRY IV.
of the past life of each interlocutor, and in every collision of character the very effects of their reaction through years of anterior
connection and consorting.
In the picturesque, fantastic, composite Owen Glendower,
quackery, superstition, enthusiasm, sentiment, and imagination
are mixed up with, rather than blend with, adventurous courage and obstinate self-conceit. He is the representative of capacities that we will hope are still to be found in the principality, and that, mellowed and liberalized, might achieve reputations that would at least elevate provincialism, if unable to escape
from it. The ill weather it is certain, and I can vouch for it, is still
to be found on the road to Bangor and about the spurs of Snowdon, that gave such efficient aid to Owen Vichen, Prince of Glendower, in thrice repulsing, as he boasts with true historic grounds,
the weather-beaten and starving forces of the king. These disasters were ascribed at the time to the "art magic" of the
Welshman, and thought to be foreshown by an Aurora borealis,
the original of the fiery shapes and burning cressets transferred
by Shakespeare to the signs of his strange nativity. Of the accomplishments that are allowed to him, the hint is found in the
record of Walsingham, copied by Holinshed, that " he was first
set to study the laws of'the realm, and became an utter barrister
or an apprentice of the law, as they termed him, and served King
Richard, though others have written that he served this King
Henry the Fourth, before he came to attain the crown, in the
room of an esquire."
The most important passage in the Chronicles, as illustrating
Shakespeare's conception of the character of Prince Henry, is, I
think, the following from Holinshed, on his conduct on acceding
to the throne:-" But this king even at first appointing with
himself, to show that in his person princely honours should change
public manners, he determined to put on him the shape of a new
man. For where as aforetime, he had made himself a companion
unto misruly mates of dissolute order and life, he now banished
them all from his presence, but not unrewarded or else unpreferred," &c. &c. Shakespeare adopted the hint of politic design
that is here indicated, and indeed extended by antedating it, but
he was too wise to retain afterwards the inconsistent concern of
the king for his old companions, or anything more than ti.e
merest pretence of consideration for what became of them. Still
he does not display policy and dissimulation as pervading J.is
nature, and they do not penetrate so deeply as to render him, incapable of filial affection or devoted to grovelling selfishness,. In
Richard the Second his father qualifies his disgraces by a/dmitting that nevertheless"He hath a tear for pity, and a hand
Open as day for melting charity;"
and this is the touch of natural sensibility that responds to the




CRITICAL ESSAY.


231


appeal of his apprehensive father, keeps him alive to the point of
honour in paying back the proceeds of the robbery with compensation, and at last unites a national sympathy with his projects
of personal ambition. All this is quite in accordance with the
summary that Shakespeare found in Holinshed:-"Thus were
the father and the son reconciled, betwixt whom the said pickthanks had sown division....... which was the more likely
to come to pass by their informations, that privily charged him
with riot and other uncivil demeanour unseemly for a prince.
Indeed, he was youthfully given and grown to audacity, and had
chosen him companions agreeable to his age, with whom he spent
the time in such recreations, sports, and delights as he fancied.
But yet it should seem, by the report of some writers, that his
behaviour was not offensive, or at least tending to the damage of
any body, sith he had a care to avoid doing of wrong, and to
tender his affections within the tract of virtue," &c. &c.
This play was entered in the Stationers' Register in February,
1597-8, the same year in which it was mentioned by Meres in
his Palladis Tamia, or Wit's Treasury; and four other quarto
editions preceded its appearance in the folio of 1623. None of
the titles of the quartos indicate that it is a first part, though the
three last at least were posterior in date to a quarto edition of
the second part in 1600. How much earlier than 1597 the play
may have been written cannot be determined, the single seeming
ground for a conjecture escaping from us as we approach it..,
Rowe mentioned the tradition that Falstaff was originally
called Sir John Oldcastle; and another tradition of the first quar- /
ter of the seventeenth century, ascribes the change of name to.,
the offence taken by the representatives of the family of Sir John
Oldcastle, as well as by others who honoured his memory as a
martyr for the opinions that triumphed at the Reformation. Now
the title entered in the Stationers, in 1598, makes quaint mention
of " the conceited Mirth of Sir John Falstaffe," and this appears
fair ground for inferring that his first production on the stage as
Oldcastle dated some time previously. Certainly he seems to have
borne it long enough to cause it to be associated with the character pertinaciously by those who blamed and by those who were
indifferent. In the prologue to the play of Sir John Oldcastle,
printed in 1600, and strangely enough with the name of Shake
speare as author on the title-page of some copies, we find these
lines:" It is no pampered glutton we present,
Nor aged counsellor to youthful sin,
But one whose virtue shone above the rest, &c......... Let fair truth be graced
Since forged invention former times defaced."
The quarto edition of the second part of Henry IV. was published in this same year, with the epilogue which protests that




232               KING HENRY IV.
f Falstaff is a different man from Oldcastle, who died a martyr.
Yet the prefix to one of Falstaff's speeches, in this very edition, remains Old. An apparent indication in what name they were originally written, as in the first part we have a like hint in the knight's
title, " my old lad of the castle." This would of course imply
that both parts of the play were written with the name of Oldcastle before 1598, when the first part was entered with the name
of Falstaff, and would plausibly carry back the composition of the
first part to 1597, or even 1596. Yet even in 1600 the profanation rankled, and had to be repudiated; and still later, in
1618, it is as Oldcastle, and not as Falstaff, that Nathaniel Field,
in his " Amends for Ladies," referred to the moralist who analysed
the soul of honour:" Did you never see
The play where the fat knight, hight Oldcastle,
Did tell you truly what this honour was."
But this last instance goes far to establish Mr. Halliwell's proposition, that in all probability some of the theatres in acting
Henry IV. retained the name of Oldcastle after the author had
made the alteration, and this weakens any inference from the erroneous prefix Old. in the second part, which may have been
none of the author's.  Thus we are again brought back to
1597-8, as the earliest date for the first part for which any evidence is forthcoming.
But this assumed stage predilection for the name of Oldcastle
has yet another reference which bears upon the point I have already hinted at, that Shakespeare worked upon some better prototype than the wretched play of the Famous Victories of Henry
V. already alluded to. In this play we have a Sir John Oldcastle
who is quite subordinate among the vicious associates of the
Prince, and has none of the outward marks of the swollen knight
of Shakespeare, any more than of his amusingness or wit. The
adoption of the name of Oldcastle for such a common-place vapid
rogue is altogether an absurdity, but still so great an absurdity
as to become a puzzle and require to be accounted for.
Fuller, in his Church History, is sufficiently indignant at the
disgrace cast upon the disciple of Wicliff, and while he plainly
refers to the work of Shakespeare, his words appear to embrace a
still earlier period, and he distinctly charges the commencement
of the offence upon the Papists. On consideration of the circumstances, I am certainly disposed to suspect that the stage in
Shakespeare's time inherited, from times perhaps anterior to the
Reformation, a dramatic version of the youth and reign of Henry
V. in which the heretic Oldcastle was, according to the grotesque
taste of the ecclesiastical playwrights in their management of the
Devil himself, at once ludicrous and hateful, a victim and a butt.
The Sir John Oldcastle of the Chronicles, in right of his wife
Lord Cobham, is a valiant captain and an hardy gentleman, ac



CRITICAL ESSAY.                     233
cused to the Archbishop of Canterbury in the first years of Henry
V. of certain points of heresy. The bishop, " knowing him to be
highly in the king's favour, declared to his highness the whole
accusation. The king first having compassion of the nobleman,"
required the prelates to reclaim the strayed sheep by gentleness,
and after " sending for him, godly exhorted and lovingly admonished him to reconcile himself to God and to his laws." The
Lord Cobham, first with thanks set forth the foundation of his
faith, and concluded with the proposal to fight the quarrel out
in open lists with his accusers; this was waived, and he shortly
after escaped from the Tower. Captured some four years after
on the borders of Wales, not without wounds given as well as received, he was brought to London, condemned, and " finally drawn
from the Tower unto St. Giles Field, and there hanged in a chain by
the middle, and after consumed with fire, the gallows and all."
I very vehemently suspect that the similarity of the treatment
that the once highly favoured Oldcastle received from his master,-lectured and left to be burnt, to that which was accorded to
the dissolute companions of the Prince of Wales, gave occasion
for those who did not favour him to make him the type of all the
seducers to his youthful straying; conviction of heresy carried
with it, of course, imputation of profligacy; the claim to valour
would be as naturally misread as violence or bare bravado, and
thus we may recover perhaps a glimpse of the tradition that
reigned upon the stage, and was proverbial and popular, until
superseded by a development beyond all change and alteration,
as much as comparison and rivalry,-the monumental comedy of
the character of Sir John Falstaff.




I
i
I
i
I




CRITICAL ESSAY ON SECOND PART OF
KING HENRY IV.
%-` HE Second Part of Henry IV. is at once the supplement and epilogue of the first part, and the preparation
l    for the ensuing dramatic History of Henry V. We
may, I think, still detect some traces of the manner in
which the materials for the history of Henry IV. developed and
expanded in the poet's mind until they became not simply too
bulky for a single play, but until they divided by natural polarity into distinct groups and resulted in the double birth of contrasted but still closely connected and correlative plays. Thus, in
the second play we find Falstaff passing through Gloucestershire
by some incredible route from London to York, a divergence far
too wide to be accounted for by his having to take up soldiers in
counties as he went. The incident as first imagined came in no
doubt in the earlier sequence of events when King Henry despatching forces towards Wales tells his son " and, Harry, you
shall march through Gloucestershire;" a natural course for Falstaff to follow, and so for both to encounter in the poet's own
Warwickshire on the road near Coventry. The consistency on
this view holds on and the next stage is indicated towards
Sutton Coldfield, picturesque municipality still lying under as
bright a sky as of old, beside the beauty and privilege of its wide
pastoral park, though the smoke and clamours of Birmingham
reach the very edge of its horizon. Hence we cannot doubt that
the tattered troop that Falstaff sends to Coventry-thus we still
specify a dead cut,-comprised in the poet's first invention Wart
and his wardrobe, to the process of whose enlistment the soliloquy
on the abuse of the king's press applies so entirely and that
Shallow and his household were already shaped and shadowed
forth, though afterwards for ample reasons transferred to the later
scene.
In the first part the insurrection of which Hotspur is the life
and soul is aspiring, adventurous, wild and reckless, and the
irregularities of Falstaff and his friends, and of which the Prince
is led to be a participator, are, in another sphere and on a different




236


KING HENRY IV.


scale, of much the same character. The mirth of the Prince has
a roystering madcap devil-may-care tone, and although he starts
with a plan to turn his excesses to sober account, it is only as the
play proceeds that we can be assured that this is not one of the
mere prudent resolutions that lead into temptation and betray by
false confidence. The smoothfaced lie that he puts off on the
sheriff and his posse, and his unreverent deputing of Falstaff to
send an answer back to his father's message, are escapades that
might justify some mistrust whether the first abetting of lawless
violence on the common road would be the last.
In the second play the political incidents are of an entirely
different tone, and the scenes from the disorders of civil life become modified in sympathy with them. A weak, ill-united, halfhearted confederacy represents the very dregs and remainders of
the discontents that suffered so shrewd a check at Shrewsbury.
Then reckless overhaste and fiery precipitancy carried the truly
warlike leaders of the rebellion to ruin, and there continues over
but an accretion of slow however acrid humours, an association
of chiefs who ask counsel of each other and have neither vigour
of will nor force of judgment to bring two counsels fairly into
comparison, or to deny to a reason that will not stand in the
argument, the right to sway the conclusion. There is nothing
formidable about the insurrection from the beginning. The
despair and alarm of Northumberland when he hears of his son's
death suffice to rouse him to cast away his false ensigns of sickness, but not to rouse him to the true energy of despair. He
assumes just sufficient activity to help to invite his friends to their
destruction. In the debate at York, Lord Bardolph lays down
every principle that should check the enterprise at once, and remains unanswered, yet does not persevere in his opinion, and the
Archbishop's Grace of York decides the question to go on relying
on an appeal to the surfeited commonwealth, weary of Henry, at
the same time that he moralizes on the giddy insecurity of reliance on the vulgar heart. Personal dangers are thickening
about the leaders, their heritage from their participation in the
downfal and murder of Richard; but they stand isolated from
the commonwealth, and by their own admission represent only
the unreasoning and dissatisfied hankering for change, of the vile
multitude, and command so little respect as to fail to engage our
interest or sympathy. And yet is not the picture of them uninteresting; the nature of limited nature is exhibited with such
truthfulness that it rivets our attention and carries us on in forgetfulness for the time of the more brilliant qualities of the characters
of the previous play, as in fact we are being prepared to taste
with lively novelty the exciting glories of the play that is to ensue.
Against an insurrection thus inspired, the lieutenants of King
Henry are perfectly sufficient counterbalance, and little as he interferes himself the force of his character as familiar to us from




CRITICAL ESSAY.


237


the previous play, is felt in the harmony of its tendencies with
the course of suppression they adopt. Indeed Henry IV. does not
come on the stage at all in the first, second and fifth Acts, and has
but a short scene at the commencement of the third; the fourth
Act however concludes with a fine scene devoted to him as long
as an Act, and though he dies at the end of it, yet cannot it be
said that the fifth Act is properly the first of the history of King
Henry V. for the spirit of the father still lives, and the acts and
demeanour of the new king are the close and instant echo of the,vords and tones that passed in the secret interview with his dying
father and predecessor.
Deeply, however, as craft enters into his character we do him
some injustice if we regard the policy of Prince John and Westmoreland as no more than he might have practised. His own
subtlety it must be said wears ever a more dashing outside, and
he would have been, we may believe, personally indisposed if not
incapable, to carry through the sustained deception by which the
Archbishop and the rest are led to accept fallacious terms and
prematurely disband their troops. This, however, is such a trick
as more honourable rulers than Henry never disown when successful,-it is the meanness at second hand which is so often indulged
through the hands.of agents by those who admit no flaw to their
name or even to their consciousness of scrupulous honour, the degradation stopping short to their thinking at the hands of the
manager. Westmoreland is the chief negotiator here, and is
watchful to check a natural impulse that even in the cold Prince
John was not quite repressed; but the prince has fair share in the
effrontery with which he repudiates his implied pledge, and is
alone in the mercilessness with which he commands execution
upon the unwilling followers of the rebel chiefs-" Send out pursue
the scattered fray."
The solidity indeed which Henry has at last succeeded in
gaining for his power, is exhibited forcibly in the zeal with which
he is served and attended by his Lords. Thus seconded he has
gradually crushed or rooted out the enemies who at once attacked
his throne and disturbed the public peace-constant causes of
domestic quarrel and bloodshed; but his friends and assistantsthe Westmorelands and the rest, do not once suspect that they
themselves are as dextrously-more dextrously, duped than Hastings and Mowbray. Gradually the aristocratic families have been
weakened and decimated by each other's hands, and power has
become concentrated in the hands of an able monarch who will
keep his nobility employed on somewhat else than plying into his
title if he have to carry them on sanctimonious pretexts to the
Holy Land.
Only in his last confidential counsel with his heir apparent is
this deep laid policy revealed and recommended for guidance of
the future reign. It is highly characteristic that this confidence




238               KING HENRY IV.
is elicited and flows in full and unconstrained stream in return to
the prince's excuse for removing the crown. We may think as
we please of Warwick's report that he found the prince in tears
over it,-Warwick before has been forward with palliations for
him, yet on his accession is as mistrustful as any; certainly the
prince is susceptible of natural emotion-though it may be merely
natural as the order of his own words suggests:" Thy due from me
Is tears and heavy sorrows of the blood,
Which nature, love and filial tenderness
Shall, oh dear father, pay thee plenteously."
Still assuredly he overstrains the fact as provable from his own
words, that putting on the crown did not swell his thoughts to
any strain of pride. His father however is satisfied, and satisfied
it is noteworthy, not because he literally believes the apology, but
because he is charmed with the wisdom with which it has been
pleaded. His heart opens and while his nobles are attendant in
the ante-room he guides his son to the subtle and unsuspected
policy by which they are to be best retained in subordination.
Thus is handed over to younger hands and under more favourable
circumstances, the supreme rule of England; foreign aggression
has been unheard of since the time of John, no nobleman rivals
the king in popularity and qualities for governing, as under King
Richard; a high-spirited nobility restless for enterprise and exertion still surrounds the throne, but at present unexcited by either
animosity or apprehension against it as in the troublous time of
the fourth Harry, and thus the energies of the country are held
collected and united in the hands of a young and daring sovereign,
and we are prepared for great events at least, whether ultimately
advantageous to the country or not. This then is the triumph of
kingcraft and political duplicity and successful intrigue; for personal and family interest has achieved not only power and wealth
but honour and dignity, and respect and veneration from the
wisest and most sober minded in the land. Some true dignity,
it is certain, is conferred on this exercise of the distinguished
mental qualities of the princes, by the earnestness of the interest
which they acquire, and the pride which they admit in the real
dignity of the country rescued from anarchy, keeping pace and
front with the best governed, and equally prepared for peace or
war, or both together, and the contemptible character of their
enemies makes us acquiesce in fortune's award of the glory and
garland of the contest. But still the taint of selfishness and
personal interest to which the public interest will be made subservient at last is there, and if the career of the Henries has brought
many misdoers to condign punishment, fair warning is given
that their own misdeeds are sufficient to ensure an ultimate
catastrophe for their line. It is in the conduct of the secondary
story that we meet with the motives of the serious portion of the




CRITICAL ESSAY.


239


play presented in forms that stimulate and aid us in correcting
the appreciation of them that the pomp of historical action so
easily leads astray. In the dupes of Falstaff-the Quicklys and
Shallows-we find the same false confidence and weak reliance
that betrays the Archbishop of York and the rest, and the knight
is here in the same relative position as Westmoreland and Prince
John, while on the other hand as duped and cast off himself he
makes the same blunder as his victims. The prince, now king,
assumes the airs of solemnity and virtue, and we applaud at least
the self-control with which he releases himself from old habits
and indulgences, and the associates he rejects are soiled so irretrievably with mean practices as well as base indulgences, that
they have forfeited claim to pity in a betrayal for which their
own courses have furnished abundant precedent. But still these
very precedents of shabbiness and fraud enable us to appreciate
the royal and noble imitations, and low life holds the mirror to
the high, by which itself is castigated, and as the royal train stalks
off it leaves us disposed to think while its high sounding echoes
still ring in our ears, that the wrong at either extreme of society
is of much the same moral quality and that neither has much to
claim for its own impunity,-fortunate though it be that they are
rather in opposition than alliance, and society is thus the quieter
by a check to that at least which it is possible to check.
Swindling, peculation, ill-faith, and fiaud had never a better
ihance of being popular than when combined with the exhaustless wit, humour, good-humour, and general amusingness of Jack
Falstaff, and laxity and grossness of body, life, and manners could
never go so far to assert their independence of necessary viciousness and vileness, as when brightened by the gleams and sparkles,
the lambent phosphorescence and piercing radiance, of his equally
fanciful and intellectual invention. Yet the very course and occasion of the manifestation of these enchaining endowments, is
the means of setting forth the natural sequence by which idleness, frivolousness, and sensuality bring on and ally with meanness of spirit and of aims, heartlessness, and even malice and
murder; and as the action proceeds we become either ashamed of
our sympathy with him, or alarmed at the risk we run by continuing any portion of it.
The variety of forms into which the leading idea of the play,
the inviting and conciliating of confidence from the weak and the
careless, with intent to betray,-the abuse or the disappointment
of trust foolishly reposed, changes and counterchanges in both
serious and comic portions of the play, is infinite. Wary Master
Dumbleton has a narrow escape when he rejects the security of
Bardolph, but his neighbour Master Smooth, the silkman, is evidently the victim of the customer whom he thinks it an honour
to have to dine with him. The correspondence with Mistress
Ursula speaks as plainly as the scene of cajolery related by Mrs.




240              KING HENRY IV.
Quickly, how well Sir John knew the value of knighthood, the
power to make any Joan a lady, and husbanded the resource.
His rehabilitated character from Shrewsbury gains him indulgence and a kind word from the Chief Justice, and he immediately
attempts to realize the false credit as a loan of a thousand pounds,
but it is from a Justice of weaker parts that he obtains it; and
even disease is welcome, that there is a chance of turning to commodity. The spasmodic vigour of Mrs. Quickly, with her officers
Fang and Snare, has the same fate, when met by a few words and
assurances of the knight's, as the easily renounced attempt of the
Archbishop and his allies; but the result to Falstaff of his success is, that this time he is dismissed with a rebuff from the Chief
Justice, and, worse, with the contempt that befits him when serious business is in motion, " Now the Lord lighten thee; thou
art a great fool." Then we have his own people, Bardolph and
the page, the drawers, and even Mistress Doll Tearsheet, suborned
to lead him on and betray him; a very Samson he is in his turn,
with an Eastcheap Delilah on his knees, for she asks him what
humour the prince is of, with an evident glance at the Prince and
Poins in their leather jerkins in the background. The vapouring intrusion of Pistol drunk, the altercation with Doll, the vile
brawl at his expulsion, turn outwards the unhandsome side of
the scene of the Prince's revels and evil combats, the brothel tavern; this is the second fray already, the first was with Fang
and Snare. Transferred to the country, the scene exhibits the
foolish justice, foolish and corruptly favouring a known rogue at
the solicitation of a servant tempered between the finger and
thumb of the knight, and running hoodwinked into trouble in
mere silly self-conceit, and trust in one who is observing him to
laugh at him, and to make money out of him. It is at the conclusion of these scenes, after the announcement of the king's
death, that those who have acquiesced too heartily in the irregularities that brought them sport, are checked, if checked they
may be, by the discovery that wit and jollity, as the knight has
followed them, still may harbour rancour, and that more is at
stake than they might think for in the question of his continued
influence with Hal. In elevation of spirits for once genuine, and
genuinely uncontrollable, he exclaims that the laws of England
are at his commandment, and posts away engrossed with the anticipation of "1 Wo to my Lord Chief Justice." What might be
implied in this as affecting civil order, is told in the next scene,
where Doll, who was not to dress herself handsome till his return, and who brawled with Pistol in terms beyond his match
for a swaggering, foul-mouthed rascal, is haled in by beadle and
officer, and the hostess with her, and for too good a reason, " Come,
I charge you both go with me; for the man is dead that you and
Pistol beat among you."
The first conditions of society in internal order are here at




CRITICAL ESSAY.                      241
stake, if Sir John Falstaff is to deliver his friends; and the consideration inclines us to be not displeased at his catastrophe, as
well as to assent to it as a true representation of the course of
nature, the way of the world.
If any apology were thought to be required for the conduct of
the new king, a better could scarcely be invented than the aspect
of the group that hails him familiarly on his path from his coronation. Ned Poins is absent, and charitable hopes suggest that
he may have had milder treatment, though I do not believe it; his
place is taken by the contemptible Pistol, and the country justice,
the very emblem of profaned law, stands chattering beside the
composed Bardolph, who is taciturn in confident anticipation of
fortunes to come from the merit of his master, and perhaps be
bettered by remembrance of his own. It is at last with an effort
alone that the king can quite overmaster the old propensity of
Hal to jest on the personal ridiculousness of the bulk before him,
but certainly the effort is made with full success, and his speech
is carried through with a steadiness and abstraction that convince
us that Falstaff, as an individual, is at that moment and for ever
forgotten, and that the king addresses in reality the sympathies
of the listeners who are around him. At this point, and not before this, the serious and the comic portions of the play arrive at
a common junction, the spirits of both meet and mutually countervail each other, and the action concludes. The end of all is
the highest expression of the movements that conduct to it. If
the words of the king, and the engagement they imply, were
liberally or even strictly interpreted, the fate of the company,
though dependent on their merits, might not be so helplessly
destitute after all:" For competence of life I will allow you,
That lack of means enforce you not to evil:
And as we hear you do reform yourselves,
We will, according to your strength and qualities,
Give you advancement.-Be it your charge, my lord,
To see performed the tenour of our word."
This is, of course, addressed to the Lord Chief Justice, who reenters shortly after, and thus executes his reading of the commission:" Go, carry Sir John Falstaff to the Fleet,
Take all his company along with him."
Turning then to Prince John, who closely follows him, he listens
with composure to the commendation of the royal liberality:" I like this fair proceeding of the king's:
He hath intent his wonted followers
Shall all be very well provided for;
But all are banished, till their conversations
Appear more wise and modest to the world;"
and assents to the remark with an effrontery, after his proceedR




242


KING HENRY IV.


ing of the moment before, that does honour to the habitual gravity of the ermine:"And so they are."
Kingcraft, policy, and statesmanship are, therefore, not so far
removed in kin from the cheating and swindling of inferior ranks;
and that they are more solemn, and less readily admit of genial
accompaniments, is no addition to their excellence, and the ambitious politically, or indeed in any other direction, must lay their
account of dignity with the penalty of isolation. This contrast
is not only exhibited dramatically in the double position of Hal,
cordial almost and at his ease among his free companions, and
reserved perforce and disabled from real cordiality as the centre
of a crowded court, but the same sentiment inspires the reflections of the restless Henry IV. on the contrast, in respect of ease
and happiness, between the occupant of the throne he struggled
so incessantly to gain and retain, and his humblest subject inl
rudest circumstances of outward hardship-the peasant in smoky
crib and upon uneasy pallet, or the sea-boy storm-drenched at
the mast- head.
The short re-entrance of the Lord Chief Justice at the end of
the play not only lifts up the lappet of state hypocrisy of the new
and gorgeous mantle of majesty, but also of judicial, for in the
absence of immediate trespass, we can only ascribe the arbitrary
imprisonment to the Judge's indulgence of a pique of his own, an
after dated assertion or re-assertion of the authority that Falstaff,
at their previous encounter, so dextrously first foiled and then
made sport of. The self-constraint, rather than self-control, to sustain an assumed character rather than really to assume the character
to be sustained, keeps up the stately masking of the Royal Henries,
of the Chief Justice, of Warwick, and Prince John, and Westmoreland. All wear, however, the mask of diplomacy with success for
their appointed ends, and cast it aside, remove or re-assume it,
with equally calculated deliberateness. Small chance against
such artists has the bungling irresolution of Northumberland in
his passion, which even his retainer Travers ambiguously rebukes
as "strained;" as little the attempt of the confederates to give a
show of vigour to the unhearted forces, that they too soon admit
are eager to be dismissed; least chance of all the vain or contemptible frivolities who are masking for make-sport, or vapouring for a humour, and hope by such means to come in for a share
of the governance of the laws of England. It is because the
most serious form that these dishonesties can take, admits of no
truly heroic excess, and can only attain an approach to dignity
by the magnitude of the affairs they influence, and the difficulties
they cope with or overcome, that such large development is invited and rendered necessary for their purely comic aspect, for
that aspect in which they at least generate the interest of being
highly amusing. Thus double-faced affectation in every form of




CRITICAL ESSAY.


243


the grotesque and the witty, the conscious and the unconscious,
and the half-conscious, reappears in every comic scene and almost every speech. What are the exaggerated tragical trappings wittbwhich Pistol flourishes over his vileness but the badges
of a masquerade that in principle at least is a parallel to that of
the king. An attempt more modest but happier on the whole is
the vapouring of Lieutenant Bardolph, swearing "by Heaven,"
and adventuring an attempt at camp slang and the air of a soldier
where he is not known. Justice Shallow for his part dresses up
a fictitious image of the wildness of his youth and puts up a pretension to dissoluteness and violence which his will may have been
equal to but his power never, and even Silence would fain assert
a toper's glory which neither his head nor his spirits are capable
of. I may pass over the smoothpated eidolon, Master Dumbleton,
who could bear a gentleman in hand and then stand upon security, but who can pass over the ever persevering and ever selfbetraying seemliness of Hostess Quickly. In her care to keep up
appearances as a principle of her profession as ostensible tavernkeeper, in her sober mannered anxiety to conserve the seemly for
herself as for all about her, she is for ever falling into unhappinesses of expression that suggest the state of the fact even to
those who would forget it, commits herself coolly to the plumpest
asseverations of overdone lies, or in all simplicity and pure intent
to disclaim her true character and calling, admits and publishes
it in absolute terms. The Page's description of Mistress Doll
Tearsheet as a proper gentlewoman and a kinswoman of his
master's, evidently came from a Mistress Quickly not unrelated
to the housekeeper of Dr. Caius, who reserved the world's truth
for old folks who know the world and held it conscience still to
put off children with a nayword. The well-intentioned creature
would be a hypocrite if she could, and indeed she seems to have
made some progress in making a first dupe of herself; but here
it is like to end, for more than good will is required in the matter,
and infirm dialectics and hap hazard haste convict her from her
ovim lips by inevitable propensity, and leave her no chance of a
second. Mrs. Quickly and Doll Tearsheet embody between them
the moral, if we may so speak, of the London Police reports and
all sheets of night charges from the days of Queen Elizabeth to
the Times newspaper of this current date.
But the affectation of a character, of either virtues or vices,
which is studied in Hal lewd or Harry reformed, and whimsical,
foolish and ridiculous in meaner emulators, is in Falstaff the very
soul of his irony, the spirit of his wit. Falstaff has unlimited
faith in the power of the ludicrous; wit is to him power, and if
he can succeed in exciting a laugh he feels that he is wielding
an invincible weapon. Hence a short burst of spite or ill-humour
at Prince John, or the Lord Chief Justice, when they refuse to
respond to his provocations to laughter, or evade its consequences




244               KING HENRY IV.
of familiarity. His faith has but weak grounds at the last trial,
for lie scarcely anticipated opposing his staff of reliance, such as
it is, to the steadfast passage of a vehement and resolute passion,
and when in such an encounter it utterly fails him, it is not hard
to conceive that degrading disappointment goes nigh to break his
heart. In the meantime with spirits ever prompt and matchless
fertility of resource he is the true comedian off the boards; to
him it is success and life to secure his laugh, and he has long
ceased to regard any sacrifice of personal dignity as of any consequence, or likely to countervail his results. If Sir John therefore
assumes a mask and belies his nature and character, it is never
with so settled a design that he will not remove it the next instant to heighten the incongruity, or reverse it by hinting his
consciousness of his own dishonesty. After teasing the Chief
Justice with his pretended deafness, he purposely overacts his
pretence, and at last plainly admits and gives it up; with as
lightly carried irony he gives himself the airs of being in the
vaward of youth, professes to have reprimanded the prince, and
complains of the labours entailed by his military reputatiou, acting the braggart with the intent to be admired for the excellence
of his acting, while he combines the production of amusement by
appearing to intend to be believed. So with every opportunity of
misrepresenting the conquest of Colevile he prefers driving his
description of the occurrence into caricature, and at last completes
the merriment by bantering the mock heroics of his prisoner at
the expense of his own exploit. So when the Prince and Poins
discover themselves in the drawer's jerkins he first affects to try
to divert their thoughts from the calumnies he had been uttering
within their hearing, then he excites their curiosity for his defence, and when appealed to to characterize his companions as
the wicked, with wits running over with cunningest associations
he lingers-I can see him, with an expression of the moving and
then steady eye that now seems gloating in fancy over the rich
variety of the coming evasion, and now assumes the mock embarrassment of a nonplus till Poins jogs the wine cask impatiently
-" Answer thou dead elm, answer,"-and with a deliberateness
still more racy than the eager alacrity expected of him, answer
he does. But who shall speak of Falstaff as he deserves; he
himself says that it were better than a Dukedom to be able to do
so, whatever the value of that estimate may be.
A first-rate comedian himself, Falstaff takes a comedian's
pleasure in contemplating the capabilities of all comic materials
both in others and in himself, and the result of his observation
overflows as freely in soliloquy or whenever he is at his ease and
among his inferior associates as when called forth by Prince Hal's
requirements of excitement and amusement. Hence the unction
with which he hits off Shallow, Prince John, Pistol, Hal and
Poins, and on the intrusion and bluster of Pistol his silence during




CRITICAL ESSAY.


245


the altercation is sign of a certain relish in witnessing it, and it
is only when the Ancient makes it evident that he intends to
stay and be tedious, that after the short notice, " Pistol, I would
be quiet," he gives the sign to Bardolph to "quoit him down
stairs like a shove groat shilling," and takes to his own rapier to
hasten the execution.
The indignation that some critics have expressed at the treatment of Falstaff is the best vindication of the wisdom of the poet;
it was the first public action that formed the turning point in the
history of Henry V. that he was called on to set forth, and the
conditions of the case require that this act should display something more than ordinary self-command;-the mere capability
of deliberate injustice and ingratitude is a point of vigour easily
reached by the vulgar run of monarchs, not so the power of renouncing the habitual enlivenment of a wit and humorist many
degrees nearer to a buffoon than Falstaff-Falstaff inexhaustible
in himself and assuredly never to be replaced by another.
Look at the matter however as strictly as we may, it is difficult to suppress a thought of satisfaction at Falstaff having at
least some present indemnity in the loan of a thousand pounds,
that Shallow will see no more, and a conviction that it will go
hard if the King, Henry V., ever again enjoys free participation
in sociality so vivacious as with whatever accompaniments he
found and quitted at the Boar's-head.
Which indeed, we are inclined to ask, is after all the more enviable condition, of King Henry IV. overwearied and wasted with
the cares and business of state, pressed down and stifled by the
close and heavy mask of dissimulation, ever watchful, ever anxious,
suspicious of all about him and even of his own sons, for whose
sake he undergoes his labours-is it better, it may occur to us to
consider, to live thus and persuade oneself it is the course of
dignity or duty, or to rate such a life as the sacrifice of the real
to the imaginary, and find a better philosophy in even that of
Falstaff. Very indifferent sympathy one may think is better than
such utter isolation, and be inclined to deliberate whether the
half-believed protestations of Prince Henry to his sinking father
are so genuinely consolatory to the fluttering human heart, as
even a sign of attachment so questionable as the blubbered cheeks
of Doll, the considerate "run, Doll, run, run "-of the Hostess,
her momentary veneration of him as a type of "an honest and
true hearted man"-monstrous imagination! or to anticipate
the perfectly sincere regret of Bardolph, desolate by his death" Would I were with him wheresoe'er he is, whether in heaven or
hell." The veteran king and the old debauchee are much upon
a par even in the private court of conscience, and Falstaff is as
nervous as to the event of his latter end when Doll talks like a
death's-head, as the king when he higgles for a compromise that
shall allow him both pardon and possession of his ill-gotten gains.




246


KING HENRY IV.


Thus rises up before us in every page of Shakespeare some pregnant moral dilemma; the fate and character of kingdoms has
turned upon the prevalent feeling at critical epochs on such a
contrast as that before us between ease and honour, between care
and comfort. Shakespeare is content to leave the moral to tell
for itself, to vindicate its own power by carrying our sympathies
with it. In the present instance methinks, these cling in preference to and favour the bold hearts that encounter the labours
and dangers and with whatever lapses, the duties of state, above
the narrower minds of whatever geniality of thought or sympathy, who adhere to the maxim,-to perform one's appointed
functions in one fashion or another, (taliter qualiter) not to embroil
oneself with one's superiors, and to let the mad world take its
own way, since take its own way it will,-a maxim that has made
many slaves but never yet a freeman, either political or moral.
In looking over the old play of The Famous Victories of Henry
the Fifth, we meet with constant proof that it was familiar to
Shakespeare, whether hlie used any other antecedent drama or not;
but of the leading scope of the action, as he decided on treating
it, we find no hint. In the old play the double phases of the
Prince's character are opposed to an extent that is mere incongruousness. The raffish scamp of the first scenes is transformed
into a sudden model of dutifulness in the ensuing. We have none
of the indications of the princely dissimulation in the midst of
riotous self-abandonment in the first period, no hints of the calculated stroke of stage effect in apparent resentment against the
Lord Chief Justice, no adumbration of that marvellous picture
of assumed feeling blending into and losing itself in real, in the
scene of the apology for removing the crown. The following extracts of the soliloquy of the prince on his father's supposed death,
and the ensuing scene of explanation, will suffice to illustrate generally the point of contact and directions of divergence:" Ah, Harry, thrice unhappy, that hath neglect so long from
visiting of thy sick father. I will go, nay but why do I not go
to the chamber of my sick father, to comfort the melancholy soul of
his body: his soul, said I-here is his body, but his soul is whereas it needs no body. Now thrice accursed Harry, that hath offended thy father so much, and could not I crave pardon for all;"
and so forth in the same tone, too tedious to transcribe. The
sequel is more spirited:" Oxford. Here, an please your Grace, is my lord the young
Prince with the crown.
Henry 4. Why, how now, my son; I had thought the last
time I had you in schooling, I had given you a lesson for all, and
do you now begin again? Why tell me, my son, doest thou think
the time so long, that thou wouldest have it before the breath is
out of my body?




CRITICAL ESSAY.


247


Henry 5. Most sovereign liege and well beloved father, I came
into your chamber to comfort the melancholy soul of your body,
and finding you at that time past all recovery and dead to my
thinking, God is my witness, and what should I do but with
weeping tears lament the death of you my father. And after
that seeing the crown, I took it. And tell me, my father, who
might better take it than I, after your death? But seeing you
live, I most humbly render it into your majesty's hands, and the
happiest man alive that my father live, and live my lord and father for ever.
Henry 4. Stand up, my son; thine answer hath well sounded
in mine ears, for I must needs confess that I was in a very sound
sleep, and altogether unmindful of thy coming. But come near,
my son, and let me put thee in possession whilst I live, that none
deprive thee of it after my death.
Henry 5. Well may I take it from your majesty's hands, but
it shall never touch my head, so long as my father lives. [He
taketh the crown.
Henry 4. God give me joy, my son; God bless thee and make
thee his servant, and send thee a prosperous reign; for God
knows, my son, how hardly I came by it, and how hardly I have
maintained it.
Henry 5. Howsoever you came by it I know not. And now
I have it from you, and from you I will keep it: and he that
seeks to take the crown from my head, let him look that his armour be thicker than mine, or I will pierce him to the heart,
were it harder than brass or bullion."
There is a lesson to all critics in all arts to check their superciliousness, in observing how the highest genius detected, through
close crowding absurdities, the scattered sparkles of true originality and nature. The incident stands thus in Holinshed (copying
Hall), in a passage that was no doubt also under the poet's eye:" During this his last sickness he caused his crown, as some write,
to be set on a pillow at his bed's head, and suddenly his pangs
so sore troubled him that he lay as though his vital spirits had
been all from him departed. Such as were about him thinking
that he had been verily departed, covered his face with a linen
cloth. The prince his son being hereof advertised entered into
the chamber, took away the crown, and departed. The father
being suddenly revived out of that trance, quickly perceived the
lack of his crown, and having knowledge that the prince his
son had taken it away, caused him to come before his presence,
requiring of him what he meant so to misuse himself. The prince
with a good audacity answered, ' Sir, to mine and all men's judgments you seemed dead in this world, wherefore I, as your next
heir apparent, took that as mine own and not as yours.' ' Well,
fair son,' said the king, with a great sigh, 'what right I had to




248


KING HENRY IV.


it, God knoweth.' 'Well,' said the prince, ' if you die, king, I
will have the garland, and trust to keep it with the sword against
all mine enemies, as you have done.' ' Then,' said the king, 'I
commit all to God, and remember you to do well.' With that he
turned himself in his bed, and shortly after departed to God, in a
chamber of the abbots of Westminster called Jerusalem, the 20th
day of March, in the year 1413, and in the year of his age 46,
when he had reigned 13 years five months and odd days, in great
perplexity and little pleasure."
We have seen that the First Part of Henry IV. was written
as early as the end of 1597, when the name of Falstaff had already superseded Oldcastle.  In 1600 the only known quarto
edition of the second part was published, and one of the speeches
of Falstaff retained in it the prefix Old., which however, it has
appeared, is no absolute proof that the play was written before
that change was made, as the earlier name was not so easily superseded. We are thus referred to the next trace of a date, an
allusion in Ben Jonson's Every Man out of his Humour, first acted
in 1599:" Savi. What's he, gentle Mons. Brisk? Not that gentleman.
Fasl No lady; this is a kinsman to Justice Silence."
There are important variations among the impressions of the
edition of 1600; the entire first scene of the third act being
wanting in some, a defect that was corrected by the reprint of a
sheet in later copies. The folio of 1623 furnishes many other
lines, while it omits various passages found in the quarto. Many
of these are merely of the nature of castigations due to the stringency of the law against theatrical profaneness, and not to the
judgment of the author. Other omissions are plainly compositor's lapses, and are to be remedied by resort to the text of the
quarto with glee and gratulation. It is possible that some of the
speeches peculiar to the folio may have been added by the poet
on revision in the interval, but the review of the general differences
is not in favour of a systematic correction.
The tenor of the epilogue proves that at the time of its production, the drama of Henry V. was neither written nor planned;
and as Richard II. is quoted in the first part of Henry IV., of
which the second part is as obviously and necessarily a continuation, we have at least the best proof that these four plays were
written in the same order as the course of their subject matter
proceeds.
Among the anecdotes of Shakespeare collected by Oldys, the
following note occurs:-" Old Mr. Bowman, the player, reported
from Sir Wim. Bishop, that some part of Sir John Falstaff's character was drawn from a townsman of Stratford, who either faithlessly broke a contract, or spitefully refused to part with some
land for a valuable consideration adjoining to Shakespeare's, in or
near that town." Bowman was a veteran actor, contemporary




CRITICAL ESSAY.


249


and friend of Betterton; and Sir William Bishop, his informant,
was the son of Sir Richard Bishop, of Bridgetown, adjoining
Stratford, who was contemporary with the poet for thirty-one
years, and died in 1673. Now we have already trace of one personal allusion il the play in Justice Shallow, for doubtless the
satire on Sir Thomas Lucy was quite independent of the reference
to his arms, though even this does not seem to be wanting:-" If
the young dace be a bait for the old pike," says Falstaff, moralising
on his friend, " I see no reason in the law of nature but I may
snap at him." In 1597, the earliest year we can trace the play
in which Falstaff first appeared, the parents of Shakespeare,
doubtless with his consent and advice, were parties to a suit which
charged the defendant, a neighbour, though not, it would seem, a
fellow-townsman, with breach of contract in refusal to surrender
land near Stratford for a valuable consideration. John Shakespeare, as appears from the bill in Chancery discovered by Malone, mortgaged the land he acquired with his wife for ~40 to
Edmund Lambert, of Barton on the Heath; but on the tender of
repayment at an agreed date, thus the complaint avers, the money
was refused unless other moneys owing were also repaid, and possession of the property withheld by Edmund Lambert, and John,
his son and heir after him. The very sum that comes into question,
is strangely coincident with Falstaff's "three or four bonds of
forty pound a piece;" and Barton, the residence of the Lamberts,
is not less like in sound to the habitat of " Goodman Puff, of Barson," and very much nearer to the scene in Gloucestershire, than
Barstone beyond Coventry. I do not hesitate, therefore, to conclude that for some of the roguery and some of the bulk at least,
if not the wit, that make up Jack Falstaff, the world is under
obligations, and ought to own them, to Goodman Lambert of
Barton.




I




CRITICAL ESSAY ON KING HENRY V.
HE historical drama of Henry the Fifth is, like either
Part of Henry IV. and like Richard the Second as we
have scrutinized it, by no means an independent whole,
rounded off and complete within itself from commencement to end. Much of its contents, the purport of incidents, the
characters of agents, cannot be felt, cannot even be understood,
unless as following up impressions and remembrances of former
plays. And so the entire moral of the action can scarcely be gathered from the action itself, and is only salient in the story of
Henry VI. that the stage had shown before Shakespeare produced
his refined and ennobled version of the incidents of the long dramatized anterior reign. True it is that Falstaff, now dying and
soon dead, never comes in presence on the stage, but the play
cannot open and show the new king in dignified state without
some thoughts reverting to his disgraced companion, and the recollection is indulged and addressed accordingly. So, again, we
shall be in danger of misconstruing the spirit of the play bothl
historically and personally, if we do not retain from the anterior
play the thought of the counsel of the dying Bolingbroke to his
son, to busy ha  y1ars an-6i            s s  Tfenwce his ti e;
a  the thought, also, from the general disposition evinced by the
Prince of Wales, of how far a sage counsel was likely to sink into
his mind, and with what steady self-restraint and reserve he could
at once conceal and act upon it. Nay, we must be retentive of
warnings still further back, and entertain the argument of the
immediate story, with remembrance how far it is but episodical
to a more comprehensive movement that was set in motion in the
play of Richard II. It is there that the Bishop of Carlisle's prophecy foretells the horrors of the civil wars, and the contested succession of the divided house, consequent on the usurpation of
Bolingbroke. The uneasy and disturbed reign of Henry IV. and
his fretful conscience, keep up the feeling of the unappeased
Erinnys that hovers in the atmosphere; and when the crown is
handed over to the successor who was personally guiltless of
Richard's overthrow, he endeavours to persuade himself that re



252              CRITICAL ESSAY.
tribution is lulled, but with how little success, appears plainly in
the anxious endeavours of ceremonial satisfaction, unsatisfying
even to his own mind after all; the masses, and charities, and reinterments, with which he would persuade himself that divine
vengeance has consented to be satisfied. In the mind of the spectator of the present play, as in that of the king, there is therefore
the latent sense, the half suspended consciousness, that a back
account of original misdoing may be at any time, and must at
last be brought forward; but, meanwhile, the mere vigour of personal character of the occupant of the throne defers the catastrophe, holds the realm well together and perfectly in hand, and
launches its whole power with such effect as to make an era in
the history of the country, and establish a precedent of chivalrous achievement and pretension, from which it must ever after
be loath to recede.
At the conclusion of the former play, it was intimated that the
direction in which the new king designed to carry out his father's
policy of external enterprise, was not the Holy Land but France;
and forward as the war-exciting zeal of the bishops appears, the
poet does not permit us to regard the king as duped or directed
by them; the subsidy they propose to furnish is in regard of
causes already in hand, and they only lend their eager aid to push
on the prosecution of those causes, in order that the aid by which
they buy their immunity from reform may be indispensable. The
king, by their own account, affects so much indifferency in the
question they fear, as to whet their anxiety, and thus he obtains
from them not only pecuniary supply, but all the important diplomatic furtherance that is gained by the holy sanction and perverted colour of historical traditions, of the law not only of nations
and of Holy Writ, but of nature,-citations of half obliterated
genealogies, the book of Numbers, and the order and analogies of
the human microcosm and the honey bees.
The poet leaves no uncertainty as to the motives of the Archbishop; and when he makes him, in his second speech, read from
a draft of the bill for the civil application of Church temporalities, the advantages are so expressed as to engage the sympathy
of the spectators for its design as both politic and charitable, and
very decidedly against its opposers. When, therefore, from the
same lips we receive the overstrained eulogium of the king, some
suspicion is aroused which assuredly is not, or should not, be dispersed when, with an air of solemn conscientiousness, he invokes
a holy and disinterested statement of his French claims, and is so
easily satisfied with what is so glibly provided for him. Yet
there is much in this very glibness that would touch a sensitive
conscience, not to say check but ordinary acuteness, as his Grace
has occasion for precedents that sound at least unluckily,-King
Pepin which deposed Childerick, the usurpation, so admitted, of
Hugh Capet, and the scruples, so nearly akin to Henry's, of Lewis




KING HENRY V.


253


the Tenth, sole heir of the usurper, who could not keep quiet in
his conscience till satisfied of his descent in the female line, which
the very course of the argument shows did not make his title a
whit the less corrupt and nought. But the dignitary proves what
he is called and required to prove, and follows up with exhortations to the king to unwind his "bloody flag," and when a
military nobleman avouches that the hearts of Englishmen lie
pavilioned in the fields of France, the Christian churchman takes
up the cue with overdone and somewhat revolting animation:" 0! let their bodies follow, my dear liege,
With blood, and sword, and fire to win your right!"
In the same scene we have also conveyed to us a sense of the
complete command of the king over the military element of his
power, founded on the confidence and respect he inspires, and on
hearty sympathy with the enterprise of which he puts himself at
the head.
It is under these conditions of questionable motives, questionable because dynastic rather than patriotic, and because faced and
guarded with holy pretences and assumed conscientiousness, that
the war is commenced, and its course does not belie the falsities of
its origin. It carries us along with all the interest excited by the
prowess of fellow-countrymen, who reply to shallow taunts with
dignified retort and challenge, oppose discipline to irregularity
and coolness to flightiness, and when hemmed in by fivefold odds,
reject indignantly every suggestion of surrender, and looking forward to the peril at once collectedly and cheerfully, respond to
the gallant incitements of their leader in a spirit and accents like
his own; and whether for the assault of the perilous breach, or
the reception of an out-numbering charge, acquit themselves so
manfully, that even private soldiers rise to the height of heroic
achievement and bravery. In this there is no little glory, and a
glory that it ever behoves a country, with independence and
authority to be defended, to be eager for, jealous of, proud of; but
here this glory, otherwise, susceptible of far higher enrichment,
simply ends. The cause at issue is not so exalted, as to continue
the excitement to the height after the decision of the pitched
field. The enterprise was commenced with a frequency of reference to the Divine name, which in such a connection seems rather
sanctimonious than sincere, ostentatious and politic than truly
pious. In the king's soliloquy, however, before the battle, it appears that there is at least as much of weakness of mind and
superstition as of hypocrisy in the case. He stands truly in awe
of Divine Power, but in truth this seems to be the only divine attribute he recognizes. The very terms of his prayer prove his
consciousness that he is at heart still guilty of consent to the
terms by which his crown was purchased, the murder of Richard;
and hopeless of immunity from the consequent penalty, he presses
for the postponement of it. With anxiety and urgency he pleads




254


CRITICAL ESSAY.


the merit of pompous and ceremonial reparation, and even while
he promises still more, is brought back to the confession that true
penitence has scarcely been his motive and remains at last to
pay. Knowing as the spectator is supposed to know and must
remember,-for Shakespeare, when a main point has been sufficiently impressed, does not lower his demand of attention by reminding of it or repeating it,-what relation the expedition bears
to the retention of the murder-purchased sovereignty, the prayer
of Henry sounds to him but as deprecation of the descent of divine vengeance for a crime, while he aims at securing the results
of it by commission of another. Side by side with the blaze of
heroism throughout the play, we have lively allusion to the havoc
and atrocities of war, and side by side also appeals to God; and
it is shame and pity if we cannot see the native blackness of ambition all the more distinctly, when the very picture and figure
of mangled peace and desolated society lies bleeding before us,
and wrangling princes trample upon humanity to resent a mock
and found ill-gotten power, and cover all with the cloak of halffaced piety and spurious religion. In the devout thankfulness of
the king after the battle, we are reminded of the despatch in which
Cromwell gives to God the glory of the massacre of Drogheda, in
a tone that suggests satisfaction at being cheaply quit at the same
time of the responsibility. But the humility in all such cases is
at best but refinement of pride, whether audaciously claiming to
be the representative and arm of the divinity, or mounting to the
fantastic trick of partnership with or even generosity to God:" Henry V.         0 God! thy arm was here,
And not to us, but to thy arm alone
Ascribe we all.-When, without stratagem,
But in plain shock, and even play of battle,
Was ever known so great and little loss,
On one part and on the other!-Take it, God,
For it is only thine!
And be it death proclaimed through our host
To boast of this, or take that praise from God,
Which is his only.
Do we all holy rites;
Let there be sung non nobis and Te Deum."
Therefore it is that by the very conditions of the subject theme,
when the battle is won and the excitement of danger and the admiration of resolution is exhausted, the triumph and sequel are
likely to be somewhat tame; the spirits have been exalted throughout, but the heart, we are surprised to find, remains comparatively
unmoved, and we are relieved from impending disappointment
when the course of the play strikes into comedy, and the still
living appetite for excitement is slaked by the indulgence of an
afterpiece, for such we may consider the concluding act.
In Harry the Fifth, as king regnant, we still trace some of the




KING HENRY V.                         255
limitation of mind that we noticed in the companion of Falstaff;
the active energies are more powerful in him than the reflective;
engrossed by a pursuit or a passion, his whole nature is promptly
co-operant in furtherance of it, but he can never, even for a moment, so far disengage himself from it as to take any other point
of view. In his night talk with the soldiers the limitations of
minds, sophisticated by station and unsophisticated, mutually define each other. Private Williams and private John Bates have
a clear and honest sense of royal responsibility; their own duty
is to obey and to fight bravely, but it is for the king to look to
the justice of the cause and be answerable for it-and answerable,
moreover, for some unrepented sins of those whom a false quarrel
may bring to death prematurely and in ill blood;-a clear principle enough and palpable to plain sense, and, in fact, the very
touchstone of the moral position of Henry in the action of the
play. His reply at the moment, and his soliloquy after, are sufficiently in harmony to evince the sincerity of his reply, and thus
to prove that he is as unconsciously blind when he answers with
plausible detail a different question to that which is proposed, as
the questioners who accept his conclusions and leave satisfied.
With lucid exposition he proves that if a sinful servant miscarry
on a lawful errand, the imputation of his wickedness cannot justly
lie on the master who so dispatched him, whereas the hypothesis
laid out that the errand was unlawful, and made no question of
the servant not answering for himself, but of his damnation aggravating that of his master, not being transferred to him. The
soldiers are not acute enough to check this logic, and freely admit the new case stated. Williams, however, has still a genuine
English jealousy of royal sincerity, and the renewed difference
leads to the challenge. The king left alone reverts to the earlier discussion, and a careless reader, interpreting by his own impulses, too often assumes in the opening reflections, that suddenly
alone, the awful sense of regal responsibility rushes upon his mind
and finds his feeling conscience. No such thing; in mingling
indignation and discontent he reflects on the ingratitude of the
subject, commiserates the hardship of his own, the royal lot, runs
through the evils of the sta'ion with which dignity is coupled,
and then contrasting, as his father had done before him, the superior happiness and ease of the lowly, he slides insensibly into
such a description with such epithets, of a state of existence divided between toil and mere insensibility, as convicts his complaint of self-imposing affectation at last.
Thus much in reservation, or thus much in vindication of the
poet, who nmust not be lightly misconstrued as exhibiting a dazzling display of military heroism to take and astonish the world
by its dash and brilliancy, while he overlooks or forgets to hint
at the basenesses that are compatible with glories of this class,
and the essential narrowness of the minds to which the glory of




256


CRITICAL ESSAY.


simple military achievement is all-sufficient. Famine, sword, and
fire are the supporters of such an escutcheon on one side, and
princely pride and selfishness, and clerical craft and magnificent
hypocrisy, are clustered in unhallowed alliance on the other.
Apart, however, from the question of the cause that calls them
forth, the qualities that achieve military success are in themselves
truly honourable and admirable, and the possession of them, and
conscious pride in having approved them, is a nation's safeguard
as a nation's glory. While, therefore, the poet does not conceal
the qualifications they are subject to, he addresses the national
military spirit distinctly enough, and excites our esteem for soldierlike bearing in general, officers, and men, by setting forth
their steadiness and gallantry in desperate peril, and heightening
the effect by contrast with all forms of deficiency both in discipline and valour. The origin of the war in priestly.intrigue and
kingly policy is for a time lost sight of, as the conduct of the
French provokes resentment or contempt, and for the time appears to put them in the wrong. The insulting message of the
Dauphin with the poor jest of the tennis balls, seems itself a justification of any extremity of rebuke; the subornation of assassins
is still worse, and the repeated messages proposing ransom, rouse
indignation to the highest. The affectation of superiority in war
to Henry of Monmouth, on the part of so tame a chief as the
Dauphin or the French king, or such a wild troop of unregimented
lords as are enumerated by the king, and gamble for prisoners yet
untaken, would be merely ridiculous, but that their numerous and
well appointed host, embattled against starved, and weakened, and
overwearied battalions, gives a cause for their high spirits, and
renders them an enemy still so formidable as to reserve a grace
for the decisive victory gained upon them. Shakespeare does not
degrade the enemy by cowardice; and though, to make sport, a
single French fugitive is introduced, surrendering in poltroonery
to the greatest poltroon in the English camp; it is by over confidence and by ill directed, or rather undirected, headlong onslaught that they meet their main discomfiture. Disorder hath
spoiled them, and they rush in heaps to destruction and expected
death, in mere agony of shame and despair.
Nothing can exceed the vigour and spirit with which the English scenes are represented, or the boldness and success with which
an exotic character is attempted in the French scenes and realized.
iThe introduction of provincial characters, the hasty Irishman,
tie cautious and disputatious Scot, and the care and valour of the
fantastic Welshman, with their special dialects and pliraseologies,
aids in softening off the incongruous effect, that might amount to
oddity and grotesqueness, in the scenes of mixed English and
French, which, as it is, are managed with telling characteristic
effect. This was the more necessary, as the plan of the play required so prominent a position for the merriment of the king's




KING HENRY V.                      257
ironical wooing of fair Katharine of France. The battle is scarcely
over than the tension of the theme which was held up by the peril
of the military crisis relaxes, and the reference of Fluellen to the
discarded fat knight, prepares for the jest of his old pupil in the
ensuing scene, in the practical joke of embroiling Fluellen and
Williams about the exchanged glove, which he winds up, however, with generosity and moderated condescension. The honest
straightforward apology of Williams is as much a defence of his
freedom as an apology for it, and is a very engaging picture of
self-respect and independence, in the class that is the broad base
of a nation's constitution.
The relation of the secondary incidents to the main action, all
through the play, is very remarkable; not an event takes place
in the great political movement to which they conduce, and which
would not proceed just the same, as matter of pragmatical dependence, without them; and yet are they indispensable to the
distinctness and effect of the more ambitious groups. King Henry
says of himself-" All his senses have but human conditionsj his
ceremonies laid by, in his nakedness he appears but a man; and
though his affections are higher mounted than ours, when they
stoop they stoop with a like wing;" and so, in the incidents of
lower and private life, we are presented all through with the same
or similar passions and motives, as in the higher are invested with
state and ceremony, and with this aid and comment it is our own
fault if we fail to transfer the intervals of the moral scale, from
the example on a level with the eye and within moderate range,
to antitypes beyond our usual scope. Sooth to say, his Grace of
Canterbury, and his royal master and the rest, make up their alliance on much the same terms as Nym, Pistol, and Bardolph.
Domestic differences on matters economical are patched up and
smoothed over, to pursue with mutual aid the foreign enterprise.
Nym gives up Nell Quickly, compounding for the noble he won
at betting, and so, as yokefellows in arms, they speed for France
"like horseleeches, my boys; to suck, to suck, the very blood to
suck."  ' And that," adds the boy, "is but unwholesome food,
they say;" and there is no reason why the obvious truth should
apply less to kings and bishops than to paltry filchers.
So, again, the length at which the detection of the conspirators
at Southampton is treated, serves to express the well-ordered security in which the internal administration of the country is settled
and remains; and for those who can see it, there is the incongruity hinted at between the indignation of the head of a community at selfish violence on the part of subjects against himself,
and indifference or blindness to the same crime on his own part
as a member of the general human community. The rule is the
same that Nym and Bardolph should be aware of, for they will
have to aby it, and be hanged for a paltry robbery in an enemy's
country, by the exalted personages who are violently snatching
S




258


CRITICAL ESSAY.


the country itself. The king's sermonizing lecture to the doomed
Scroop on his ingratitude and savage inhumanity, the jealous infection he has conveyed to the sweetness of affiance by betraying a
trusting friend, marking the full fraught man and best endued
with some suspicion, comes in significantly between the two scenes,
in the first of which we hear of the illness of the disgraced Falstaff, his heart "fracted and corroborate," and in the next his
death-" the king has killed his heart."  Henry quitted Falstaff
for Scroop, the tun of humours for the nobleman grave, learned,
religious, spare in diet, free from gross passion or of mirth or anger, and narrowly escapes from his new and sober companion the
very fate that he himself, in guise as seemly, inflicted on his old
one. No reason here for the king reverting to Falstaff, but much
illustration of the tendencies of treacherous example.
It is clear, from the tenor of contemporary literature, that in
Pistol and his companions Shakespeare drew from the life-studies
that London ordinaries supplied him in abundance./ We must
call to mind the general custom of carrying weapons, the frequency of fatal brawls, license of duel, and insufficiency of police,
together with the loose military population always afloat, to recognize fairly the unnatural developments of swaggering and cowardice in combination, that the circumstances of the times made
familiar. Pistol, I doubt not, might scarcely have been thought
more of an exaggeration than the sullen and bloody-hinting Nym;
and the original spectators must have appreciated, with a gusto
that we may envy tnem. the scene in which these lily-livered
rascals of contrasted costume stand opposed with naked swords
that they are themselves afraid of, and affect to be held apart by
the sword of Bardolph, only less a coward than the least of them,
who faces out one impossible contingency by another and an
oath;-" Hear me, hear what I say:-he that strikes the first
stroke I'll run him up to the hilts, as I am a soldier." Mrs.
Quickly herself never hit a truer meaning in attempting to express a false one, than when she bade good Corporal Nym " Show
thy valour, and put up thy sword."
The contrast of the Dauphin's feeble support of a foolish insult,
and between the general contemptuous haughtiness of the French
and their deeds when they come to the actual shock and close of
battle, would provoke a peal of laughter, but that, from the circumstances of the march, the English jeopardy was in any case
most serious. Thus some relief is given to the colour of religious
sobriety that Henry now assumes, as aforetime he donned the
masking behaviour of a yokeless reveller. But the end tries the
true spirit of the man for humility or egotism, and of this the play
does not leave us in doubt.
In the discussion among the captains about the mines, we find
how stout-hearted soldiers can, through hot tempers and awk



KING HENRY V.


259


wardness in expression, bring themselves to the verge of mutual
insult and quarrel, and avoid both by virtue of mere simplicity of
intention. Fluellen gives an example of tolerance carried still
further, when Pistol insults him for refusing to intercede for Bardolph, for the Welshman is deceived by " prave 'ords," and makes
an allowance that he is prompt to retract when Gower lets him
into the truth. In the camp scene by night misunderstandings
go another step further, and taunting words, though without any
malice in the case, and with as little ill blood as may be, between
Williams and the king, whom he twits, in disguise, with foolish
presumption and an absurd brag, come to a challenge. The jest
after the battle brings further complication; Fluellen gets a hearty
box on the ear from Williams, and prepares to return it with interest, giving loose to his tongue in preparation. But even this
imbroglio is fairly reconciled by a few words of explanation, and
with no loss of dignity in any part. Williams sets his apparent
insult to the king in its natural light, and has from him a glove
full of crowns, which he well deserves, and an honourable distinction that he deserves still better; and Fluellen thinks no more
of the blow, and has even twelvepence to spare for the giver of it,
who however knows himself much too well to take it, and pitches
it back. ' Thus we are gradually carried forward and exercised in
appreciating and apprehending the shades and limits of forbearance and pusillanimity,-of the magnanimous and the overbearing, and enabled, if we will but keep clear of false lights and vain
prepossessions, to receive the full effect of the scene that closes and
completes the martial play. t One other scene is even yet interposed; in this, reparation is made to Fluellen for the hard words
which too good an opinion of a counterfeit induced him to put up
with. Ancient Pistol's mock at the quaint but honourable badge
of the odd-fashioned but valiant Welshman, is invented not without reference to the Dauphin's mock with his tun of tennis balls,
on the strength of the seeming frivolity of the wilder time of
Prince Henry. Of such an offence the punishment is much the
same in either case, and the mouthing braggart is roughly repaid
with hard knocks first, and then with humiliation in its bitterest
form of forced acceptation of a kindness.  Fluellen, who took
back his shilling from Williams and forgave him the buffet, gives
a sound thrashing to the contemptible scoundrel who disgraces
the profession of soldier, forces the leek he jeered at down his
throat, ain' makes him accept of a groat to heal his pate. Pistol
deserves all that he gets and more, and it is the treatment such
a character as he provokes, whether deserving it or not; it is
a faint consideration in the Ancient's favour, that he quarrels
so pertinaciously with Fluellen from resentment at his not saving
his comrade Bardolph, good-for-little wretch as he might be.
But thus ends the memory of Falstaff and his associates, crea



260


CRITICAL ESSAY.


tures whose habits turn the best human feelings to weeds, and
drag them all down at last into disgrace and very foulness of
destruction.
Shakespeare, however, had honest English reasons for placing
the correction of the varlet in a Welshman's hands, whose choleric
spirit it becomes, and the oddity of whose ways and speech makes
the scene laughable, and carries off the coarseness that will cling
to such encounters; the sober rebuke of Captain Gower however
sets every thing right, and so we pass on from the court of guard
to the room of state, where we have to catch, as best we may, the
true effect and natural tone which the poet aimed at conveying
in the last satisfaction exacted by an insulted but now conquering monarch.; The French king has to eat his leek as inexorably
as Pistol, and faintly endeavours to assume an air of hesitation,
treaty, or free choice, and after being reduced to utter political
insignificance, like Pistol hle is still enforced to the crowning humiliation of accepting kindness and gratification that he would
fain be able to repudiate. He agrees that when he shall have
occasion to write for matter of grant,-no other matter is contemplated,-he will style his conqueror most dear son.
The vivacity and spirit in execution with which the scene is
written between Henry and Katharine, insure it triumphant success in representation. I recall with unalloyed enjoyment the
personation of Henry V. throughout by Mr. Macready, but surprise was most largely combined with entire satisfaction, in witnessing the brilliancy with which he brought back the maker's
colours in their true, and original, and glowing distinctness in
his performance of this scene.
The speech in which Burgundy describes the condition of warharrowed France brings back to our mind the early threats of
the offended Henry, and forces us, in spite of national pride in
the triumph, to entertain for a moment the question how far a
difference was at issue that justified the cost to humanity. Furthermore a few words dropped by him, without reference to the
scope that they embrace, bring up to the mind the end of the
warlike manifestations we have admired and delighted in:" Even so our houses, and ourselves, and children,
Have lost, or do not learn, for want of time,
The sciences that should become our country;
But grow like savages,-as soldiers will,
That nothing do but meditate on blood,To swearing, and stern looks, diffused attire,
And everything that seems unnatural."
Something of this tendency therefore, though moderated, is recognized in the ensuing wooing of Henry,-he speaks as he says
plain soldier, and this does not promise or imply either tenderness or gracefulness. How little these would be missed by him
we have had, I think, some warning in Fluellen's comparison,




KING HENRY V.


261


though otherwise intended, of his Welsh hero to Alexander the
Great, the fellow reveller of Falstaff and the slayer of Clytus.
Henry is as sincere in his love as he was in his friendship, and
no whit more so. Nice customs, as he says himself, curtsey to
great kings, and among them kings are apt to reckon the delicacy
that is in truth the single indispensable condition of the affections
of the heart, that however they very readily spare when policy
urges an alliance. They who do not think it impertinent to test
the courtship of even kings by the nice customs that are the fine
morals of eternal propriety, will not be apt to misconceive of the
addresses that after banter, however amusing, thus come to a
close, with the daughter of France.
" K. Henry. Katharine, break thy mind to me in broken English, Wilt thou have me?
Kath. Dat is as it shall please de roy mon pere.
K. Hen. Nay, it will please him well, Kate; it shall please
him, Kate."
Harry of England, however, is saved from the disgrace of acting the braggart and bully himself by the character of those he
deals with, who have neither the spirit nor the delicacy of feeling
themselves to be hurt and touched at the off-hand entertainment
that is given them in their misfortune. The coarse:jesting of
Burgundy on such an occasion is far more degrading to his nation,
still too ill-reputed on that head, than any insult he could have
received from Henry, and it is a closing satisfaction for us to find
that all he gets for his sacrifice of self-respect is to stand first in
the notice that the conqueror gives of his requirement of the
solemn seal of subjection:" K. Ien. Prepare we for our marriage;-on which day,
My lord of Burgundy, we'll take your oath,
And all the peers' for surety of our leagues.
Then shall I swear to iKate and you to me;
And may our oaths well kept and prosperous be."
The old play of The famous Victories of King Henry the Fifth
which furnished as we have seen suggestions to the poet for his
Henry IV. was still more available for the present play; the
study of it however in this relation confirms me in the opinion
that the earlier drama as we have it was either considerably elaborated, or what may be still more likely, is a surreptitious and
imperfect edition of the same character of imperfectness and corruption as those that got about of various plays of Shakespeare.
The author to whom the general scheme of it is due, cannot be
suspected of being accessary to the transparent fraud of the printer
who has divided and arranged prose speeches to give the semblance of blank verse.
Taking the play, however, as it stands, and comparing the
course of its action with the full detail of Holinshed, who was
referred to by both authors, we see at once what wide latitude




262              CRITICAL      ESSAY.
the subject affords for variation, and are bound to give due credit
to the earlier writer for his conception of the plan and framework
of the dramatized reign so largely adopted by Shakespeare. He
first sets forth the argument of the Lords and Bishops respecting
the King's title, and then the Dauphin's message and present of
tennis balls. Another parallel scene is the report of the French
ambassadors at home; the messages by the herald, the battle and
victory ensue, and lastly the treaty, courtship of Katharine and
exaction of oath of allegiance. He omits any reference to the
secular motives of the bishops in urging the war, and these
Shakespeare found distinctly imputed in the Chronicler and supported by characteristic speeches, even to the incitement to " enter
into France and destroy the people, waste the country, and subvert the towns with blood, sword, and fire." The first words of
the reply to the embassy are closely followed by Shakespeare.
" My Lord, the Dauphin is very pleasant with me." Shakespeare
again followed the old play and not the literal account of the
history, in showing the Dauphin as so easily diverted by his
father's authority from joining the army. The secondary scenes,
rubbish as they are, have also a certain correspondence; in England husbands and wives take leave for the wars like Pistol and
his hostess, not without squabble, and in France the slur of
cowardice is reserved for French prisoners and the dregs of the
English camp or camp followers. It is, however, in the scenes
with Katharine, and in the tone of Henry towards the French
king and princes, that the old play exhibits the most spirit and
originality, and has most to be proud of as leading the way to
something that so far surpassed it. Henry however displays more
simplicity of spirit and warm-heartedness as a wooer, and Katharine more sensibility as well as sense than were admissible in the
later play without marring the effect of all: still it is very interesting to observe by what slight strokes and changes the force
of expression is now modified and now reversed.
" Henry 5. [alone. ] Ah Harry, thrice unhappy Harry, hast thou
now conquered the French king, and begins a fresh supply with
his daughter, but with what face canst thou seek to gain her
love, which hast sought to win her father's crown? Her father's
crown said I? no it is mine own: Ay, but I love her and must
crave her, Nay, I love her and will have her.
Enter Lady KATHARINE and her ladies.
But here she comes: how now, fair Katharine of France, what
news?
Katharine. An it please your majesty, my father sent me to
know if you will debate (abate) any of these unreasonable demands which you require.
Hen. 5. Now trust me Kate, I commend thy father's wit greatly
in this; for none in the world could sooner have made me debate




KING HENRY V.


263


It, if it were possible. But tell me, sweet Kate, canst thou tell
how to love?
Kath. I cannot hate, my good Lord; therefore far unfit were
it for me to love.
Hen. 5. But Kate, tell me in plain terms, canst thou love the
king of England? I cannot do as these countries do, that spend
half their time in wooing: Tush, wench, I am none such, but
wilt thou go over to England?
Kath. I would to God that I had your Majesty as fast in love
as you have my father in wars; I would not vouchsafe so much
as one look, until you had related (abated) all these unreasonable
demands.
Hen. Tush, Kate, I know thou wouldst not use me so hardly:
but tell me canst thou love the king of England?
Kath. How should I love him that hath dealt so hardly with
my father?
Hen. But I'll deal as easily with thee as thy heart can imagine
or tongue require: how sayst thou; what will it be?
Kath. If I were of my own direction I could give you answer:
but seeing I stand at my father's direction, I must first know
his will..
Hen. But shall I have thy good will in the mean season?
Kath. Whereas I can put your Grace in no assurance, I would
be loth to put your Grace in any despair.
Hen. Now before God it is a sweet wench.
Kath. [aside.] I may think myself the happiest in the world
that is beloved of the mighty king of England.
Hen. Well Kate, are you at host with me? Sweet Kate, tell
your father from me that none in the world could sooner have
persuaded me to it than thou, and so tell thy father from me.
Kath. God keep your Majesty in good health.       [Exit.
Hen. [solus.] Farewell, sweet Kate, in faith it is a sweet
wench, but if I knew that I could not have her father's good
will, I would so rouse the towers over his ears that I would make
him glad to bring her to me upon his hands and knees. [Exit."
At the conclusion of the alliance the French king lets fall an
unhappy equivocal phrase in pure accident though not without
malice of the play writer; Shakespeare who would have disdained the inopportune jest, by giving intention to the speaker
rendered the trait at least most opportune, and characteristic of
the disposition of Burgundy and the mean spirit of the worthily
vanquished.
In the old play we find but trifling indication of the prompt
and spirited eloquence, the flow and facility of speech that distinguish Shakespeare's Henry, and nothing whatever of that
leading characteristic of half politic, half superstitious affecting
of pious humility in combination with the boldest enterprise and
the severest, not to say most savage, acts. It is in the Chronicles




264              CRITICAL ESSAY.
in Holinshed and Hall, that we find the fullest suggestion of this
contrast which Shakespeare aimed at and succeeded in preserving
at the same time, that by the counter contrast of overweening
confidence and wretched inefficiency he took care nIot to deprive
the national feeling of its expected satisfaction. Thus the play
expresses the very spirit of the history, in every page of which
we meet with some incident of the violent miseries of war, and
following it up, the ascription of all the glory of the aggressors to
the common God and Father of all. The incongruity is no more
than the world still expects and puts up with, and the very
tolerance and tranquillity of indignation are points of humaL
nature connected with the case, which the poet sets before us as
truthfully as all the rest.
The character of Scroop, and the address of the king to the
conspirators from the Chronicles, will illustrate the poetic development of prosaic materials; it would be in vain to attempt
to collect the scattered instances which contributed to raise and
fire the poet's imagination in the busier and martial scenes; after
turning over the history with a view to notice illustrations of the
drama, I find myself closing the book with the impression that
the drama affords at least as much illustration to the history.
" The said Lord Scroop, was in such favour with the king that
he admitted him sometime to be his bedfellow, in whose fidelity
the king reposed such trust that when any private or public
council was in hand this lord had much in the determination of
it. For he represented so great gravity in his countenance, such
modesty in behaviour, and so virtuous zeal to all godliness in his
talk, that whatsoever he said was thought for the most part
necessary to be done and followed.
" When King Henry had heard all things opened which he
desired to know, he caused all his nobility to come before his
presence, before whom he caused to be brought the offenders also,
and to them said, ' Having thus conspired the death and destruction of me which am the head of the realm and governor of the
people, it may be no doubt, but that you likewise may have sworn
the confusion of all that are here with me, and also the desolation
of your own country. To what horror, 0 Lord, for any true English heart to consider that such an execrable iniquity should ever
so betray you as for pleasing of a foreign enemy to imbrue your
hands in your blood, and to ruin your own native soil. Revenge
herein touching my person, though I seek not, yet for the safeguard
of you, my dear friends, and for due preservation of all sorts, I am
by office to cause example to be showed. Get ye hence, therefore, ye poor miserable wretches to the receiving of your just reward, wherein God's majesty give you grace of his mercy and
repentance of your heinous offences.' And so immediately they
were led to execution."
The date of the first representation of this play can be fixed




KING HENRY V.


265


very satisfactorily to the summer of 1599. That it is not mentioned by Meres in his list of the previous year would not alone
be conclusive that it did not then exist, but it is certain that it
was written after the second part of Henry IV. which dates certainly after 1597, and is quoted by Ben Jonson in 1599, produced
therefore probably in 1598, and a passage in the chorus introductory to the second act, fixes it as certainly not later than
Midsummer, 1599. Thus run the often quoted lines:" Were now the general of our gracious empress
(As in good time he may) from Ireland coming,
Bringing rebellion broached on his sword,
How many would the peaceful city quit
To welcome him!"
The allusion is certainly to the expedition of Essex, who, according to Camden, "about the end of March, 1599, set forward for
Ireland, and was accompanied out of London with a fine appearance
of nobility and gentry, and the most cheerful huzzas of the common people. He returned to London on the 28th September of
the same year in disappointment and disgrace.
There are three quarto editions of the play in a very abridged and
imperfect form; they date 1600, 1602, 1608, the two later being
mere uncorrected reprints. None of them bears an author's name
on the title-page, and they did not emanate from publishers whose
names or interest are connected with either the quartos that appear to have been authorized, or with the folio of 1623. There
cannot be the slightest doubt that they are to be ranked among
the piracies denounced by the editors of the folio as " divers
stolen and surreptitious copies, maimed and deformed by the frauds
and stealths of injurious impostors that exposed them." I have
little doubt that we may apply these words to the quarto Henry V.
with the greatest strictness, and ascribe its deformed and.llutilated dishonours to the circumstances of the fraudulent process by
which it was obtained. The choruses are entirely wanting, so also
the very first scene between the two bishops, Macmorris and Jamy,
Henry's speech before Harfleur, his soliloquy on ceremony, Burgundy's great speech on peace and war, and other portions beyond
enumeration. Occasionally the agreement is exact enough to
suggest that the lines may have been taken down in short-hand
at a representation, but more frequently we are struck with
appearances that indicate rude and hasty notes, and such an
exertion of the memory as every assiduous spectator of a favourite
play can understand. As the reporter, whoever he was, omitted
the choruses which we know dated before the earliest quarto,
there is no difficulty in accounting for or assuming other omissions
by which he lightened his labour, and we must have better grounds
if we are to be brought to the admission that the abortion he
produced is in truth a stolen representation of an early sketch of
the play as we now possess it. The most satisfactory, under the




t66              CRITICAL ESSAY,
circumstances the only satisfactory, proof of this would be to find
that he had preserved lines, passages,-or even merely epithets
and phrases, single and scattered, that bore the stamp of Shakespeare's mint-mark, and that in his affluence of invention he
sacrificed for superior considerations on his revisal. In search of
such indications I have looked through the reprint of Steevens,
but the search is vain, and my conclusion is absolute, that for
anything that can be gathered from these spurious quartos, Henry
V. as rendered to us in the folio, may be in the same form as it
was first brought forth for public wonder and delight.
The introduction of the chorus with a speech introductory to
each act is a remarkable peculiarity of this play. The ostensible
purpose of it is to indicate the rapid transitions of the scene both
in time and place rendered necessary by the circumstances of the
theme. Yet Shakespeare is not elsewhere so scrupulous, and the
changes from London to Southampton, and thence to flarfleur
are not so much more violent than those from London to Shrewsbury, or from Warkworth Castle to London, and the interval of
time is still more inconsiderable. But in truth it would seem that
the true intent of this novelty was less to excuse or gloss over
these transitions than to give them a more marked emphasis, and
bring into the strongest light the grand opposition of the two
kingdoms, by marking with pause and hesitation the difficulties
and moments of their collision. There are no circumstances in
the speeches of Chorus that it would have at all encumbered the
poet to indicate in regular dramatic process, and these stately and
announcing interludes have obviously an independent fitness of
their own. They make much of a dramatic difficulty, in order to
enhance the impression of the completeness with which it is surmounted. Only in the case of the battle itself has the apology
any apparent necessity, and here to all appearance it is left unusually unsupported. In the other Shakespearian battles we have
together with alarums and excursions a variety of warlike episodes
of encountering valour, but here even alarums and excursions seem
to be wanting, and after the royal order to set on, no incidents
are brought forward but the disorderly entrance of the French
lords, and the false exploits of Pistol, and then the battle is won.
The very length of these scenes, I suspect, had their motive in
allowing time for the battle to be struck out of view; no stage
attempt or stage effect could add another martial effect to the
exciting and inspiriting harangue of King Henry, and after this
the rout and discomfiture of the enemy could not too soon ensue.
Some behind-scene clamour there may have been during the progress of these scenes, but the less methinks the better, and the
commencement and end are expressed with such liveliness of
force, and have such manifest dependence on and congruity with
each other that they express all that is intermediate, and we
forget that it is not absolutely depicted, as we take it for granted.




KING HENRY V.                       2(67
The poet is as far from speaking personally in the character Gf
the Chorus as in any other; the Chorus expresses himself with a
pomp of diction that bespeaks the enthusiasm of a warm partizan,
and is indeed little above an idealization of the vulgar, though a
vulgar above the lowest sort. He embodies the spirit of the
crowd that rush well-dressed to any bustle of external parade,
and are ever ready to mistake success for right and splendour for
glory, gold chains for judgment and a uniform for a hero. Chorus
represents common Opinion, the cloud that diffuses and refracts
the radiance of all dashing exploits in whatever cause, and casts
withal, a haze about some other brilliancies which a sober judgment must take note of for itself. Nothing can differ more in all
external respects from the lyric chorus of the Greek tragedy, but
in this respect it is nearly coincident. Setting aside the formalized misconceptions of Horace as to the function of the Greek
chorus, it is clear that from the first instances of its assumption
of human as apart from daemonian nature, it forms the link between
the exalted personages of the fable and the spectator, exhibiting
the aspect of the theme as received by minds of inferior stamp
and order, the unheroic and variously impressible as contrasted
with the more fixed and far seeing participators in the action. In
either case there is a liability for too sympathizing criticism to
be taken rather with the example than the warning, to acquiesce
in the tendencies that yield blame rather than pity to the heroic
but unfortunate Antigone, and give applause unmingled with any
reservation to the successful bravery and amlition of Henry; but
this is a liability that not merely self-respect but also respect for
their audiences, forbade to be entertained either by Sophocles or
Shakespeare.








CRITICAL ESSAY ON KING HENRY VI.
THREE PARTS.
HE historical plays of Shakespeare, the Histories as they
are entitled in the first edition, are manifestly distinguished from his Tragedies and Comedies by a
specialty of construction as mutually dependent. Each
play is at once a sequel and an introduction; the main action
which it brings to its height can scarcely, cannot properly, be
appreciated without remembrance of a former play, and the scene
closes at last not on the full cadence of a hushed catastrophe but
on the first murmurs of forcible reaction. Each drama bears thus
the same relation to the entire series that exists between one of
its scenes and itself as a whole, and the analogy is still further
extended when we find that the dramas themselves tend to group
and compose and thus forin still grander Acts of the great movement. King John, isolated by the break of time, I would designate as the first Act, and Richard the Second, including in thought
the missing drama, without which the latter play is scarcely selfexplained, the second. This brings us to the great break in
legitimacy, and the three next plays, the two parts of Henry IV.
and Henry V. united among themselves by similarity in style as
belonging to the same age of the poet, and by numerous reappearances of persons of the plays, especially Henry of Monmouth, compose another Act. The fourth Act opens the boy-reign
of Henry VI. whose mere minority makes a great separation from
what goes before, while the most prominent and interesting characters appear for the first time like Talbot, or are individualized
for the first time. The contrast of style though largely due to
the different age of the author to which they belong, assists the
distinction, while from the first part of Henry VI. to the close of
Richard III. the course of events runs on or hurries forward without gap or resting place of prolonged quietude, and the house of
York, Richard Plantagenet and his sons, and Margaret of Anjou,
appear for the first time and then re-appear in prominent activity
almost throughout. At the accession of Henry Tudor another
break occurs, marked again by lapse of time and change of characters, and highly contrasted style of writing, and King Henry




270


KING HENRY VI.


the Eighth, an isolated drama, concludes the series as a fifth
Act, which King John opened as the first.
Of this series King John may seem the most complete within
itself, and yet it does not end without a hint that a reign of
happier auspices was to follow and order the affairs he left so
rude and indigest; while the conclusion of Henry VIII. brought
down events by prophecy to the very days of the poet.
That plays should be written and continued to be written on
such a system of definite interconnection and suspended interest,
implies a public of assiduous and persevering playgoers with
taste well exercised and whetted in this direction, of the existence of which we have many proofs. Heywood writing, in
1612, his Apology for Actors, avouches both the fulness of the
historical drama, and the general interest it excited and satisfied
-" Plays have made the ignorant more apprehensive, taught
the unlearned the knowledge of many famous histories, instructed
such as cannot read in the discoveries of our English Chronicles;
and what man have you now of that weak capacity that cannot
discourse of any notable thing recorded even from William the
Conqueror, nay from the landing of Brute until this day, being
possessed of their true use? "
But it is from the Abuse of Actors that we obtain a notice much
more to our present purpose,-the indication of the vogue of the
History Play when the place of Shakespeare was still with the
spectators. A pamphlet by Gosson, printed about 1581, when
Shakespeare was only seventeen, accuseth thus: -" If a true
History be taken in hand, it is made like our shadows, longest at
the rising and falling of the sun, shortest of all at high noon; for
the poets drive it most commonly into such points as may best
show the majesty of their pen in Tragical speeches, or set the
hearers agog with discourses of love, or paint a few antics to fit
their own humours with scoffs and taunts, or bring in a show to
furnish the stage when it is bare: when the matter of itself comes
short of this, they follow the practice of a cobbler and set their
teeth to the leather to pull it out." The pattern of this description is recognized in such remains as the exaggerated passion of
the True Tragedy of Richard III. printed in 1594, the love-making
and low comedy of the Famous Victories, the dumb show of
Pericles, or the play in Hamlet; and the old play of Richard II.
recorded by Dr Forman, examples the stupid perversion of History by a dramatic cobbler, which is rivalled in the Edward I. of
Peele in 1589. That the last abuse, however, came to be reckoned
as such, and imputed as a drawback, may be perceived from the
frequency with which the old dramatic histories claim on their
title-pages to be True Histories. The old play of King John is
not without lapses in this respect that might be accounted serious,
but that it preserves on the whole so excellently, an adherence
to the essential truth.




CRITICAL       ESSAY.                 271
A different picture is given of the Historic Stage in 1592, when
Shakespeare was still but twenty-eight years old, but already so
distinguished as to excite both admiration and envy. Something
might be allowed for the partiality of the writer, but we have
the best proof in extant works that his main drift was no exaggeration. In a pamphlet by Thomas Nashe, Pierce Pennilesse
his supplication to the Devil, printed in 1592, we have this witness:-" Nay, what if I prove plays to be no extreme but a rare
exercise of virtue! First, for the subject of them; for the most
part it is borrowed out of our English Chronicles, wherein our
forefathers' valiant acts that have been long buried in rusty brass
and worm-eaten boo!s are revived, and they themselves raised
from the grave of oblivion and brought to plead their aged honours
in open presence, than which what can be a sharper reproof to
these degenerate days of ours?.... How would it have joyed
brave Talbot, the terror of the French, to think that after he had
been two hundred years in his tomb he should triumph again on
the stage, and have his bones new embalmed with the tears of
ten thousand spectators (at least at several times) who in the
tragedian that represents his person, behold him fresh bleeding!
In plays all cosenages, all cunning drifts overgilded with outward holiness, all stratagems of war, all the cankerworms that
breed in the rust of peace are most lively anatomized. They show
the ill-success of treason, the fall of hasty climbers, the wretched
end of usurpers, the misery of civil dissension, and how just God
is evermore in punishing murder, and to prove every one of these
allegations could I propound the circumstances of this play, and
that if I meant to handle this subject otherwise than obiter."
Unless the lively writer expressed himself with extreme carelessness we are justified in taking his word that, at this date of
1592, History plays were the most popular of all, and although,
as we have seen, they were rife long before, he seems to intimate
and indeed his words imply, that at this time the restoration to
life of historical characters was a novelty at least in the perfection and liveliness and truth of the representations. This
praise is quite merited by the old King John, printed in the previous year, and in a less degree by the portion of the famous
Victories of Henry V. to which Nashe makes a distinct reference,
but pre-eminently by the first part of Henry VI. which his mention of Talbot certainly refers to. Nothing can be more strictly
correct than the allegation of a firm and unflinching tone of critical judgment both in politics and morals in these plays, as borne
out by those that remain to us of the period.
Within the Decad that divides the testimonies of Gosson and
Nashe a remarkable and brilliant group of writers developed the
literature of the Theatre; some are well-known by name and
extant works, but others have left anonymous productions, or
hlave perished from memory entirely.




272


KING HENRY VI.


After Shakespeare's the most celebrated names are Greene who
died in 1592, and Marlowe slain in a wretched brawl the year
after; Peele follows, of inferior originality and merit. The plays
of the period were written in prose, rhyme and blank verse. We
may accept the Famous Victories as a type of the prose plays of
the lower grade; dramatic compositions in blank verse occur from
Gorboduc in 1561, downwards to 1587, when Nash talks of " the
swelling bombast of bragging blank verse," in a tone that indicates its abundance, though the more ambitious productions may
even to this date have been more frequently in rhyme; " vainglorious tragedians," he says, " are mounted on the stage of arrogance, and think to outbrave better pers with the swelling
bombast of bragging blank verse." This was written il an introduction to the Menaphon or Arcadia of Greene, his friend, and
Greene in " Perimedes, the blacksmith," published the next year,
marks the individual allusion by a reference to the author of Tamburlaine, whom he accuses of " setting the end of scholarism in an
English blank verse," and who, it would seem, had somewhere
inputed to Greene an incapacity of writing it. In the prologue
to Tamburlaine accordingly we find a tone of self-assertion that,
coupled with the turgid verse of the play, brings home the charge
of arrogance:"From jigging veins of rhyming motherwits,
And such conceits as clownage keeps in pay,
We'll lead you to the stately tent of war," &c., &c.
All these hints appear to be part of the same squabble, and
though the first part of Tamburlaine the Great was not printed
before 1590, I cannot but believe that it was produced on the
stage at least as early as 1587, and though it is true blank verse
may have abounded on the stage at that time, this play must be
taken as opening a special controversy, or commencing an epoch
both of versification and style. The great fault of the blank verse
of the period is flatness and monotony, giving a general impression of timidity in execution; it is entirely wanting in the variety
and flexibility conferred by the licenses of additional syllables,
and variety of pause and inflection; the lines end with monosyllables with wearying frequentness, and in renouncing the
bondage of rhyme they seem to have sacrificed ornament without
acquiring grace and freedom. But the versification of Tamburlaine fairly bursts the bondage, though not, perhaps, without retaining some of its scars. The writer breaks away in forcible
violence, and aids his spasm with every artificial excitement of
extravagance and fairly escapes, though some of his movements
may still remind of the stiffness induced by earlier slavery. To
Marlowe, therefore, I suspect we must assign the merit of the
bold and revolutionary innovation that prepared for milder and
sweeter laws, and caused the regulated vigour of Shakespeare to
be so generally greeted with the admiration of "gentleness."




CRITICAL ESSAY.


273


The blank verse of Greene is much nearer to emancipation than
that of Peele, but still lingers with that heavy-gaited monotony
that marks its proper epoch. Still we can only speak with hesitation of all these writers by the criterion of imperfect remains,
and the accidents of time may have as much done them injustice
as it has favoured Marlowe in preserving his Edward II. which
evinces as great power in its development from his inferior style
as in proper excellence, and must be greatly valued, whether it led
the way for Shakespeare, or was written with the aid of his example. This is a point which will find its answer with others, if
we can make up our minds on the main questions concerning the
authorship of the three parts of Henry VI. which in one form or
other may be carried up as high as 1592 at least, and these
questions we must now approach. Before doing so I have only
to add to previous remarks that I cannot satisfy myself that any
of the writers named was likely to have written the old King
John, and as this probably was not the only work of its author,
and perhaps not the best, the field of conjecture is left open for
nameless competitors in all enquiry as to anterior History plays,
as foundations of those of Shakespeare.
The First Part of Henry VI. has not come down to us in any
other form than we find it in the first edition of Shakespeare's
works, but we find the mention just quoted in 1592 of its subject
matter having been dramatized. Of the second part and also of
the third, ruder forms came from the press in quarto in repeated
editions from 1594 downwards, but it was not until 101 9 that the
name of Shakespeare appeared on their title-pages. The last play
of the series, however, appears to have been written as early as
1592, for the often quoted posthumous libel of Greene in this year
parodies one of its lines in his attack on Shakespeare as "a tiger's
heart wrapped in a woman's hide." The titles of the quartos make
no reference to a previous drama; one is usually styled "The
first part of the Contention of the two famous houses of York and
Lancaster," and the other, " The true tragedy of Richard Duke of
York." The title-page of the latter states that the play had been
" sundry times acted by the Earl of Pembroke's servants," who
also acted the mistrusted play of Titus Andronicus; Greene was
in the habit of writing for this company, which was not Shakespeare's. There is so much uncertainty about the limits of dramatic literary property at this time that little can be gathered
from such records. Thus Mr. Collier shows that Tamburlaine was
acted by the Lord Admiral's servants as attested by the titlepage, and Henslowe's diary shows that it was also represented by
those of Lord Strange. It seems probable that at first when a
profusion of dramatic novelties was called for and supplied, this
demand was the only protection required. The company that
paid for a new play had the first representation of it, and after
they had thus satisfied the curiosity of the audience or the town, no
T




274              KING HENRY VI.
advantage might remain in the property worth protecting. Hence
plays may have been carried from one company to another, or
exchanged by them with little restriction; and it would.remain
for the appearance of plays of such attractiveness as to become
stock plays, for a stricter jealousy to arise. In this state of things
no doubt the temptation to evasion would increase proportionably,
and some of the numerous alterations of other men's plays of
which we have accounts may have been made merely for the purpose of acquiring a right to represent them,-a process open to
all the licenses and limitations of the legal, the customary and
the honourable. The true state of the case with respect to Greene's
charge I suspect to have been this, that some of his plays, perhaps the old Taming of the Shrew, perhaps several, had been
altered by Shakespeare, and the altered plays had so much exceeded the originals in popularity that the author, as an author
so readily will, felt vexed and piqued, and while he thought the
play decidedly changed for the worse would fain ascribe all its
new success to its old materials. This, however, is by the way,
for as regards the present plays, there is nothing in those portions
that declare themselves most plainly as original that can bring
Greene's name or claim into consideration.
The researches that have been made into the history of the
publishing right of these plays as traceable in title-pages, and the
stationers' books have been quite as unfruitful in any conclusive
inference.
The epilogue of Henry V. bespeaks indulgence for that play
as connected with the story of Henry VI. " whose state so many
had the managing, that they lost France,"-the theme of our
First Part,-" which oft our stage has shown;" but it would be
idle to wrest this into a claim on the part of the poet to the
authorship of Henry VI. and hence apart from the strong presumption given by insertion in the first folio, we are cast upon
internal evidence.
It is abundantly certain that all the three plays, as we possess
them from the folio, contain a vast amount that Shakespeare
never composed originally, and some that we may even wonder
how he could bear to transcribe. Beyond this point opinions are
more divided, and I can but state my own; after full consideration I feel confident in the belief that the framework and groundwork of all three plays was furnished by as many older plays by
some single author, such plays as the author of the Troublesome
Raigne of King John was at least capable of producing, and whose
name may be equally unknown; that the first of the series owes
least to Shakespeare, but that even in this we may recognize his
hand, not only in speeches and scenes which betray him unmistakeably, but also in prevailing avoidance of the worst offences
against poetic taste that are so abundant in his contemporaries,
and to be ascribed to the liberality of his pruning-knife; the




CRITICAL ESSAY.                    275
false parade of classical allusions, the prolonged and turgid bombast are absent or severely controlled; if no deep characterization
is attempted inconsistencies in character are fully excluded, and
there is a form and proportion in the scenes, their movement and
conduct that is very Shakespearian, though in a lower tone. I
recognize great merit in the plan and management of the play;
but much of this, though seen to more advantage from the later
adjustments, I suspect is due to the rude but genuine spirit of the
first designer.
In the other two parts the contributions of Shakespeare are
much more extensive and generally obvious, and indeed admitted;
the edition of the folio differs very materially from the quartos,
and the changes are clearly for improvement, by the better pen;
but the same pen is already recognizable in the quartos themselves, where mixed style betrays very contrasted authorship, an(l
large portions are such as only a poet equal to Shakespeare could
have written, which therefore were written by Shakespeare. No
stress can be laid on the absence of his name from the title-pages,
as the three 4to. editions of Henry V. were equally neglectful.
In all these plays the archaic portion is in the crude monotonous
versification which we have already remarked upon.
Certainly, if it could be admitted that the two plays as found
in 4to. were material yet untouched by Shakespeare, we might
hesitate in ascribing to him any share whatever in the first part,
which contains nothing superior or perhaps equal to considerable
portions of them, but the view I have adopted is different, and we
are thus directed to look with more interest and attention to the
First Part of Henry VI. which Shakespeare to some extent adopted
and approved, and did not disdain to alter.
The theme of the play is indicated with exactness in the Epilogue to Henry V.; the multifarious managing of the State of
the child or childish Henry VI. which lost France and brought
reactionary disaster upon England. The contrast of the reigns
of father and son is expressed in the opening scene before the
corpse of King Henry V. among the wrangling regents. Amidst
this bickering and the insignificance of the king, the claimant of
the throne, by the legitimate line, is reminded of his claim, and
the war in France is feebly conducted or supported; the two disorders, the internal and the external, mutually aggravate each
other; and the grand disasters that lose the foreign conquests of
Henry the Fifth, are skilfully connected with the germ of the
great contest of the Roses in the opposition of the first wearers of
the symbols, the Duke of York and Lancastrian Somerset; the
play closes as the great Contention is ready to burst forth, and
the last incident prepares for the marriage of Henry in weakness and faith-breach, with Margaret of Anjou, the Erinnys
of his coming troubles. A minor, a king whose nature makes
him for ever a minor, succeeds an energetic conqueror, and the




276


KING HENRY VI.


spectator looks on at the catastrophe of a national glory which
has so narrow a foundation as the hereditary chance of a governor
succeeding a conqueror, and at the excesses of an aristocracy
clerical and lay, when no second check countervails the accident
that lets them out of hand. National pride is solaced by the
heroism of Talbot, and by an ingenious representation of the
course of disaster which reminds of the skill with which Homer
exhibits hi- Greeks driven to their ships by a series of encounters
which cover them individually with glory, and permit to their
enemies a very slender allowance of glory indeed. Even at the
height of disaster the glory of the nation is exceedingly well
taken care of. Sir John Fastolffe is made the sole scapegoat for
want of spirit, the defeats of the English are shown as consequences of the dissensions of their leaders and the strength of the
French appears chiefly in stratagem and the seduction of allies,
and they owe their best successes to the inspiriting leading of a
woman, and perhaps something to sorcery.
The representation given of Joan la Pucelle is grating and disagreeable from our conviction that it is historically false and unjust; this however was not the conviction of Hall and Holinshed
and their readers, which was as distinctly the other way; and
though such glimpses of the truth appear in their narrative as
would well enable Shakespeare to divine and display the whole
of it, to have done so would have involved a much more extensive
change of the old play than he took in hand. Taking the character as it stands,-the embodiment of motives and disposition
in harmony with deeds that the chroniclers assert as facts, it is
hard to say that it is other than consistent and natural.  The
world is now in possession of numerous detailed examples of religious enthusiam and self-deception combining with ambitious or
political purpose in all their strange and mingling manifestations
both of the mind and body, and if we scrutinize the most fortunate
of them the result is much the same as the catastrophe of Joan
even as represented in the play. The false impressions and
assumptions that inflame the enthusiast work wonders in their
strength, but their weakness tells at last. The self-conviction of
the special choice and guidance and inspiration of heaven suffers
rude shocks in an extended course, as rude as the blindest fatalism
that hardens its purposes by repetition of the phrase of a destiny,
a mission or a star. Rarely indeed does the vainly exalted
thought of special heavenly protection escape reversal by as
depressing a belief of desertion and forsakenness, and a life of
heroism may easily close in vacillation, or despair, or degrading
attempt to keep up by foul means, or trickery, the influence that
only worked wonders, and was victorious when it sprung spontaneously. Still the dramatist has been more tender to Joan in
one respect than the historians, and he rejects the fact they
charge her with, of shamefully slaughtering, out of spite and in
cold blood, her surrendered prisoner.




CRITICAL ESSAY.


277


Apart from the traces of general refinement and correction already adverted to, it is in the scene of the quarrel in the Temple
Garden that the hand of Shakespeare most clearly betrays itself;
as no account of such an incident is to be found elsewhere, it is
possible that his are both the execution and the invention of it.
The scenes which set forth the perils and heroism of the Talbots
have also the ring of true Shakespearian metal; and the fine
taste with which the versification assumes the enrichment of
rhyme at the very moment that the tone of the sentiment will
bear or even requires it, is unexampled in any other work of the
time but his own. The happy ingenuity of the connection of incidents in this act by the resulting of the death of Talbot from the
quarrel of his colleagues, premonitory of the wars of the Roses, is
worthy of Shakespeare, but it would be unjust to his predecessors to deny that it may only be one of his adoptions.
The coherence of the plan of the First Part of Henry VI. with
that of the first part of the Contention, is obvious and undeniable,
however we explain it; if the plays were of entirely distinct authorship, one must still have been written to complete the other,
for the second as clearly presupposes an introduction, as the first
promises a sequel. Certain superior passages, and the general
absence of the grosser dramatic faults and inconsistencies avouch
that the revising eye and pen of Shakespeare passed over the
first part; and weaknesses and quaintnesses still more abundant
are the proofs of the less august parentage. Quotation may be
sparing in a matter so clear.
Salisbury. Talbot my life, my joy, again return'd!
How wert thou handled being prisoner?
Or by what means gott'st thou to be released?
Discourse, I pr'ythee, on this turret's top.
Talbot. The duke of Bedford had a prisoner,
Call'd the brave lord Ponton de Santrailles;
For him I was exchang'd and ransolmd.
But with a baser man of arms by far,
Once, in contempt, they would have barter'd me;
Which I disdaining, scorn'd; and cravbd death."
Besides the old monotony, the extract exemplifies the sign
that recurs throughout large portions of the play, of the author
enslaved by his instrument in the alternate use and rejection,
even in the same line and parallel phrases, of the license of contracted syllables under the evident pressure of metrical urgency.
In other passages we have a different signal of similar distress
in the crowding of redundant syllables, which exclude all rhythm
from the line, or accommodate it by jostling the most emphatic
words into its very weakest places; thus" With those clear rays which she infused on me,
That beauty am I bless'd with which you may see."
Again:" And hunger will enforce them to be more eager."




278


KING HENRY VI.


Lines of this sort are not Alexandrines, but simply unmetrical, mere crudities, and to be distinguished from those varieties
-trochaic trimeters we may account them, which Shakespeare
admitted in the Two Gentlemen of Verona, and in the Comedy
of Errors. Examples of these abound in the First Part of the
Contention:" The Lord shall be my guide both for my land and me.
— Buckingham's proud looks bewray his cruel thoughts.
-And thrice by awkward winds driv'n back from England's
bounds."
These lines, I think, were very probably written by Shakespeare,
though he reduced them to rule in the later revisal, leaving
however others; and thus in the first part of Henry VI. also, this
loose metre is comparatively rare, and yet is not wanting:" Otherwise the famish'd English, like pale ghosts,
Faintly besiege us one hour in a month."
The subject of the second part of Henry VI. is the progress of
disorder in the country consequent on the weak character of the
king, his want of every spark of kingly, national or even manly
spirit. Of a devout tendency, his religious feelings have not the
energy to rise from a pious ejaculation to a fervent prayer, still
less to stimulate a really conscientious action. Selfishly and imprudently he married Margaret to gratify a passion foolishly
adopted at second hand, and makes no effort to control a wife
whose vague animosities hurry him to destruction; he deserts
Gloster in base cravenheartedness, and when he is murdered almost under his eyes, banishes the murderer Suffolk only when
compelled by the indignant outbreak of the commons, and then
from no higher motive than apprehension of consequences to himself. Afterwards he is as ready to purchase his own tranquillity by
the sacrifice of the rights of his son; and thus on the strength
of harmlessness and freedom from active vice, he brings the
country into civil war, and takes rank as a saint. The character
of Gloster is finely contrasted with that of the king: he has
a reputation for goodness -the good Duke Humphrey, as the
king for saintship; and his goodness, though of more genuine
quality, is at the last as nugatory from like defect of energy.
He laments the base forfeiture of national honour, that never
gives the king concern, yet does nothing worthy of his position to save it, is utterly incapable of coping with the ill-conditioned Cardinal, and descends to a useless and degrading brawl,
and is at last his victim, and is as unable to rule, or guide, or
protect his wife, as Henry himself.  Such a pretence of government is entirely out of harmony with the genius of the
country both in commonalty and nobility, and both classes become
agitated sympathetically. The men of Kent are represented as
rising in disgust and contempt for the ordinance of a bookish
priestlike king and counsellors, who acquiesce in the loss of conquests of a bolder monarch; and a powerful confederacy of nobles




CRITICAL ESSAY.                       279
lends aid to the claimant of the throne by the elder line, who
certainly possesses many qualities that are more worthy of power,
though as usual in history they can only command power through
violence and fraud, that bring on a Nemesis behind them. The
crown that came to the line of Lancaster, through the dissolute
misgovernment of Richard II. falls from it again through the
misgovernment of the factitious piety of an enervate devotee.
The drama in one respect misrepresents the motive of Jack
Cade's insurrection as directed against learning and letters, a
characteristic borrowed from the earlier outbreaks in the reign of
Richard II. This deviation from the chronicled authority is not
at all in Shakespeare's manner, though when it had been once
made, it admitted of such happy combination with the spirit
of the reign, that he developed instead of discarding it. This
lively picture of a lightheaded popular ferment, arising from no
very serious distress or discontent, and raging and exhausting
itself, is really very slightly developed from the text of the Contention. Again, the most effective and decisive lines of the death
of Cardinal Beaufort, are found in the old sketch, and the scene
round the death-bed of the murdered Gloster, which I extract,
may serve to support my opinion of the early date of Shakespeare's contributions.
[WARWICK draws the curtains and shows
DUKE HUMPHREY in his bed.
King. Ah uncle Gloster, heaven receive thy soul,
Farewell, poor Henry's joy, now thou art gone,
War. Now by his soul, that took our shape upon him,
To free us from his father's dreadful curse,
I am resolved that violent hands were laid
Upon the life of this thrice famous duke.
Suf. A dreadful oath sworn with a solemn tongue!
What instance gives lord Warwick for these words?
WVar. Oft have I seen a timely parted ghost,
Of ashy semblance, pale and bloodless;
But, lo! the blood is settled in his face
More better coloured than when he lived;
His well-proportion'd beard made rough and stern,
His fingers spread abroad, as one that grasped for life,
Yet was by strength surprised; the least of these are probab-e.
It cannot choose but he was murthered.
Queen. Suffolk and the Cardinal had him in charge,
And they, I trust, Sir, are no murtherers.
War. Ay, but 'tis well known they were not his friends.
And 'tis well seen he found some enemies.
Card. But have ye no greater proofs than these?
War. Who sees a heifer dead and bleeding fresh,
And sees hard by a butcher with an axe,
But will suspect 'twas he that made the slaughter?




280               KING HENRY VI.
Who finds a partridge in the puttock's nest,
But will imagine how the bird came there,
Although the kite soar with unbloody beak?
Even so suspicious is this tragedy.
War. What dares not Warwick, if false Suffolk dare him?
Queen. He dares not calm his contumelious spirit,
Nor cease to be an arrogant controller,
Though Suffolk dare him twenty hundred times.............*..****....*..
War. But that the guilt of murther bucklers thee,
And I should rob the deathsman of his fee,
Quitting thee thereby of ten thousand shames;
And that my sovereign's presence makes me mute,
I would, false murtherous coward, on thy knees
Make thee crave pardon for thy passed speech,
And say it was thy mother that thou meant'st,
That thou thyself was born in bastardy:
And after all this fearful homage done
Give thee thy hire and send thee down to hell,
Pernicious bloodsucker of sleeping men!"
It will be seen on comparison that almost all of this is word
for word with the text of the later version, and is indeed, except
in the versification of a few lines, quite in the tone and style of
the additions that only appear in the folio.
The Second Part of Henry the Sixth closes with the first open
claim in arms of the Duke of York and his first and successful
stricken field; we are brought to the very opening in bloodshed
of the civil contention and all the chief characters whose deeds
and adventures, whose cruelties and reprisals make up the third
and closing part, are already on the scene. The central figure of
Henry affords invaluable relief to the sameness of the atrocities
on either side in this festival of savage barbarities, and yet his
weakest failings are akin to the vices of the half-barbarous aristocracy who rage around him. The play commences with abject
meanness on his part in bartering the hopes of his heir for his
personal immunity and ease during life, and the hollow compromise he relies on is presently broken through by his own party,
as well as that of York, and with equal guilt of perjury on either
side. Instability and faithlessness are active also between members of the same party, and Exeter, the fleeting Clarence and
Warwick desert and return under the influence of the merest
personal whims and piques and self-interest. All the other virtues but valour in its lowest dogged form appear to have taken
leave of society; in no direction that we can turn is an effort
apparent that claims our confidence and deserves our sympathy,
and the state of affairs is represented that has occurred more than
once among the civil convulsions nearer to our own time, though
happily not in our own country-high motive and good faith




CRITICAL      ESSAY.                281
utterly wanting, or if found together unsupported by even ordinary sagacity, application and courage. In such a case the
strongest right, much more its merest shadow, forfeits the vantage
ground of natural strength to the very basest ambition guided by
first-rate talents, energy and courage; and when the battle at last
turns between contenders who are all destitute of right and virtue,
the victory will surely fall to him who with the best or an equal
capacity is the most treacherous, prompt and pitilessly unsparing.
The better and indeed the greater strength of the consistency of
right is lost, and the consistency of wrong has the reversion of
supremacy and bears down all before it, though only in its onward and downward course to its own destruction. It is by title
of such steady and overruling consistency that the house of York
triumphs at last, and that within that house the last prize is
destined inevitably for Richard, the most able, steadfast, daring
and unscrupulous of all. This destiny is distinctly indicated in
the present play, and the hint is given too in the prediction about
Richmond, that, if wickedness is rising to a head and ripening,
the sickle is also preparing that is to raze it to the ground. For
the rest the progress of the contest decimates a turbulent nobility
and leads us to anticipate a quieter world in days to come.
WVe can scarcely say that Henry V. had a less lively sense than
his son, that he was the holder and inheritor of an ill-gotten
kingdom, or was icss apprehensive of abying the at last inevitable retribution; father and son alike anticipate the evil day as
rapidly becoming due, but the invader of France will compound
for the deferment of it till after the field of Agincourt, till the
French are conquered, and his son in baser spirit will bargain for
his own security in whatever disgrace, and shuffle off the loss and
penalty upon his heir. But the apprehensions that were powerless upon the martial disposition of Henry V. and never held him
back from any means within his reach of securing his throne and
warding off subversion by his own endeavours, are utterly fatal
to the political vigour of his successor. The father turned, as we
have seen, his very devoutness to account and became half a
hypocrite as he screened his ambition from men, and seems even
to hope to screen it from God behind professions of religion, conscientiousness and humility, and gave a holy outside to a cause
that is indefensible. But it is in not unusual order that the
hypocrite begets the bigot,-as usual as for the bigot to foster
and bring forward the unbeliever. And thus the weaker will,
and capacity in every respect more limited, is even in consequence
of its defects more consistent, and gives up in hopelessness and
depression the contest that a bolder spirit at least kept up though
conscious it could not be carried through. This is a dilemma of
the class that the drama as holding up the spectacle of human
affairs in their strictest agony, has ever delighted in, for what can
be more agitating than to look on at the exertions of individual
man as he struggles to reconcile the requirements of his nature




282


KING HENRY VI.


with the course of events, and goes down of necessity at last in a
conflict of which the solution lies wide without the little verge of
limited existence.
The relation of the Third part of Henry VI. to the second part
of the Contention, otherwise called The True Tragedy of Richard
Duke of York, is very simple; some judicious changes are made,
various speeches are much elaborated and the irregularities, or
rather the peculiarities of metre, are softened down; but it would
be bold to say that the play, as published in the first folio, contains anything that surpasses the powers of the author of its representative in quarto. In the first scene of this play King Henry
replies to the pretensions of York:
" Suppose by right and equity thou be king,
Think'st thou that I will leave my kingly seat
Wherein my father and my grandsire sate?
No, first shall war unpeople this my realm, &c.
In the revised play this admission is well suppressed, and in
place of it we have the substituted Aside-" I know not what to
say, my title's weak."
The following are examples of the dealing with the long trochaic lines:"........... And there with him
Lord Stafford and Lord Clifford, all abreast,
Brake in and were by the hands of common soldiers slain.
And himself,
Lord Clifford, and Lord Stafford all abreast,
Charged our main battle's front, and breaking in
Were by the swords of common soldiers slain.
-My lord, this harmful pity makes your followers faint.
-My lord, cheer up your spirits: our foes are nigh,
And this soft courage makes your followers faint."
Thus runs the original soliloquy of Gloster in the third Act:" Ah, Edward will use women honourably,
Would he were wasted, marrow, bones and all,
That from his loins no issue might succeed
To hinder me from the golden time I look for:
For I am not vet look'd on in the world!
First there is Edward, Clarence, and Henry,
And his son, and all the look for issue (qy. all the
look'd for issue)
Of their loins, ere I can plant myself:
A cold premeditation for my purpose!
What other pleasure is there in the world beside?
I will go clad my body in gay ornaments,
And lull myself within a lady's lap,
And witch sweet ladies with my words and looks.
O monstrous man to harbour such a thought!
Why love did scorn me in my mother's womb,
And for I should not deal in her affairs,




CRITICAL ESSAY.


283


She did corrupt frail nature in the flesh
And placed an envious mountain on my back
Where sits deformity to mock my body;
To dry mine arm up like a withered stump,
To make my legs of an unequal size,
And am I then a man to be beloved?
Easier for me to compass twenty crowns.
Tut, I can smile and murder when I smile,
I cry content to that which grieves me most;
I can add colours to the cameleon,
And for a need change shapes with Proteus,
And set the aspiring Catiline to school;
Can I do this, and cannot get the crown?
Tush, were it ten times higher, I'll pull it down."
These are surely droppings from no other pen but Shakespeare's;
if metal like this were often met with in the secondary literature
of his age, it would not be the weary work it is to drive galleries
through its mighty mass for the sake of here and there a spangle
to reward the student of our old language, the enthusiasts of a
period, and the curious in literary history.
It is chiefly in form and management that the two parts of the
Contention betray relationship to the archaism of the first part of
Henry VI.-a relationship however, to my impressions, as undoubted as the careful though variously extensive correction,
extension and revisal, by Shakespeare of all the three. Resting
in this conclusion, and recalling the comparison of dates already
given, the development of Shakespeare's dramatic poesy is carried
so far back upon the conclusion of the career of Marlowe that it
is at least an open question to which of the poets was chiefly due
if not the first disruption of the old model of stage blank verse,
at least the decisive example of its capabilities for perfect ease,
vigour and harmony; and recalling what is implied by the splenetic attack and hints of Greene, I am finally disposed to favour
the award to Shakespeare.
In leaving these plays I would draw attention to the parallel
not only of incident but expression, of the slaughter of young
Rutland by Clifford, and that of Lycaon by Achilles in the Iliad.
The resemblance may be due to the classical knowledge of the
original English dramatist, or to the sympathy of poetic minds.
The rendering of this passage is one of the worthiest in Pope's
translation. Clifford and Achilles are here merciless alike, and
yet not utterly pitiless:" Clifford. In vain thou speak'st, poor boy; my father's blood
Hath stopp'd the passage where thy words should enter."
And thus the Greek:" Die then, my friend, what boots it to deplore,
The great, the good Patroclus is no more."




w.or
so
-.AO"
I




CRITICAL ESSAY ON KING RICHARD III.
HE external particulars that are known relative to the
publication of this play are chiefly these. Eight impressions of it in quarto form have come down; the
first was published in 1597 without the author's name;
this was added the next year and continued on the other titlepages dated 1602, 1605, 1613, 1624, 1629, 1634. The reprint
of 1602 professed to be "newly augmented," and the claim was
continued on the title-pages of all that followed, though they are
all mere reproductions of the first edition, not excepting the three
latest which are posterior in date to the first folio that really
furnishes certain additions. Probably, however, we should more
correctly say that the folio supplies various omissions of haste or
accident in the first quarto, for the changes it makes do not by
any means imply or indicate a systematic correction, much less
extension. even one capital insertion of more than fifty lines in
4th scene, 4th'act, does not exceed the possibilities of compositor's
lapse in missing a page; the great speech that it includes, commencing "Look what is done cannot be now amended," is required by the scene from every consideration of progress of passion
and rhythmical relief. On the other hand the printer of the folio
mars various speeches by omissions of necessary words and lines
that collation of the quartos enable us happily to restore. Other
cases of variation are more perplexing; it is clear from the
transference of several obvious misprints, that the quarto of 1602
was in the hands of the printer of the folio, probably a playhouse
copy that had superseded the manuscript for convenience, and
had been completed by corrections in MS. But are we then called
upon to sacrifice certain passages as condemned by the author
that appeared in the quarto of 1602 as in all the others, but are
lost in the folio without injury to sequence, and sometimes with a
change at the juncture that hints at intentional completion of an
emendation? The most remarkable instance of this class occurs
at the end of the second scene, Act iv. and this I am tempted to
ascribe to an actor's or a prompter's whim rather than to the deliberate author. True it is that the critical presumption is not




286


KING RICHARD III.


without force in such cases in favour of the more uncomfortable
alternative, and would sacrifice without scruple the most characteristic passage; but still, under all the circumstances, I honestly
believe that for the present play the decision as between quarto
and folio must chiefly hang on the relative value of contesting
readings in themselves, a slight leaning being ever due to the
fuller text.
The date of the first quarto gives a limit of time in one direction
for the composition of the play, but that is all; and when we
consider that, in 1598, King John, Richard II. Henry IV. part 1,
Love's Labour's Lost, The Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice, and Romeo and Juliet, had already been produced and perfected, we must be open to admit that Richard III.
might have been completed several years earlier than 1597. But
given this date, another would still be required for an antecedent
and less finished form, for the signs are many that the quarto of
1602 justly averred the play as it presented it, to be an augmentation. The drama exhibits in every scene the adult and vigorous
mastery of language and versification, but passages remain interspersed nevertheless which are reminiscent of metrical licenses
of the anterior period. These seem to have been spared on revision, from a happy sense that they harmonized with other
structural archaisms that there was no intention to displace, such
as the extension of dialogue in alternate lines,-the prolonged
stichomythia conducted and relieved with art and feeling that
remind of the Greek tragedians, who are also rivalled in the
distribution of antiphrastic speeches which vibrate challenge
and response with chorus-like regularity, not to say formality.
Lastly, in the scene between the camps where the stage is capacious of rival armies together, and the tents of the opposed commanders are shown together, and a single apparition addresses
the couch of either, we are reminded of the daring claims upon the
spectator's imagination or indulgence that occur in the several
parts of Henry VI., and are common in the old plays of the period,
but that Shakespeare, for good reasons doubtless, renounced in his
later works.
I think then there are satisfactory signs that the play as we
possess it, and as it was published in 1597, was the Chronicled
History of Richard III. in at least the second form that Shakespeare had given to it, and the question remains over whether we
can trace the obligations of either version to a still earlier and
independent author. There is an emphasis in the denouncement
of rebels against the Tudors with which the play concludes, that
marks a contemporary reference, but this may easily have descended to the last version of the play from the very earliest. In
one form or other I have no doubt that Shakespeare's play dates
at least as early as 193. In the previous year Greene parodied
a line from the same last part of Henry VI. that contains the




CRITICAL ESSAY.                    287
character of the Duke of Gloster already so boldly conceived and
so firmly drawn, and the play of which he was the hero could
not be long delayed after this. It may have been among the
consequences of its success that in 1594 there came from the press,
-" Printed by Thomas Creede, and are to be sold by William
Barley, at his shop in Newgate Market, near Christ Church door,
The true Tragedy of Richard III. wherein is shown the death of
Edward IV. with the smothering of the two young princes in the
Tower: with a lamentable end of Shore's wife, an example for
all wicked women; and lastly, the conjunction and joining of the
two noble houses Lancaster and York: as it was played by the
Queen's Majesty's Players." " This," according to Mr. Collier, " is
perhaps the most ancient printed specimen of composition for a
public theatre, of which the subject was derived from English
history;" although as we have seen from Gosson's report, the
stage was in long-established possession of such works before
1581. This play (as we shall have occasion to see) takes up the
history precisely at the point at which Shakespeare continues it
from the conclusion of Henry VI. and from the peculiarity of this
moment there is a presumption that it was a link of the original
series that he revised. If so, we gain an additional argument for
the extent of his concern in the older forms of Henry VI. for their
quaintnesses and archaisms do not include those which are most
remarkable in The true Tragedy of Richard III. It has the
ponderous monotony of the old blank verse in common, but in
common also with numerous plays by other hands. It runs off,
however, into prose even in its most serious parts, which they
never do; it appears to be free from the trochaic metre which
Shakespeare yielded to with pleasure iil his early plays-it appears,
I say, for the accuracy with which the reprint by the Shakespeare
Society reproduces the confusion and inaccuracy of the old impression, renders the examination of such points very troublesome.
On the other hand, it has fantastic metrical varieties that the
compared plays are utterly innocent of; in the introduction and
intermixture of couplets and stanzas of ten syllable and fourteen
syllable lines, augmented or diminished from time to time with
the boldest license of not always unhappy lyrical variation.
Allowance must be liberally made throughout for the injury
wrought upon the author's text by careless editing and ignorant
printer. On the whole I think it quite within the range of possibility, that the plays that are to be assumed as the groundwork
of Shakespeare's Henry VI. emanated from the same author as
this wild and disorderly play of Richard III. That Shakespeare
knew this play there can be little doubt, partly from agreement
in general course, though that was aided by common dependence
on another source, and still more from correspondence of terms and
of tone in particular passages; these adoptions will best illustrate
what value it really has, and in the mean time a short extract will




288             KING    RICHARD       11-.
give a notion of some of its peculiarities. Earl Rivers speaks out of
his chamber (where the key has been turned upon him):
"Ho, mine host, chamberlain where's my key?
What penned up like a prisoner? but stay, I fear I am betrayed,
The sudden sight of Gloster Duke doth make me sore afraid
I'll speak to him and gently him salute,
Though in my heart I envie much the man;
God-morrow, my Lord Protector, to your grace
And Duke of Buckingham, God-morrow too.
Thanks, noble dukes, for our good cheer and for your company.
Rich. Thou wretched Earl, whose aged head imagines nought
but treachery,
Like Judas thou admitted wast to sup with us last night,
But heavens prevented thee our ills and left thee in this plight.
Griev'st thou that I the Gloster Duke should as Protector sway?
And were you he was left behind to make us both away?
Wilt thou be ringleader to wrong, and must you guide the realm?
Nay, overboard all such mates I'll hurl, while I do guide the helm;
I'll weed you out by one and one, I'll burn you up like chaff,
I'll rend your stock up by the roots that yet in triumph laugh.
But as thou art I leave thee here unto the officer's custody,
First bear him to Pomfret castle, charge them to keep him
secretly;
And as you hear from me so deal, let it be done immediately,
Take from our garrison one whole band to guard him thither
safely.
The following is to be compared with Richard's soliloquy in the
tent, when he suddenly wakes after the apparition, and certainly
claims some merit of suggestiveness:" King. The hell of life that hangs upon the crown,
The daily cares, the nightly dreams,
The wretched crews (?), the treason of the foe,
And horror of my bloody practise past,
Strikes such a terror to my wounded conscience,
(Shadows to-night
Have struck more terror in the soul of Richard)
That sleep I, wake I, or whatsoever I do,
Methinks their ghosts come gaping for revenge,
Whom I have slain in reaching for a crown.
Clarence complains and crieth for revenge
My nephews' bloods, Revenge, Revenge, doth cry,
The headless peers come pressing for revenge,
And every one cries let the tyrant die.
The sun by day shines hotly for revenge,
The moon by night eclipseth for revenge,




CRITICAL ESSAY.


289


The stars are turned to comets for revenge, &c. &c.
**..   **.* *.............................
And all, yea all the world, I think,
Cries for revenge and nothing but revenge.
But to conclude, I have deserved revenge;
In company I dare not trust my friend,
Beissg alone I dread the secret foe,
I doubt my food lest poison lurk therein.
My bed is uncouth, rest refrains my head,
Then such a life I count far worse to be
Than thousand deaths unto a damned death.
How, was't death I said? who dare attempt my death?
Nay who dare so much as once to think my death? &c. &c.
Again in the battle:Enter RICHARD wounded, with his Page.
King. A horse, a horse, a fresh horse!
Page. Ah! fly my Lord and save your life.
King. Fly, villain, look I as though I would fly?The germ of much of the dialogue of the murderers of Clarence
seems among other parallels to be found here:" Dent. I promise thee, Will, it grieves me to see what moan
these young princes make; I had rather than forty pound I had
ne'er ta'en it in hand; 'tis a dangerous matter to kill innocent
princes, I like it not.
" Will. Why you base slave, are you faint-hearted? a little
thing would make me strike thee, I promise thee.
" Dent. Nay, go forward, for now am I resolute: but come,
let's to it."
From the custom of the stage at the time, it is probable enough
that this drama may have been altered and realtered frequently
and very variously before Shakespeare took the subject in hand.
With all its defects it is at least free from the affectation of classical
allusions, and comparatively so from frigid inflation and bombast;
and the honest attempt of the author to convey the story he had
to tell with some variety and force, has been worthily rewarded
by some of his thoughts, here a phrase and there a trait, being
recollected by Shakespeare. As to any farther comparison of
versification, characterization and design, it is of course out of
the question entirely. For the curiosity of the matter it may be
noted that the piece opens with an Induction, wherein Truth
and Poetry comment upon an apparition of the Duke of Clarence,
and it closes as strangely with an Epilogue that brings the history down in prose to the days of Queen Elizabeth, and finishes
with a not undeserved glorification of her Highness in rhymed
heroic verse.
Still earlier in date, and therefore somewhat more remote from
U




290


KING RICHARD III.


the opportunities of Shakespeare as it may have been by the
language in which it was written, is the long Latin drama of
Richardus Tertius, played at St. John's College, Cambridge, in
1579, and written by Dr. Thomas Legge, the first Master of Caius
College. It was referred to by Sir John Harrington in 1591, in
these terms, in his Apology for Poetry, " For tragedies, to omit
other famous tragedies, that which was played at St. John's in
Cambridge, of Richard III. would move, I think, Phalaris the
tyrant, and terrify all tyrannous-minded men."  Another allusion to it occurs in Nash's Have with you to Saffron Walden,
1596, to this effect:-" or his fellow codshead that in the Latin
tragedy of King Richard cries Ad urbs, ad urbs, ad urbs, when
his whole part was no more than, Urbs, urbs, ad arma, ad arma."
The principal actors succeeded better then than the subordinates,
for we learn from Fuller, that Dr. Palmer, afterwards Dean of
Peterborough, was the original performer of Richard, and very
successful in another play of Legge's, the Fall of Jerusalem. This
is in three Parts, each of five Acts, regular and orderly, but tedious enough to read unless for the sauce of curiosity, and the
hope of meeting with some trace of Shakespeare's attention to it
-a hope very scantily rewarded. I transcribe a single speech of
Richard's attempt to woo and win the Princess Elizabeth, which
may be thought to render some of the tones of the suit to Lady
Anne, and some of the beguilement of the Queen;
" Rich. Agedum effrenatas virgo voces amove,
Ne ob unum scelus, corpora pereant duo;
Cruore solium fateor acquiri meum
Et innocentium morte: sic fatis placet.
Cecidere fratres? doleo; facti poenitet.
Sunt mortui? factum prius nequit infici.
Num flebo mortuos? lacrymme nil valent.
Quid vis facerem? an fratrum geminam necem
Hac dextera effuso rependam sanguine?
Faciam? paratis ensibus pectus dabo:
Et si placet magis, moriar ulnis tuis.
Ignes, aquas, terram, aut minacem Caucasum
Petam, petam Tartara, vel umbrosum nemus
Atrse Stygis; nullum laborem desero
Si gratus essem tibi, virago regia."
The distich that vainly warned Jockey of Norfolk-his steadfastness gains him a good word from the Chronicler who heartily
detests his master; "yet all this, notwithstanding, he regarded
more his oath, his honor and promise made to King Richard,
like a gentleman and a faithful subject to his prince, absented
not himself from his master, but as he faithfully lived under him,
so he manfully died with him to his great fame and laud,"-is
thus rendered:



CRITICAL ESSAY.


291


Norfolciensis inclyte
Nil coeperis audacius:
Nam venditus Rex pretio
Richardus heros perditur.
Various notes of stage business and direction are placed in the
margin from time to time in English. The following reminds of
Fluellen:" Let here be the like noise as before, and after a while let a
captain run after a soldier or two with a sword drawn, driving
them again to the field, and say as followeth;
CENTURIO.
"Ignave miles, quo fugis? nisi redis meo peribis ense."
"After the like noise again let Soldiers run from the field
over the stage, one after another, flinging off their harness, and
at length let some come halting and wounded. After this let
Henry Earl of Richmond come triumphing, having the body of
King Richard, dead, on a horse: Catesby and Ratcliff and others
bound."
But the great source and fountain-head of the story for all these
dramatists,.nd of much of the inspiration of Shakespeare himself is the History of King Richard the Third, commenced by
Sir Thomas More, about 1513, and first printed in the continuation of Hardyng's Chronicle by Grafton, who takes up the abrupt
narrative and carries it on with no unsuccessful emulation of the
racy though discursive style of the great chancellor. We are
not concerned here with the question of strict historic truth.
More at an early age was received into the house of Cardinal
Morton, a very active partizan against Richard; and some exaggerations may have become transfused into his work in consequence, but they must be enormous indeed to affect materially
the heinous charge of treachery and murder which is exclaimed
against Richard by the barest outline of the incidents of his
career. The narrative was transferred, or rather transcribed with
moderate change into the Chronicles of Holinshed, where Shakespeare probably found it and followed it. It opens like the play
with the later incidents of the life of Edward IV. especially the
vain reconciliation of his court and kindred. The management
of the death of Clarence by Gloster is mentioned as a suspicion
which Shakespeare strengthened into a fact, and as events proceed characters are assigned, motives imputed unhesitatingly, or
conjectured and discussed with a distinctness and precision that
mark the confidence of the writer in his knowledge of the springs
of action and their signs in different circumstances and with
varying natures, and bespeak our confidence at once in his sagacity, boldness and directness. We recognize throughout the keen
through-sight of him who saw the tiger nature of Henry VIII.
in his yet quiet days, and replied to a compliment on high favour
and familiarity:-" I tell thee, son Roper, for as much as he




292             KING    RICHARD       III.
fondles me, if my head would win him a castle in France, (there
was then war), it should not fail to go." Shakespeare caught
the spirit and followed the example, and throughout Richard III.
the characterization is declared, open, simple, and on the surface,
and the attention of the spectator is rarely as in Richard II.
strained to the very brink of painfulness in watching for the
circumstance or sign that will determine the exact disposition
prompting speeches that in themselves express another. In one
play the assistance to the penetration of the spectator is reduced
to the very lowest; the problem for his solution, the test of his
feeling is impalpable but by the most refined sensibility; in the
other, he who runs may read, and it is hard indeed if any who
but reads or sees goes wrong. The sympathies slide onward in
a groove that never is lost, and come home unjringly. The difference springs not from the altered judgmeno:r skill of the poet,
but from difference in genius of the subjeCt-matter of the two
plays; but the difference is entirely in faour of the vehement
success of Richard III. regarded as an acting play. I have not
entirely excluded qualification, and it is because it seems to me
uncertain whether in the two great scenes with Lady Anne and
with Queen Elizabeth there are not embodied some characteristics
that no sagacity of the most imaginative reader can perfectly
apprehend; when Richard says:" But gentle Lady Anne:To leave this keen encounter of our wits,
And fall somewhat into a slower method."
I doubt whether the exact extent to which it is true that the
lady's retorts had ceased to be expressions of living hate and
indignation can be truly appreciated in reading, or otherwise than
as heard with the natural emphasis that they command for themselves when spoken and with the gestures visible that they inspire in an accomplished and sensitive performer. It is not that
the poet leaves blanks and vacancies to be filled up by actors,
adding to the delineation somewhat of their own which the
words do not define and prescribe for them, but that there is some
histrionic illustration prescribed by the words which only makes
itself felt, and breaks forth into expression in the heat and
urgency of actual realization. The employment of this finesse
varies but in degree in all the plays; in all there is much beauty
and refinement that only becomes visible in the strong glare of
the footlights, when the mind is roused by the potential irritant
of the spectacle. It was for the actual scene that the plays were
written, and while its resources on the one hand were urged to the
uttermost, on the other its liabilities were as severely considered,
and the conveniences of readers are forgotten and sacrificed while
security is taken against undue exaggeration there.
Richard III. is the last of the great series of plays that continues linked by incidents and interchanging characters from




CRITICAL      ESSAY.                293
Richard II. downwards. Here the action which commenced with
the first break in the line of legitimacy properly ends. In the
course of it the nation has undergone every form of disorder,
suffering, loss and disgrace that can result from the dependence
of its fortunes on the personal capacities and passions of its kings
and aristocracy, unchecked by the only force that can ensure a
continuance of security and glory-the residence of a controlling
power, through whatever machinery exerted, with a class large
enough to command the sympathies of the nation, endowed with
vigour and resolution together with unprejudiced intelligence,
and animated at last with sincere desire and reverence for what
is just, and a firm faith that injustice and ill faith lead as certainly to retribution as foolishness, cowardice and neglect. This
is in principle the solution of the great problem of politics, beset
in practice, as who knows not, with endless difficulty and complication. In the mean time the eye of the world is engaged
with the prominent groups that are thrust or press forward into
the world's foreground, and carry on the visible movement of
History. In accordance with this, the personal fortunes of kings
and nobles fill out the scenes of Shakespeare's Historic dramas,
and though the national interest and glory is never left out of
sight, the nation in a more extended sense takes but sorry part in
public transactions, and takes withal the consequences. Besides
the exhibition of the corporate nonentity of the city of London
represented by its Mayor, the play of Richard III. has a brief
scene in the second act that marks the tone of the world of citizens proper to the time. On the death of King Edward, citizens
commune,-the hint -is in More, with ominous presage of coming
troubles, but he among them who aims most shrewdly at their
source has nothing further to offer than the crude fatalism of
hoping for the best, and taking what comes:" All may be well; but, if God sort it so,
'Tis more than we deserve or I expect.
Before the days of change still is it so,
By a divine instinct men's minds mistrust
Pursuing danger; as by proof we see
The water swell before a boisterous storm;
But leave it all to God."
The vices of the great have however a Nemesis of their owl,
independent of the activities of the subjects, or even of their condonation, though this has rarely tainted the honour of England;
and throughout these varied plays the frivolity, ambition, wickedness or weakness of one monarch after another, bring on their
own punishments both from without and within. The civil war
between the rival families has been at last closed by the victory
of the house of York, but a victory achieved through many a
violent and cruel deed and demoralization has advanced with
even paces. Hence within the victorious family there lie the.




294


KING RICHARD III.


germs of new divisions, and probably renewed contention of rival
branches. But mischief by its very magnitude graves itself, and
after one more bloodiest act, evil approves itself so by self-destruction and hurries to an end. The fierce unsparing wars have
carried off the multitude of warlike spirits, and remain behind
the weak and the vacillating-a group of women, children, and
courtiers, destitute for the most part of principle as of vigour, and
confronted with them the very genius of pitiless and prompt
ambition in Richard, while the malicious curse of Margaret lours
behind.
The introduction of Queen Margaret contrary to the truth of
history, is invented with admirable effect; her invectives bring
up the horrors of the civil war with the liveliness that is required
to give force to their sequel; her penetration and denouncement of
the nature and purposes of Richard, heighten our sense of the
blindness and weakness of his victims, who neglect the warning,
and generally relieves the great contrast of the piece by the intervention of a second character of eloquence, pertinacity, clearsightedness and decision. The only other character in the play
that shares a portion of the mental qualifications of Richard, is
Lord Stanley; but he approaches him only as nearly as simulation to dissimulation, coolness to daring, the prudence of caution
to that of adventurousness. Much of the value of the character
would be due to his being seen on the stage when he was not
heard. In the third scene of the first act he makes conciliatory
reply to the Queen's accusation of his wife,-the Queen who risks
affronting him as she pursues vindictively Hastings, the only
other lord who had the disposition to protect her son. Richard
enumerates Stanley among his dupes, but there is no proof of it,
and Stanley's silence is marked, and was designed to be remarkable, throughout the scene of weak wrangling with Margaret
and weaker part-taking with Richard against her by Dorset and
the rest. Not less significant is his silence when Hastings who
had rejected his counsel is arrested, and he follows with the rest
to Gloster's invitation:" The rest who love me rise and follow me."
Thus he foils the penetration even of Richard, who trusts him
with suspicion but still trusts him, with pledge in keeping; thus
he carries on the important negotiations between Richmond and
Elizabeth, and at last at the decisive and very latest moment he
lays aside the mask, though his son's life may be the forfeit, and
the fortune of Bosworth field is decided.
The natural and usual close of a period of fierce and demoralizing contention, is the absolute decline of all to the ambition
that unites activity, boldness and sagacity with hypocrisy, unscrupulousness, and selfishness in extremest development; if
we accept Shakespeare's commentary upon history, we are ripe
for the conclusion that such ambition at its highest triumph bears




CRITICAL ESSAY.


295


within itself the maturing seeds both of punishment and destruction.
Richard is the very personation of confidence in self-conduct
and self-control, in his absolute command of every form of dissimulation, and still more difficult, of simulation. He is arrogant
no less, on the strength of his superiority to any natural stirrings
of love or pity, of terror or remorse. Like Iago he believes in
the absolute sway of will-wielded intellect to subject and mould
passion to its own determinations, while both are, unconsciously
to themselves, overmastered and enslaved by a tyrannous passion
that ever keeps out of their own sight as if lurking and shifting
place behind them. Richard's true fall and punishment is his
humiliation on his point of reliance and pride; he comes to require
friends when friends fail in heart or in heartiness, he regrets
affection, would fain be pitied, admits terror, and believes in the
power of conscience if he endeavours to defy it. The involuntary
forces of his being rise in insurrection against the oppression of
the voluntary. His human nature vindicates the tendencies of
humanity, when the organism which was strained to sustain itself
on the principle of renunciation of sympathy, falters and breaks
down. The power of the strongest will has its limitations;
mere defiance will not free the mind from superstition, and mere
brutality cannot absolutely close up the welling springs of tenderness. A strong will can assert great power even over memory,
and forget entirely much that by effort of diverted attention it
determines to forget, yet the limitations of its despotism in this
direction are obvious, and whatever remains by independent force
in the memory will have independent influence of its own on
fancy and imagination and on passion and motive too.  Acts
wicked or contemptible will generate self-hatred and self-contempt in spite of dogged obstinacy; meanness and murder will
equally prompt their own condemnation if not proclaim it in one
form or another, sleeping or awake.
It is while Richard is in action still most collected and vigilant,
that we hear from Lady Anne of his ill dreams and restless nights;
the faculties and susceptibilities that exist no less because they
are compressed to inactivity by day, are semi-waking when their
tyrannous antagonists are sodden in slumber,-torpid by exhaustion. It is with much effect that his first sign of waking
weakness follows on his acting and affectation of sincere repentance in the scene with the weak Elizabeth; it is as if he had
profaned and insulted the last sanctuary of refuge, and that this
crowning impiety fulfils the measure of his wickedness and brings
down his ruin. It is immediately after this wonderfully sustained
scene, in which he gains over the mother of the princes he murdered by appeal to her passion for position, her preference for her
son Dorset and by false penitence, as he gained Lady Anne by a
shameless avowal of guilk made flattering to her beauty, that the




296             KING    RICHARD       III.
news of Richmond's landing suddenly hurries and unbalances him,
and it appears that the prophecy of the contemned and murdered
Henry has remained in his mind and contributes to its own
fulfilment.
The failure of alacrity of spirit at the very eve of the crisis,noted in Napoleon on the day of Waterloo, reaches him in his
very tent, and a bowl of wine is a vain resource to repair the
wanting stimulus. But his soliloquy after thedream is the grand
display of the force of conscience as the sudden agitation lays
bare his mind to its very depths. Energy and pride are debased
by the merest prostration and incoherency, and we perceive not
the mere promptings of the present vision, but there is revealed
every form of torturing thoughts which evidently have disturbed
and irritated his inner heart throughout his career, though only
speaking openly at last. Each ghost threatens as it rises, and
Richard afterwards recals their threats; but as he suddenly wakes,
his exclamation, true to the nature of dreams, shows him already
transported into the heady fight. But deep as the apprehension
of the predicted defeat may be, it is overmastered for the time
by the still deeper sense of misery, hatefulness, and desolation.
The horrors of his soul and the bitterness of his punishment are
heightened or rather weakened by no vulgar resort to furies and(
torments, which prey on the spirits of the weaker and meaner
culprit Clarence. Guilty condition of being is to Richard the
present hell that Clarence looks forward to with terror as a consequence.
But even yet the energies of the king yield to the wound of
the fatal worm not without a struggle. In his address before the
battle he at first speaks with frantic avowal of conscience-stricken
desperation, but checks and collects himself, and then incites his
party in terms in themselves far more vigorous and inspiriting
than those of his opponent. He was not however so to end. He
disposes his forces with prudent generalship, but when the battle
joins, he passes from the general to the soldier, and thence to the
wild excitement of the doomed desperado. It is simply by favour
of the hurrying tumult of his maddening passion that George
Stanley escapes his vengeance, and his utter forfeiture of his
once vaunted self-command, his very raving drunkenness of bloodguiltiness is proved when as he shouts for a horse he can be urged
by Catesby to be calm, and rushes out still shouting and seeking
for the horse which was offered to him, and which he leaves behind him. According to the old stage-direction Richard dies on
the stage, and it is remarkable that Shakespeare has given him
no dying words, and doubtless the omission is designed as it is
characteristic. It is left to the actor to give the last expression
to the state of mind which is the true retribution of Richard, in
the spirit and character of his combat and his-fall. Burbage, the
first and celebrated representative of Richard, had no doubt the




CRITICAL ESSAY.


297


poet's own instructions for this great conclusion, and certain
glimmerings of true stage tradition may easily have reached and
we may hope did not die out with Kean. The reader of the
play, who has but the general stage-direction in compensation,
may pause to bring back in thought the impression of the interyal
before the closing speeches.
Thus the drama, according to its original title, embodies a life
and death, a growth and a dissolution, a career and its catastrophe.
The great turn of all is dependent on an internal and moral crisis,
not on an external reverse. No difficulty remains to be coped
with greater than has already been overcome, but the intemperance of the mind and heart and the abuse of the sympathies
tell with advancing age, and palled or jaded excitability and
courage is unsteady or spasmodic, deliberation tremulous, counsel
forgetful, and execution cool no more, is giddy, headlong, desperate,
self-condemned. The mind, like the body, has its epochs of development, activity and decay, and the earlier misdirection recoils in later sufferance. The awfulness of the catastrophe of
King Richard depends on the greatness of his powers, the suddenness of their failure, the vigorousness of their effort at recovery,
and their utter defeat all efforts notwithstanding.
Externally the punishment is comparatively nought; death in
battle, with face to the foe and weapons bravely wielded, is what
is looked forward to with composure or pride by hundreds of the
bravest and the best, and is a fate of the nature that all who
hold self-respect the last jewel to be parted with and never for
ransom of less precious good, must be prepared to encounter in
one form or other. The correction and the retribution come from
within and it is there a      it s w   n l us, t   judgment
an-dthe kingdom are already come upon the earth.
The deformity of Richard is a circumstance as essential to the
rancour of his passion as the blackness of Othello-it wounds his
pride and irritates his spite, and stirs his rankling revenge. He
hankers for the crown with a diseased imagination that dwells
upon the very metallic symbol of royalty itself as personal ornament compensating for natural personal defects. Hence he dwells
on the very name of it, and the indications are absolute that after
his success his costume is to be completed by constantly wearing
it-and the trait is akin to the affection for rich attire ascribed
to him by history, and not unusual with the deformed. So again
his opening soliloquy refers with bitterness to the disadvantage
he stands at with the gay and the fair, while his pretended indifference is belied by persevering reparation to his vanity in the
influence he exerts upon them.
In one respect Shakespeare has softened the character of the
Richard of the historian, —it is in making him show some real
sense of shame at defaming his mother,-shame which, according
to More, was but craftily assumed-" for in that point could be




298


KING RICHARD III.


none other colour but to pretend that his own mother was one
advouteress, which notwithstanding to farther this purpose he
letted not; but natheless he would the point should be less and
more favourably handled, not even fully plain and directly, but
that the matter should be touched aslope craftily, as though men
spared in the point to speak all the truth for fear of his displeasure."
I extract the following passages in illustration from More, and
by observing how closely Shakespeare followed his character of
Richard, we may believe that he was at least as careful in securing the representation of his external characteristics.
" Richard, the third son of whom we now entreat, was in wit
and courage equal with either of them (Edward and Clarence);
in body and prowess far under them both: little of stature; illfeatured of limbs, crookbacked, his left shoulder much higher
than his right, hard-favoured of visage, and such as is in states
called warlye, in other men otherwise: he was malicious, envious,
wrathful, and, from afore his birth, ever froward.........
None evil captain was he in the war, as to which his disposition
was more meetly than for peace. Sundry victories had he, and
sometime overthrows, but never in default as for his own person,
either of hardiness or politic order. Free was he called of dispense, and somewhat above his power liberal; with large gifts he
got him unsteadfast friendship, for which he was fain to pill and
spoil in other places, and get him steadfast hatred. He was close
and secret, a great dissimuler, lowly of countenance, arrogant of
heart, outwardly compinable where he inwardly hated, not letting
to kiss whom he thought to kill: dispiteous and cruel, not for evil
will alway, but often for ambition, and either for the surety or increase of his estate. Friend and foe was muchwhat indifferent;
where his advantage grew he spared no man's death whose life
withstood his purpose."
The following ensues on the account of the murder of the two
hapless princes:-" Which things on every part well pondered,
God never gave this world a more notable example, neither in
what unsurety standeth all worldly weal, or what mischief
worketh the proud enterprise of an high heart, or finally what
wretched end ensueth such dispiteous cruelty. For to begin with
the ministers, Miles Forest at St. Martin's piecemeal rotted away.
Dighton indeed yet walketh on alive in good possibility to be
hanged ere he die, but Sir James Tyrel died at Tower-hill, beheaded for treason. King Richard himself, as ye shall hereafter
hear, slain in the field, hacked and hewed of his enemies' hands,
harried on horseback dead, his hair in despite torn and tugged
like a cur dog; and the mischief that; he took within less than
three year of the mischief that he did. And yet all the mean
time spent in murch pain and trouble outward, much fear, anguish
and sorrow within. For I have heard, by credible report of such




CRITICAL       ESSAY.                 299
as were secret with his chamberers, that after this abominable deed
done, he never had quiet in his mind, he never thought himself
sure; where he went abroad his eyen whirled about, his body privily fenced-(with secret armour, that is)-his hand ever on his
dagger, his countenance and manner like one alway ready to strike
again. He took ill rest anights, lay long waking and musing,
sore wearied with care and watch, rather slumbered than slept,
troubled with fearful dreams; suddenly sometimes sterte up, leap
out of his bed, and run about the chamber, so was his restless
heart continually tossed and tumbled with the tedious impression
and stormy remembrance of his abominable deed."
Tyrants have doubtless lived, both before Richard and since,
as perjured, treacherous, and murderous, who have escaped, and
may escape, his particular fate of retribution; yet the punishment
of Richard, special to his case and temperament as it may be,
carries home, as it is depicted by Shakespeare, the profound conviction that in one form or other, of torture, of disgrace or debasement, and sooner or at last, the penalty of imperial injustice and
selfishness will be demanded, and must be paid.




-- -              - --- 1-1-  --.1 —1-1. I — —.I ----        -  -- -        - -       I- I    -




CRITICAL ESSAY ON KING HENRY VIII.
T       HIS history-play was first printed, as far as we know,
in the first folio 1623; the evidence is unusually clear,
as we shall see, that it was produced as a new play in
1613, external and internal proof concurring; the only
uncertainty that must be left open being whether it may not,
like several other of Shakespeare's plays, have made an earlier
appearance in a comparatively brief and imperfect state. There
is an entry in the Stationers' books, under date 12 Feb. 1604-5,
of an Enterlude of King Henry VIII. awaiting license for printing, and it would not be disagreeable to believe that the play in
question was written by Shakespeare with its eulogy on Queen
Elizabeth, the year after her death (March 1602-3), if so, consulting his own feelings, it must be supposed quite as much as
in deference to the complimentary remonstrance of Chettle in his
prompter, "England's Mourning Garment," 1603.
" Nor doth the silver tongued Melicert
Drop from his honied muse one sable tear,
To mourn her death that graced his desert,
And to his lays opened her royal ear.
Shepherd, remember our Elizabeth
And sing her Rape done by that Tarquin, Death."
Chettle, who ten years before handsomely withdrew the pos
thumous calumnies of Greene, was himself concerned in the authorship of two dramas, The Rising of Cardinal Wolsey, and
Cardinal Wolsey in 1601, which Shakespeare was probably not
unfamiliar with if he really wrote his own Henry VIII. as early
as 1604. All that is known of these plays of Chettle's is derived
from Henslowe's Diary,-of the first of them, the second in order
of production, he was only joint author with Drayton, Munday
and Wentworth Smith, and the composition thus speeded was,
it appears, licensed piecemeal by the Master of the Revels, that
it might be put in rehearsal as it proceeded, and represented as
soon as finished. The confidence in popularity which this implies is supported by lavish expense in getting up, a precedent




302


KING HENRY VIII.


which Shakespeare respected: what with "velvet sattin and
taffeta," Henslowe expended for the costumes a sum, according
to Mr. Collier's computation, considerably above the value of
2001. at the present time. We cannot but suppose that the interest of the audience in the fortune and the fall of the magnificent favourite of Henry, was sharpened by the excitement of the
disgrace and death of Essex, surrendered to his enemies by his
doting mistress at the commencement of this very year. How
offence could be avoided at such a time, and under the daughter
of Anna Bullen, unless by some very flagrant departures from
historical accuracy and truthfulness it is not easy to conjecture,
and here again we may be on the trace of reactionary influences
upon Shakespeare's plays.
Leaving the possibility of an earlier draught of the play aside,
it is most authentic that Shakespeare's drama of Henry VIII.
was to be presented as a new play under the title of All is True, at
the Globe Theatre at Bankside on the 29th June 1613; but was
interrupted by a catastrophe to which various allusions have come
down. The most important account is in a letter of Sir Henry
Wotton to his nephew, dated 6th July, 1613. "Now to let
matters of state sleep I will entertain you at present with what
happened this week at the Bankside. The king's players had a
new play called All is True, representing some principal pieces
of the reign of Henry the Eighth, which was set forth with many
extraordinary circumstances of pomp and majesty even to the
matting of the stage; the Knights of the Order with their
Georges and Garter, the guards with their embroidered coats and
the like; sufficient in truth, within a while to make greatness
very familiar if not ridiculous. Now King Henry making a mask
at the Cardinal Wolsey's house, and certain cannons being shot
off at his entry some of the paper or other stuff wherewith one of
them was stopped did light on the thatch, where being thought
at first but an idle smoke, and their eyes being more attentive to
the show, it kindled inwardly and ran round like a train, consuming within less than an hour the whole house to the very
ground. This was the fatal period of that virtuous fabric wherein
yet nothing did perish but wood and straw and a few forsaken
cloaks; only one man had his breeches set on fire, that would
perhaps have broiled him if he had not by the benefit of a provident wit put it out with bottle ale."
The agreement with Shakespeare's scene is evident, and other
authorities-among them Ben Jonson who, in his Execration
upon Vulcan, writes as having been present, style the cannon
chambers, in still closer agreement with the original stage direction at the announcement of Henry, "Drum and trumpet, chambers discharged." Common sources, Holinshed and Cavendish,
might however have furnished even this to another author; but
the ascribed title, All is True, is decisive. Tyrwhitt remarked,




CRITICAL ESSAY.


303


and the argument has been well driven home by Knight, that
the prologue is replete with references to this title or to the claim
it expresses, of scrupulous rendering of the historical record. The
assurance runs:" Such as give
Their money out of hope they may believe,
May here find truth too."
" Gentle hearers know
To rank our chosen truth with such a show
As fool and fight is, besides forfeiting
Our own brains and the opinion that we bring
To make that only true that we intend, &c."
"Forfeiting the opinion that we bring," implies, I apprehend,
"balking the expectation we induce," that is, by the promulgated title of All is True.
The date of the play in its present form is still further confirmed by the terms of the compliment to James I. at the conclusion:" Wherever the bright sun of heaven shall shine
His honour and the greatness of his name
Shall be and make new nations."
The allusion is doubtless to the colonization of Virginia, of which
the charter was renewed in 1612, when it was also assisted by a
lottery granted by the king, who had at least the glorious aim,
however pursued, to be according to Lord Bacon's inscription on
his portrait, " Imperii Atlantici Conditor." In the lines that
follow there appears to be a domestic allusion equally apt to the
time:"He shall flourish
And like a mountain cedar reach his branches
To all the plains about him."
These lines, I doubt not, refer if not to other marriage negotiations then proceeding, to the marriage at least of the King's
daughter Elizabeth with the Elector Palatine, celebrated on the
14th of the February preceding with much gratulation, and hopes
destined to be shadowed by years of misfortune. The alliance
was highly popular, and the festivities of the court were sitfficiently extravagant to exhaust the royal treasury. The pageantries of the time seem to have given direction as they have done
since, to the popular passion for spectacle which would be satisfied by the processions and ceremonials which are provided for
with such unusual fulness and minuteness in the stage directions
of this play. Sooth to say, the trappings of extraordinary state
celebrations, usually fall by way of contracts or perquisites to the
public theatres, and the scarlet cloth of the coronation, and the
black hangings of a lying in state are removed from hall and
abbey to the best and readiest customer, the mimic stage, where




304


KING HENRY VIII.


the pomps of greatness are often made ridiculous not so much by
familiarity, as Sir Henry Wotton infers, as by the contrast of
livelier imagination, and better taste, and a more genuine end.
I do not suppose, however, that Shakespeare wrote Henry VIII.
merely upon the tiring-room motive of utilizing an accumulation
of untarnished gewgaw; the motive of literal transference of life
to the stage expressed in the prologue and second title, All is
True, was derived from the general intention of veri-similitude
appropriate in a play of nearly contemporary subject: and on
the same principle the court pageantry of the play became a necessity; for pageantry was at the time,-and the memories of the
pomp of Wolsey and Henry were rife and had been refreshed, the
very body of whatever and whatever kind of life the court was
endowed with. In the Chronicle of Henry the Eighth, by the
contemporary Hall, history vainly struggles to exhibit a limb or
exert a movement, oppressed below the superincumbent weight
of wardrobe. Shakespeare, therefore, in approaching his own
times, adopted justly and deliberately a design as literal in accessaries as Holbein, but with freer hand in more venturous scope
than the painter ever attempted.
The drama is not like most of the History-plays-the Life and
Death of the Monarch, nor, on the other hand, does it embody
a chief and brilliant exploit of a short reign, like Henry V.; it
presents a series of events which after all only carry us over a
portion of the reign of Henry VIII.; but we shall find that the
selection made, and the time covered, are most expressive and
significant. The play is the link by which the chain of histories
is attached to the very age of the poet and his audience; it sets
forth the chief points of contrast between the current age and
that of the great contention of York and Lancaster, and exhibits
both the origin and developement of the motives on which that
contrast depends. Internal peace has superseded intestine war,
and the arts of peace take the place of disorders, the power of the
monarch is advanced both by undisputed title and by the exhaustion of the reduced and decimated nobility, and is aided for the
time by the rising influence of the peaceful and industrious commonalty. Still more important, the resolute tones of popular independence are heard and attended to together with the first
murmurs of protestantism, the revolt of the democracy against
the exclusiveness of the church and religion. It is the personal
character of the monarch that gives specialty to the incidents
thus prepared for, and it is by something more than mere accidental concern in each successive catastrophe that Henry, with
all his limitations claims to be the chief and central figure of the
piece.
The reign of Henry has three well defined periods; the early
portion and sway of Wolsey to the mooting of the divorce; the
divorce with its accompaniments of the disgrace of Wolsey and




CRITICAL ESSAY.


-305


rupture with Rome, and the last period of capricious, cruel and
unrestricted tyranny; all these are represented and set forth.
The Field of' the Cloth of Gold, and the Mask at the Cardinal's
bring before us the costume of the time and the spirit of the
modern court and youthful king; the conduct of the suit for the
divorce, exhibits self-will still cautious and stooping to pretexts
and hypocrisy however transparent; while the last ict, though it
alone is free from acts of cruelty or violence, fully expresses the
resistlessness of the adult and outspoken autocracy. This sequence attaches itself to earlier history by the character and
catastrophe of Buckingham, and to later by the concluding prophecy of Cranmer.
The fate of the father of Buckingham was of course fresh in
the minds of the audience that had witnessed Richard III. ant'
they are moreover reminded of it. With very slight suggestion
from the History, Shakespeare has illustrated his theme by representing the son as a nobleman, distinguished by the more modern accomplishments of cultivated thought, and the valued
facility and elegance of expression. Norfolk praises the sagacity
of his counsel as the king the charm of his eloquence, topics that
are quite new in the history. Yet something of the untamed
spirit of his fathers-no one of them for more than a century had
died a natural death, still agitates him; he vents the plaint of
despised nobility, of princes reduced to pages, no difference of
persons, the beggars' book carrying it against the nobles' blood;
nevertheless,-so times are changed, there is no talk of noble
insurrection now, and his utmost resource is to follow Wolsey
into the presence and outstare him before the king. Hie dies after
trial, his father died without one, yet the improvement is but
maturing while suborned testimony does the work of bold violence.
The king, thus supreme above his nobles, is not without a
check, and he recognises the necessity of yielding to the pressure
of the Commons in respect to taxation,-" The gathering of
money," says Sir Thomas More, "is the only thing that withdraweth the hearts of Englishmen from the Prince," —and he
makes the concession with alacrity, and like Elizabeth after him
The power that lies in this quarter prompted the notice in the
information against Buckingham, that the prophet bade him
" gain the love of the commonalty-the duke shall govern England."
The popular intercession of Katharine is an invention of the
poet, or rather it is a transference in more amiable form of a trait
of her rival Ann Bullen, who, according to Cavendish, took a
somewhat similar course to prejudice the King against Wolsey" saying as she sat at dinner in communication with him, ' Sir,'
quoth she, 'is it not a marvellous thing to consider what debt
and danger the Cardinal hath brought you in with all your subx




306             KING HENRY VIII.
jects.' 'How so, sweetheart,' quoth the king. 'Forsooth,'
quoth she, 'there is not a man within all your realm worth five
pounds but he hath indebted you unto him' (meaning by a
loan that the king had but late of his subjects)." P. 241, Singer's
edition.
The disposition of the king is apparent from the first; he satisfies the Commons in terms to make Wolsey bear all the brunt
of unpopularity, and with a graceful appearance of yielding freely
to his queen; but he has no consideration for her appeal in favour of Buckingham: he is gracious to the Commons and Katharine against Wolsey, and then to Wolsey against the Duke,
merely from his own interest and purpose. Here is the key of
so much of his reign, bartering the aid of his position in exchange
for indulgence, and making a market of ecclesiastical estates,
doctrines, or privileges, as they would bring him in fullest aid
and impunity in every personal and political enormity. It is
clear already that he is capable of any selfishness, and that no
scruple of friendship, affection or truth will interfere with his
pursuit of it. It is not necessary for us to wait for the last Act
to perceive, from the king's warning to Cranmer, how clearly he
was aware of the process of Buckingham's destruction:"At what ease
Might corrupt minds procure knaves as corrupt
To swear against you? Such things have been done."
Buckingham, Katharine and Wolsey fall successively, by whatever subordinate machinations, distinctly as sacrifices to the jealousy of the king, his inconstancy of attachment, his rapacity
and revenge. The characters of those he governs assist the
course of events in completing his absolute power. The play
closes upon the most declared exhibition of his unchecked caprice, and the subjection of all the powers of the nobility and
the Church; and yet the true catastrophe of this play, the last
and crowning piece of the historical series, is so managed notwithstanding, that it only announces the establishment of tyranny,
to indicate its unconscious subservience to the progress and triumph of liberty and good government, and to prefigure its coming
euthanasia.
Opposed to Buckingham, but still more accomplished with the
new arts in vogue, and with a tongue still more persuasive, is
the magnificent arrogance of the all-performing Wolsey. He is
the type of the advancing Commons as sprung from their very
depths; but he has taken such a start ahead of them as to be
willing to forget and to aid in oppressing, his own original order.
He has the upstart's not unprovoked hatred of the hereditary
nobility, and the upstart's neglect also of the class le has quitted.
The tendency of the age is to advance him, and tempting circumstances and a nature that can be dazzled and misled, carry




CRITICAL ESSAY.


307


him on by ways too often unholy to a perilous height. Assentation and convenience to royalty brings on such gigantic success
that he makes the usual mistake of his position and dreams of
independence. The first manifest proof of falsehood for his own
ends in a service that every truth disowned, ensures his ruin, and
the double herds of vulgar, the select and the numberless, blacken
him in his descent, and exult in his overthrow with a temper
that would put the best cause in the wrong.
Wolsey is Shakespeare's most elaborate picture, and he has
many, of the arrogant, scheming and unchristian churchman.
The strongest lines mark his duplicity of act and word, his envy,
malice and pitilessness against Buckingham, Catharine, Pace or
Bullen-the dim-burning light that with off-hand severity he
would snuff out; and yet so soon as his own ruin explodes he turns
upon those who triumph in his fall, some like Surrey not without
good excuse, and taxes them indignantly with envy and malice,
-their ignorance of truth,-he who so often had profaned his gift
of ingratiating language to betray,-with shameful want of manners, thus imputing the faults with which he of all others is most
chargeable. Yet strange to say in all this seeming impudent
self-assertion he is already becoming more truthful. His defencelessness comes bitterly home to him, and he grasps about
wildly and eagerly for those weapons and the armour, that would
bestead him in such need; and as he vainly searches in his soul
for the resources he has forfeited he becomes  niscious of his past
and irreparable improvidence. Relieved ftorn the obstructions
of place and power, he soon sees with clear eye from what quarter
might have come entire protection against, or compensation for
any danger, and any insult and fall. The very features oi the
vices he has been practising are reflected before him in the exultation of the enemies who have leapt into his position, and with
sudden pang he notes and hates their despicableness in himself.
Such is the process of the purification of his mind, and the sign
of it is that the taunts of the nobles have their effect in composing his mind rather than agitating or irritating it. In a bright
outburst of moral enlightenment we note the refreshment and
very rejuvenescence of the soul, which Shakespeare is our warrant may truly come over the corrupt,-the criminal. No repentance will ever undo and reverse the full consequence of
wrong, for the better life of the man may sigh as vainly to
recover the misused capacities and opportunities of youth and
boyhood as their lost hours; yet is not the great Order merciless, nor are they dreamers and deceivers of the fanatical who
tell that it remains for the wrong-doer-who shall set a limit
and say how heinously guilty —to arrive by whatever providential process at a newness of heart that places him in completest opposition to his former self, gives hlil the sense of triumph over his own former errors and enables him,-the test of




308


KING HENRY VIII.


sincerity at last, to conquer self in the future, and to find happiness in promoting happiness entirely independent of his own
temporal success, and even at the expense of it.
Frequent, no doubt, are the unhappy essays and false gratulations at such transformations unaccomplished, and the renewed heart rejoiced in is but swollen again from shrunk dimensions by reassertion of pride, and often the callous criminal has
been intoxicated into a dream of forgiveness and glorification
by the very stimulus of abject fear, and as often lured on to such
a state by the promise that it is the acceptable sign of grovelling and irrational abasement before the tyrannies of superstition.
But Shakespeare leaves no uncertainty in the case of Wolsey
-he conducts the transformation healthily to its end;-the gall
of hatred and enviousness is so entirely lost that he who formerly
in his presumption only transferred a servant to the king that he
might still be an instrument of his own with more efficiency, and
who without compunction, rather with complacency, saw one who
might rival or supplant him worried into madness or death, now
eagerly and earnestly presses on Cromwell to leave him, and
seize the opportunity of the time to recommend himself to the
king. This is the seal and completion of his triumph, and is
followed up by the expression of the noble ideal of true ambition, of an end worthy a struggle, and of means competent to
achieve it and worthy of the best, and able in the last malignity
of fortune to turn defeat into triumph unalloyed and unassailed,
-the true career of those who destitute of adventitious aid have
no title but merit-a title only valid while with firm faith relied
on.
Wolsey speaks not in mere disgust at reverse and peevishness
of disappointment, but a glimpse opens of a new range of opportunity in history. The mere direction of ability in subservience to princes, for the end of vieing in the vulgarities of rank,
is a convicted blunder when power has become attainable consistently with honesty and peace, and a power which is beyond
all humiliating reverse. The hearts of princes he once said, kiss
obedience so much they love it; but he now urges that all the
ends of the statesman should be-not the king's,-but his country's, his God's, and truth's, and a fall here is not disgrace but
martyrdom, with all the honours and compensations of blessedness.
These are the perfect ways of honour which the prophecy that
concludes the play assumes, will be learnt in the reign of Elizabeth by the statesmen about her even from their sovereign; in
the mean time the anticipation is heightened by contrast of the
very faint approach to the ideal as realized by the Cranmer of
the concluding Act. He is as free from the arrogant vices of
Wolsey as fromhis stateliness; in his right hand he carries peace,
as the recovered Wolsey would, to silence envious tongues; and




CRITICAL ESSAY.


309


cherishes as far as churchman may, who is also a politician, the
hearts that hate him, and standing on his truth and honesty he
professes to fear nothing that can be said against him. But he
has withal a certain infusion of slavishness that derogates from
the better type of dignity; Wolsey spoke much of truth when
he said he had crawled into the favour of the king; cautious
and timorous his spirit is rebuked in the presence of royalty, and
he is disabled in all his functions before royal opposition. He
is for ever dropping on his knees, and overflowing with tears of
mingled anxiety and gratitude at the feet of a tyrant, and it will
be strange indeed if the best and worthiest successes he achieves
be not dishonoured by weak consents to wicked deeds in the service of so exacting a task-master as Henry. It may be that by
his very deficiencies he becomes an apter vehicle for prophecy
which rushes through him to a vent, ill understood by himself
and by King Henry, and only truly vocal and laid to heart by
spectators in the generation among whom it was thought to be
accomplished.
It seems to me that a trace of the most trivial weakness of the
great Cardinal clings to him at his very grandest moment, and
the mention of the coronation of Anne touches on the chord of his
passion for pomp, and evokes a last sigh for the eclipse of pillars,
and crosses, and pomander, and all the rest of it. Note elsewhere again the trick that is played him by his fantasy, when he
whom few would positively assert not to have been a butcher's
son before he was legate and chancellor, with many grounds for
dreading the advancement of Anne Bullen, is chiefly indignant at
plebeian presumption. "The late queen's gentlewoman; aknight's
daughter! " The pride of aristocracy has many more excuses in
the long descended royalty of Katharine, in whom it is native
by her Spanish birth as well as rank, yet that it is a defect even
in her as well as in the man she once most hated, appears by it
showing as a blot on the pure orb of her serenity. She clings
tenaciously to her titles and her dignities; nothing but death
she says, shall ever divorce them, —we have a glimpse of the
passion as governing her very earliest years:"She now begs,
That little thought when she set footing here,
She should have bought her dignities so dear."
Accordingly the first article of her impeachment of Wolsey's life
thus runs:" Ie was a man
Of an unbounded stomach, ever ranking
Himself with princes."
Honest is the rebuke of Griffith's counter sketch:" This Cardinal




310


KING HENRY VIII.


Though from an humble stock, undoubtedly
Was fashioned to great honour from his cradle."
But after this, and even after her beatific vision she is, I almost
said, vindictive against the unmannerly messenger, and her last
breath is exhausted in enjoining the observances of regal obsequies:"Embalm me,
Then lay me forth; although unqueened, yet like
A queen and daughter to a king inter me,
I can 1no more."
The debasing tendency, to say the least, of absolute sovereignty,
is forcibly depicted in the exhibitions of callousness of moral
sense in all who approach within its range; no enormity is any
longer recognised in its true nature when associated with sovereignty. The sentiment of all the virtues is deadened by the
habit of applying their names and designations to the very embodiments of their opposites. From the lips of all, with no exception and slight qualification, we find the character of the King
adverted to with fulsome perversion of all natural sympathies.
Gardiner's crafty commendation is of course; to Cranmer Henry
is not only " most dread sovereign," but also " a most noble
judge." Katharine, whose fine intellect and accurate conscientiousness are sharpened by injuries, has some plain words for his
hatred of her, his corruption of judgment, and her ejaculation as
she witnesses his relentless encouragement of suborned witness,
" God mend all!" speaks volumes, yet even she can endure to
style him " his noble grace," " in all humility," she would have
him know that in death she blessed him. Wolsey exclaims,
" God bless him," prays his " sun may never set," avouches that
he " knows his noble nature." Buckingham while he determines
not to sue can say:" The king has mercies
More than I dare make faults."
And thus with the sobriety of real earnestness pursues" My vows and prayers
Are still the King's; and till my soul forsake
Shall cry for blessings on him: may he live
Longer than I have time to tell his years!
Ever beloved, and loving, may his rule be!
And when old time shall lead him to his end
Goodness and he fill up one monument!"
To bless those who curse and injure us is consistent with christian principle and injunction; but scarcely to do so with a fervour and affection that makes us to some extent consenting accessaries in their guilt, apologists if not advocates of cruelty and
selfishness. There is an honour in the spirit subdued by mis



CRITICAL ESSAY.


311


fortune that must not be given to the broken and the weakened
spirit that cringes to the tyrant even when he has done his worst,
and can do no more; and the end of it can only be to harden and
encourage him in wickedness,-to comfort and lull him in the
confidence of his unaccountability till at last he loses the interest,
the habit, the power of distinguishing one action from another
unless by the standard of his appetites. So, however, it is and
long it has been; the unjust power that human justice cannot
reach, assumes to cowed and shaken minds the dignity of inherent alliance with the order of nature, and they bend before its
injuries as a besotted devotee before an image of personified caprice and cruelty. The conversation of " the Gentlemen" exemplifies the obstinacy of oblique vision which makes every local
stain upon the monarch a reflection from some other criminal:" But is't not cruel
That she should feel the smart of this; the Cardinal
Will have his will and she must fall."
And so Suffolk's outspoken hint that the source of ill ease to the
King's conscience is, that it has " crept too near another lady,"
is parried with unpremeditated instinct by Norfolk;-" 'Tis so;
this is the Cardinal's doing." Charity, prudence, and politeness
have all suggestions in favour of tenderly speaking that Shakespeare gives full fair play to; but he not the less sets matters in
such a light, that ourselves must be in fault if we are not sensitive to the stimulus, and determine that after all allowances, no
courtly course can be right that disables from forming a distinct
apprehension of the true relations of an act as just or unjust,
lofty or despicable, and from stating a home truth in homely unambiguous terms when the proper occasion, that ever is at hand,
commands to be plain spoken. The tendency as embodied in the
play reflects too well the disgraces of history, and Henry, with
the best capacity and opportunity for self-knowledge, rebukes the
" cruel nature and bloody" of Gardiner and overlooks his own,
and at the height of his misdoing coolly assumes his heavenly
glorification:" This oracle of comfort has so pleased me,
That when I am in heaven, I shall desire
To see what this child does, and bless my Maker."
The very imagination that the Henry of history, with counterchanging blasphemy and grotesqueness embodied in his effectless
instructions for his monument.
The play, then, in setting forth the spirit of the time and of the
monarch, unfolds before us also the main sequence of its events,
as bearing on the interests and progress of the nation.  The
Commons and the Nobles, the Queen and the Queen aspirant, are
united against the power of the plebeian favourite Wolsey, reasonably enough in many respects, though in some they do him




312


KING HENRY VIII.


injustice. In the meantime, with obvious and ominous signs, the
aversion to the dignitary is reawakening the old Anglican aversion to his office and his church. Hence Henry's rejection of the
authority of the Pope in the business of his marriage, calls forth
no popular protest or murmur, and the return of Cranmer with
opinions to suit the king's purpose, and his consequent archbishopric are premonitory of the great internal reconstruction of
the church thereafter to ensue.
The last Act is the indispensable sequel and completion to
those that precede, and clenches the vast political determination
that was gathering and moving onward, in the intrigues and
reactions of the earlier scenes. The business of the divorce opened
the question of independence of Rome,-or reopened it, and it is
furthered by the dispositions of Anne Bullen and her feud with
the Cardinal. In the last Act we find the King in personal exercise of absolute power, and giving sign of casting it decisively
into the scale of the party of the new opinions, by crushing the
intrigue of Gardiner. Cranmer and Cromwell are indicated in
the play as the ecclesiastical and lay leaders of the impending
innovation, and if with brevity, we must remember that the ears
of Shakespeare's generation were still tingling with their doings,
and parties took sides at once at the very mention of their names.
Hence the significance to the course of the play, of the support
they receive from the king, and the seal of the alliance is the
selection of the new man Cranmer to be godfather to the infant
princess-of Elizabeth, who was destined to carry forward not
only the better public tendencies peace and power-of honours
open to all, and as nobly gained as bestowed, but also to secure
the strongest establishment for the church of liberty and liberalizing enlightenment, that the marriage of her mother was the
occasion of first effectually promoting.
Thus Shakespeare brought the history of the English nation
and monarchy down to his own times, and while he exhibits the
happiness and glories of the country as still far too dependent on
the personal character of an accidental occupant of the throne,
he has marked also that growing spirit which was destined to
go far to work out a correction. In the meantime the circumstance fully justifies a generous enthusiasm for the character of
the great princess, who less than a woman in womanly foibles
was, in matters of state, more than a man; and who by her energies and forbearances alike, was for so many years the great safeguard of those conditions of progress which place England, in
her reign, in such contrast to the whole anterior period dramatized by Shakespeare, and also to all contemporary European
kingdoms. If we consider that Shakespeare is speaking of a
prince, and of what a prince, as compared with princes, and that
his eulogies are posthumous, I think we may-taken into account also necessarily the promptings and requirements of his




CRITICAL ESSAY.


313


dramatic climax, absolve him of any courtliness that can be considered insincere or dishonourable. Perhaps the commendation
of James may be thought at least to supplicate for an apology,
and yet I know not; if king James accepted the praise, it was
with the condition of admitting and adopting the precedents of
Elizabeth, for it is only thus far forth that the praise attaches.
His share, moreover, is at best but parenthetical, and I could
almost imagine that Shakespeare compared Elizabeth to Sheba
in covetousness of wisdom, with mischievous intent to tantalize
the king's highness with the natural but vain expectation of
being exalted a few lines later to the seat of Solomon.
The plan of the play permitted or required that Anne Bullen
should be kept for the most part in the back ground; but a
single scene fully expresses the not unconscious ambition of her
coyness, and a single sentence at the Cardinal's revel, that
laxity of manner that was used at last as pretext in her destruction. Holinshed's remark on the mode of her elevation is
evidently in satisfaction of a conscience ill at ease between loyalty and truth. " Of this divorce, and of the king's marriage
with the lady Anne Bullen, men spake diversely; some said the
King had done wisely, and so as it became him to do in discharge
of his conscience. Other otherwise judged and spake their fancies
as they thought good; but when every man had talked enough,
then were they quiet, and all rested in good peace."
Shakespeare drew the materials of this play from the Chronicle of Holinshed, and from a chief source of the Chronicle, the
Life of Wolsey by George Cavendish. This admirable biographywas first printed in 1641, and then imperfectly-the first complete edition was that given by my friend Mr. Singer in 1825,
which he has so much cause to be proud of,-but the delay was
only caused by the strong opinions expressed in it, unfavourable
to the cause and promoters of the reformation, and it was certainly multiplied and freely circulated in manuscript. Literally
as Holinshed copies much of its contents, his process necessarily
mars the great charm of unaffected freshness that pervades it,
and which assuredly was recognized and embodied by the poet,
and we repeatedly recognize the materials and inspirations of
the poet in passages that the Chronicler neglected. I think this
is most apparent in the character of Cromwell, who is exhibited
as truly attached to Wolsey anid affected at his fall, at the same
time that hlie has a lively sense of the desirableness of being in
future independent, and we are called on to recognize how much
" truth and honesty " may be consistent in a retainer with the
cold expressions:
" Must I then leave you? must I needs forego
So good, so noble, and so true a master? "
So in the last Act we find him combining regard for his own
preferment with much honesty of spirit in aiding his depressed




314             KING    HENRY      VIII.
ally Cranmer, whom to aid seemed dangerous. Compare the
relation of the Gentleman Usher," It chanced me upon All hallownday to come there into the
great chamber at Asher (Esher) in the morning to give mine
attendance, where I found Master Cromwell leaning in the great
window, with a primer in his hands, saying of our Lady mattins; which had been since a very strange sight. He prayed
not more earnestly than the tears distilled from his eyes. Whom
I bade good-morrow, and with that I perceived the tears upon
his cheeks. To whom I said, 'Why, Master Cromwell, what
meaneth all this your sorrow? is my lord in any danger for
whom ye lament thus? or is it for any loss that ye have sustained by aly misadventure?,'
"' Nay, nay,' quoth he, 'it is my unhappy adventure, which am
like to lose all I have travailed for all the days of my life for
doing of my master true and diligent service.' 'Why Sir,'
quoth I, 'I trust ye be too wise to commit any thing by my
lord's commandment, otherwise than ye might do of right, whereof
ye have any cause to doubt of the loss of your goods.' ' Well,
well,' quoth he; 'I cannot tell, but all things I see before mine
eyes is as it is taken; and this I understand right well, that I
am in disdain with most men for my master's sake; and surely
without just cause. Howbeit an ill name once gotten will not
be lightly put away. I never had any promotion by my lord to
the increase of my living. And thus much will I say to you,
that I intend, God willing, this afternoon when my lord hath
dined to ride to London, and so to the court, where I will either
make or mar, or I come again.'"
To the court accordingly he rides, and takes good security for
his own future preferment, and yet withal exerts himself perseveringly, and with boldness, carried as far as there was any
chance that boldness would be serviceable to lighten the fall of
his former master.
The scene of the first disgrace of Wolsey is equally reminiscent of Holinshed and Cavendish, the hint of the intercepted
letter being taken from the latter-" in so much as I heard the
King say, " How can that be: is not this your own hand? " and
plucked out from his bosom a paper or writing and showed him
the same; and........  said to him, " My lord, go to your
dinner, &c. &c."
The incidents of the fifth Act, and many of the characteristics
of Cranmer, are derived from another authority, Fox's Acts and
Monuments of the Christian Martyrs, printed in 1563; the poet
has availed himself of all these materials in the same spirit.
The quaintnesses and narrownesses of mind of the narrators fall
away before him, and he sees beyond the medium to the pure
and unperverted picture of nature, and in transferring this to the




CRITICAL ESSAY.


315


stage, it is admirable to observe how entirely he harmonises the
natural and ideal, now following with almost literal accuracy the
descriptions and speeches as he finds them, and anon sustaining
the consistency and movement of the piece by omissions, changes,
combinations, and inventions of images, incidents and passions
ever as effective as they are dextrous, daring, and imaginative.
Space presses, and yet I cannot but extract the two passages
that are found apart in Holinshed, respecting the character of
the Cardinal:" This Cardinal (as you may perceive in this 'ry) was of a
great stomach for he compted himself equal with p.-'ces, and
by crafty suggestion got into his hands innumerable treasure.
He forced little on simony and was not pitiful, and stood affectionate in his own opinion: in open presence he would lie and
say untruth, and was double both in speech and meaning: he
would promise much and perform little, he was vicious of his
body and gave the clergy evil oxamnle." P. 765.
"This Cardinal, as Edmund Campian in nls nistory of Ireland
describeth him, was a man undoubtedly born to honour: I think,
saith he, some prince's bastard, no butcher's son, exceeding wise,
fair spoken, highminded, full of revenge, vicious of his body,
lofty to his enemies were they never so big, to those that accepted
and sought his friendship wonderful courteous, a ripe schoolman,
thrall to affections, brought abed with flattery, insatiable to get
and more princely in bestowing as appeareth by his two colleges
at Ipswich and Oxford, the one overthrown with his fall, the
other unfinished, and yet as it lieth for an house of students considering all the appurtenances incomparable throughout Christendom. He held and enjoyed at once the bishoprics, &c. &c...... a great preferrer of his servants, an advancer of learning, stout in every quarrel, never happy till this his overthrow,
wherein he showed such moderation and ended so perfectly that
the hour of his death did him more honour than all the pomp of
his life passed." P. 756.
The same principle which induced Shakespeare to adhere in a
play of modern subject to the truth of history, and to copy
stage-directions for pageants literally from the Chronicle, governed his versification which frequently approaches as nearly to
the prose of ordinary intercourse as verse well may. The lines
end with unusual frequency with insignificant words and particles, the pause is constantly carried far towards the end of the
line. The construction of periods is elliptical and parenthetical
to a degree that only the inflection of conversation, but that perfectly, renders smooth and intelligible. In these respects large
portions of the play approach so nearly to the style of Fletcher
that a theory has obtained considerable currency that they were
contributed by Fletcher. The evidence of verbalism, I dare say,




316             KING    HENRY      VIII.
is decisive; but a larger consideration of the scenes and acts
thus condemned their organic dependence in spirit as well as
detail on the central conception of the piece-nay, a moment's
thought of their creative and poetic value and sustained consistency of taste as compared with any extract of like length
from Fletcher whatever, would, one should think persuade all
to renounce it who do not by natural instinct set it aside when
first propounded-with the "Tush " and "Go to " to which 1
heartily subscribe.




CRITICAL ESSAY ON TROILUS AND
CRESSIDA.
ENSLOWE'S     manuscripts show several entries of
money advanced in 1599 to Dekker and Chettle, ias
earnest of a book called Troilus and Cressida, which
appears to have been ultimately called Agamemnon.
This change of name is interesting, as it may indicate that a
drama preceding Shakespeare's had set the example of combining the intrigue of the Trojan lovers with the main action of the
Greek expedition, in a manner that even at last reduced the intrigue to an episode. The Stationers' books furnish the further
information, that at the beginning of 1603, a play of Troilus and
Cressida was being acted by Shakespeare's company, the Lord
Chamberlain's men. The entry runs "Feb. 7, 1602 (i.e. 1603
new style) Mr. Roberts. The booke of Troilus and Cresseda, as yt
is acted by my Lo. Chamberlen's men." The presumption that
this was Shakespeare's play is checked by the occurrence of an
entry to another name at a later date, namely Jany. 28, 1608-9,
corresponding to a quarto edition of his play which has come down
to us with a prefatory notice that it had never been acted. Other
copies of the same year bear a different title page with the addition of " As it was acted by the King's Majesty's Servants at
the Globe," the preface being now omitted. The natural inference appears to be, that in 1608 Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida was a new play that got into print-it is hopeless to guess
by what channel, illicit or otherwise-before it was aoted, and that
the title page was altered in the course of the year, after it had
come out upon the stage. That the play of 1602 may have been
the same play in rudimentary form would even, under this view,
be quite possible, but there is no evidence that advances it to a
probability. The text of the quarto varies but very slightly from
that of the folio, and evidently was accurately printed from a
genuine copy. The tone of the original preface of 1609 carries
with it our confidence in its averment of the untouched novelty
of the piece, and would merit reprint from its proper vivacity,
but still more from being one of the most remarkable expressions,
as judicious and pointed as enthusiastic, of contemporary appre

'1




318         TROILUS AND CRESSIDA.
ciation of the poet and his works. It will be observed that this
preface speaks of the play as a comedy; in the Stationer's entry
it is called the History of Troylus and Cressuda, and in the folio
it stands first among the Tragedies following the Histories, and
is called a tragedy in its running title. It is omitted altogether in
the table of contents, and is moreover unpaged, except on the
second and third pages, of which the numbering, as remarked by
Mr. Knight, appears to indicate that it was at first intended to be
inserted after Romeo and Juliet. But for the preface to the quarto
of 1609.
"A never writer to an ever reader,
News.
"Eternal reader, you have here a new play, never staled with
the stage, never clapper-clawed with the palms of the vulgar,
and yet passing full of the palm comical; for it is a birth of your
brain that never undertook anything comical vainly: and were
but the vain names of comedies changed for titles of commodities
or of plays for pleas, you should see all those grand censors that
now style them such vanities flock to them for the main grace of
their gravities; especially this author's comedies that are so
framed to the life, that they serve for the most common commentaries of all the actions of our lives, showing such a dexterity
and power of wit, that the most displeased with plays are pleased
with his comedies. And all such dull and heavy witted worldlings as were never capable of the wit of a comedy, coming by
report of them to his representations have found that wit that
they never found in themselves, and have parted better witted
than they came; feeling an edge of wit set upon them more than
ever they dreamed they had brain to grind it on. So much and
such savoured salt of wit is in his comedies, that they seem for
their height of pleasure, to be born in that sea that brought
forth Venus. Amongst all there is none more witty than this;
and had I time I would comment upon it, though I know it needs
not for so much as will make you think your testern well bestowed; but for so much worth as even poor I know to be stuffed in it,
it deserves such a labour as well as the best comedy in Terence
or Plautus. And believe this that when he is gone and his comedies out of sale, you will scramble for them and set up a new
English Inquisition. Take this for a warning and at the peril of
your pleasures' loss and judgments, refuse not nor like this the
less for not being sullied with the smoky breath of the multitude;
but thank fortune for the scape it hath made amongst you, since
by the grand possessors' wills I believe you should have prayed
for them rather than been prayed. And so I leave all such to
be prayed for (for the states of their wits' healths) that will not
praise it. Vale."
We need not doubt that the grand possessors referred to are
the company of players, and a little confusion of grammar leaves




CRITICAL      ESSAY.                319
it still clear enough that the company was jealous of its valuable
dramatic property getting into print, and this agrees with the
rarity of loose editions of the plays after a certain date.
The history and accidents of the text of this play resemble
those of the text of Richard III. as well as of other plays of which
quarto editions exist. The quarto of 1609 was unquestionably
used in printing the play for the folio, for its press errors are
constantly literally there reproduced. Whether an actual copy
of the quarto was in the compositor's hands, or a playhouse MS.
that had been copied from it, makes little difference, excepting
that the latter view would furnish another source of corruption,
and the copyist might bear the blame of some errors that seem
otherwise unaccountable. The printed or MS. copy of the quarto
edition employed for the folio had however some special advantages probably derived from the prompter's books, and has furnished several interesting additions. These must be adopted
wherever they occur; but otherwise the text of the quarto bears
evident marks of being nearer to the author's hand, and enables
us to correct the injuries which seem to have crept in by recopying, as well as the omissions of passages that cannot be spared,
and the unusually rank crop of press errors with which the text
of the folio is chargeable. The dispassionate criticism of the text
of Troilus and Cressida can, it seems to me, only create as much
astonishment as regret at the reactionary bibliolatry that, without even the praise of rigid consistency, has canonized the letter
of the first folio, and so large a proportion of the injuries to the
poet that, with all its advantages, it has to answer for.
The admiration expressed for this play by its first editors, has
been strangely qualified by their successors; before the century
which produced it had elapsed, Dryden (in 1679) produced an
alteration of it, professing to have "refined Shakespeare's language which before was obsolete,"-to have "improved those
characters which were begun and left unfinished," and to have
undertaken "to remove that heap of rubbish under which many
excellent thoughts lay wholly buried."  Dryden criticizes the
winding up of the piece, especially that " the chief persons who
gave a name to the tragedy are left alive," and I even meet with
apologetic suggestions that some parts, towards the conclusion,
must have been relics of a play by another hand. Coleridge avers
that there is " no one of Shakespeare's plays harder to characterize," and speaks of himself as " scarcely knowing what to say
of it," yet some shafts he launches that strike the target forcibly,
and not far wide methinks of the central eye. Lastly, Gervinus,
who can say so much to the purpose on all the plays, has a theory
to account for the fact as he assumes it to be, that "from no
Shakespearian piece does one arise so uncontented as from this."
The critics must answer for themselves; but in favour of the
poets it must be called to mind how frequently one poet has shown




320         TROILUS AND CRESSIDA.
himself unsusceptible of the spirit and ideal of another. Was
this the case with Shakespeare himself in dealing with the materials of this very play; did he misapprehend the tale of Troy
as Chapman had recently presented it in English verse; did he
designedly parody it as Schlegel supposes, and if so, was it from
inability to sympathize with the interests that engaged and animated the Greek? We can only satisfy ourselves on this head by
considering together what is the true aim and import of the play
as it appears, and what its relation to the anterior poetic sources
from which at least its incidents and accidents are derived.
Even if we had reason to adopt the earlier date of 1602 for
the play, it would stand as a production of Shakespeare's ripened
period; and setting aside the antiquarian evidence entirely, it is
manifest by internal proof, that whether it be faulty or excellent,
it was so far taken to his own approval as to be wrought up to
the highest and completest finish that the subject would bear;
the supposition of weakness in the last act has entirely arisen
from closet students failing, or being unable to realize the peculiar liveliness and dilation of the subject matter that accrues
from a succession of bustling entrances and combats in actual
representation. For the rest the contrast and relief of the succession of the scenes are managed with unerring effect; the alternations of pause and movement, the transitions from the vigorous
to the racy, and from the expansive to the terse, both in the
metrical and unmetrical scenes, sustain the interest and animate
the attention unflaggingly. Largest views of man and of his
doings, profoundest insight into the workings of nature, abound
with the fulness of the very harvest-home of an observant lifetime, and make their own expression in seeming spontaneous
eloquence. Wit, shrewdness, imaginative metaphor, are all apparent, and in such manner that they appear to be drawn from
exhaustless stores, which would as readily supply a fund of entirely contrasted resources if occasion only called for them. The
leading characteristic of the language of the play is no doubt
luxuriance, but luxuriance appropriate as it is indispensable from
the nature of the theme and the characters that are concernedtherefore as entirely under the check and severity of taste as the
strictest correctness of any ancient drama.
Thus it is that Troilus and Cressida becomes the longest as in
some respects it is the most peculiar of the plays. It is a display of the poet's most robust and adult powers, while yet it does
not display his highest capabilities; weighed indeed with such
scrutiny, it may seem as though a subject relatively unworthy to
employ his best period had been deferred until the arrival of it,
and then had the benefit of qualifications which it is incompetent
fully to employ. Wit, wisdom, insight, correctness and definite( ness of characterization are there, completest mastery of language
both in preen and verse, most absolute skill in modelling and




CRITICAL ESSAY.


321


proportioning scenes, and varying and contrasting the movement and progress of action; but the deepest passion, the purest
pathos, the most ethereal poetry, characterization the profoundest,
are as little displayed as demanded by the occasion. The style
is exuberant, abounding full and glowing with juice and vivacity and copious recuperation, and yet such is the harmony of
the style with the employment of it that there is probably no
other play in which less can be said to be redundant. Exuberant to rankness it may be, but it is the rankness of a tropical
scene, of the quick and bursting vegetation of an equatorial sun;
and foliage more sparse and growth more controlled, colours less
glowing and blooms not so expansive, would mar at once the
effect and truth of the scene. It is the perfection of its class, but
by the very conditions that restrict its pretensions to a class that
is by no means the highest.
Treatment here as elsewhere, but here conspicuously, is dependent on subject, and with and by that, if at all, it must be justified to the offended. Offence at a picture in which wantonness,
contemptibleness and scurrilousness come so conspicuously forward, claims to be touched tenderly; but if the drama assumes
the office of showing vice its own image it must face the consequences, and also the responsibility, and it was not in the age of
Elizabeth that the sensitiveness of the reserved compelled the
moralist either in the pulpit or on the stage to give immunity to
the folly and falsehood of the dissolute.
An apparent offence which may appear to some, if not more
serious, more difficult to palliate or excuse, is the profanation of
Homeric poetry in the use made of the characters and incidents
of the Iliad, and to this we shall in all due time arrive.
Troilus is mentioned only once in the Iliad, in a late book, as
one of the better sons that Priam had lost by the sword of Achilles-his death being thus referred to a period preceding the anger
and secession of the Greek chief. Later authorities reckon the
fate of Troilus-his death in youth, as one of the fatalities by
which the doom of Troy was guarded, and the subject of his
death is very frequent on the painted Greek, - the so called
Etruscan vases. He is usually represented as a boy rather than
a youth ruthlessly slaughtered by Achilles at the altar of Apollo,
or on horseback flying in dismay from the same pursuer,-hopelessly from the swift-of-foot. His sister Polyxena is frequently
introduced along with him, also in flight and letting fall a water
jar. The combination hints at the love of Achilles for Polyxena,
which afterwards led to his death at the very fane of Thymbrian
Apollo where he had slain Troilus. In a later authority Troilus
again becomes the efficient warrior he is implied to have been by
Homer, in fact another Hector. This authority is in the Latin
Epitome of the trojan war, which bears the name of Dares Phrygius as the original and contemporary writer, but was probably
y




322    TROILUS AND CRESSIDA.


composed as late as the 6th or 7th century after Christ, betraying signs, especially in the personal descriptions of the heroes
and heroines, of Byzantine source. This, far more than Homer,
was the great authority in the middle ages for the incidents of
the Trojan war, and largely was it drawn upon and liberally
expanded in the wild and weedy literature of the semi-barbarous
centuries which we perhaps fondly flatter ourselves we have escaped fiom. It is very difficult to say how much of what is most
at variance with Homer in this story may not have been derived from other Greek sources-so multifarious, so everchanging
— besides those that we can actually trace. From Dares Phrygius
descended with other streams, the Troy-boke of Lydgate and the
Destruction of Troy of Caxton, both probably known to Shakespeare, and thus the general circumstances of the war as well as
many of the particular are recognized as the same in the play
before us. Hence came the importance assigned to the Trojanl
relationship of Ajax and that of Calchas, the valour of Troilus as
survivor and successor of Hector, the intrigue of Achilles and
Polyxena, and the origin of the Rape of Helen in retaliation for
that of Hesione. The scene of Hector arming notwithstanding
the boding of his family, follows the description of Dares Phrygius exactly.
Upon this stock which roots at least in classical times, the love
intrigue of Troilus and Cressida was a true mediaeval graft; it
was of course received by Shakespeare from Chaucer, probably
the next in succession to Boccaccio, whose poem of Filostrato he
follows as closely as he liberally expands, for as to his professed
authority " mine auctor Lollius," I find none who know anything of him; he is indeed as mere a fiction as Bishop Turpin,
whose veracity was always appealed to by the minstrels of the
Paladins, when it suited them to give forth a palpable invention
as a fact.
It is usually said that no ancient author ever mentions Cressida, but this is not strictly correct, for the name is a mere corruptioni of Chryseis from the accusative Chryseida,-the Creseid
of Chaucer. Thus the Destruction of Troy substitutes the corresponding name of Briseis in the form Briseyda. In the story
of Dares there is no place for the episode that opens the Iliad,
of the solicitation of the priest Chryses for the restoration of his
daughter and her safe conduct in protection of a Greek chief, but
when Calchas had become a Trojan priest the opportunity was
manifestly spied by some careful story-teller of transferring to
him the daughter Chryseis, Cryseida, or Cressida, so that nothing
might be lost.
Chaucer's Troilus and Cressida, in five long books, is a work
remarkable for more than its length; it is exceedingly full and
diffuse, a mere modicum of incident furnishes the simplest skeleton
to the large bulk, yet slowly as the story moves it is always




CRITICAL ESSAY.


S323


moving, minute as are its details they are ever touched with
liveliness; and archness and mock simplicity, irony most delicate
in grain is thrown over the whole, and gives a fanciful glow to
descriptions of otherwise literal nature. It is here we recognize
the inspiration of much of the texture and treatment, though not
of the tone, of the Venus and Adonis and the Rape of Lucrece,
but Chaucer's poelm, I confess, despite its length and thinner imaginative colouring, is more readable, indeed is pleasantly and
easily to be read from beginning to end by those to whom leisure
and long summer days permit amusement not impatient for its end.
The Cressida of Chaucer is the same dame as the heroine
of Shakespeare, though he spares to give her the terms that she
deserves. He leaves her words and actions to tell for themselves,
and they are consistent enough to assign her true place and
niche in the descending line of troth and constancy and feminine
reserve. The poet is plaintive on his own ill-luck in a theme
unfriendly to the feminine audience he stands in awe of, he would
willingly have told a tale of Penelope or Alcestis, even offers a
faint defence and affects to retort pettishly on the men as causers
of all the mischief, soberly warning "every gentilwoman" to
beware of deceivers just as he closes a tale of female art and deception that should make the whole sex blush and cry shame
upon him.
Shakespeare, who has otherwise scarcely strengthened the leading lines of the characters, alters one circumstance in this direction,
for his Cressid is not like Chaucer's, a widow, and she thus loses
an apology, fictitious though it be, from the latitude of allurement, the privilege of the fair guild that wedded once is permitted censureless in compliment to former nuptials to indicate by
cabalism of its own a not unwillingness to wed again.
Chaucer has been no more exempt than others from the hap
of having his irony taken for earnest, but a few stanzas from the
courtship of Diomed suffice to show that he designed her coyness
as enacted and artifice-direct suggestion of the corresponding
scene in the play;-she replies to his solicitations:" Mine heart is now in tribulation,
And ye in armies busy day by day,
Hereafter when ye wonnen have the town,
Paraventure then so it happen may,
That when I see that I never ere sey,
Then will I work that I never ere wrought;
This word to you enough sufficen ought.
To-morrow eke wol I speak with you fain,
So that ye touchen nought of this matere;
And when ye list ye may come here again,
And ere ye gon thus much I say you here,
As help me Pallas, with her haires clear,




324         TROILUS AND CRESSIDA.
If that I should of any Greek have ruth,
It shoulde be yourselven by my truth.
I say not therefore that I wol you love,
Nor say not nay, but in conclusion,
I meanb well, by God that sit above.'
And there withal she cast her eyen down,
And gan to sigh and said, 'Troilus and Troy town,
Yet bid I God in quiet and in rest,
I may you seene or do my hearth brest.'
But in effect, and shortly for to say,
This Diomed all freshly new again,
Gan preasen on and fast her mercy pray,
And after this the sothb for to sain,
Her glove he took, of which he was full fain,
And finally, when it was woxen eve
And all was well, he rose and took his leave."
There is some flatness perhaps in the last book both of Chaucer
and Boccaccio, from the falsehood of Cressida being conveyed to
Troilus at second-hand, by hearsay, cold letters, and conclusively
only by his love tokens being captured with the equipments of
Diomed. Shakespeare relieved this by carrying himpersonally
to the Greek tents.
The actual conclusion of Chaucer's poem is replete with spirit
generally in both conception and execution, but in no point more
so than in the compensation allotted to Troilus, less it must be
said for his merit, than for his simplicity and suffering. It is
after his troubles are over with his life that he rises superior to
the false loves and poor passions and pride of a low world, and
beholds the better end of existence.
"And when that he was slain in this manere,
His lighte ghost full blissfully is went
Up to the hollowness of the seventhe sphere
In his place leting everyche element,
And there he saw with full avisement,
The erratic sterres hearkening harmony
With sownes full of heavenis melody.
And downe from thennce fast he gan avise,
This little spot of earth that with the sea
Embraced is, and fully gan despise
This wretched worlde, and held all vanity
In respecte of the plaine felicity
That is in heaven above, and, at the last
There he was slaine, his looking down he cast.
And in himself he lough right at the woe
Of hem that wepten for his deathe so fast,




CRITICAL ESSAY.


325


And damned all our werkes that followeth so
The blinde luste whiche that may not last;
And shulden all our heart on heaven cast;
And forthe he went shortly for to tell,
There as Mercurie sorted him to dwell."
Shakespeare evidently was struck with this termination, and
adopted and realized the essence of it in his last act. Here a few
light strokes indicate how the mind of the youth who had noble
capabilities, green goose though he appears, gradually rights itself. At first, after the discovery, he can even speak of himself
as continuing to love Cressida:" Hark, Greek, as much as I do Cressida love,
So much by weight hate I her Diomed."
Still later he can still take her letter and read it, though now
with sharpened apprehensiveness he reads her falsehood in it
and tears it up. His last weakness is special enmity to Diomed
in the field from the baser rivalry, but the heat and warmth of
patriotic exertion banish the latest clouds, and when again they
cross in mortal encounter he has forgotten Cressida and owns a
nobler motive:" 0 traitor, Diomed!-turn thy false face, thou traitor,
And pay thy life thou ow'st me for — my horse!"
Diomed, it may be said, is still remembered for his treachery;
but the last thought of all vanishes on the death of Hector, and
in a speech equally touching and resolute Troilus devotes him*self-as all are supposed to know, fatally-to the avenging his
cowardly death upon Achilles, and the play ends; the dignifying
point was missed by Chaucer, as well as his repulse, not in disappointment but uncontrollable disgust, of the coupler Pandarus.
Troilus is the youngest of Priam's numerous sons, and the
passion of which he is the victim is the bare instinctive impulse
of the teens, the form that first love takes when crossed by an
unworthy object, which might have been that of Romeo had
Rosalind not overstood her opportunity. It is his age that explains how, notwithstanding his high mental endowments, he is
so infatuated as to mistake the planned provocation of Cressida's
coyness for stubborn chastity, and to allow himself to be played
with and inflamed by her concerted airs of surprise and confusion when at last they are brought together. He is quite as
dull in apprehending the character of Pandarus, and complains
of his tetchiness to be wooed to woo, when in fact he is but
holding off in the very spirit of his niece and affecting reluctance
in order to excite solicitation.  Boccaccio furnished some of
the lines of this characterization to Chaucer, but Chaucer gave
them great development in handing them down to Shakespeare.
Troilu', is preserved from the ridiculousness that pursues the
dupea of coquettes of so debased a stamp as Cressida, by the




326


TROILUS AND CRESSIDA.


allowances that untried youth bespeaks, and by the spirit and
gallantry that promises the coming self-recovery, the first process of which appears in the control he imposes on his anger
and impatience when he looks on at the scene of her falseness,
and is completed as we have seen. Still our sympathies are but
moderately engaged for him, for what can we say of him but
that he is young and a fool-though heroes have been so before
and since, fit to be played with and played upon by ajade who only
tantalizes him that he may cease to be shy. Hie is the subjected
slave of an intoxication that makes him insensible to the debasement of admitting such a worm as Pandarus into the very presence of what should be the sanctities of love. The ungenuineness of the love that is in question is self-betrayed when in the
first declaration, as in the latest parting, he angles for and invites assurances of faithfulness which it is not in the nature of
things should be either convincing or true.
The long scene between Cressida and Pandarus is but another
exhibition of the same art of stimulating reluctance or hesitation,
as she pertinaciously foils the pertinacious go-between in his recommendations of Troilus, only at last to bespeak his services
more certainly in bringing him to her:" Pandarus. I'll be with you, niece, by and by.
Cressida. To bring, uncle,Pand. Ay, a token from Troilus."
The inspiration of Shakespeare is due here less to Chaucer than
to Homer, and he has caught exactly the intention so often mis-.
understood, of the pert reply of Helen to the inviting Aphrodite
on the Trojan walls, and of the sulkiness and taunts unsustained
and not intended to be sustained, with which she greets her
fugitive lover, when" Full in her Paris' sight the queen of love
Had placed the beauteous progeny of Jove."
This then was the aspect of human nature, that Shakespeare,
struck by the suggestive truthfulness of Chaucer's poem,-this
episode of the tale of Troy, determined to make the subject of a
play. But he saw that this episode was capable of being made
an exponent of the spirit of the tale of Troy at large, regarded
in a certain aspect, and that aspect and point of view which
enabled him to give the utmost fulness and fitness to his scene
he did not hesitate to take up. Certainly it is difficult at first to
restrain a feeling of indignation at the travestie he thus commits
himself to, of the grand Homeric characters of Ajax, Achilles, and
Patroclus; there is something of profanation in a poet attempting to add to such complete heroic delineations even in the
worthiest spirit, how much more so then in his boldly changing
and reversing them altogether. Of course, it is quite clear that
Shakespeare well knew that Ajax and Achilles were not n the




CRITICAL ESSAY.


327


Iliad the blockheads and bullies it suits him to make their.;
the change was deliberate, was it malicious?  Did Shakespf re,
whose deficiency in Greek was notorious, indulge himsee       by
showing how substantially le could embody a 1Greek subject,
taking for his experiment that of the noblest Greek-the world's
noblest poem, and purposely degrading and vulgarizing it? This
I do not think was his leading motive, or that lie admitted it at
all; he started from the subject of Troilus and Cressida with
whatever crudity, not to say coarseness of motive, clings to it,
and then modified the story of the Iliad to comlpose withl it and
with its genius, and turned indiscriminately to  Iomer or Lydgate as one or the other furnished available material. His satire
passes over the literary antecedent and attaches to the world, the
spectators, human life of any period, so far as its image is reflected in the mirror-never was mirror more lucid, that he holds
up.  It is remarkable, indeed, how closely Shakespeare coincides
with the summary which Horace, ages before him, gave of the
action of the Iliad,-strengthening only and exaggerating as required in the interest of his theme:" Fabula, qua Paridis propter narratur amo:ret
Grtecia Barbarioe lento collisa duello,
Stultorum regulm et populorunm continet testuts.
Antenor censet belli pracidere causaln:
Quid Paris? ut salvus regnet, vivatque beatus,
Cogi posse negat. Nestor componere lites
Inter Peliden festinat et inter Atreiden;
Hunc amor, ira quidelm conmmuniter urit utltrin(le;
Quicquid delirant reges, plectuntur Achivi.
Seditione, dolis, scelere, atque libidine, et ira,
Iliacos intra muros peccatur, et extra."
Shakespeare extends his love story over precisely the period
and crisis of the war contained in the Iliad, commencing fiom the
secession of Achilles and ending with his return and the sealed
fate of Troy in the death of her great defender.  The attack of
the city is prolonge  and      ld ad disabled by weaknesses of the same
kind as relax the defence. Paris and Troilus arm for the field or
disarm and stay at home according to the varying humours of
their ladyloves, as Helen dissuades or Cressida is incomprehensible, and if Hector arms in haste and anger it is to vindicate
his honour rather than save his country.  So the debate on the
proposed surrender of Helen sways uncertainly to be decided by
the motives of dignity of the rashest of the youth; Hector rouses
the Greeks from sloth, that he ought to rejoice at, by a challenge
which he carries out as if war were a May-game, and loses his
life and his country at last by ill-timed delicacy in attacking
Achilles on merely even terms, and exhausting his strength imprudently and even after warning still more by pursuit of a




328         TROILUS AND CRESSIDA.
painted armour, and at last the nerves of the Trojans are only
str  x to really desperate exertion when it is in fact too late.
In. the Greek camp Achilles desists from war like Troilus, from
Whe motive of a love intrigue, and faction divides and disables
the whole armament. The same trifling that prolongs the siege
of Cressida, if we should not rather say of Troilus, lingers on the
tedious siege of Troy itself, both in attack and defence; and
the course of the drama brings forward into sight how keener
insight and persevering purpose, by their own power and engaging the favours of fortune, shorten up sequences that otherwise
were interminable.
The nature of Cressida, so unknown to Troilus, is seen through
at once by Ulysses, and declared for what it is, and her arts
that tantalized the Trojan so long are only exerted upon Diomed
to be met with equal art and signally discomfited. Achilles in
his way would be as provokingly coy as Cressid if he had the
wit, and is vainly wooed by the Greek commanders to quit his
tent, but they are better masters of the weapon, and by the trick
of setting up Ajax in opposition to him, and treating him with
well assumed indifference, sharpen his emulation and stimulate
his pride as effectively as the eagerness of Troilus is whetted by
the mock reserve of Cressida.
In the play, as so frequently in life, the honours of success
fall to the share of those who deserved it, but in a mode they
neither expected nor influenced. The purposes of Agamemnon,
Ulysses and Nestor, have been sustained throughout and well
pursued, and though as Thersites says, their policy promises little
fruit from circumstances running cross, others arise that give full
compensation. The trifling that they strove against brings on
consequences that aid them shrewdly. Achilles is roused by the
death of Patroclus and slaughter of his Myrmidons, Ajax also
suffers for his absence, and is also roused by the loss of a friend.
This is the same motive that gives the last force to the singlethoughted resolution of Troilus, and thus the play appropriately
ends when on either side the levities and frivolousnesses that
had drawn out to ten years' length the desultory and harassing
war, are finally disposed of, and the decisive contest and crash of
fully collected and determined powers is at last prepared for.
Shakespeare has recognized all the contrasts marked by Homer,
though from the nature of his design he has also exaggerated
most of them or largely modified them. The Phrygian character
is as distinct from the Greek in the drama as in the epos, but
to the lightness and frivolousness and laxity of morals and purpose of the ancients the modern player has added characteristics
from the middle ages, the motive of gallantry hovering in expression between the romantic and the material, and the parade
of honour half fantastic, yet also with a touch of nobleness. The
terms of Hector's challenge remind of that which the Earl of




CRITICAL ESSAY.


329


Essex in 1591-the French called him the English Achilles,
sent to the governor of Rouen, to decide which was the better
man, fought for the better cause, or served the fairer mistress.
Villars declined the challenge on the sensible ground of his
public charge, but in gross terms "shocking to men of the sword."
He gave the challenger the lie on all his points, but added as to
the beauty of their mistresses, that " toutefois ce n'estoit pas chose
dont il se mist fort en peine pour cette heure la."  The challenge
came just in time to have been called Quixotic, and Shakespeare
evidently thought of it much as his great contemporary Cervantes
might have done. Phrygian valour accordingly loses some coarseness at the expense of more efficiency, as Phrygian counsels also
pass by policy for the sake of sentiment.
In the greeting of ~Eneas and Diomed-not unreminiscent of
that of Glaucus and Diomed, we have a glimpse of a more genuine
and moderated gallantry that gives the tone and scale of weaker
or coarser variations.
Paris entertains with unruffled politeness and complacency the
plainspoken truth which Diomed bestows on the character of
Helen, and with like Phrygian indifference Hector addresses
Menelaus in the truce with a light allusion to his wife, but meets
a short rebuff.
The Greek councillors debate apart from the warriors who are
made instruments, not allowed as at Troy to sway all. The
roystering challenge of Hector is turned carefully and skilfully
to account. Ajax and Achilles in their contempt for the councillors are as contrasted with them as with each other in apprehensiveness, and again are in still broader contrast with the
warriors of Troy. Ajax has none of the delicate scruples of relationship of Hector, and Achilles none of Hector's courtesy in
truce or chivalrous demeanour in the field. He utters the coarsest
threats to his guests, and takes the advantage of numbers and
opportunity with extremest unscrupulousness, and insults even
the dead.
The sternness and strictness of Greek counsel and Greek purpose triumph at last, and the war is favourably concluded by
that conjoint exertion that the first Greek council plotted to
lring about. True the direct solicitation of Achilles, true the
excitement of his emulation of Ajax failed to bring him into the
field, and even sent Ajax out of it,-but the end is ever kept in
view, striven for by what means offer, and when the end, as in
the ancient poem, comes by another path, it seems as invited and
attracted by the sympathy that lives in moral fitness.
Thersites,-the idealization of scurrility as Pandarus of much
that is worse,-Thersites is the general chorus, and strips bare
and points with contemptuous finger at the imperfections and
inconsistencies of all. In the Iliad he represents demagogy in
its most repulsive and therefore most detrimental form. He
injures the best of causes by the worst of advocacies. Aga



330          TROILUS AND CRESSIDA.
memnon, possessed with the idea of activity independently of the
insulted Achilles, propounds a divine incitement, which Nestor
pretty plainly hints that only respect for authority and hardly
that makes him admit, and he then plans to excite the army to
warlike zeal by artfully pretending disgraceful slackness. This
is the same trick which at a later period he plays off upon the
kings themselves to rouse them to renewed exertions. The
speech of Thersites, however, plainly indicates that he penetrates the whole plot and its motives also, and thus the page was
certainly read by Shakespeare. Nevertheless the crowd for whose
behoof he spake, and who are being led or lured like cattle to
their destruction by the kings, applaud when Ulysses administers
to him at once both threats and thrashing. Something of the
same effect is produced by his prominence in the play; he assails
so venomously and vilely whatsoever is venomous and vile that
the sympathies rebel at such unclean alliance, and we regain
some fellow-feeling with the objects of repugnant denunciations;
we fly back upon an appreciation of what there is of soundness
in the characters of Troilus, Ulysses and the rest, and but for the
aid of this reactionary contrast, the depicture of the failings of the
heroes must have been touched much more lightly, and much of
the boldness that makes the general effect, lost entirely.
The contrast which Shakespeare marks so definitely between
the sages and the warriors, he found in the Iliad; but there
marked with a delicacy that has too often caused it to escape
less happy apprehensions. It is quite clear, for instance, from his
adaptation of the motive, that he caught the true spirit of the long
speech of Nestor to Patroclus, which even a critic so discerning
as Colonel Mure can refer to as senile and inopportune prolixity.
Dimmed and distorted as the speech appears through the uneven medium of Chapman's translation, its admirable art and
appropriateness was seized by the dramatist. This is not the
place to illustrate it at large, but it suffices to say that every
sentence of it bears upon the purpose it aims at and effects, as
Nestor, despairing of recalling Achilles to the field, endeavours
to regain at least Patroclus, and recounts his own youthful
achievements to excite him to emulation, and chooses precisely
those that have a correspondence with the existing conjunction,
and suggest the glory of recovering a fainting host, and the
chance of compensating by sudden outburst for long enforced
idleness, perhaps, by snatching the very success that Achilles is
most eager for, the conquest of Hector. Certainly the artful
words with which Ulysses works upon Achilles at the door of his
tent, with all their power, are not comparable in genius to this
matchless example of eloquence the most refined and efficient,
yet withal most unsuspected, and still I could believe that
Shakespeare was minded to emulate it, to the extent that the
inferior natures he was bound by his theme to delineate, gave
scope and opportunity for.




CRITICAL ESSAY.


331


The most important points of contact then between the play
and the epos are, the general coincidence of plan which so
happily unites the Homeric pathos of the fate and funeral of
Hector with Chaucer's climax of the ennobled spirit of Troilus,the contrast of the contending nations of Phrygia and Greece,
their genius and governments, the state swayed by the secret
management of the elders, and that controlled by the heat and
passions of the young,-and the general policy and spirit in
which this management is brought to bear by older and wiser
heads upon the less artificial impulses of the arm and heart of
the soldierly.
Beyond this it is most extraordinary to remark how many of
the subsidiary incidents of the Iliad are worked up into the composition that from another point of view seems entirely imbued
with the spirit, and furnished forth with the details of the mediasval poets and romance writers.
I refer at random to allusions to the combat of Paris with
Menelaus and his return worsted, the Catalogue and Teichoscopia,
the combat of Hector and Ajax and its harmless close, their encounter in the battle and Hector struck down, the separation of
the armies by night, Hector's anticipation of the result of meeting Achilles unarmed and proposing truce, the arrival of new
kings at Troy, pursuit of _AEneas by Diomed, Achilles scanning
Hector, and the Myrmidons admiring yet insulting the mighty
corse, the scanning of mutual presence by Achilles and Priam,
the illustration of the grief for Hector by the misery of bereaved
Niobe, and so forth; lastly, as illustrative of the Homeric Achilles,
I quote the description from Chapman of the amusements of his
retirement which Shakespeare for a purpose transformed into the
coarse mockeries of the monarch and fool of a contemporary court.
The supplicant embassy approaches his tent:" The quarter of the Myrmidons they reached, and found him set,
Delighted with his solemn harp, which curiously was fret
With works conceited; through the verge the bawdrick that
embraced
His lofty neck was silver twist; this, when his hand laid waste
ACtion's city he did choose as his especial prize;
And loving sacred music well made it his exercise.
To it he sung the glorious deeds of great heroes dead;
And his true mind that practice failed, sweet contemplation fed.
With him alone and opposite, all silent sat his friend,
Attentive and beholding him who now his song did end.
Th' ambassadors did forwards press, renowned Ulysses led,
And stood in view: their sudden sight his admiration bred;
Who with his harp and all arose: so did Menetius' son
When he beheld them: their receipt Achilles thus begun:
Health to my lords!"




332          TROILUS AND CRESSIDA.
It is impossible, however, to wish that Shakespeare had stood
upon more ceremony in substituting coarseness for the refinement
of the Greek, for it would have cost us this equally wonderful
and admirable play. The poetry of Homer can fully protect and
vindicate itself, and is far above interfering with what pleasure
we may find in compositions that imply a satire upon it, or assume
superiority either in the severe tone of Dante, or the self-mocking playfulness of Chaucer's own moral to his heathen story:"Lo! here of Paynim's cursed olde rites!
Lo! here what all their Goddbs may avail!
Lo! here this wretched worldes appetites!
Lo! here the fine and guerdon for travaile
Of Jove, Apollo, Mars and such raskaile! "
Hard words! but more easily to be digested perhaps by the
most devoted admirer of antiquity, than by others may be the
expressions and tone that so often leave us in doubt how far
Chaucer looked upon the subject matter of his own creed in
more reverent light than as simply another more complicated my -
thology.




CRITICAL ESSAY ON CORIOLANUS.


ORIOLANUS is one of those plays for the text of
which we have no other authority than the first folio
 edition of 1623, in which it originally appeared. Criticism thus loses some of its aids, and is spared some of
its perplexities; we have to make the best of a single authority
instead of adjudicating on several, none so good or so bad as to
find their own place and level: certainly the play has thus
escaped one of the most fertile sources of corruption, the editorial
caprice of taking any reading from any of the authorities preferred at random, and barring all protests of rhythm or reason
by a figment for a ground of preferableness. Experience however renders it too certain that the single impression of the folio
cannot be relied on for exemption from compositors' lapses,omissions of paragraphs, lines and the like, to say nothing of misreadings. The lack of one line is evident from the broken and
bleeding construction, and others may have dropped more secretly;
and more than one important passage, after all the triumphs of
editorial sagacity, is still in a condition that makes us sigh for the
assistance of quarto copy for rescue or at least for confirmation.
The great source of the play is as simple as the authority for
its text: it bears throughout the patent reminiscences of the life
of Caius Marcius Coriolanus, in the translation of Plutarch by Sir
Thomas North. This translation which was made from the French
of Auriol, Bishop of Auxerre, and frankly confessed itself to be so,
was published in folio in 1579. It furnished materials and motives
for Shakespeare's other Roman plays, Julius Ccesar and Antony and
Cleopatra, as well as for Timon of Athens, all dating no doubt long
after its publication, but all uncertain within considerable range
of time. No allusion has been recovered to any previous play on
the subject of Coriolanus, and as we compare the biography with
the drama it gave rise to, while we wonder at and admire the
mastery with which the crude confusion of mingled history and
tradition is brought into form and order, we marvel no less at the
exhaustless stores of thought and poetry which furnish germinative vigour and luxuriance to its hardest and dryest grains of
vitality, and can scarcely believe that we are not at the harvest



334


CORIOLANUS.


ing of all that had been ever written and digested, or could be
said of the relative positions of democracy and aristocracy. Nevertheless I find only one indication of another literary source, and
this of a very subordinate nature. Malone points out that the
Apologue of Shakespeare's Menenius bears as evident traces of
Obligations to Camden's Remains concerning Great Britain, &c.
as to North's Plutarch. If this be so, it fixes the date of the play
at least after 1605, which is in every way probable-more so, I
think, than that the coincidences are due to Camden's memory
of the play. However it be, they are thus exhibited:" There was a time when all the body's members
Rebelled against the belly; thus accused it:That only like a gulph it did remain
In the midst of the body, idle and unactive,
Still cupboarding the viand, never bearing
Like labour with the rest; where the other instruments
Did see and hear, devise, instruct, walk, feel
And, mutually participate, did minister
Unto the appetite and affection common
Of the whole body. The belly answeredTrue is it, my incorporate friends, quoth he,
That I receive the general food at first:-............bu t  if  y ou   do   rem em b er
I send it through the rivers of the blood,
Even to the court the heart, to the seat of the brain," &c.
Thus Plutarch by the mouth of North,-" On a time all the
members of a man's body did rebel against the belly, complaining
of it that it only remained in the middest of the body without
doing anything, neither did bear any labour to the maintenance
of the rest; whereas all other parts and members did labour
painfully and were very careful to satisfy the appetites and desires
of the body. And so the belly all this notwithstanding laughed
at their folly, and said, It is true I first receive all meats that
nourish man's body; but afterwards I send it again to the nourishment of other parts of the same. Even so, quoth he,-(Menenius)
O you my masters and citizens of Rome," &c. More racily in
Camden thus:-" All the members of the body conspired against
the stomach, as against the swallowing gulph of all their labours;
for whereas the eyes beheld, the ears heard, the hands laboured,
the feet travelled, the tongue spake, and all parts performed their
functions; only the stomach lay idle and consumed all. Hereupon they jointly agreed all to forbear their labours, and to pine
away their lazy and public enemy. One day passed over, the
second followed very tedious, but the third was so grievous to
them all that they called a common council. The eyes waxed
dim, the feet could not support the body, the arms waxed lazy
and could not lay open the matter. Therefore they all with one
accord desired the advice of the heart. There Reason laid open
before them," &c.




CRITICAL ESSAY.


335


Here we trace a sympathy with the protest of the citizen:"Your belly's answer? What!
The kingly crowned head, the vigilant eve,
The counsellor heart, the arm our soldier,
Our steed the leg, the tongue our trumpeter,
With other muniments and petty helps
In this our fabric, if that they,.....
It is with regret that I pass from the question of the date of
the play with so unsatisfying result, but as matters stand there
is no help for it. Not alone the excellence of the play in itself
renders it desirable to fix it to a year, but from the subject matter
of it there would be great interest and instruction in knowing
precisely the current page of contemporary history that was open
before the dramatist when he embodied in living action this
illustration of the virtues and the vices that are shared and contrasted in the factions of the many and the few.
The history of the Roman republic furnishes the grandest and
most pronounced example of the contest of democracy and aristocracy that the recorded movement of the world can show. The
strength of the opposing forces, the steadfastness and duration of
the struggle, the vast events which it influenced, hastened, or
retarded, the general scale of the entire movement, and the consequences of its results still visible in the condition of the states
of Europe, all invest it with an importance that tells upon the
sympathies as strongly as it engages the attention of the reason.
At the commencement of the story the patricians are separated
fiom the plebeians by jealous purity of blood and by political
privileges that have the strongest sanction in admitted claims to
superior competence for the worship of the gods, the interpretation
to a superstitious people of the ominous expressions of divine
favour and angel, and for the declaration and decision of all
principles and applications of moral obligation and duty. The
great securities for the conservation of these privileges and the
advantages consequent, depended on the masterly skill with which
the superstitions of the many were played upon and promoted,
and then on the high efficiency with which such great powers
were wielded for the furtherance of objects deeply at heart to the
whole of the community, the extension of the power and wealth
of the state and the condition of this,-its security against
numerous, close and powerful enemies. But the same ambition
and corporate spirit that gave the patricians a stimulus to zeal
and self-devotion in the service of the state, and that often
guided them to the best and safest even when most distasteful
counsels, in less favourable instances brought them into collision
with the subordinate class, and would have rendered oppression
intolerable even though sympathetic emulation had not helped
to rouse resistance. The contest goes on through the centuries.
but ever with advantage on the side of the plebeians, who wrest
one privilege after another, until the distinctions of blood are lost,




336


CORIOLANUS.


and a new phase supervenes which is not to our purpose at present;-the quarrel of base and noble passes into that between
rich and poor and thence onward, the inevitable tendency towards
democracy, which would seem to be the leading law of history, being ever foiled and disappointed at the crisis of its fullest triumphs
by the law, equally constant, of the requirements by society of
certain qualifications in its governing class and ruling or dominant minds, of some largeness of view, acutenesses of perception,
certain persistencies of purpose, and a capacity for refinement and
embellishment, that democracy hitherto has failed in providing
for any length of time, and has to learn to provide if it ever
aspires to realize not only dignity but even endurance.
The story of Coriolanus fixes the history at what is perhaps its
most characteristic if not most important crisis,-when the pride
of class is still instinct with the pride of blood, when the privileged are not inured to concession beyond the hope of recovery,
and when the intruders upon new rights are still neither confident in the safety nor accustomed to the enjoyment of their
encroachments. The anxiety of both parties is wound up to the
highest, and the crisis is really decided at a moment that the excitement of boiling passion persuades all that it is still to be
battled about. Bitter recollections and fierce designs are in wild
agitation, the exponents of every feeling that has been excited
in the fray; but to the practised eye the commotion is in process
of exhaustion, and the convulsion at last subsiding.
The picture of the commotions of the republic exhibits also the
qualities that restraining those commotions within limits, excluded the last violences of faction and allowed the progress of
the state in its imperial career notwithstanding. We see the
regulating as well as the exciting powers and principles,-we see
the more clearly therefore what danger is ever in waiting, and by
the relaxation of what moral restraint it will be fatally admitted,
with equal misery, whether by the popular or the patrician side.
Rome is preserved from cleaving in the midst by the virtues
of the state, the reverence for the political majesty which pervades both the contending parties. The senate averts the last
evil by timely concession of the tribunitian power first, and then
by sacrifice of a favourite champion of their own order, rather
than civil war shall break out and all go to ruin in quarrel for
the privilege and supremacy of a part. Rather than this they
will concede, and trust to temporizing, to negotiating, to management, to the material influence of their position and the effect of
their own merits and achievements, to secure their power or recover it hereafter. Among the people, on the other hand, there
is also a restraining sentiment, a religion that holds back from the
worst abuses of successful insurrection or excited faction. The
proposition to kill Marcius is easily given up. Even the tribunes
are capable of being persuaded to forego the extremity of rancour
against the enemy of the people, and of their authority, when he




CRITICAL ESSAY.


337


is fairly in their power, and commute death for banishment, and
the victory achieved, they counsel tranquillity, as Menenius on
the other hand softens down and all goes on smoothly again,
like a reconciled household, after experience of the miseries of
adjusting wrongs by debate and anger. The great example of
this self-sacrifice to the interests of country is in the conduct of
Volumnia: the Volscians anticipate that the divided city will be
more divided by approach of the exiled patrician, but within
Rome there is no hint of such a possibility; some impatience of
the people against the tribunes is natural, but the tribunes with
all their faults take their humiliation not ignobly, and the
nobles never for a moment dream of getting a party triumph by
foreign aid. The danger of the country engrosses all, and at
last Volumnia presses upon her son the right and the noble, and
employs all the influences of domestic and natural affectionbut all entirely to the great political and national end, and is as
disregardful of the fortunes or interests of the aristocratical party,
which might have hoped to seize the opportunity for recovering
lost ground, as she is apparently unaware, unconscious, regardless of what may be the consequence personally to her muchloved son. If she urges upon him that he may save Rome and
yet not betray the Volscians, it is rather from a feeling that his
sentiment of political honour requires to be satisfied, than as
hinting or apprehending that he is casting about for an outlet
of individual escape and scathelessness.
We perceive clearly what saves the state,-so clearly that we
must be blind not to see what will or may destroy it.
The selfish and personal impulses of a Coriolanus in an age
when corruption has sapped the domestic virtues and the sacred
influences of the old Roman heroism of the hearth, will no longer
meet with a check in the moral opinion of the circle of social intercourse, which gives ruling tone even to commanders of armies
and expeditions, and decides the conditions under respect to which
they care to be glorious. Then comes the time that a Sulla
floods the forum with a deluge of citizens' blood,-as when tribunitian power comes to be wielded by mere unscrupulousness,
Marius decimates the aristocracy. And when a union is effected
of the forces of popular numbers with the prestige and the fortune and the accomplishments of aristocracy, and a Caesar pursues
his personal ambition at any cost to his opponents, at the risk of
whatever disorders in the state,-then ripens fatally the fruit of
which we see the germ in the liability of an ignorant democracy
to be guided and cajoled and exasperated by false leaders, and
Menenius with his apologue, and Volumnia with her lesson of
flattery and fawning and deception, are the forerunners of the
adventurers who mastered all such arts to their admiration, but
employed them for ends from which they would have shrunk
with horror.
z




338


CORIOLANUS.


In the meantime public affairs are in a condition which, with
all its irregularity and uneasiness, expresses a healthier vigour,
and the coarser heroism and harsher manners of old Rome are
tempered and controlled by robust virtues and policy of inferior
grade of sophistication, and a crisis is successfully overcome in
a manner to seal the title of the city to give the world the
grandest example of largely organized and still self-regulated
polity.
The expulsion of Coriolanus is proof and witness of the young
vitality of the body politic, which is able thus harmlessly and
decisively to extrude an element that is inimical; for Coriolanus
is a type of all the trouble and mischief that befel the Republic
in ensuing years, from the traitorous selfishness of otherwise well
meriting servants that it retained within its bosom. Yet even
the egotism of Coriolanus, which urges him to abet the enemies
of'his country for the sake of revenge, never suggested a thought
of erecting a tyranny, and even retained him zealous and satisfied
in an inferior military command. It is a mere calumnious imagination of the tribune that he had any artful motive for preferring the second place;-it is quite clear that this is but part of his
habitual loyalty to the aristocratic system which he bows to
readily and instinctively, so long as it is true to what he conceives to be its proper genius as well as only safety.
The state of affairs represented in the play is much on this
wise;-hemmed about by powerful, jealous, and vigilant enemies,
the interest of the Roman state demands most firm internal
union, at a moment that general discontent as to the relative
dependence of high and low is heightened to verge of violence
by the fertile cause of popular insurrections, a dearth for which
no one is accountable, though friendliness to the people or the
reverse may be shown in solicitude for its alleviation. Under
this pressure the governing class purchases domestic peace by a
concession of a share of power to the people represented by their
tribunes, which seriously maims their previous supremacy and
might suggest to the coolest mistrust for the consequences, on
account of mistrust of the nature of the now emancipated people.
The step has admitted them fully into partnership, and, according to Marcius, this was the first error; his alternative was the
massacre that is and has been no doubt effective in such cases,
if we do not scrutinize ulterior results; he would slaughter the
slaves ruthlessly by thousands, and thus evade the danger ot
entrusting them with power. He contemns like other patricians
the "beastly plebeians," and shrinks from their proximity with
personal disgust at associations of coarseness, foulness, and unculture both of body and mind. There is no doubt too much that
is true in both his insults and apprehensions, but his violence is
exhibited as no less coarse and disorderly than the plebeian riot;
his expedients for remedy as reckless and one-sided, he is to the
full as difficult to be persuaded and guided by the cooler and




CRITICAL ESSAY.


339


wiser, and after the assent of his judgment has been attained he
is even more ready to change his mind by sudden impulse, and
renounce the awe that restrains the members of a single commonwealth from preying on each other. Nay, it is he himself, who
taxes the commonalty with falseness and fickleness, who proposes
when opportunity and passion conspire, to revoke the sanctioned
concession and put the quarrel again to the arbitrement of intestine contest and the civil sword. At the commencement of
the play the city is in danger from the rabble as at the conclusion from the resentment of the individual, and the mob relaxes at the dexterous persuasiveness of Menenius almost as
opportunely as Coriolanus at the critical appeal of his mother;
but the citizens with a better cause and fairer intent acquire a
true advance in liberty, while the fortunes and life of the noble
are as justly as irrevocably wrecked.
The subjection of the popular power to the senatorial by main
force having been repudiated, it remains to administer the state
under the new conditions of joint powers which may mutually
neutralize each other, a problem the more difficult at the commencement when the recently elevated officials are still mistrustful
of designs to subvert them. Here the utter incompatibility of the
principles and habits,-the nature of Marcius with the modified
institutions breaks forth. The difficulty is partly due to the vices
of his own nature, partly to those of the democracy. His own pride,
imperiousness and spirit of class, would have disabled him from
working kindly with any democracy whatever, and it is quite as
difficult to perceive how such a democracy could be co-operated
with to any effect, with the preservation of self-respect demanded
by a thoroughly dignified nature. Here, as elsewhere and for
ever, the incongruity that opens the quarrel between the spirit of
man and the work he has to do, grounds ultimately on the present condition of incongruousness between them; the work is
unfitted for the tool and the tool for the work, and it wears itself out and is destroyed in the conflict, having done its utmost
and its best when it yields at least a lightened labour to a successor. " How you talk," exclaimed a moralist within hearing
of my early days to an elder subject of admonition, " it is our
part to struggle and not to complain, which only distracts one;
God bless me, we were not sent into this world to whistle and
sing!"  Even so, we have lungs that require fresh air and foul
is around us, and the foul it is our duty to inhale even were it
possible to fly from it, for only by the venture and its penalty
will the marish miasma be abated; meantime it is not a low
ambition to become capable of satisfaction in having helped the
chance for others to whistle and sing in our places and more
pleasantly hereafter.
The dignity of Marcius is rescued sufficiently to sustain and
vindicate our interest in him, by contrast with those who attempt
the solution of the problem which he repudiates and recoils from.




340


CORIOLANUS.


The populace are admitted to power, and others make up their
minds that there is now nothing for it but to submit to learn to
lead those who will no longer be driven. But it is the very
aptness of the rabble to be led that rouses the indignation of
Marcius, because he contemns, and not unjustly, those whom
they follow as leaders; and, inasmuch as justly or unjustly he
hates and despises the people, for him to give them fair words
were fawning and hypocrisy, and what else is it in other patricians
who share his sentiments at heart. Prudence and policy it may
be named perhaps, but the sympathies rebel against the judgment, and if to the "let them hang" of her son, Volumnia can
respond, "Ay, and burn too," we are naturally attracted to the
consistency that disdains to be "false to his nature," that fears
to contaminate his mind by infection from baseness of bodily
abasement," rather than to the well instructed monitress of popular
fraud who teaches:" I pr'ythee now, my son,
Go to them, with this bonnet in thy hand;
And thus far having stretched it (here be with them),
Thy knee bussing the stones (for in such business
Action is eloquence, and the eyes of the ignorant
More learned than their ears), waving thy head
Which often, thus, correcting thy stout heart,
Now humble as the ripest mulberry
That will not bear the handling; or say to them," &c.
Outspokenness and directness, even harshness and contumely,
when they express the heart, have a glory of their own when contrasted with simulation and duplicity-with conspiracy and fraud.
Hence the certain brightness and grandeur given to the figure of
Coriolanus, fate-marked as he is by the pride that ever goes
before a fall,-the rashness that bespeaks destruction, by relief
upon the background of envious and base-minded and intriguing
tribunes. For the tribunes' solicitude to keep intact and uninfringed the authority of their office what blame can attach?
what to their just apprehension of jeopardy at the hand of Marcius? but here again a justifiable end of self-preservation and
fulfilment of trust invites,-if we dare not say necessitates, the
employment of means worse to a noble nature than bereavement
of any end whatever. Not without provocation then, but still
with base fraud and contrivance, the tribunes mark the weakness
of him they deem their natural enemy, and bring him by open
irritation and underhand practice to his destruction. The facility
with which Coriolanus is thrown off his guard, and roused to uncontrollable and desperate rage, is a weakness that places him at
the mercy of every enemy who is at all self-collected, and seems
almost to degrade him below the dignity of the lowest range of
the heroic character. Hence the inferiority of his nature-as in
many other respects, to that of Achilles, who, highly irascible,




CRITICAL ESSAY.


341


never, under the direst provocation, entirely loses his self-control,
but listens to the moderating suggestions of " the goddess graceful with the azure eyes." This characteristic, however, is fundamental in the constitution of the Roman, and indispensable in
his story; and it declares itself not only in his furious outbursts
at the provocation of the tribunes or of Tullus Aufidius, but also
marks those sudden reversals of a determined course that have
their last expression in his reception of his mother's intercession.
Volumnia's conquest of his reluctance to return with mild demeanour to the market place, is premonitory of the form of her
influence upon him as well as of its force. Rebuke, argument,
persuasion, tenderness, have their effect and obtain a consent,
but only such a one as on anticipation of the circumstances is as
instantly given up:" I will not do't
Lest I surcease to honour mine own truth,
And by my body's action teach my mind
A most inherent falsehood."
It is then that she resorts to her last effort, and in changed
tone of recklessness, and affected indifference for his pride and
all its consequences, she overcomes his last resistance, and he
goes at her bidding when it takes the form of a forbidding, and
his concession is wrung from him as if by the sudden provocation
of defiance. It is the same at last,-reason and supplication, honour and affection, are addressed to him in return, not it is certain without effect; but still decisive outburst is won by a revulsion and a surprise, and his heart cannot consent to declare
the surrender of pride to request in any form, but opens again
and at last at the excuse and opportunity of a defiance:" Come let us go,
This fellow had a Volscian for his mother;
His wife is in Corioli, and his child
Like him by chance!"
The play throughout is peculiarly and remarkably a play of
arguments, intercessions and persuasions, as the epoch of history
marks a transition from dissension and violence to peaceful compromise-far as this was from being permanent. It is a condition of the world that is depicted, when men were open to be
swayed and wrought upon, given to abrupt changes as to sudden
decisions, as ignorance and passion laid them open to alarms and
false excitements. Thus Coriolanus soliloquizes at Antium on the
world and its slippery ways, and recognizes the sudden ruptures
and reversals of enmities and friendships as among its most ordinary incidents. His early declaration that from emulation of
Tullus Aufidius he would not hesitate to change sides at the instant to be against him in a contest of one half of the world with
the other, is premonitory of the lightness with which, on a motive of personal offence, he gives up his country to join with him




342                CORIOLANUS.
in alliance. The soothing of the populace by Menenius alters
their temper as suddenly as the irritating suggestions of the tribunes afterwards; even Coriolanus, who in the field does not forget his nature, and in return for harshness to the troops is left by
them to fight his way in Corioli alone, has the experience, could
he have profited by it, that a different tone could turn skulkers
and marauders into daring and enthusiastic combatants. There
is something of his stubbornness in the nature of his wife, timorous and quiet little creature though she be, that makes her proof
against all the exhortations of Volumnia and allurements of Valeria to give up her determined retirement. Menenius with admirable skill works the tribunes to a degree of moderation when
their purposes are fiercest and bloodiest,-then ensues Volumnia's
control of the violence of her son to a mildness that suddenly embraced is after all as suddenly forgotten. The quick change that
takes place in the demeanour of Coriolanus, after his sentence of
banishment, is most expressive: his nature is now in truth subjected by a deeper feeling than it ever owned before. He who
could not soothe either populace, tribunes or patricians, is seen
an actual dissimulator for the time, as he urges composure,himself apparently composed, on his wailing and indignant family
and mourning friends. For the first time he has embraced a
bold counsel, and holds it concealed. In the presence of his former hated enemy Tullus, he learns such deliberate and impressive speech that gains him over immediately, and the feelings of
the Volscian are the subject of a revulsion as sudden as those of
Coriolanus himself. In the last act, when old Menenius consents
to try his influence, the tribune assures him, " You know the very
road into his kindness, and cannot lose your way; "-and whatever oddity there may be in the way he attempts, I do not doubt
it was that which he thought, and justly, gave him the best
chance. " Shakespeare wanted a buffoon," says Johnson in reference to Menenius, " and he went into the senate-house for that
with which the senate house would most certainly have supplied
him." Johnson had not reported and written debates for the
Lords' house without making some observations; but as regards
Menenius, it is unfair to call him a buffoon, for he evinces so
much sober earnestness in the scenes of the senate-house, that he
would not have failed had the occasion invited such a display
again. The gravity and force of the intercession of Volumnia is
beyond all expression of praise, and after this it might be rashly
thought the play could not too rapidly have an end, and that the
death of Coriolanus might be conveniently despatched without
change of scene. Not so; throughout all the series of excitements, levities, violences, and revulsions of the piece, even when
the people of Rome themselves are the subjects and agents of
them, Shakespeare had succeeded in making present to our minds
a prevailing impression of the weight and steadfast majesty that
abide in and constitute the genius of the Roman state. This




CRITICAL ESSAY.                       343
is not expressed in the acts of leading characters, for it is a point
to be remarked how very few in this play there are; but it is conveyed, as we have partly seen, by the effect of certain restraints
and reservations, when otherwise the very elements of the state
seem settling into chaos. And thus it is at last; with scarcely
the intervention of any speaker of superior gravity to Menenius,
the return and reception of the successful embassy of ladies and
their demeanour are set before us with such simple force as to
suffice to excite our veneration for the state deservedly destined
to be imperial. The last encounter of the ladies and the city was
marked by the mad petulance of Volumnia enraged at her loss,
and the pettish lamentations of Virgilia; they now pass along after
a still greater private loss-for hope of the return of Coriolanus
is over,-silent and dignified, and all the members of the state
that were before opposed, unite to accompany them with honour,
and senators and patricians, tribunes and people, forget all past
disputes in joy and gratitude for the salvation of the state which
none was false to in its hour of utmost peril.
In the concluding scene we appear to see the supremacy of
Rome assured, by her former faults and excesses appearing to be
expelled with the banished Coriolanus to her enemies. In the
senate-house of the Volscians is perpetrated the assassination
from the disgrace of which the better spirit of the Romans preserved their city; Aufidius and his fellows with equal envy and
ingratitude take the place of the plotting tribunes, and the senators are powerless to control the conspirators and the mob of
citizens who abet them. For Coriolanus himself it cannot be
said that his mercy to his native city either sprung from or engendered a nobler sentiment of patriotism than he had shown
himself capable of entertaining before; he returns the soldier of
the Volscian as he went, and the only alleviation that his fate
admits is that it is at least by an outburst of his original nature,
faulty as it might be, that he provokes it, and that carried away
by passion and impatience, he dies at least in declared exultation
at an exploit performed when he was the glorious soldier of Rome.
The question that returns upon us again and again after the
study of the picture of human nature presented in this play, is,
how far it represents a period, how far the permanent necessities
of civil society,-how far it is possible that under other circumstances a large, the largest infusion of democratical influence
might be infused into a state, and those unhandsomenesses and
unholinesses avoided that rouse the disgust of natures that cannot stoop to flatter, alid that turn with like distaste from the
essentially vulgar and the vile. There is evidently slight gain
for humanity in such a figment as a franchise becomes when entrusted to a multitude, that the safety not of a class but of themselves and of the state, requires should be in effect cozened from
them again by the cajolery inculcated by Volumnia and exercised by butcher-kissing duchesses at Westminster elections. The




344


CORIOLANUS.


catastrophe of such a state of affairs lies in the retirement of the
more finely organized minds from politics, the subjection of ambitious intellect and ingenuity to a competition of subserviency
and fraud, the serving of the public by officials who despise and
fain would barter it for personal profit; the better superiorities
it would seem must be suppressed by the tyranny of mediocrity,
and what can ensue but a lowering of the tone not only of public
principle but of literature, taste and art, that leaves a nation
hopelessly on an inferior level of all that constitutes civilization
-that is, of all in fact that is best worth living for.
Yet the tribune says truly,-" What is the city but the people?" and of all the truths that cling to Christianity, and are
carried with it over the earth, none has taken stronger hold than
the conviction of the equality of man in the aspect of the divine,
-the limitless possibility of extending and enhancing the excellence of the individual. Surely from this point of view we are
yet at the beginning of the world; it would be rash to say that
it is nature alone and not circumstance, that now fixes the limits
or instances of the better culture; negatively however we may
be sure of this,-the hand and seal of Shakespeare are upon it,
that mobs so far as they are weak or wicked, are so by their ignorance and general uncultare of intellect, fancy and feelings,that so long at least as these original deficiencies remain, en.
franchised or disfranchised, they will be slaves in themselves and
instruments of mischief to others, and when seemingly most
absolute only most easily hoodwinked for a private purpose by
factious tribune or more insidious noble, while the occurrence or
continuance for any time, of alarming public perils throws them
almost inevitably into the ready toils of a dictator-an autocrat.
It seems not much to ask or hope for that the many should learn
in time at least to place their confidence with betterjudgment, and
thus make up for their own deficiencies by accomplished agency,
not merely represent or in fact exaggerate them.-It will be
however as it will; the mob that Shakespeare depicts is the
lineal descendant of that which Homer characterized as it
swarmed over the agora of the camp besieging Troy, and if we
are but yet at the beginning of the world in this matter, the
question may well enough stand over here.
There are many points of correspondence as between the anger and revenge of Achilles and Coriolanus, so between the eloquence of the supplications addressed to them. In the ninth
book of the Iliad, the wrath of Peleus' son is unmoved or only
roots deeper in return to the suggestions of Ulysses; some slight
relaxation rewards the words of his foster-father Phoenix pleading with naive allusions to his nursery days with something of
the humour of old Menenius; but the chief impression is reserved
for the sudden and curt as blunt appeal of Ajax, who speaks
with the same mixture of tenderness and temper as Volumnia at
the close, and obtains a still further modification of the resolve,




CRITICAL ESSAY.


345


to depart at once, to take counsel respecting departure, and now
to give up the plan of departure though holding off from present
reconciliation. The address first obliquely to fellow supplicant,
and then as suddenly the appeal directly, answer in figure precisely to the close of the Roman intercession.
"Ajax silence broke
And thus impatient to Ulysses spoke;Hence let us go,-why waste we time in vain?
See what effect our low submissions gain:
Liked or not liked his words we must relate
The Greeks expect them and our heroes wait.
Proud as he is, that iron heart retains
Its stubborn purpose and his friend's disdains,
Stern and unpitying! if a brother bleed
On just atonement, we remit the deed,....
Then hear, Achilles, be of better mind,
Revere thy roof and to thy guests be kind,
And know the men, of all the Grecian host,
Who honour worth and prize thy valour most."
The sketch of the supplication of the family of Meleager contained in the speech of Phoenix, is as an incident still more closely
parallel, and the supplication of Priam to Achilles for the ransom
of the body of Hector, has melted hearts in every generation from
the time it was first written.
Shakespeare wisely relieved the apologue of the belly and the
members from the responsibility which Plutarch lays upon it of
sufficing to parry the main brunt of the food and poverty riot,
and in the play it simply diverts and engages a loose party of
the general sedition. The fable, however, taken along with its
introduction,-" the senate being afeard of their departure did
send unto them certain of the pleasantest old men and the most
acceptable to the people among them"-gave the cue for the
character of the spokesman; and the outline was completed and
filled up with a watchful eye to the requirements in composition
with the principal figure. The pleasant old senator has a contempt for the " beastly plebeians," and the tribunes their " herdsmen" as hearty as Coriolanus, and even expresses it as plainly
and as coarsely, and yet he remains acceptable to both, and has
the character of having always loved the people, on the strength
of the hearty joviality of his temperament, his tendency to ridicule rather than revile, and it must be said at bottom, so much
esteem for the people that he does not consider his own individual dignity a counterbalance for the lives of the whole of them.
We may note how the apologue appears from the character of his
subsequent speech, to be the natural form into which his expressions of practical wisdom overflow; the spiritual world reveals
itself to him in an incarnation of physical and material analogies,
and his ideas willingly come abroad clothed in trope and metaphor of which homeliness seems to be a prime recommendation.




346


CORIOLANUS.


The dissension in Rome is a rent that "must be patched with
cloth of any colour;" for the unpopular Marcius"The service of the foot (one of the members we before
heard of)
Being once gangrened, is not then respected
For what it was before."
The relentless Coriolanus is figured by " yond' coign of the ca
pitol, yond' corner stone;" —" there is a difference between a
grub and a butterfly, yet your butterfly was a grub "-" he no
more remembers his mother now than an eight year old horse;"
— " Mark what mercy his mother shall bring from him: there
is no more mercy in him than there is milk in a male tiger."
The confusing interchanges and successions of wars, tumults,
dearths, and secessions that are found in Plutarch are most skilfully condensed and combined in the play. The refusal by Marcius to accept more than his rateable proportion of the spoil is
from the biography; but there is no hint of his so highly characteristic impatience at listening to his own praises-a matter
partly of simple embarrassment and partly of pride. Again, the
sudden change of the good will of the people for his consulship
is recorded; but nothing is said here of intrigues of the tribunes,
and, more important, nothing is said of any reluctance to conform to the custom, or of offensiveness in manner of solicitation.
Plutarch describes the formal course as strictly adhered to"Now Marcius following this custom showed many wounds and
cuts upon his body which he had received in seventeen years'
service at the wars, and in many sundry battles, being ever the
foremost man that did set out feet to fight. So that there was
not a man among the people but was ashamed of himself to refuse so valiant a man; and one of them said to another, we must
needs choose him consul, there is no remedy. But when the day
of election was come," &c.
The following passage is worth citing, to show what Shakespeare had in his mind, when he makes Coriolanus give the lie
to the tribune with this emphasis:" I would say
Thou liest unto thee, with a voice as free
As I do pray the gods."
"When the magistrates, bishops, priests, or other religious
ministers, go about any divine service or matter of religion, an
herald ever goeth before them crying out aloud Hoc age, as to
say, do this, or mind this. Hereby they are specially commanded
wholly to dispose themselves to serve God, leaving all other business and matters aside, knowing well enough that whatsoever
most men do, they do it as in a manner constrained unto it."
But the relation of the perfected play to the great source of
its subject is most interestingly and instructively seen in the
great speech of Volumnia in its two forms of poetry and prose,
and long as it is it must needs be extracted, for of all possible




CRITICAL ESSAY.


347


illustrations of the manifestation of the idea of the play it is by
far the completest and the best.
"Now was Marcius set then in his chair of state with all the
honours of a general, and when he had spied the women coming
afar off he marvelled what the matter meant; but afterwards
knowing his wife, which came foremost, he determined at the first
to persist in his obstinate inflexible rancour. But overcome in
the end with natural affection, and being altogether altered to
see them, his heart would not serve him to tarry their coming
to his chair; but coming down in haste he went to meet them,
and first he kissed his mother and embraced her a pretty while,
then his wife and little children......... After he had thus
lovingly received them, and perceiving that his mother Volumnia
would begin to speak to him, he called the chiefest of the counsel of the Volsces to hear what she would say. Then she spake
in this sort: —' If we held our peace, my son, and determined not
to speak, the state of our poor bodies, the present sight of our
raiment would easily bewray to thee what life we have led at
home since thy exile and abode abroad; but think now with
thyself, how much more unfortunate than all the women living
we are come hither, considering that the sight that should be
most pleasant to all other to behold, spiteful fortune had made
most fearful to us: making myself to see my son, and my daughter here her husband besieging the walls of his native country,
so as that which is the comfort to all other in their adversity
and misery, to pray unto the gods and to call to them for aid, is the
only thing which plungeth us into most deep perplexity, for we
cannot, alas, together pray both for victory to our country and
for safety of thy life also; but a world of grievous curses, yea
more than any mortal enemy can heap upon us, are forcibly wrapt
up in our prayers. For the bitter sop of most hard choice is
offered to thy wife and children to forego one of the two, either
to lose the person of thyself or the nurse of their native country.
For myself, my son, I am determined not to tarry till fortune in
my lifetime do make an end of this war. For if I cannot persuade thee rather to do good unto both parties than to overthrow
and destroy the one, preferring love and nature before the malice
and calamity of wars, thou shalt see, my son, and trust unto it,
thou shalt no sooner march forward to assault thy country, but
thy foot shall tread upon thy mother's womb that brought thee
first into this world. And I may not defer to see the day either
that my son be led prisoner in triumph by his natural countrymen, or that he himself do triumph of them and of his natural
country. For if it were so, that my request tended to save thy
country in destroying the Volsces, I must confess thou wouldest
hardly and doubtfully resolve on that. For as to destroy thy
natural country it is altogether unmeet and unlawful, so were it
not just and less honourable to betray those that put their trust
in thee. But my only demand consisteth to make a gaol deli



348


CORIOLANUS.


very of all evils which delivereth equal benefit and safety both
to the one and the other, but most honourably for the Volsces;
for it shall appear, that having victory in their hands, they have
of special favour granted us singular grace, peace, and amity,
albeit themselves have no less part of both than we. Of which
good if so it come to pass thyself is the only author, and so hast
thou the only honour. But if it fail and fall out contrary, thyself alone deservedly shall carry the shameful reproach and burthen of either party. So though the end of war be uncertain,
yet this, notwithstanding, is most certain, that if it be thy
chance to conquer, this benefit shalt thou reap of thy goodly conquest, to be chronicled the plague and destroyer of thy country.
And if fortune overthrow thee, then the world will say, that
through desire to revenge thy private injuries thou hast for ever
undone thy good friends who did most lovingly and courteously
receive thee.' Marcius gave good ear unto his mother's words
without interrupting her speech at all, and after she had said
what she would he held his piece a pretty while, and answered
not a word. Hereupon she began again to speak to him and
said:-,' My son, why dost thou not answer me? dost thou think
it good altogether to give place unto thy choler and desire of
revenge, and thinkest thou it not honesty to grant thy mother's
request in so weighty a cause? dost thou take it honourable for
a noble man to remember the wrongs and injuries done him, and
dost not in like case think it an honest, noble man's part, to be
thankful for the goodness that parents do show to their children, acknowledging the duty and reverence they ought to bear
unto them? No man living is more bound to show himself
thankful in all parts and respects than thyself, who so universally
showest all ingratitude. Moreover, my son, thou hast sorely
taken of thy country, exacting grievous payments upon them in
revenge of the injuries offered thee; besides thou hast not hitherto shewed thy poor mother any courtesy and therefore it is
not only honest, but due unto me, that without compulsion I
should obtain my so just and reasonable request of thee. But
since I cannot by reason persuade thee to it, to what purpose do
I defer my last hope? '-And with these words herself, his wife
and children, fell down upon their knees before him. Marcius
seeing that could refrain no longer, but went straight and lift her
up, crying out, 'Oh, mother, what have you done to me?' and
holding her hard by the right hand, 'Oh, mother,' said he,
'you have won a happy victory for your country, but mortal
and unhappy for your son, for I see myself vanquished by you
alone.' "




CRITICAL ESSAY ON TITUS ANDRONICUS.
ITUS ANDRONICUS is of impugned, but not I think
of doubtful authenticity, as, in a modified sense, a work
of Shakespeare. That it was included in the first
folio editin (1623) of his collected plays by his friends
and fellows, is evidence conclusive for his concern in its authorship-whether solely, conjointly, or as re-writer of an earlier
production. It is cited in the list of Shakespeare's plays given
by Francis Meres in 1598, and there is every appearance that
Meres had good opportunities of information; and lastly, it is
proved by the titles of the quarto editions to have been played
by the company to which Shakespeare belonged.
The extant quartos date 1600 and 1611, and give us therefore
later dates than the notice of Meres. Langbaine (Account of
English Dramatic Poets, 1691) has a reference to an edition of
1594, set. 30-which is now unknown, but may easily have
existed-as in the case of the quarto of 1600, and that of Hamlet
of 1603; a single copy in each instance has alone saved the edition
from oblivion. An entry in the Stationers' Registers, 1593, confirms the memorandum of Langbaine. An allusion of Ben Jonson
to a play of Titus Andronicus would, if interpreted literally, carry
back the date to 1589, aet. 25, or even 1584.
The quarto editions do not bear Shakespeare's name, but this
is no more than occurs with other plays that are certainly his,
that were printed during his lifetime.
There is an old ballad which gives the story of the play-with
certain variations it is true, but I am not able to convince myself
that they indicate more than the necessities of abbreviation, and
the play seems quite as likely to have been the source of the
ballad as the ballad of the play.
The internal evidence that has weighed against the authenticity of the play founds on the defects of its versification, which
in large portions and in the first scene especially, is tame, flat,
monotonous,-on the absence of dramatic spirit and poetic imagery,
a charge which however is not universally applicable,-and lastly,
on the savage details of the story. The monotonous and tame
versification is-allowing a date, quite consistent with an early,




350            TITUS ANDRONICUS.
-perhaps the earliest essay of Shakespeare, and, we may disagree
but have no quarrel with those who adopt this view in preference to
casting the blame on any supposed original, that he altered and did
not entirely over-write; and think that we may trace in the play
the gradations by which this embarrassed style grew into the true
Shakespearian vigour. In Scenes 2 and 3 of Act ii. we have
several speeches in which we may recognize the struggling attempt
to that perfect harmonizing of imagery and verse of which Midsummer Night's Dream is the triumph. Compare:"The hunt is up, the morn is bright and grey," &c.
"My lovely Aaron, wherefore look'st thou sad?" &c.
Aaron's address to his child that concludes Sc. 2, Act iv. leaves
little to be desired, and generally as the play advances there does
seem to be an improved mastery of the instrument of language.
It is remarkable withal that rhymes couplet and alternate are
rare throughout the play; this would seem to indicate that with
Shakespeare indulgence in rhyme was the result, in the first instance, of very luxuriance of versifying power that was not developed at first, but grew with the general growth of his facility
-was allowed the rein in certain compositions which contain
blank verse as fine as any he ever wrote, and then was controlled
and subjected in the general progress of his powers towards perfect development and unity of balanced activity.
The savage atrocities of the story will appear in the outline of
the plot; the poet grinds his red colour, it must be said with
stintless liberality, and might seem to sit down to his task fresh
from the bloody conflicts of the bear-garden, as he expected an
audience whose tastes were trimmed to such a school. But e —en
here it may be we recognize the hand of Shakespeare-the 'Prentice
hand. The horrors of the tragedy are scarcely greater than
occur in his own masterpieces, or in those of mighty dramatists
his predecessors, they are matched in Hamlet, in Lear, in CEdipus
Tyrannus; but they are not relieved and counterbalanced by the
other aids of Tragic Art in its highest form, that enable us to
read the plays enumerated with equable satisfaction and delight.
Shakespeare's early plays for the most part exhibit severally
some single of his resources in excess, some one of his powers
luxuriant to rankness at the expense of,-as if unknown to, the
others. In Titus Andronicus this predominance is allowed to the
quality that even in tragedy least admits such licence, barbarous
execution and revolting cruelty.
We trace agreement with the early manner of Shakespeare in
the nakedness with which the mixed evil and good of all the
leading characters are exhibited-even to the extent of sometimes
defeating or at least perplexing that passion for sympathy with
one party or other to the dramatic action that is necessary for our
enjoyment of it.
In other respects the development and march of the action is




CRITICAL      ESSAY.                 351
more orderly and in better proportion; the winding up is less
precipitate and equivocal than in the Two Gentlemen of Verona,
to which few would consider it to be posterior, or in Measure for
Measure, which has hitherto been dated much later.
I do not think there is any other of the plays of our poet that
is as near the reach and level of his contemporary dramatists as
Titus Andronicus,-yet who shall we say could have written it
as it stands?  Does it not even contain in several scenes snatches
and impulses of the characteristics of several of his competitors?
The scene in which Tamora personates Revenge may at least be
compared with the artificially fearful inventions of Webster.
But we meet with a trick of alliteration here and there in this
play for which no parallel occurs to me in other serious plays of
Shakespeare:-" Their mother's bed-chamber should not be safe,
For these bad bondmen to the yoke of Rome.
-The story of that baleful, burning night."
These are the solemn vagaries of tragic inexpertness that
Shakespeare lived to laugh and make others laugh at in Midsummer Night's Dream. Repetitions also as peculiar occur:-" Go, go, into old Titus' sorrowful house."
-" Come, hither boy; come, come and learn of us."
These are the particular indications that seem to me to confirm
the general presumptions which run all in the same direction,
that Shakespeare's hand, of which I trace to my full conviction
some marks throughout, was applied to the work of another writer.
Titus Andronicus has been the valiant general of the Roman
empire for forty years, during which time he has kept the Goth
at distance from the city walls and so preserved the heart of the
empire, but for little better result than to give its internal disorders and diseases uninterrupted course of development. There
is no true historical date assignable to the action of the play, but
it tells the same story that is told by much of the later warlike
achievements of Rome;-valour is displayed sufficient to have
saved the social fabric, but that there is no healthy self-renewing
power, as in the days of the early republic, to sustain the waste
of population, and to keep up the succession of patriotic energy
that valour, even when most successful, draws on so exhaustingly.
The army sustains the state and not the state the army, and
nothing remains but the most fundamental of revolutions so soon
as the army is either fully corrupted along with the state or,
overborne by chance or odds unmatchable, seriously defeated.
Titus returns from his last campaign victorious, and not grudging for the sake of Rome, that his victory has cost him another
son. He arrives at an interregnum,-the Emperor dead and his
two sons making parties for the succession, which they mutually
admit requires the sanction of the people. Marcus Andronicus,
the brother of Titus, announces as tribune, the election by com



352           TITUS ANDRONICUS.
mon voice of Titus to be Emperor. The attempt to substitute
the warlike representative of the people, as fitted the times, for
the corrupt, palace-bred Saturnine, fails by the false nobleness of
Titus himself. Titus surrenders his own claim, and procures the
adoption of the eldest son of the emperor, with the same selfsacrifice that has appeared in his warfare: but he confounds personal and public loyalty; as the events are placed before us he
might without blame have accepted the crown, he foregoes it to
the destruction of both himself and his country. No reason appears
for the course but misjudged veneration for " legitimacy" which
made no part of the law, and which usurps the service and affection
that are due to the common weal alone. He finds too late:" Ah, Rome I well, well, I made thee miserable,
What time I threw the people's suffrages
On him that thus doth tyrannize o'er me."
And it was not without warning; the insolent demeanour of
Saturninus in the scene with the tribunes, gives fair warning of
what may be expected to follow the pedantic resignation of the
people's trust to a false keeper.
Titus, who sacrifices himself for his country, and his country to
an unworthy first-born of a prince, completes the exhibition of
spurious loyalty by supporting the new-elected Saturninus in
depriving Bassianus of his betrothed Lavinia. There is no hint
whatever that Titus is moved by ambition to have his daughter
an empress, he is simply following his blind soldierlike maxim
of obedience. He has no thought for the feelings she might be
supposed to entertain, though in truth she does not betray them,
and when his sons exclaim at the injustice, Titus disavows all
right as opposed to sacred prerogative, and buries his sword in
the bosom of his own child.
These horrors have been introduced by the barbarous slaughter
of a Gothic prince, an offering to the manes of the Andronici,
torn ruthlessly from the entreaties of Tamora his mother, whom
Saturninus presently adopts as his empress: and thus the act
comprises an epitome of the barbarities of Roman warfares and triumphs over the so called barbarians, and of the internal atrocities
of Roman against Roman, and prepares us for appreciating with
correcter feelings the completed interchange of wrong for wrong,
when the barbarian in turn not only became predominant in
the field, but gained place and authority in the body-guards,
the palaces, the councils of the emperors of declining Rome.
The political condition represented in the drama has great
peculiarities, and inconsistent throughout with Roman history, is
as markedly consistent with itself. We appear to be presented
with a view of a free commonwealth, with mixed popular and
patrician institutions-tribunes and senators, passing through the
stage of a virtual but unrecognized monarchy to a mere and
admitted Eastern despotism. Roman history furnished a certain




CRITICAL ESSAY.


353


parallel to most of the circumstances political, but never to the
exact relative distribution of power-to say nothing of special
detail.
The gratuitous subservience of Titus is therefore placed in
strong relief, by the fact that the monarchical institution has not
yet had the time that might be supposed necessary to foster and
confirm superstitious traditional veneration for the simple direct
line and blood royal of a dynasty; his anticipation declares the
tendency.
Saturnine braves and insults the benefactor who has given
him a crown, and the Gothic Tamora prepares to wreak her
vengeance, as empress, on the family that bereaved her of a son.
The very morning after her marriage and that of Lavinia with
Bassianus she takes the occasion of a hunt,-the courtly compliment of the yet unawakened Titus Andronicus, and with the
aid of her paramour Aaron, the Moor, and her brutal sons, Chiron
and Demretrius, she abuses and maims Lavinia, murders Bassianus,
and destroys by false accusation two of the sons of Andronicus.
Still the author does -ot allow us to take unhesitating party,for Bassianus and Lavinia are as wanting in prudence as temper,
and heap provocation upon her that she could scarcely be expected to bear. It is a point of art by which the black wickedness of Tamora is deepened to the imagination, that we are made
to despise and detest her, notwithstanding that her wrongs and
provocations have been such as might easily wean our sympathies
from very compassionable victims. By mastery of dramatic chiaroscuro, however, we follow sympathetically the distinctive distances of hatefulness, and never lose our way so far as to palliate
the atrocities of Tamora, or to refuse our pity to the woes of the
Andronici.
The weakness that disables the powers of Titus away from his
camp and involved in civil embroilments, is exhibited again when
his sons are accused; he kneels to the insulting Emperor, and
even regards the false assurances of Tamora:" Tarn. Andronicus, I will entreat the king,
Fear not, thy sons they shall do well enough."
"Titus. Come, Lucius, come, stay not to talk with them."
The latter line limits the contrasted disposition of Lucius, who
in the first scene had, it is true, slaughtered the son of Tamora,
but had also resisted his father's base surrender of Lavinia, and
unjust violence to Mutius. At the beginning of the 3rd Act,
therefore, we are prepared to see Titus prone in the dust, soliciting for mercy to the condemned, while Lucius has interceded
with drawn sword, and is banished for the attempt to rescue
them. At last, it is true, when he becomes aware of all the
injuries done to him by Chiron and Demetrius, and when the
Emperor sends him the heads of his two sons along with the
right hand that he had cut off to ransom them, he gives signs
A A




3,54


TITUS ANDRONICUS.


of being roused, and bids Lucius " Hie to the Goths, and raise an
army there." Lucius with vigour and good will adopts the hint
of Titus, but yet the disposition of Titus is still apprehended by
his brother Marcus as disinclined to retaliation or resistance:"But yet so just that he will not revenge."-Act iv. Sc. 1. fin.
That Titus Andronicus should be so slow to apprehend the revengeful purposes of Tamora for the death of her son may be
very strange, but it is quite consistent with all his preceding
characteristics; the captive whom he despised is consecrated to
his reverence by the choice of the Emperor, and raised so far
above his right to suspect of bad design that only clearest proof,
together with direst experience, convince him after the designs
are accomplished.
The Greek names of Chiron and Demetrius give a certain Byzantine colour to the story, which is helped by the tenor of the
court intrigues and violences. Indeed, it is difficult not to think
that the plot at large owes much to the suggestiveness of the
history or story of Belisarius,-the mighty general of an ungrateful country and Emperor, in age and blindness begging for
his bread. The Empress Theodosia was raised by Justinian, if
not from the position of a captive, from one still lower, and had
vice enough to furnish motive for the invention of Tamora; and
even the eunuch Narses, the rival of Belisarius, is an appearance
in the imperial court un-Roman enough to niche opposite to Aaron.
Aaron, the Moor, is a declared blackamoor, to whom a Hebrew
name seems to have been given to facilitate the adhesion of hatefulness to his proceedings. I cannot consider his character in
detached trait without an odd intermingling of reminiscences of
Shylock and Othello. Aaron revels in cruelty and wickedness
with a delight that reminds of Shylock gloating over his promised pound of flesh, but with more gratuitous viciousness, for he
has not Shylock's provocation-unless, indeed, we detect such a
feeling of general resentment against nature for his blackness,
as Richard expresses for his deformity,-akin both to Shylock's
sense of being an object of antipathy to Yenice at large, for
no better reason than his Judaism. The avaricious Jew who
could still think the best worth of a jewel lay in his having
" had it of Leah when he was a bachelor," is the invention of a
poet who may have owned to the idea of the cruel, coarse, reviling Aaron, still retaining affection for his base offspring. He
not only protects his child by Tamora from her indignant sons,
but, when he is the captive of Lucius, is prepared to undergo any
sufferings rather than forego his chance of preserving his life,
and that boon granted he gives loose to his tongue and, as if
death under any tortures were indifferent to him, declares and
boasts of his atrocities in terms the most exciting and exasperating. lago's dogged resolution " to speak no more" seems contrasted with this; but Iago, it will be recollected, made some




CRITICAL ESSAY.


355


avowals when he was first apprehended, that indicate pleasure in
public scorn of his victims. Still there is a certain devilish glee in
Aaron's crime that distinguishes it from that of all other villains of
Shakespeare; he gloats over the enjoyment, and resorts to it
with the propensity of an indulgence, not under the sting of fury
or bitterness. "Inhuman dog" is a term assigned both to Iago
and Aaron.
After Lucius has betaken himself to the Goths, and Titus is
giving way to half-crazy laments and insults to the Emperor,
there is considerable melo-dramatic excitement produced by the
uncertainty whether Tamora, who proposes " to temper that old
Andronicus with what art she has, to pluck proud Lucius from
the warlike Goths," may not succeed in her plan. Even after
Titus, whether in sane or madman method, has cut the throats
of Chiron and Demetrius, we feel apprehension lest Lucius may
be deceived, and even his precautions frustrated. The reader
is relieved, and the catastrophe arrives when Titus having killed
Lavinia first, then stabs Tamora, whom he had caused to eat unwittingly of the flesh of her own sons. It is in harmony with the
character of Titus as delineated all through the play, that to the
last he does not appear to meditate violence against Saturninus.
IIe falls himself by the hand of the Emperor, who finds an executioner in Lucius, exasperated at the sight of his father's death.
In the conclusion of the play from this point to the end, we
may perceive as we read, that a certain grave and measured
march is aimed at, but not felicitously executed,-not at least
throughout. The same feeling of soothing harmony seems to me
to have prompted this epilogue, that in completer works, in
Romeo and Juliet, and in Hamlet, is achieved unblameably.
The introduction of the child here, as in other parts of the play,
is highly expressive, and speaks distinctly for the author of the
play-whether Shakespeare or not, having had "a noble and a
true conceit"-though his powers of realization were yet unripe,
of the resources at the command of a dramatic poet,-who aimed
at large effects and complete, and who had the ambition at least
to write for the human passions " in full score."
The political transactions that conclude the play are in accordance with the balance of powers displayed in the opening
contentions. Lucius is declared Emperor by the tribunes, who
express the elective decision of the free Roman people. Did any
contemporary state furnish pattern for such a constitution? What
was the condition of Poland, of Sweden, at this time?
It has once or twice occurred to me that the course of events
in France may have modified the poet's incidents and even
characters. Shakespeare was only eight years old at the date of
the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, but he was twenty-four when
England fought and vanquished the Armada, and alarm at Popish
enmity and bigotry caused the minds of men to revert to that




356


TITUS ANDRONICUS.


bloody catastrophe. Sufficient pains were taken indeed to keep up
the belief that the fleet of the Spaniard was designed to repeat the
check to Protestantism with equal mercilessness and only greater
cruelty. Titus Andronicus, it seems to me, may not improbably
have been written at the date of this excited horror of bloodshed
and massacre, as it was indeed revived at a later period, at the
time of the Popish plot,-not, I suspect, without some feeling of
a well-timed lesson.
In the French massacre, as in the play, we have civil dissensions, and a convention at last establishing a monarch and feigned
reconciliations;-Catherine de Medici is the dissembling and ruthless Tamora of the Paris drama,-the too-confiding Coligny the
Andronicus. There is no intention, of course, to press the comparison closely; but one striking agreement in the two actions is
obvious. The Bartholomew Massacre has obtained in Germany
the name of the Blut-Hochzeit, from the marriage of Henry of
Navarre having been made the means to lull the Calvinists and
lure them to Paris. The speeches and letters of Queen Elizabeth
advert to this circumstance as increasing the heinousness of the
dissimulation. In the play it is on the morrow of the marriage
that unites the families of Saturninus and Andronicus, that the
sweeping destruction is directed upon the latter.
The slaughter of the son of Tamora symbolizes the treatment
of the barbarians by victorious Rome,-her bloody triumphal
executions and shows of gladiators. Roman then exercises on
Roman the ferocity that such actions had rendered familiar, and
the empire descends through internal dissensions, palace intrigues,
and mutual decimation, to the point at which recovery, if possible
at all, must be by infusion of new and vigorous blood,-by fusion
with the very barbarians so long oppressed, and despised, and
massacred. The vigorous Lucius is the Emperor of the Romans
and his support is in the arms of barbarians, less barbarous than
degenerate and effete civilization.
The play is wonderfully free from anachronical implications of
Christian manners and terms and ideas, it is thus more decidedly
an expression of the genius of paganism. There seems to be a
trait of schoolboyishness in the working up of the catastrophes of
Virginia, Lucretia, Brutus, and of the horrors of Tereus and
Philomela, and Atreus and Thyestes; and the footsteps of Shakespeare, or his predecessor, I have heard, are to be tracked in the
snow of Seneca's tragedy, whither however I have not thought
it worth while to follow them-veniam da mihi posteritas.
In asserting the title of this play to rank in a certain sense as
Shakespeare's, it is by no means intended to elevate it to lofty
distinction as a fine play; but it is because its demerits are so
gross and glaring that it becomes necessary to point out the indicatiois of thoughtful plan that it contains, and the germs of
better things.




CRITICAL ESSAY ON ROMEO AND JULIET.
1       1-3:^HE earliest edition extant of Shakespeare's Tragedy of
}   P[ l~  Romeo and Juliet, (and we have no impression of any of
) his plays earlier,) is a quarto, dated 1597, a rare book, I
m   4 gbut reprinted by Steevens. It differs very importantly
from later impressions, but its interest on this account is diminished
by the probability that many of its variations are due to the imperfect manner in which it found its way to the press. That it was j
printed without the concurrence of the author is to be inferred }
from the absence of his name from the title page, as indeed it is.
omitted on those of almost all the subsequent qnarto editions; and
it bears marks of haste and irregularity in being printed in two
different types,-perhaps by two different printers. There can
be little doubt, however, that it represents, although insufficiently,
an earlier form of the play, and that we may safely recognize inl
the purer portions the earlier projection of the Shakespearian idea,
that afterwards was rather completed and elaborated than recast
and rewritten. Like almost every other separate edition of the
plays, it does good service also in helping to the correction of
various inveterate typographical errors; these aids are constantly
such as to be embraced without hesitation, but more caution is
required in entertaining what, no doubt, is a possibility, that
among the lines that are peculiar to it may be some that have
been lost by negligence only from the later copies, not condemned
in deliberate alteration.
A second more extended edition is dated 1599, and professes to
be " newly corrected, augmented and amended;" accordingly, it
presents a large revision of the earlier text and various important
additions, and the transference of misprints proves that another
quarto, dated 1609, was printed from it, as the latter again was
made use of in printing the play in the first folio, 1623. One
copy without a date is also known, and a quarto of 1637, which
seems to be a reprint of it. The folio, as usual, has errors and
omissions of more or less importance, to be corrected by the edition
it was printed from; but the most important responsibilities of




358


ROMEO AND JULIET.


editorial criticism are incurred in adjudicating upon pretensions
of readings from the first quarto to reversal of their attainder.
Francis Meres mentions the play among others; but as this is
the year after the date of the first quarto, it adds nothing to our
knowledge; and how long it may have been written and acted
before it was printed, is a question we have great interest in, but
little aid to set at rest. In 1598 Shakespeare was thirty-three,
and the list of plays which can be fixed certainly before that date
gives a wide range of dramatic activity.  From the character of
the first quarto, we cannot be certain that when its proprietors
printed the readiest copy they could lay unscrupulous hands on,
a better version might not already be in possession of the stage;
waiving this uncertainty, we should have the conclusion that the
corrected play of the folio took its existing form between the dates
of the two first quartos, 1597-1599; and that we may confidently interpret the " newly augmented, &c." of the later title
page, as equivalent to " recently" in our present phraseology.
Tlis is possible enough, for though Romeo and Juliet bears unquestionable marks of the poet's earlier hand, it asserts its title
quite distinctly to take rank notwithstanding, and in virtue of its
revision, beside even the perfection of the Merchant of Venice.
As to the original date of a Shakespearian play on the subject, I
am disposed to carry it very far back, even very closely upon the
commencement of the second period of his writing for the stage.
The freedom with which rhymes are diffused through the earlier
scenes inclines me to this opinion, and still more so the genius of
the theme which provokes the expression of the feelings that ever
flow most freely from the poetic heart, that certainly seized the
first turn for indulgence in the life of Shakespeare, and could not
readily brook to be postponed or neglected in his art. Even the
first quarto, however, has little or no blank verse that recalls the
constrained measures of the first group of plays.
Dante, who was resident at the court of Verona, in the first
years of the fourteenth century, close upon the date traditionary
history assigns to the catastrophe of the lovers, has an allusion,
but no more, to the families of Montecchi and Cappelletti. (Purgatorio, vi.)  In 1535, a novel entitled La Giulietta, by Luigi da
Porto, of Vicenza, was published at Venice; and this must be
regarded as the earliest form known of the proper story of Romeo
and Juliet, though an earlier tale, told about 1470, by Masuccio,
a Neapolitan, of which the scene is Sienna, has sufficiert agreement for a claim, if not a title, to be considered the same. At
any rate da Porto chose to refer to another authority, the information of an archer of his,-he had fought the battles of Venice
against the Germans, and took up the pen when wounds and weakness had disabled him as a soldier; he quotes then his archer,
whose name was Peregrino, "a man about fifty years old, well
practised in the military art, a pleasant companion, and, like




CRITICAL ESSAY.                     359
almost all his countrymen of Verona, a great talker." The next
version of the story is given by Bandello, in the ninth novel of
his second part, published in 1554; and, if we may place any reliance on the circumstances of his dedication, the informant of da
Porto, whose novel he does not mention, but which had reached
a third edition the previous year, was also his own. It was when
he was agreeably convalescent at the baths of Caldero that it
occurred to the distinguished and jocund society there inviting
entertainment, to discourse of the haps of good and evil fortune
that attend on love; and hence arose occasion for " il Capitano
Alessandro Peregrino to relate a pitiable history that occurred at
Verona in the time of Bartolomeo Scala, which, by its unhappy
ending, well nigh drew tears from all." Accordingly these two
accounts run parallel in the circumstance of the catastrophe, that
Juliet revives before the death of her husband in the tomb, and
expires upon his body as of a sudden broken heart.
From Bandello the story passes to the Collection entitled Histoires Tragiques de Belleforest, where it was translated, not without
various change and amplification, by Boisteau, who evidently had
no better ground than the notice just extracted from Bandello, for
his assertion that so recent was the memory of the incidents," qu'a peine en sent essuiez les yeux de ceux qui ont veu ce piteux spectacle." The French tale was literally translated into
English by William Paynter, Clerk of the Armoury to Queen
Elizabeth, and published under the title of " The Goodly History
of the true and constant Love between Rhomeo and Julietta," in
1567, in the second volume of his Palace of Pleasure. This is
the collection in which we find the story of Giletta of Narbona,
on which All's Well that Ends Well is founded; and here, therefore, we are fairly on the track of Shakespeare; it is to the French
writer we trace the change, for many reasons advantageous, of
relating how Juliet did not awake till after the death of her husband, and then stabbed herself with his dagger.
After the perusal of Paynter's version, 1 cannot doubt that it
was familiar to Shakespeare, but it was still only one of his sources;
he was evidently equally familiar with a poem by Arthur Brooke,
published three years earlier, in 1562,-" The Tragical History of
Romeus and Juliet, written first in Italian by Bandello, and now
in English by Ar. Br."  The title notwithstanding, Brooke makes
very free use of the story of Boisteau, and allows himself also a
liberty of variation, apparently in indulgence of his own inventive
powers. His address to the reader furnishes us with the interesting fact, that already two years before Shakespeare was born, the
English stage-this I think is implied, was in possession of a play
on the subject of Romeo and Juliet, which a versifier, not to say
a poet, of considerable merit might be well satisfied to rival. His
modest words are these; " though I saw the same argument lately
set forth on stage with more commendation than I can look for,




360


ROMEO AND JULIET.


being there much better set forth than I have or can do; yet the
same matter, penned as it is, may serve to like good effect, if the
readers do bring with them like good minds to consider it; which
hath the more encouraged me to publish it, such as it is."
Thus it is likely enough that dramatic touches that Shakespeare caught from Brooke were caught in the first instance by
Brooke from the earlier dramatist; if, indeed, the play did not
still survive in the theatres, and proffer its assistances at first hand.
If the play that Brooke saw and admired was lost before Shakespeare wrote, there is little doubt it had been succeeded in the
interim by another. A numerous series of allusions prove how
well known the subject was, and how generally popular; among
the rest B. Rich-the same who furnished materials for Twelfth
Night,-a punster he, witness his motto, MValim me divitem esse
quam vocari, states, in 1574, that the pitiful history of Romeus
and Julietta was so well known as to be represented on tapestry.
There is, moreover, evidence that goes far to prove that Shakespeare's drama was preceded by another that must have been
written at least after 1578, because indebted to an Italian play
published in that year. Plausibly as the matter has been argued,
I believe the presumption remains conclusively against Shakespeare's familiarity with either Italy or the Italian language, and
even the plausibility is weakened, if it appears that transferences
directly from the Italian stage to the English, gave aid in communicating the tone of Italy, its imagery and manners.
In Walker's Historical Memoir on Italian Tragedy, an account
is given of the Tragedy of Hadriana, by Luigi Groto, which
closely follows the incidents of da Porto's novel, merely carrying
them back to a quasi historical antiquity-times of Hatrio king
of Adria, Mezentius, and so forth. The author was a remarkable
man, for, though blind from his eighth year, he was not only a
poet of repute, but also an actor; he played the part of (Edipus
in the tragedy with which was opened the celebrated Olympic
theatre of Palladio at Vicenza.  Our present point of interest,
however, is that Mr. Walker detected such coincidences of expression in parallel scenes between the Hadriana and Shakespeare's
Romeo and Juliet, as to imply that, directly or indirectly, they
were derived from the Italian.  Thus the mention of the nightingale, in the morning scene of parting of the lovers, is found in
the Italian and Shakespearian parallels, but in none other that is
extant.
" Latinus. S'io non erro, b presto il far del giorno,
Udite il rossignuol, che con noi desto
Con noi geme fra i spini, e la rugiada
Col pianto nostro bagna l'herbe. Ahi lasso!
Rivolgete la faccia all oriente
Ecco incomincia a spuntar l'alba fuori,
Portando un altro sol sopra la terra."


(




CRITICAL ESSAY.


361


In the following passage, also, there is a coincidence of expression
that is not found either in Paynter or Brooke.  Mago, the substitute for the Friar, thus instructs the heroine in the effects of
the sleeping potion:" Questa bevendo voi con l'acqua cruda,
Darh principio a lavorar fra un poco,
E vi addormentara si iiminota e fissa,
E d'ogni sense renderk ~si priva:
II calor naturale, il color vivo
E lo spirar vi torra s', sii polsi,
(In cui e il testimonio della vita)
Immobili staran senza dar colpo;
Che alcun per dotto fisico che sia,
Non potra giudicarvi altro, che morta."
And thus the Friar:" Take thou this phial, being then in bed,
And this distilled liquor drink thou off;
When presently through all thy veins shall run
A cold and drowsy humour, which shall seize
Each vital spirit; for no pulse shall keep
His natural progress, but surcease to beat;
No warmth, nor breath, shall testify thou liv'st;
The roses in thy lips and cheeks shall fade
To paly ashes; thy eyes' windows fall
Like death when he shuts up the day of life;
Each part, deprived of supple government,
Shall stiff, and stark, and cold appear like death."
The corresponding passages in Brooke's Romeus and Juliet run
thus:"It doth in half an hour astonne the taker so,
And mastreth all his senses that he feeleth weal nor woe:
And so it burieth up the sprite and living breath,
That even the skilful leech would say that he is slain by death...
Receive this phial small and keep it as thine eye,
And on the marriage day, before the sun do clear the sky,
Fill it with water full up to the very brim,
Then drink it off, and thou shalt feel throughout each vein and
limb
A pleasant slumber slide, and quite dispread at length
On all thy parts, from every part reve all thy kindly strength;
Withouten moving thus thy idle parts shall rest,
No pulse shall go, ne heart once beat within thy hollow breast,
But thou shalt lie as she that dieth in a trance."
To this tune the whole tale jogs along and along until the
head aches with the monotony, the eyes swim, and the room goes
round; enough of it then and to spare, and we turn for relief to
the prose, that is more rhythmical, of Will. Paynter. We have
here the simpler prose of the French novelist that Brooke hitched




362           ROMEO AND JULIET.
into metre: the Friar describes a paste from " divers soporiferous
simples, which, beaten afterwards to powder and drunk with a
quantity of water within a quarter of an hour after, bringeth the
receiver into such a sleep, and burieth so deeply the senses and
other sprites of life, that the cunningest physician will judge
the party dead........    Behold, here I give you a phial,
which you shall keep as your own proper heart, and the night
before your marriage, or in the morning before day, you shall fill
the same up with water and drink so much as is contained therein.
And then you shall feel a certain kind of pleasant sleep, which
encroaching by little and little all the parts of your body, will
constrain them in such wise as unmovable they shall remain, and
by not doing their accustomed duties, shall lose their natural
feelings, and you abide in such ecstasy the space of forty hours
at the least, without any beating of pulse or other perceptible
motion, which shall so astonne them that come to see you, as they
will judge you to be dead, &c."  I find, moreover, in a speech of
Groto's heroine, a remarkable agreement with Romeo's antithetical
definition of love-due, I think, to something more than casual
indulgence in the same commonplace of the passion.
"Why then, 0 brawling love! 0 loving hate!
O anything of nothing first created!
O heavy lightness! serious vanity!
Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms!
Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health,
Still waking sleep, that is not what it is!This love feel I that feel no love in this....
What is it else? a madness most discreet,
A choking gall and a preserving sweet."
Compare with the following:" Fu il mio male un piacer senza allegrezza;
Un voler che si stringe ancorche punga,
Un affanno che'l ciel dh per riposo.
Un ben supremo, fonte d'ogni male,
Un male estremo, d'ogni ben radice,
Una piaga mortal che mi fec'io,
Un laccio d'or dov'io stessa m'avvinsi.
Un velen grato, ch'io bevei per gli occhi;
Giunto un finire e un cominciar di vita,
Una febre che'l gelo, e'l caldo mesce,
Un fel piu dolce assai che mele e manna,
Un bel fuoco che strugge e non risolve,
Un giogo insopportabile e leggiero,
Una pena felice un dolor caro,
Una morte immortal piena di vita.
Un Inferno che sembra il Paradise."
The testimony of these extracts, all having great similarity
from dependence on common authority, is, I think, not to be




CRITICAL ESSAY.


363


escaped from, that Shakespeare is here much closer to the Italian
drama than to either of his English guides that remain. I therefore infer, on grounds already indicated, that he adapted or made
use of some English adaptation of Groto, now lost; and when we
consider that many of his coincidences, both with Paynter and
Brooke, may have been adopted at second hand through this intermediate work, it will be seen that we shall only lose time,
and mislead ourselves, by entering into minute comparisons and
deductions. Suffice it to note, that Malone's indications determine that where Brooke and Paynter, who so largely agree, do
differ, the play usually follows Brooke, who is also traceable in
special passages and expressions. Particularly, I observe, that
Brooke has elaborated with considerable unction, possibly after
the old dramatist, the character of the old nurse, her gossip of
Juliet's childish days, her ready assistance and laxity in counsel:"She setteth forth at large the father's furious rage,
And eke she praiseth much to her the second marriage,
And County Paris now she praiseth ten times more,
By wrong than she herself by right had Romeus praised before.
Paris shall dwell there still, Romeus shall not return;
What shall it boot her life to languish still and mourn?
The pleasure past before she must account as gain,
But if he do return, what then?-for one she shall have twain," &c.
It seems to me quite clear, therefore, that we are like to make
ourselves content, without the satisfaction there would be in
studying all the crude materials of Shakespeare in the actual
form that preceded their development into his perfect play. Still
there is great interest in noting how much of the completed ideal
was germinant in the original inspiration of the incident, and
even fairness to the Italian authors may induce us to compare the
sketch of Bandello, that ultimately became the finished soliloquy
of Juliet before taking the lethargic potion.
" This night she slept not at all, or but little, revolving various
thoughts in her mind; then, as the hour of dawn approached at
which she was to drink off the water with the powder, she began
to figure Tebaldo in her imagination as she had seen him with
the wound in his throat and all covered with blood; and as she
reflected that she should be buried beside or perhaps above him,
and how many dead bodies and fleshless bones there were within
this monument, a chill passed through her frame so that her
hair all stood on end upon her, and overcome with affright she
trembled like a leaf in the wind. And then a cold sweat spread
over all her limbs, as it seemed to her that she was torn by
these dead bodies into a thousand pieces. Then, after a time
collecting herself, she said, 'Ah me, what would I do? Whither
would I cause myself to be carried? Should I by chance wake
up before the Friar and Romeo arrive, what would become of me P?




364            ROMEO AND JULIET.
Could I support the stench of the decaying corpse of Tebaldo, I
who can scarcely endure the slightest disagreeable smell about
the house. Who knows what reptile or what thousand worms,
which I so fear and shudder at, may not be in this sepulchre, and
if I cannot muster courage to regard them, how shall I endure
to have them close around ime,-touching me. Have I not heard
tell a thousand times what fearful things have occurred at night
even in churches and cemeteries, not to say actually within a
tomb?' With this alarming thought she imagined a thousand
hateful things, and hesitated to take the potion, and was on the
point of pouring it on the ground; raving with wild distracted
thoughts, she was now inclined to take the draught, and now
others suggested a thousand perils to her mind. At last, after
long agitation of ideas, urged on by lively fervent love for her
Romeo, which increased amidst her troubles, at the hour that
Aurora had already put forth her head from the balcony of the
East, chasing away all opposing thoughts she boldly drank off
the potion at a single draught, and composing herself to rest was
presently asleep."
The Italian novel of course, but also the English tale derived
from it, is more correct in the details of-the cell and confessional
than Shakespeare is, or perhaps cared to be; so long as he simplified his scene and satisfied his audience he, no doubt, willingly
gave up the circumstances of management that, according to the
actual practice of the country, rendered the rendezvous much
more difficult than it appears in the play. Brooke writes with
the particularity of one who lived nearer to the times, when the
land had been only too glad to relieve its social life from shriving
friars, to associate with their function either delicacy or romance.
His preface indeed is furiously polemical, and he applies hard
words to "superstitious friars," and "auricular confession," which
reflect even upon the purity and passion of the two lovers, though
in the actual narrative the mere sentiment of the story obliges
him to do them exacter justice. Bandello's friar is a character
known to every church. " Forasmuch as the good friar had no
wish to forfeit the good opinion of the vulgar, and yet would
enjoy those sweets of philosophical research to which he was inclined, he followed his pursuits perforce as cautiously as possible,
and, as a protection in case of accidents, was desirous of attaching himself to some personage of nobility and influence;" and
this is made the motive of his assistance to the lovers.
In taking leave of these earlier forms of the story, I may notice
that it seems pretty clear from comparison of the words of Brooke
that, whether from personal or derived knowledge, he seems to
have been familiar with the remarkable tomb of the Scaligers at
Verona;-the design is engraved by Knight, and to have regarded or chosen to regard it as that of the lovers:" And lest that length of time might from our minds remove




CRITICAL ESSAY.


365


The memory of so perfect, sound, and so approved a love,
The bodies dead, removed from vault where they did die
In stately tomb on pillars great of marble raise they high,
On every side above were set and eke beneath
Great store of cunning epitaphs in honour of their death.
And even at this day the tomb is to be seen,
So that among the monuments that in Verona been,
There is no monument more worthy of the sight
Than is the tomb of Juliet and Romeus her knight."
Certain general modifications in the conduct and construction
of the action of which no trace appears before Shakespeare, and
no doubt are originally his, are the introduction of Tybalt at the
mask, and the commencement there of the animosity against
Romeo that is fatal to both of them afterwards,-the special exasperation of Romeo by the slaughter under his very eves of his
friend Mercutio, and the fatal encounter with Paris at the Capulets' monument. Another pervading and most characteristic
change is the accelerated movement of the entire story. Shake -
speare, who never scruples to neglect the restraints of time when
they would interfere with the effect he aims at,-boldly beckoning us over any gulf of time as in The Winter's Tale, or as in
Othello, assuming a lapsed interval that the continuous occupation of the stage is inconsistent with had we only leisure to
make the comparison, in this Italian story neglects the pauses
and intervals that separate the stages of the original stories,
moves up every successive incident in preparation before the previous one concludes, and scrupulously accounts for the occupation
of every day and every portion of each day and night, from the
morning that opens upon the bickering partisans to that which
gives light to their reconciliation when too late to save the best.
The tumult of the first scene is over by nine o'clock in the
morning; Capulet's issue of invitations follows for the same night,
and the intermediate time is fully occupied by the suggestion of
Benvolio to join the mask, the gossip of the nurse with Juliet and
her mother, and the lively prelude of Mercutio before the intruders enter and find the ball at its height, which only closes
with act. A single word, a single look, a single touch have
joined two hearts in a moment and for ever, eager against every
obstacle and desperate against every reverse; the yearning restlessness of Romeo in pursuit of the mere shadow of love evinced
his fine susceptibility, and we are prepared for the response in
the maiden heart of Juliet by her repression of her nurse's tattling
jokes, no less than by her mother's injunctions to look to love.
Already, before their first interview, the fatal suit of the County
Paris is announced, and opposed to the thrilling figure of Romeo,
as he gives utterance to the first syllables of passion, stands the
scowling Tybalt, quivering with the rage that foredooms his end
The chorus that divides the first and second acts but marks




366


ROMEO AND JULIET.


the transferred scene continued in the open air, and it is expressive of the hurrying rapidity, that the line with which Benvolio
gives up the search for his cousin in the open place, has its completing rhyme in the rejoinder of Romeo in the garden:" Go then; for 'tis in vain
To seek him here that means not to be found.
Romeo. He jests at scars who never felt a wound."
After the entrancing night-scene in the garden it is still but
early morn, as Friar Laurence completes his basketful of dewy
simples and greets the early tongue of Romeo: the mission of the
nurse and Peter is between nine and ten; at twelve the answer
is brought back to the impatient but soon overjoyed Juliet, and
the marriage at the friar's cell is in the afternoon. The heat of
the day is not past when Tybalt, brooding over the insult conceived the previous night at the ball, is embroiled with Mercutio,
slays him, and is slain himself by Romeo; the banishment of
Romeo, the expectant monologue of Juliet, the return of the nurse
with the rope-ladder and news of the catastrophe, the consolation
of Romeo by the friar, and the message and ring from his love,
and preparations for the meeting at night, and departure for
Mantua, disguised, early in the morning, carry on and cover
every moment of time till the short scene of the late talk of
Capulet, Lady Capulet and Paris, brings us almost to morning:"Afore me! it is so late that'we
May call it early by and by.-Good night."
Romeo and his wife have but just parted at the first signals of
morn, when her mother, in obedience to the instructions of Capulet,
-" Go you to Juliet ere you go to bed," comes to her chamber
to prepare her for marriage with Paris two days later. On the
same day the despairing Juliet is again at the friar's cell for
counsel; her changed manner on return causes the marriage to
be fixed for the next day, and that very evening, the first after
her marriage night, she takes thJ potion that is to lock her in
death-like lethargy for two and forty hours. Thus it is only at
the termination of the fourth act that any break in the close
following incidents is admitted; then the scene is transferred to
Mantua, whither Balthasar speeds with heavy news to return
in post with Romeo, and duly, at the expiration of the appointed
term, when Juliet had been two days buried, the friar arrives to
behold the spectacle of desperation and death.
This breathless rapidity of incidents, this hasty interchange,
-nay, this closest interweaving and association of rapture and
misery in the distribution of the plot, is in sympathy with the
characteristic passion that gives the central impulse, on which
all depends. The hasty precipitancy of the passion of Romeo and
Juliet is the ruling motive with which all the accompaiii menits
harmonize, as it seems the highestexpression -of-a prevailing
tendency of the age and the clime. Tndif'erent accidettsrdispose


I




CRITICAL ESSAY.


367 -'


themiselves to aid, like the appearance of Juliet at the balcony,
andlolove does not follow on first sight more surely than mutual
avoaal and full confidence at the earliest interview, and contract
andicompletion at hastening and undeferred opportunity. The
union of delicacy and frank affection and glowing passion in
Juliet is something too sacred for criticism, which can but turn
such divinity to profanation.  Envy, belief, and admiration, are
insufficient homage, and the self-control of honour so perfect as
to be unconscious, rides angel-like over the turbulence of surprise
and enthusiasm, and redeems the very excess of rashness to our
sympathies if not approval.
The love of Romeo again, with all its vehement intensity and
seeming extravagance, is preserved to our respect, by the proof
that it tends rather to regulate than extinguish the more peculiarly manly sentiment. When elate from marriage he lights
upon his friends skirmishing with his new kinsfolk in anger, sudden and violent as his own love, he opposes calmness and expostulation to insult, though not without self-reproach when his friend
is hurt beside him, and, indeed, through his interference; and
when he hears that he is dead and Tybalt returns in triumph,
reason how we may, it is with advantage to our feeling for his
character, that he thrusts his love aside and vindicates in mortal
attack his own honour and his friend.
Thus the very checks to the violence of passion are sudden
and violent as itself, and resolution passes from one extreme to
the other, from despair to desperate remedy by natural recoil.
Where feelings either of love or hate are so excitable the best intervention is foiled and disappointed, or only ministers occasion
for new embarrassment or outrage. It is the calm Benvolio who
induces Romeo to seek a cure for his love of Rosaline at the hall
of the Capulets, where a more fatal love awaited him; Capulet
checks Tybalt at the mask, where his interference might at least
have prevented the accosting of Juliet by Romeo; Mercutio, in
his eagerness to forestall Tybalt's challenge of Romeo, destroys
his friend and himself also; Romeo himself, when he rushes between combatants, gives occasion for one to receive mortal hurt
under his arm; the foolish and tyrannical parents, who would
comfort their grieving daughter, do it in a harsh unfeeling wise that
brings her to her grave, and the hasty message of Balthasar, who
does not wait to communicate with }riar Laurence, is fatal to his
master. Friar Laurence himself has the calmness and right
meaning of Benvolio, with knowledge of human nature that
teaches him how far it is to be hoped to eradicate passion, and
at what point the utmost hope is to control it and direct it to
good end. But even his aid participates in the destiny that
attends all who would guide precipitateness that is practically
uncontrollable. Assuming all the circumstances it is hard not to
admit his own appeal that-A greater power than he could con



d368


ROMEO AND JULIET.


tradict had thwarted his intents, —the catastrophe was a " ork
of heaven to be borne with patience, and nothing in it misca) ied
by his fault."  It will be observed that in his apology he I'lies
upon the bare circumstances, and does not think it necessary evenl
to refer to one motive that he entertained, the hope of making
the marriage effect a peace between the rancorous houses.
The lovers are punished it may be said for their haste and
rashness, their disobedience of parents, their unsanctioned con-  s
tract, their excessive engrossment by a passion that is at last lot
heavenly love but earthly, and many more are the hard words
that would as readily as justly apply. They are punished by the
agonies of their checquered union, by deprivation after brief enjoyment of the happiness they ran such risks to seize, and the misdeeds of their earlier course bring them at last to the irretrievable
misery and crime of self-destruction. It is most certain, however,
that these are not the sentiments with which the conclusion of the
drama leaves us imbued; our hearts are melted at the unhappy fate
of the lovers, and pure commiseration, undisturbed by any thought
of anger, bedews their hapless tomb. How then? Did Shakespeare suborn our feelings against our better judgment? Has he
by false colour withdrawn our attention from the really blameworthy, and cast a false halo around wickedness and selfishness
and wrong, and made a scape-goat for our maledictions of the
allies and parents who in truth should engross our sympathy and
pity. Neither is this so; so long as English poetry remains, the
story of Romeo and Juliet will be felt as the blameless vindication
of t e rh-tsana-d -r i    eiTes  f devoted love; the picture which
no associated suffering can render less attractive of the purest
and the highest happiness the human heart can feel; the bright
imagination, if no more, of that last true and sympathetic touch
which so long as unknown,-let us less severely and more hopefully say, so long as unbelieved as a possibility, leaves the heart,
however else expanded, the victim of the sense that after all it is
alone; that it is at best but a foreigner in a strange land, among
strange tongues, strange faces, at best entertained and occupied
by curiosity, but ever prepared to find seeming sincerity and
sympathy reveal themselves as the hypocrisy of indifference or
design.
Never then was or will be a heart deterred from love, however
dangerous, by the story of Ro;leo and Juliet; though many may
be those which shrink with sympathetic suffering and regret as
Romeo, untaught by wairnings of previous wilfulness, sinks by his
own rash wrong act into senselessness the very moment before
it is known his waking wife would have risen from her seeming
shroud to reward a stronger self-control. But still the misery of
the end has a double source, and that which is the chief lies
without the nature and the conduct of the Iovers, in the fierce
animosities of civil rivalry on the one hand, and on the other




CRITICAL ESSAY.


369


quite as fatally in the inconsiderate heartlessness that controls
the unwilling-or as bad, the inexperienced, into heartless marriage. It is by exciting awe and pity at the consequences of such
misdeeds, or at least in promoting the sensibility to such feelings
at more real incidents when they arise, that the poet becomes the
ultimate lawgiver, and reaches actions which neither law nor
institution can influence or approach.
Romeo and Juliet, then, displays the encounter of two natures
prone or prepared to love, and with that native suitability to
each other that renders instantaneous passion at first sight the
apparently natural consequence of meeting,-a predetermined
destiny of the order of the world. Their ages are those at which
love first opens and seeks its object when it awakens, as the newborn eye expects the light; they live under the Southern sun that
warms into beauty all the objects of the filer senses and seems
to refine the senses with them, where it seems most natural that
speech should be harmonious, that language should mould itself
without effort or constraint into melody and poetry, that colours
and forms should spontaneously distinguish themselves in their
various combinations as readily by their fitnesses of harmony and
contrast as by their mere obvious diversity, where the odorous
air seems fragrant from the immediate heart of health-breathing
nature, and the features and form of man become the nearest
approach to the perfect expression of every charm that can attend
the grace of life. Fortune and friends are close and warm and
zealous around each of them; equality in honours, and proximity
in place, preclude the obstacles and accidents that violently separate so many hearts, and every influence but one conspires as
happily to give birth to the passion as to crown its success.
The single obstacle is the bitter enmity of their rival houses,
set in opposition by an antipathy that seems as characteristic of
the clime as the sympathetic passion of the lovers; it is kindled
by a word, exasperated by a look, and rushes to its gratification
and its ruin with the like single unconsidering and headstrong
impetuosity. Such was Verona then, and such still is Italy; the
land where the vehemence of love has most to excite and most
to excuse it, but where the germ of dissension is ever rife beside
it; and when Friar Laurence finds a moral for his osier cage of
simples,-depositories side by side within the same flower of
poison and medicine, it is rather a national reminiscence than a
principle of human nature, though that be so no less, that brings
up the two opposed kings, Grace and rude Will, encamping in
man as well as herbs.
The drama represents,-as all dramas, more or less, the clash
and conflict of these rival powers; the Powers of Love and Hatred
join in civil close; Love it is true is crushed and mangled in the
fray, but its holier spirit and better purpose is not unrewarded
or effectless: true the lovers perish, the victims no less of their
B B




370


ROMIEO AND JULIET.


own precipitation than of their hasty enemies, but something of
their passion still lives in power, and it is across the bodies of
the breathless pair, as over an atoning sacrifice, that hands that
were so lately clenched in reckless and unreasoning animosity,
are joined in relenting tenderness and the cordiality that grows
by common tears.
Pride of self-confident sagacity, flattering with vain assurance
the timidity that shrinks from confronting the liabilities of human
life, is ever too ready to comment upon the catastrophe of the
hapless, and lay down that thus acting or thus, they would have
achieved happiness, or at least escaped harmless. There are
who find consolation in tracing misfortunes of their neighbours to
flaws of habit or character, whether it be that thus they justify
their judicial cold-heartedness, or hug themselves on a security
derived from the very instruction of others' fate, or previous preparation. But the opinion is as false as the sentiment is unfeeling, and both find their rebuke in collision with the course of
nature, and in the poetry that truly represents it. Misfortune
and decay hover unseen around all that is best and most beautiful,
and may and do descend at any time with fatal and inevitable
swoop-to be anticipated by no forethought, shunned by no
adroitness. These are the most impressive lessons of sympathy
with the ills of others, of moderated thoughts in high success, of
such continuous recognition of the divinity of contentment, of
patience, of self-collected resignation as bespeaks their present
aid when hope itself goes down beneath the waters. The scourge
of independent accident strikes then severely, no less than that
which, by our own faults and ignorances, we ourselves put into
the hands of fate. Men at some times are masters of their fate,
but still not always, and neither Shakespeare nor nature disallows an influence to the stars as well as to ourselves. The
history of the world is that of the progress of man in wresting a
greater share of this divided control, and bringing his own destiny
into more absolute dependence on his own doings and demeanour.
Absolute conclusion of the conflict may be inconceivable, and in
the meantime, which therefore is for ever, every story of the
highest tragic interest will, like that of Romeo and Juliet, abundantly illustrate how high-exalted and unruly passion attracts
misery, as the eminence the thunderbolt, and speak in warning
and condemning tones, but at the same time provoke our awe
at the resistless forces that may overbear the best dispositions
and endeavours, and solicit a pure tear of tender commiseration
for those who struggle well and bravely but must perforce succumb. It is idle to charge such a moral with imputing injustice
and tyranny to the laws of the universe; such are the conditions
of our existence, and who shall say that he has not virtually
acceded to them and accepted them over and over again.
Grave comment this upon a tale of love: but love is the essence




CRITICAL ESSAY.


371


not only of the highest joy of life but also of the severest duty,
and the germ of all morality, its lapses and its exaltations also
are symbolized in the susceptibility, in virtue of which the souls
of Romeo and Juliet become blended in one mutuatl being for
ever sympathetic and inseparable, whether for rapture or destruction.
It is as susceptible of affection, the most passionate and engrossing, and at the same time the purest, most ethereal, and most
self-devoted, that the natures of the lovers are displayed in
brilliant contrast to most of those around them; the passion that
animates them, that unites the sexes and, effacing the deepest
of all distinctions, vindicates the unity of humanity, blends'at
the same time all the faculties of mind and body into most harmonious exercise, makes perception poetical and imagination
resolute, combines grace and tenderness with all that is most
manly, and all that is most truly feminine with persistency and
will. Every passion wrought to its height and hemmed in by
persecuting accidents, sins equally by impatience and impetuosity
and confounds itself in its own rage, but it is reserved for love
alone to be its own atonement, and the only errors that are nearly
cancelled in virtue of their source are those that own a natural
nobleness of birth from loving much, though it may be over much.
The love of Romeo and Juliet stands alone in the play; no
secondary attachment of another pair is introduced beside it,.none other could have been attended to, and it is fully relieved
upon the mere uneasy turbulence of sense of the false passion for
Rosaline on the one hand, and on the other the cold decorousness
of the suit of Paris. Shakespeare from the resources of his own
invention gave distinctness to the figure of the County Paris, who
solicits the parents of his proposed bride, admits the fixing of the
marriage day, and himself bespeaks the service of the officiating
priest, before he breathes a word to the lady, or receives a glance
of encouragement, or takes the trouble to become aware how
averse her feelings are to the time, to say nothing of the alliance.
Wooing like this evinces the mere deadness of heart and dulness
of the sympathies that are not unusual among the noble, fostered
by self-esteem and quite independent of cruelty of disposition;
but it is a wickedness no less, and the trifling sentimentalist
justly incurs his fate, for the blood of the innocent is set abroach
through his negligence and heartlessness.
These few lines contain all that Arthur Brooke provides in the
way of suggestion of the character of Mercutio,-effectually nothing;-the scene is the hall:" At th' one side of her chair her lover Romeo,
And on the other side there sate one called Mercutio;
A courtier that each where was highly had in price,:For he was courteous of his speech and pleasant of device;
Even as a lion would among the lambs be bold,




372           ROMEO AND JULIET.
Such was among the bashful maids Mercutio to behold.
With friendly gripe he seized fair Juliet's snowish hand,A gift he had that nature gave him in his swathing-band,
That frozen mountain ice was never half so cold
As were his hands, though near the fire he did them hold."
Thus far, however, the contrast with the grasp of Romeo is continued in the play, that Mercutio is the most decided foil to his
more refined and delicately gifted spirit. In vivacity and liveliness he may be his equal, and he is endowed with an aptness for
excitement and a flow of fantastic associations that, in the absence
of sentiment, are the first though insufficient conditions of poetical
invention; but his fancy tends to be overborne by fluency as his
mirth by boisterousness; he is a gay companion and a ready
partisan, but lax not to the verge but to the very limits of coarseness in his talk. It is this very characteristic that renders him
indispensable, for such things are, and only by admitting a glimpse
of them can art define their opposites, and if Mercutio, on the one
side, and the old nurse, on the other, are to be tongue-tied where
they would talk most willingly and freely, a glory will fade from
the angel brightness of Juliet and the graceful sprightliness of
Romeo, and the very ardour of their wishes run the risk of degradation by the withdrawal of a background necessary for
guiding to the true scale of intervals and intensities from best to
worst. Even Tybalt himself is scarcely so gratuitous a brawler
as Mercutio, but he lends a dignity to his victim by the contrast
of entire destitution of finer accomplishments; he is a mere type
of practised aptness for feuds and animosities. Mercutio draws
from himself in his jesting imputation of quarrelsomeness to
Benvolio, and there is a spirit of prophecy in his words that if
there were two such there would be speedily none-fulfilled
when his slayer Tybalt himself so soon is slain. The speech on
Queen Mab is one of the many that has had its effect in the play
weakened by dismemberment in extract-the same remark applies to Romeo's description of the poverty of the Apothecary,
blamed not seldom as inopportune occupation with the picturesque,
as though the dwelling on the proofs of penury were not necessitated by their bearing on his chance of being bribed to forbidden
sale of poison.
Love is the soul of Nature, and it seems as though Shakespeare
would vindicate for the ruling passion of this play a closer intimacy with Nature's counsels, for in no other does he allow such
value to dreams and presentiments. Romeo goes to the ball of
Capulet impressed with boding dream and anticipation, Juliet at
parting looks down upon him from the balcony as on a dead man
in a vault, and the promising plans of the Friar at Verona are
mirrored in his dreams at Mantua, though the promise, as so often
occurs with these mysterious vaticinations, is first misread and
afterwards foiled.




CRITICAL ESSAY.                     373
The play begins with the comedy of the commonest minds,
and interspersed throughout we have returns of the same discord, and the vulgarity of feeling that depends on station among
the servants is brought into composition with that which is independent of it, in Capulet and his lady confronted with the
nurse. What a picture of a common-place grieving household
is that assembled round the seeming death-bed of Juliet-the
world pausing for a moment with suspended feelings at the shock
of a suddenly terminated existence, and after a few moments recommencing an unaltered course which beyond the very narrow
circle of contact was never interrupted. No thought of recent
unkindness touches the hearts of father or mother, and the rapture
of the blubbering nurse is a welcome diversion of our feelings,
and gives us an excuse to smile. It is by thus completing the
picture of society in all directions, the intellectual, fanciful, animated and irritable, sentimental and sympathetic, and the opposites and negatives of all, and in all grades of the social order,
that a living reality is gained for ideal and poetic Love; and
notwithstanding its exaltation it descends to us and embraces us
invincibly, and the sympathies cling fearlessly and believingly
to a glory that is bright with beams from Paradise, yet so accompanied and associated as neither to scare us as a phantom alluring to destroy, nor mock us with hopelessness of a beauty that
can never be achieved.




I
II




CRITICAL ESSAY ON TIMON OF ATHENS.
HE original sources and authorities for the character
and story of Timon of Athens are the Dialogue of
Lucian, which bears his name, and the various scattered notices, of all ages of Greek literature, most of
which, through one channel or another, were doubtless, among
others now lost, familiar to Lucian. The general tenor of these
notices seems to imply that there was no lack of information
about him, and hence the probability that Lucian's satire is not
entirely a fiction in the circumstances ascribed to its hero. Nevertheless, the nature of the man is set before us in two phases, perhaps not entirely irreconcileable, but so far contrasted as to invite poetical elaboration into two persons as distinct as Apemantus and Timon. From Plutarch, we learn that he lived in the
time of the Peloponnesian war, a contemporary of Alcibiades and
of Aristophanes, who twice. alludes to his hatred of men, and perhaps even of gods:-" A certain Timon there was, vagabond,
fenced about among thorny thickets inaccessible, offshoot of the
Furies, and this Timon went off out of hatred, with many imprecations on the depravity of man, and hated them persistently."
Here there is very much of the sincere bitterness of the Timon
of Lucian. A quotation by Diogenes Laertius indicates similar
circumstances, and assigns more rational motives; he is said to
have been of " philosophic turn, exceedingly attached to his garden, and retired within himself." This manner of life has had
charms in all ages, its harmlessness ever open to be taxed as indifference to mankind, and readily by such a busy sociable people as the Athenians, would be held to argue misanthropy. " To
fly from, need not be to hate mankind;" but those who are piqued
or uneasy at the desertion, seldom give it a milder name,
whether the retreat be a flower-garden and orchard or a library.
Nay, there remains a name to be found for it that is still harder,
and it was imputed by a Peripatetic, that Timon's retirement was
but philosophizing coxcombry and affectation: -" the philosophers," he said, " are like the Scythians, who discharge their
arrows both in pursuit and flight, and are divisible into those




376            TIMON OF ATHENS.
who invite disciples and those who repulse them, in either case
with the same design, and of the latter class was Timon." Stobseus furnishes us with a dictum of Timon the misanthrope, as a
philosopher; it was, that the elements of all evils are human insatiableness and love of reputation. The doctrine of indifference
to fame and contentment with moderate resources, is at least in
apparent harmony with Timon's retirement from the world, as
well as with the traditions of his severity of life.
The general tenor of all the accounts forbids us to suppose but
that Timon's misanthropy must have been displayed in more
positive and offensive manifestations than mere self-enjoyment in
the leisure of a trim garden or simple eccentricity; and the historical question lies between affectation and anger. There is an
odd coincidence with the two allusions, already noticed, to his
horticultural tastes or haunts, of the anecdote related by Plutarch,
and made use of somewhat against its goodwill and convenience
in the play. " It is reported of him also," thus runs North's
translation in the Life of Antonius, " that this Timon on a time,
the people being assembled in the market-place about despatch
of some affairs, got up into the pulpit for orations, where the
orators commonly use to speak unto the people, and silence being
made, every man listening to hear what he would say, because
it was a wonder to see him in that place, at length he began to
speak in this manner: My lords of Athens, I have a little yard at
my house where there groweth a fig-tree, on the which many citizens have hanged themselves, and because I mean to make some
building on that place, I thought good to let you all understand
it, that before the fig-tree be cut down, if any of you be desperate,
you may there in time go hang yourselves."
Pausanias, in the age of Hadrian, mentions a tower of Timon,
"who held that happiness was only attainable remote from society," as visible from the pleasant neighbourhood of Colonus in
Attica, and it was apparently in imitation of the position of this,
that Antony, fugitive from Actium, and discontented with life,
raised a building in the sea at Alexandria, which he called his
Timonion. I am disposed to think it likely that nothing but the
melancholy position of some solitary wave-washed tower caused
it to be associated with the name of the man-hater, as his residence first, and afterwards as his tomb." " He died," says Plutarch, " at Halse, an Attic deme, and was buried on the sea side;
now it chanced so that the sea getting in, it compassed his tomb
round about, that no man could come to it, and upon the same
was written this epitaph:Here lies a wretched corse, of wretched life bereft,
Seek not my name; a plague consume you wicked wretches left.
It is reported that Timon himself, when he lived, made this epitaph."
The scholiast of Aristophanes has the story that he died from




CRITICAL ESSAY.


377


the mortification of a limb, broken by an accident in the country,
and lacking the contemned attendance of a surgeon. The rest
of the account of Timon, as given by Plutarch, and translated by
North, runs to this effect:" Antonius he forsook the city and company of his friends, and
built him a house in the sea, by the isle of Pharos, upon certain
forced mounts which he caused to be cast into the sea, and dwelt
there as a man that banished himself from all men's company, saying he would lead Timon's life, because he had the like wrong
offered to him that was before offered unto Timon; and that for
the unthankfulness of those he had done good unto, and whom
he took to be his friends, he was angry with all men, and would trust
no man. This Timon was a citizen of Athens that lived about
the war of Peloponnesus, as appeareth by Plato and Aristophanes'
comedies, in the which they mocked him, calling him a viper
and malicious man unto mankind to shun all other men's companies but the company of young Alcibiades, a bold and insolent
youth, whom he would greatly feast and make much of, and
kissed him very gladly. Apemantus, wondering at it, asked him
the cause and what he meant to make so much of that young man
alone, and to hate all others. Timon answered him,' I do it,' said
he, 'because I know that one day he shall do great mischief unto
the Athenians.' This Timon sometimes would have Apemantus
in his company, because he was much like of his nature and conditions, and also followed him in manner of life. On a time
when they solemnly celebrated the feast called Chove, at Athens
(to wit, the feast of the dead, where they make sprinklings and
sacrifices for the dead), and that they two then feasted together
by themselves, Apemantus said unto the other: ' 0 here is a trim
banquet, Timon.' Timon answered again, 'Yea,' said he, 'so
thou wert not here.' "
In this passage, which no doubt was known to Shakespeare,
we find the ingratitude of false friends assigned as the origin of
Timon's misanthropy; which, however, is less akin by its manifestations to bitterness of heart and indignant resentment than to
the sour temper and ill conditioned nature of a gratuitous cynic.
Accordingly, in the drama, it is the hound Apemantus who hangs
about society for the set purpose of insulting it, and makes his
appearance at feasts without any absolute necessity, for the pleasure of telling the other guests how heartily he despises and wishes
them away. In the play it is Apemantus, not Timon as in the history, who hankers after the opportunity of a dialogue to vent his
discontent and parade s love of solitude, and corroborates the
opinion of Cicero:-" Qumn etiam si quis ea asperitate est et immanitate nature, congressus ut hominum fugiat atque oderit,
qualem fuisse Athenis Timonem nescio quem accepimus, tamen
is pati non possit ut non anquirat aliquem apud quem evomat
virus acerbitatis suae."




378


TIMON OF ATHENS.


It is difficult not to think, as others have repeatedly observed,
that some of the characteristics of Apemantus,-how happy the
homophony of the name, descended to Shakespeare through whatever channel, from the Cynic of another piece of Lucian's,the Sale of Philosophers. " But now mind how you are to behave: you must be bold, saucy, and abusive to every body, kings
and beggars alike; this is the way to make them look upon you
and think you a great man: Your voice should be barbarous, and
your speech dissonant, as like a dog as possible; your countenance
rigid and inflexible, and your gait and demeanour suitable to it:
everything you say savage and uncouth: modesty, equity, and
moderation you must have nothing to do with: never suffer a
blush to come upon your cheek: seek the most public and frequented place, but when you are there desire to be alone, and
permit neither friend nor stranger to associate with you, for these
things are the ruin and destruction of power and empire."
A short "Novel" in Paynter's Palace of Pleasure, a book
familiar to Shakespeare, consists of the story of Timon extracted,
with slight change and colouring, from Plutarch;-its tone will
be recognized from its conclusion. " By his last will he ordained
himself to be interred upon the sea-shore, that the waves and
surges might beat and vex his dead carcase. Yea, and that if it
were possible his desire was to be buried in the depth of the sea:
causing an epitaph to be made wherein were described the qualities of his brutish life."
Thus all the authorities so far, ancient and modern, present at
best but an indistinct, confused, and conflicting representation of'
the spirit of misanthropy; but in the Timon of Lucian we find
a sketch of the disposition that rises to characterization by the
consistency of its details, and the accordance with nature of its
sequences of causes and effects. We are here at the well-head of
much that is most effective and philosophical in the drama, though
literary history has not preserved a memory of all the intermediate links. All that can be said is that plentiful allusions prove
that the story of Timon was familiar and popular, while one
anonymous play on the subject, to which we must return, has
been actually preserved, and has been reprinted from the MS. by
the Shakespeare Society. The Greek quotations introduced into
it indicate an academical author at least if not audience; it
is probably one of a class of works like the Latin Richard III.
written for the dramatic displays of Colleges and Inns of Court,
a class which must have been numerous, and had great effect in
transferring classical subjects, as well as spirit and modes of treatment, to the English stage.
Lucian's dialogue then opens with an address of Timon to
Jupiter, whom he taxes with laziness and remissness for not
checking human depravity, in terms which at first belong rather
to the author himself than to the Athenian. But after the satirist




CRITICAL      ESSAY.               379
has well indulged and satisfied himself with bullying the king of
gods and men, he applies himself more steadily to his theme
and Mercury relates to Jupiter the story of the man, who squalid
and clothed in hide, is stooping over his laborious spade at the
foot of Mount Hymettus, and uttering impieties that can scarcely
proceed from any one but a philosopher. In a manner of speaks% ing, says Mercury, his goodness and philanthropy ruined him,
and his commiseration for all who were in need, but in point of
fact it was his foolishness, and facility, and inability to discriminate in friendship, never perceiving that he was doing kindness
to carrion crows and wolves; while his very liver was being
preyed upon by so many vultures he thought them friends, and
while they were rejoicing in their feast he esteemed them as
companions out of pure good will to him. But when they had
stripped his bones clean and gnawed them about, and if any
marrow was in them had sucked this out also with sedulous care,
they went off leaving him withered and rooted up, and would
not either know or look at him,-much less think for a moment
of assisting or requiting him."
Jupiter defers the punishment of the ingrates till such time as
his thunderbolt shall be mended, two of its big spikes being broken
and blunted through a false stroke which aimed at Anaxagoras
was parried by Pericles and fell upon the temple of his own sons
Castor and Pollux, which it set on fire,-the bolt itself being
almost as good as spoiled by the collision; Mercury therefore has
to carry it to the Cyclops, and on his way drops the blind Plutus
in Attica with orders from Jupiter to restore Timon to riches.
Plutus, abused once, is unwilling to return, and has the same
opinion of the effect of recovered riches on Timon that is expressed by Apemantus in the play,-a renewal of prodigality;
and Indigence whom they find in his company, with Wisdom,
Courage, and Labour, is not more sagacious in her expectation.
Timon however is recusant; at first he repulses the gods as hated
no less than men, relaxing a little at the kindness of the intentions of Jove, he still would fain continue poor,-it will quite
satisfy him if Jupiter will limit the obligation to making all
mankind miserable for ages. At last he submits, and a stroke of
his spade discloses the treasure, and at the sight of it he seems
to forget his apprehensions of the returning cares of riches, and
gives it greeting:-" Yes, gold it must be, bright, ruddy, heavy,
and of aspect ever pleasing; Come, O dearest and delightfullest,
now at last I believe that Jove himself once turned to gold, for
what virgin would not with 'apron mountant' receive so fair a
lover. Midas and Croesus and Delphic dedications, ye are nothing
compared to Timon and Timon's wealth. The Persian king himself is no match for him. 0 spade and jerkin my favourite, it is
fair and fitting to dedicate you here to Pan, but I will buy the
entire remote plot and build a tower above my treasure, sufficient




380


TIMON OF ATHENS.


for myself alone to live in, and the same I design shall serve me
for a tomb after my death. Thus be it decreed for the rest of
my life,-avoidance of all men, and disregard and contempt:
Friend, or guest, or fellow, or altar of Pity-mere nonsense; to
pity the weeping, or to aid the distressed, be trespass and immorality, and my life shall be lonely like the wolves, and Timon
alone my friend." After more in the same strain which is rather
triumphant than truly bitter, he becomes aware of the approach
of a crowd who already scent his riches as crows the carcase.
Gnatho, the parasite, is first,-then Philiades, to whom he had
given a farm, and two talents for dowry for his daughter, rewards of compliments to his singing when other hearers were inattentive. One brings verses, the other professions of intended aid
in money, and Demeas, the orator, follows,-Demeas, whom he
had released from prison by payment of his fine, and who afterwards disowned him as a citizen, but now announces that the
senate and people of Athens are assembled to honour Timon as
the great furtherance of the race, the prop of the Athenians, the
rampart of Greece, and that he has prepared the fulsome flattery
of the decree. Lastly comes a philosopher, excellently described
with all the attributes known to all ages, of " the flamen who
scolds against the quality of flesh and not believes himself."
Timon awaits them one after the other rather with mocks than
objurgation, and speedily drives them away, laying about him
with serviceable spade,-till in conclusion as numbers press he
gives it respite, and mounts upon a rock and repels the intruders
with a hailstorm of stones.
Lucian's Timon, it must be said, seems to recover his spirits
wonderfully with the recovery of riches, and his misanthropy
does not reach a much higher tone than the somewhat vulgar one
of selfishness and miserliness succeeding the silly profusion of the
dupe and the prodigal; but the character is at least cleared of the
foreign elements that make up the splenetic carper, jealous of his
bad conditions as of a property and a distinction. The sketch is
quite equal to all its pretensions, and abounds with the suggestions
of which we enjoy results in Timon of Athens.
The anonymous play of Timon, carefully reprinted with all
flaws and faults by the Shakespeare Society, was preserved in a
MS. that seemed to have been written about 1600; and, poor as
the drama is, it is not without some of the marks belonging to a
good period. The profusion of Timon is displayed in vulgar form
of riotous living, and the character and the story are thus at once
lowered in dignity together; as little advantage results from
setting on foot the intrigue of a mercenary match, but other additions there are to the story as told by the ancients, that were
probably original in this play, and are common to it with Shakespeare's. We find here the faithful steward, who endeavours in
vain to check the recklessness of extravagance, and afterwards




CRITICAL      ESSAY.                381
faithfully follows his ruined master to the woods; this is a portion of their dialogue:" Timon. Begone, I say, why dost thou follow me?
Why art thou yet so instant?
Laches.                   Faith commands.
Tim. Faith! what is faith? Where doth she hide her head,
Under the rise or setting of the sun?
Name thou the place.
Lach.             Here, in this breast.
Tim.                                 Thou liest,
There is no faith, 'tis but an idle name,
A shadow, or nearer unto nothing,
If anything.
Lach.     Let me but follow thee.
Tim. If thou wilt follow me, then change thy shape
Into a hydra that's in Lerna bred,
Or some strange monster hatcht in Africa;
Be what thou art not, I will hug thee then:
This former face I hate, detest and fly."
This manifestly anticipates the stipulation that the rewarded
Flavius shall also turn misanthrope, as it was itself suggested by
the anecdote of the rustic feast with Apemantus.
" Thou art a man, that's wickedness enough;
I hate that fault; I hate all human kind;
I hate myself, and curse my parents' ghosts....
Lach. Think me thy foe, so thou wilt suffer me
To be thy mate, no harshness I'll refuse;
If thou command, my parents I'll despise,
Thou so commanding, will them ever hate.
Tim. Thou hast prevailed, be thou then my mate;
But thou must suffer me to hate thee still:
Touch not our hand, and exercise thy spade
In the remotest part of all the ground.
O Jove, that dart'st thy piercing thunderbolts,
Let a dire comet, with his blazing streams,
Threaten a deadly plague from heaven on earth.
Lach. Let seas of bloodshed overflow the earth, &c."
Here, also, we find the incident, for which the old anecdotes
supply no hint, of Timon's treacherous invitation to his false
friends to a concluding banquet of blows and insults. He pelts
them as they escape with stones painted like artichokes; and it
has been remarked that Shakespeare's scene seems reminiscent of
this in the complaint of the Lords, that they have been received
with stones, though nothing is said of any other false viands than
dishes of warm water. I feel quite confident, however, that this
anonymous play was entirely unknown to Shakespeare, and this




382            TIMON OF ATHENS.
coincidence, together with those of the character of the steward,
and the mock entertainment, were probably borrowed by some
other play, which became his rude material.
On the other hand, Apemantus, Alcibiades, the solitary tower
or tomb, are all unmentioned here; but still the author does not
leave his spendthrift misanthrope quite without the advantage of
a foil. He introduces beside him, with little connection by incident, a wealthy dupe, Gelasius, who is hoaxed by the traveller
Pseudocheus, eloquent on his influence, address, and daring, as
travellers will be when they give their own characters, into realizing his property and placing the money in his hands preparatory to a journey on the winged horse Pegasus, as far as the antipodes. It was a much happier thought, to whomsoever it was
due, to gain the required contrast and relief to Timon by making
use of the association with his name of the equally, but less honourably extravagant, the equally injured and incensed, but at
the same time'less sensitive and less implacable Alcibiades; while
in the opposite direction, the misanthrope, whose feeling of the
hatefulness of the species is at least so genuine that it does not
exempt himself from self-disdain, has the glory of truthfulness, as
compared with the arrogance of the wretch Apemantus, whose
depreciation of all the rest of mankind has no better ground than
his inordinate appreciation of himself. Equally fortunate was the
recognition of the sentiment of the seashore landscape and lonely
surge-beaten tomb, as furnishing the tone of the last reflections
of the formerly magnificent and sympathetic Timon.
That the Timon of Shakespeare is a remodel of a lost play on
the same subject by another writer, I feel no doubt whatever,influenced by considerations of treatment, style, and subject matter. Plutarch and Paynter were within his reach, and so also was
the anonymous play, though I do not think he knew it at first
hand; but Lucian was locked up from him in untranslated
Greek; yet Lucian is as large a benefactor to the drama as Plutarch, and the anonymous play as either, and hence the probability that Shakespeare made use of one, or even several, dramatized forms of the story, borrowing from or repeating each other.
From one detail it would seem as if his immediate prototype was
not of learned origin, I mean from the names of the friends and
servants being Latin, not as in the quoted play, Greek.
The play appears to want that perfection of scope, plan, and
range that would be in keeping with the style and finish of its
better parts. There is a lack of harmony between the defective
and unsatisfying dramatic structure and the faultless vigour and
delicacy of the execution of large portions, that would be decisive,
though the execution also did not betray the traces of different
hands. Of the greater portion of the play it may be said, with
confidence, that it displays the fullest and ripest energy of the
poet's mind,-his fancy, intellect and imagination in completest




CRITICAL      ESSAY.               383
concert and force;-it is so far as nearly equal to Lear, to Othello,
to Macbeth as the capability of the subject admits, and it does
admit at least of comparison. The contrast of the weakness and
negligence of other parts is unmistakeable,-weakness as obvious
in form as in manner, and the best excellence of these parts seems
due to having undergone a cursory correction more liberal of erasure, to which even the raggedness of the metre may be due, than
of substitution. I well recollect my earliest impression on reading this play, and am scarcely disposed to swerve from it,-it was
that Shakespeare had put his hand to the drama of another author,
with intent, in the first instance, to give it just so much, and no
more revisal as would make it useful in representation, not deeming the theme susceptible or worthy of rewriting entirely: imagination, however, and invention were not to be controlled, and
at last and by degrees he was drawn on to rewrite entirely first
one scene and then another, until in mere aversion to adopt the
whole play by complete revision of a dramatic subject matter
he was not quite satisfied with, he left it as we have it, of gold
and clay commixed, an incomplete if not sometimes inaccurate
metamorphosis. It is scarcely necessary to specify the speech of
Flavius, commencing, " What will this come to?-he commands
us to provide and give great gifts," and the dialogues of Alcibiades and Senators as chief illustrations of these differences, which
will escape few readers. The readiness with which Shakespeare
adopted a plot is sufficient instruction whence he would derive
such diversities in style.
The want of individualisation of numerous persons in the play,
named and unnamed, is also a cause of apparent inferiority and
infirmity; the forms of shabbiness are varied among the false
friends, but not appropriated. Shabby tricks to save their money,
and shabby means of obtaining it, do not suffice alone to mark
out one mean man from another by absolute and necessary indication. Certainly it may be said that this blankness has some
propriety in marking the herd as a herd; and accordingly, the
omission of the names of individual friends at the last banquet of
warm and steaming water, is quite consistent with the rest; but
the play in whichbblankness of feature is so largely required or
admissible, will lose in dignity, though it must be admitted that
some of the scenes thus carried on between generic rather than
individual personations, —for instance, the opening dialogue of
the Poet and the Painter, have all the appearance of being, from
the first word to the last, entirely Shakespeare's.
Who, indeed, shall rashly put asunder what the poet has joined,
or consented should be joined? Surely there is harsh discordancy
in passing by unprepared transition from the stronger verse to the
shambling metre of the senate-house scene, yet the indistinctness
that appears in the opening of this, in the leaving unnamed and
undetermined the friend for whom Alcibiades interposes, is at least.




384            TIMON OF ATHENS.
in harmony with the rest of the play, and the assignment of a
name would only have rendered more glaring the general disconnection of the incident. Whatever may be thought of the execution of the scene, or of the reason of leaving it so unpolished,
there is much in its contents that tells with admirable effect in
defining the moral idea of the piece. Alcibiades pleads for indulgence to the fault of a noble nature,-the lapse of a well merited
defender of the state, an outbreak of violence, the natural result
of his nobleness, and of the very quality of spirit that enabled
him before to do the state a service; the amenability to punishment of excellence stooping by lack of self-control, is the theme
of the discussion, and comes in most opportunely at the very crisis
that the violent outbreak of the generous nature of Timon requires
all our consideration and indulgence.
It is noteworthy that this statement of the quarrel of Alcibiades with his country argues a certain minute attention to history
in the inventor, for it is clear from both Thucydides and Andocides, that the resentment of Alcibiades against Athens reached
its fatal height of exasperation from the severities by which so
many of his closest friends lost their lives while he was absent in
the service of the state that judged them so ruthlessly. There is
even something historical in the moderation ascribed to him in
his triumphant return, a moderation which is designedly marked
with emphasis, in order to complete a contrast to the wild and
uncompromising revulsion of Timon, who never knew the mean
of nature, but was first at the extremity of one end and then of
the other.
" Those enemies of Timon and mine own,
Whom you yourselves shall set out for reproof,
Fall and no more: and,-to atone your fears
With my more noble meaning,-not a man
Shall pass his quarter or offend the stream
Of regular justice in your city's bounds,
But shall be remitted to your public laws,
At heaviest answer.
Dead
Is noble Timon; of whose memory
Hereafter more.-Bring me into your city,
And I will use the olive with my sword:
Make war breed peace; make peace stint war; make each
Prescribe to other, as each other's leech.
Let our drums strike."                        [Exeunt.
In reading the first part of Timon of Athens I am not myself
conscious that the tragic action ever descends so far from the
ideal as to become distressing, or breaks into the simple commonplace of irritating affliction to the sympathies. In all tragedies
there is a germ of painfulness,-interest is engaged for one who
is visibly hurrying to destruction as a fool or a desperado; but




CRITICAL      ESSAY.                385
it is the triumph of art so to detain the imagination that relief
ever accompanies excitement, and enables us to gaze on with
steady and learning eye at the direst catastrophes of human fortune; nor do I think that the rule is infringed in the exhibition
of the special impulse and recoil that are the subject matter of
Timon of Athens. As much grandeur is given to Timon as
the defect that makes his misery could in any case admit of, and
thus his distress,-common-place and even verging on the ridiculous or comic as it would be apt to be in ordinary cases, is
raised truly to the height of an heroic misery. His dignity is
sustained not merely by the association of hereditary use of wealth,
but by high and estimable mental endowments. Even amidst
his extravagance his revelry is elegant; he has all the accomplishments of manners and taste, his liberality is refined and has
the slightest tinge that is possible of ostentation, he has rendered
political service to the state by capacity and valour, and our
sympathies are irresistibly engaged even for imprudence which
so promptly and effectually succours the imprisoned friend, and
hastens to make a deserving and enamoured servant happy in
his love.
For anything that now appears Timon's employment of his
newly-found gold, as an instrument against mankind, is original in
Shakespeare. The story owed him the compensation of recovered
wealth to afford him a triumph over his false friends, and to complete their degradation by renewal of flatteries in vain. But it was
incompatible with an heroic form of the heedlessly munificent, to
represent him even in his frenzy as a hoarder of the treasure he
had such reason to despise; and the imparting it to the honest
steward is not more happily and effectively conceived than the
splenetic subornation to mischievousness of the children of debauchery and violence.
Timon represents a nature highly susceptible of the enjoyments of expanded sympathy, and unsuspecting that others may
not be animated by the like passion,-may even be dead to it
entirely, and ready to sacrifice it for the paltriest exchange of
baser tastes and advantages. Hence he is generous, not so much
from the loftiest generosity, not so much from the spirit of philanthropy that can live independently of reciprocal feelifigs, but
out of the impulse to minister by a ready and, it seems to him,
exhaustless means to the pleasurable stimulus of mutual kindliness and confiding friendship. Everything is common between
perfect friends, but, in his eager and craving appetite for the
blind sensations of friendship, he omits to reckon how rare true
friends and possible friendships, from the nature and impracticable
conditions of the world, are and must necessarily be. Timon
therefore sought to buy with freely distributed gold, which he
held but as dross in comparison, a treasure of jewels which the
world can only supply as the veriest chance-find a most single
C C




386


TIMON OF ATHENS.


rarity; and when he finds that he has bartered not only his
means, but feelings beyond all price and irrecoverable, for worse
than dross, the warm glow of pervading satisfaction chills at
once, and his contracting heart burns hotly with an acrid hate
nearly as indiscriminate as his former affection.
It seems then that the misanthropy of Timon is not revulsion
from proper philanthropy. Why should the lover of mankind,
whose single aim and passion is to do them good, be shaken from
his purpose by ingratitude and unworthiness? In hearts so
braced such manifestations only deepen pity, and give new energy
to the resolution to combat and eradicate a mischief of deeper
root than was believed. There is a specific enjoyment in the
expenditure of resources and in the act of generosity by whatever
instrument, whether the wealth imparted be material riches or
the stores of knowledge, taste, advice, or experience,-the finer
assistances man renders to man; but woe to him who indulges
in the luxury of such seeming self-denial, and still looks for
grateful reciprocation of like benefits, or even of the cheaper but
nobler return of similar sympathies. Let him communicate wisely,
and in such way as will husband and keep in breath his power
of communication, and it is well to be ever prepared to greet the
true metal of genuine friendship which is not unknown in the
world, but still ever be contented with the good that results independently. Truth for its own sake and at all hazards, is the
only worthy principle of the philosopher; and philanthropy for
its own sake, and at whatever risk and cost of ingratitude, equally
befits the activity which is philosophy's proper complement.
Do good, and throw it into the sea: cast your bread upon the
waters, and you shall find it after many days; but your happiness
will be both securer and nobler, if you are content unconsciously
with the reward of present elevation of nature in capability of
the act.
The revulsion of the feelings of Timon is as excessive as their
tension; but as his earlier fault escaped the ignobler stains of the
spendthrift, so regained wealth does not betray him to the counter
meanness of the miserly. Despising men for the want of the only
sentiment that made society valuable to him, he now despises
gold for its inability to purchase the only good for the sake of
which he ever valued it; and mankind and the great object of
man's selfish passions, share his imprecations together. Hle seems
and speaks as if eager to make it an instrument of mischief to his
species, but so wildly and ironically, that we almost recognize a
mere continuance of that same tendency to expend, to diffuse
rather than retain or collect, that is in itself a habit of mind distinct from and superior to all principles and motives. His nature,
with all its faults, was originally too noble for him to exchange
beneficence, however mistaken, for active malice. He speaks and
curses in spleen and sarcasm rather than malevolently, and the




CRITICAL       ESSAY.                387
natural tendency of his suggestions of mischief is from their tone
rather to awaken shame and self-mistrust in the vicious than to
stimulate to vice, and some notes of lamentation and remonstrance
are audible amidst and above his angry complaints.
Still, amid all his misery and indignation, Timon retains at
his heart the capability of sympathy, and has acquired even a
jy      rudimentary capacity for discrimination. He is saved from the
last disgrace of bigoted incredulity of human goodness by admitting and rewarding the virtue and honesty of his steward,one honest man, but one, and on the appearance of Alcibiades, the
only leaning to individual preference he ever manifested and
that might have saved him, draws from him the avowal, though
equivocally expressed, how reluctantly he includes him in the
general ban:"I am misanthropos, and hate mankind;
For thy part I do wish thou wert a dog
That I might love thee somewhat."
Shakespeare thus varies from the tale of Plutarch, in assigning
the germ of special friendship of Timon for Alcibiades anterior
to any malicious interest in his traitorous purposes. True, his
heart and spirit are now broken and bowed out of the line of
growth and recovery for ever; but it is a proof of his better
sensibilities, that he turns to the only haven of tranquillity remaining for those whom defeated sociability drives into the
desert,-the feeling of sympathetic communing with the soul of
nature.
Alcibiades is drawn with all the generosity and all the negligence of Timon, and combines with reckless and careless prodigality the less refined excesses betokened by his escort of fair
and free companions; this was required to reduce his dignity of
character and position relatively to Timon,-the centre and hero
of the play; otherwise the success that crowns his enterprise and
closes the drama, correctly shows how buoyantly minds that
amid their irregularities preserve a certain balance, surmount a
trouble that confounds the more earnest but less agile and flexible,
for ever.
Timon of Athens was first published in the folio of 1623, and
is among the plays that had not been previously entered in the
Stationers' books to other men. Again we are unfortunately
without the means of fixing the date of the play in the Life of
Shakespeare. In the loose, free and sketchy style of some portions which still are struck forth by the mature hand of the
master, and are associated with other portions of his noblest
finish, it falls into a class with Coriolanus, and Antony and Cleopatra on the one hand, and on the other with Henry VIII. and
Measure for Measure; we can only hope that the useful industry
of the antiquaries will not relax until they establish or recover
some exacter limit.




388              TIMON OF ATHENS.
There is considerable metrical license in the versification of
much of the play that is most absolutely Shakespearian, in other
parts negligence or irregularity of metre would be fitter terms;
and it is a task for the taste and judgment of an editor to correct
the misarrangements which most certainly were made in some
instances by the earlier printers, without straining for a spurious
exactness that is as discordant to the ear as opposed to the genius
of the play and the obvious conditions of its composition.




CRITICAL ESSAY ON JULIUS CAESAR.
HE death of Julius Cssar is perhaps the most central
incident in the political history of the world: it is placed
k    in time at the conclusion of one great series of events
S    and at the commencement of another, most strikingly
contrasted and dividing between them the general course of
events, which, as the body of ancient history, stands in the closest
connection with modern, its proper offspring and inheritor. It
was l)y his own hand, by his own military exploits and political
ambition that the consular and senatorial constitution of Rome,
which had acl'ieved such glories for the Republic, was brought
virtually to its end; and it was he also who wound up the great
cycla of those achievements by fulfilling their aim and tendency of
universal sway. The dictatorship of Caesar is the confluence of
all the great dominations that had swayed in scattered succession
round the shores of the Mediterranean. Vast as are the differences between Phoenician, Egyptian, Jewish, Assyrian, Persian,
Greek, Lydian, Etruscan and Roman powers and civilizations, the
development of each has so much affinity with every one of the
others, whether from common origin, primeval or later intercourse
and collision, and direct or intermediate influence, that their monuments, literature, and history, evince a certain transcendental
community that unites them as members of a central group
among the nations of the world. Hence, despite their separation, conditions of sympathetic movement and reaction pervaded
them all, for which mere geographical relation is the most obvious, though by no means the sole elucidation. The history of
their mutual reactions, in general outline, exhibits various specialties of custom of local and temporary scope; then various contributions by action and reaction to art and science and social
improvement-much lost again entirely, much dormant again,
but safe in record, and much ever living on continuously; and
then a certain tendency to the diffusion of these results, carrying
with them whatever qualifications of folly, falsehood, or vice for
future abolition. This tendency to expansion and extended intercommunication, struggling with obstacles which were ever




390


JULIUS CAESAR.


renewed, ever varied, and yet ever losing some ground irretrievably, obtained a fuller expression by the foundation of t'fe Roman
empire, than ages of constant but difficult commerce, and extensive
but fluctuating conquest, had given it before. No wo: ider men
believed that the conclusion of so much was the settlemr mt of all,
and did not care to look forward to the grand combination becoming itself but an element in larger reactions, and to the propagation of the overruling tendency, to the external members of
a still wider range. This, however, was later; and in the mean
time the Empire, of which the general limits were fixed or indicated by the achievements of Caesar, and the form of autocratical
government, which he distinctly aimed at and assumed, continued
for long centuries, and form a second division of the history of
ancient Europe and adjacent regions, in their most active and intimately connected portions. The great change in religious opinions
and associations, which gave a common creed to the whole empire,
was, no doubt, to a great extent, the concluding phase of.a sympathetic tendency, as much as the political catastrophe; but it
was also, to some extent, a consequence of it and necessary complement.
It is difficult, therefore, not to regard Julius Caesar as the instrument of most efficiently hastening onward and completing a
destined conclusion; and to deny his consciousness of his great
office in the course of Fate, would but give occasion for ascription to
him of the higher dignity of elected inspiration. From this point
of view the banded aristocracy, who surround and strike him
down with sudden daggers at the very crisis of his career, are
traitors every way to Caesar and to the world; and futile in their
treachery, hoping to stay the wheel of destiny by a surprise, a
divert it by a chicane. But on the other side are arrayed all the
respects and considerations that, from the hour of their deed down
to the present, have given them place and glory in the esteem
of so many of the noblest, as the grandest of all examples of
patriotic daring and devotion. Whatever there is of magnanimity
in Caesar may be paralleled among his slayors, even in the conduct of their bloody deed; and what are their political misdeeds
that are not counterbalanced by those of their victim in the sustained course of intrigue, systematic corruption and regardless
violence, with which he pursued an end of arrogant selfishness,
and did all in his power to aggravate the confusion and disorder
of social right, on the recovery of which he founds his claim for
not only impunity but honour.
Certainly there is always somewhat of ideal glory in a Republic
even of the most unfavourable form of crudity or debasement, and
somewhat of slavishness and barbarism attaches to Monarchy at its
best; and transition from the one to the other carries with it, ever
as we read of or regard it, a depressing feeling of lofty duty renounced for lower convenience, a descent in the order of nations,




CRITICAL ESSAY.


391


a voluntary and base surrender of the better attributes and aspirations of the species in compromise for present tranquillity within
a narrower and meaner range of activities. " The enormous faith
of many made for one," admits but of secondary and equivocal
palliation from the supereminent qualities of the one, which are
at last rather relative to the degradation around than absolute;
-" he were no lion were not Romans hinds,"-and where the institution of single rule is disconnected with any consideration of
personal superiority in the ruler, what can the preference for it
be referred to but superstition, helplessness, or routine? Hence,
whenever monarchy assumes a position and activity that give it
a claim to the higher enthusiasm of enlightened philanthropy, it
will be found virtually false to its own principle of monarchism,
and promoting its own transformation; and, on the other hand,
when the difficulties of a republic cause monarchy to be an inevitable catastrophe and almost-assuming it but an episode,
desirable, the spirits that dare all, endure all, risk and suffer all
to make the most of the last chance that might avert it, are ever
in the front line of the muster of the heroes of humanity.
Coesar, however, by his mere qualifications and position, apart
from his passions, was in immediate sympathy with the demand
of the proceeding movement of the world. Since the era of Coriolanus, the people of Rome have become degraded into a base
populace, incapable of the dignity of a people, and the ready prey
of the first ambitious man who has the genius to cajole and corrupt them for the acquirement of a power which he will retain
by merciless coercion. In Coriolanus, the last excesses of internal
dissension are prevented by a certain forbearance on the part of
the mob and the tribunes in the midst of their success, no less
than on the part of the patricians. But with the progress of corruption this moral restraint is lost on either side, and the ranks
of the aristocracy furnish the leaders who stimulate the mob to
the destruction of the nobles, or who purchase their aid to seize
upon the absolute sway of the state by liberal donation from the
spoil, and at last induce the confusion which nothing but perl)etual dictatorship can regulate. Still it is ignorance that is the
main cause of the errors of the easily misled populace; they are
still, as of yore, susceptible of authoritative rebuke, or even comlassionate appeal; but they are utterly incapable of steady election or moral judgment, and therefore as readily excitable to any
caprice of weakness, cruelty, or rage. Hence the course of events,
like a favourable set of current, carries Caesar onward to absolute
power, but at the same time opens the inevitable temptation to
inscrupulous aid by every ambitious act and artifice, till the end
is reached by triumph over civil blood; triumph through the
streets of Rome over him who had triumphed there before so frequently more purely and patriotically; by the support of robbers,
by flagrant piracy on the high seas of political adventure.




392


JULIUS CaESAR.


On the other hand, while the conspiring nobles, taken at their
best, and there is worje along with them, endeavour to roll back the
universe with sore impeachment of their judgment, and resort to
means which the most promising hopes could neither dignify nor
sanction, yet, withal, in virtue of their purer and better motives
and their cause, they achieve a commendation and a glory that
almost excuses their faults, and entirely compensates defeat.
Julius Caesar is the shortest of the historical plays; it adheres
more closely than any other to the historical sources, which are,
moreover, unusually detailed, and, it may be added, unusually
authentic. Plutarch's Lives of Julius Caesar and Brutus, and
secondarily of Pompey, Antonius, and Cicero, in the translation
of North, were undoubtedly the chief authorities made use of by
Shakespeare, though I shall have occasion to note the indications
that some others, I do not doubt at second hand, also contributed.
Still this almost literal adherence does not exclude the most wonderful exercise of skill in selection of the leading incidents and
limits of the action to be represented, as most dramatically interesting, coherent and significant. Only the later incidents and,very latest scene of the life of Julius Cesar are represented; he
enters but three times, and the action of the piece is extended
more than as much again after his assassination. Still the piece is
rightly called by his name; it is his fate and fortune that give
commencement to the action, and the influence and predominance
of his character is observable to the end. Antony, over his bleeding body, predicts the agency of his unplacated spirit in the civil
conflicts to ensue; it is ever present to the imagination of Marcus
Brutus, and actually decides at last, by visible intervention, the
fatal battle field of Philippi, and walks abroad, believed to turn,
and therefore really turning, the swords of his slayers into their
proper entrails. Otherwise it is Brutus on whom the interest and
sympathy of the play converge and become continuous throughout
its course, making him thus, in a certain sense, its hero.
The leading characteristic ascribed to Coesar is a somewhat
overcharged tendency to Thrasonical arrogance, which, however,
is saved from the ridiculous by a manifest sincerity that lies below,-by a true magnanimity that subsists with professions of high
pitched dignity of sentiments that are not base counterfeits but
simply exaggerations. It is by comparison with this rather
strained expression of devotion to an ideal principle of worthy
self respect that we are prepared to accept the more attempered
form of the like characteristic in Brutus, without an uneasy suspicion of vapouring or vain parade. The highest manifestation
of Roman moral sense is here struck off exactly; it is animated
with a noble ambition to attain the worthiest honour, and armed
with unflinching resolution to grasp it at all hazards and any sacrifice, but it fails in the ultimate refinement of perception which
must define for the best intentions the graceful and the good,



CRITICAL ESSAY.


393


"what true, what just, what fit we rightly call,"-without which
heroism is after all but sustained and self-denying attachment to
a disaster and a mistake. It is not only on public occasions that
Caesar in the play falls into this tone of turgid ostentation, it is
quite as marked in his private intercourse with his wife Calphurnia; yet throughout the picture we trace the originally simpler
lineaments of character that are thus clouded and overlaid, and the
change that has been wrought by change of position is indicated in
the fr' nk anecdote of the challenge he once gave on the banks of
Tiber, and the defeat he owned so freely; placed as it is in such
immediate contrast with the angry ill-humour and suspicion, as
he comes sad away from the unsuccessful stratagem of the offered
crown at the Lupercal. In the play itself allusion is made to a
recent change in Caesar's character, ire respect to an entertainment
of once contemned superstitions, which is one of the incidents that
beset the self-satisfied and successful, no less than the as distinctly
declared accessibility to flattery, and the self-condemning littleness
of spirit that hankers after a title.
Most of the motives thus consistently combined are traceable
in Plutarch, thus:-" But the chiefest cause that made him mortally hated was the covetous desire he had to be called king, which
first gave the people just cause, and then his secret enemies honest colour to bear him ill will.... And furthermore they were so
bold besides that Caesar returning to Rome from the city of Alba
when they came to salute him they called him king. But the
people being offended, and Caesar also angry, he said he was not
called king but Caesar: then every man keeping silence, he went
his way, heavy and sorrowful. When they had decreed divers
honours for him in the senate, the consuls and Praetors, accompanied with the whole assembly of the senate, went unto him in the
market place, where he was set by the pulpit for orations, to tell
him what honours they had decreed for him in his absence. But
he sitting still in his majesty, disdaining to rise up unto them
when they came in, as if they had been private men, answered
them that his honours had more need to be cut off than enlarged.
This did not only offend the senate but the common people also,
to see that he should so lightly esteem of the magistrates of the
commonwealth, insomuch as every man that might lawfully go
his way departed thence very sorrowfully. Thereupon also Caesar
rising departed home to his house, and tearing open his doublet
collar, making his neck also bare, he cried out aloud to his friends
that his throat was ready to offer to any man that would come
and cut it. Notwithstanding, it is reported that afterwards to
excuse his folly, he imputed it to his disease, saying, that their
wits are not perfect that have this disease of the falling-evil, when
standing on their feet they speak to the common people, but are
soon troubled with a trembling of their body, and a sudden dimness and giddiness. But that was not true, for he would have




394


JULIUS CESAR.


risen up to the senate but Cornelius Balbus, one of his friends, or
rather a flatterer, would not let him, saying,-What, do you not
remember that you are Caesar, and will you not let them reverence you, and do their duties?" On this follows the account of
the offered Crown at the Lupercalia, which Shakespeare has so
excellently combined with it. There is nothing, however in Plutarch of Cssar's injunction that Calphurnia should be touched in
the ceremony of the course,-this is a trait of superstition invented to exhibit the disposition already referred to, adopted by
the poet in perfect consistency with nature, and suggested at least,
if not borne out by the biography. Plutarch, Cicero, and Appian
all report Ceesar's indifferent, if not contemptuous regard for signs
and omens, but at the culmination of his fortune Sibylline prophecies were resorted to, whether in policy or faith, to help along
the intrigue for obtaining the kingly title, and Plutarch furnished
the notice that on the fatal day, disturbed by the dream of Calphurnia, which affected him the more that she like himself had
hitherto been superior to ominous alarms, "he would search further of the soothsayers by their sacrifices to know what should
happen him that day;-thereby it seemed that Ccesar likewise
did fear or suspect somewhat, but much more afterwards when
the soothsayers having sacrificed many beasts one after another,
told him that none did like them; then he determined to send
Antonius to adjourn the session of the senate." His adoption of
an offensive arrogance is still more strongly insisted on in the
history of Dion Cassius, which has other signs of having been
referred to by play writers of the times; and Shakespeare, in another play, has given his impression of the spirit and taste of the
Veni, vidi, vici, as a Thrasonical brag.
The circumstances of the assassination are given with great
minuteness by the ancients. The kissing of Caesar's hand by a
suppliant conspirator is historical, though not in Plutarch, who,
however, furnished or suggested the simile of the quarry "stricken
by many princes."
Shakespeare deliberately omits the appeal of Brutus to Cicero
after the deed, challenging his approval by his title of Pater patrise, which we have on Cicero's own authority as well as Plutarch's;
-it has been put into sounding verse by Akenside. The orator
indeed is treated rather severely, though I believe as well as he
deserves. Plutarch ascribes his exclusion from the conspiracy,
which he approved enthusiastically after the fact, to mistrust of
the timorousness of his nature and age, but Shakespeare attaches
it to the apprehension of a still less dignified defect,-his vanity;
the description of his confused oratory in a perplexing position,
as " speaking Greek," is an amusing application of the account of
his philological studies at this time as turning on the equivalent
expressions of the two languages. There is no mistaking a certain contemptuousness in the manner in which his violent death




CRITICAL ESSAY.


395


after all is mentioned and received. I cannot but think, however,
that it was more or less directly from Cicero, who was an eye witness, that the sentiment of Caesar's fall arrived at Shakespeare;" Quid vero Coesarem putamus? Si divinasset fore ut in eo senatu
quem majore ex parte ipse cooptasset, in curia Pompeii ante ipsum
Pompeii simulacrum, tot centurionibus suis inspectantibus, a nobilissimis civibus, partim etiam a se omnibus rebus ornatis, trucidatus
ita jaceret ut ad ejus corpus non modo amicorum sed ne servorum quidem quisquam accederet, quo cruciatu animi vitam acturum fuisse! certb igitur ignoratio futurorum malorum utilior est
quam scientia."
The justifiableness of Tyrannicide is a question which is capable of being so stated as to match any difficulty that casuistry
can indulge in. The right and duty of insurrection against clear
tyranny and usurpation none but slaves deny, and cases may be
easily combined in which the assassination of the tyrant appears
the only form of insurrection available, and also most promising
of success; the tyrant, it may be urged, is self-outlawed,-he
stands at open warfare with all the rights of humality,-innocent lives are dropping daily while he walks in impunity, and
what in such a case, it may be said, is covert conspiracy and sudden onset, but the laudable and prudential subtlety that is not
simply excusable but incumbent in warfare. To this, experience
and history supply a rejoinder more decisive, and probably more
influential than theory, or may guide to a theory afterwards.
No instance can be adduced of justice in this wild irregular form
having ever been effective; I do not believe that any tyrannous
life has thus been forfeited that the tyrannical element did not
survive: tyranny springs native from the corruption of states, and
no accidental effort will eradicate the germ,-nothing less than
such a summoning up of the vital spirit as re-establishes healthy
action throughout the organism, and throws off the infection bv
general re-action; or at least such a partial recovery as gains a
preponderating force for the happier force of political energy.
Little did it profit the Roman aristocracy to exchange the glorious clemency of Julius, for the precocious astuteness and cold
heartedness of his adopted son, who reverted to clemency at last
in policy and not from sensibility, and then not until he had
taken security and more than security, by unsparing and deliberate extirpation of all but the very off-shoots of the entire
order. Even war itself, the bitterest and most desperate, has
some restraints imposed as much by experience as by theory or
sentiment, and the poisoning of wells, poisoning of weapons, and
subornation of assassins, are given up by tacit convention, not
merely as barbarisms, but as blunders.
So in the present play; its action reduces the resort to assassination,-to tyrannicide by covert conspiracy, as an instrument
of liberal policy and patriotic furtherance of the advantage of




396                JULIUS CAESAR.
~! humanity, to a counter-sense. Nothing but the intervention, consent, and spirit of Brutus renders the conspiracy respectable,
much less dignified for a moment; and yet it is this very intervention that hampers its course, and interferes with all the conditions of its ultimate success. Brutus, it may be thought, is
altogether too refined and scrupulous for any efficient action
whatever in such a world as this; how much then above all,
for one which at every step trenches on the equivocal. His
original dilemma is severe enough,-he is placed between the
' traditional duty of his family to protect the republic from introduction of regal sway at any cost, and on the other hand the
consciousness that against this sway as hitherto exercised by
Cmesar, no case can be established for arbitrariness and abuse, and
he is driven to make up the indictment from anticipations of
probabilities in future. But when he joins the alliance it becomes
a necessity, as he gives into it without penetrating the narrower
motives of his allies, that he should either give in also to their
violence and corruption, and compass so an end debased to the
standard of their characters, or elevate them to his own height
of philosophical determination: in the latter case their original
purpose is necessarily lost, as its conditions are surrendered from
one time to another, first to one scruple and then to another, until
nothing is left but to embrace with dignity the fate and catastrophe that awaits a band of noble spirits embarked in an ill conceived adventure. The oath that Brutus repudiates would at
least have restrained him from his affectionate but very ill advised
confidence to Portia, which so nearly led to discovery; his aversion to involving Antony in the fate of Cesar is obviously a preparation for his own destruction, yet how shall we urge that he
is blameable here any more than when he discountenances bribery
and peculation at the very time that he seeks, and that the
interests of the cause require that he should be accommodated,
to participate in the funds so indirectly raised for payment of his
legions. His guilelessness is as mischievous as his scruples; he
puts faith in the sincerity of Antony, and when warned against
him, relies for security upon the still more questionable reasonableness and constancy of the vulgar. The deference that has
been paid to his moral qualities and influence betray him as disastrously into an over estimate of his judgment and capacity; he
relies upon the force of his dry unflexile oratory with as ill result as on his generalship; he overrules,-indeed, interrupts the
expostulation of Cassius, an older and more experienced general,
and forces on the march to Philippi first, and then the committing the fortune of the cause to a general engagement, and at
last, in the battle itself, gives the word too soon, and ruins all
by the serious strategetical error of regarding only the operations
of his own wing.
I There remains to him the dignity of pure intention, high mo

4




ChkTICAL ESSAY.                       397
tives, courage untarnished, sensibility most lively and refined,
preference of public to privateo interest, and of failure by noble
means to success degraded by,ny baseness other than that of the
original deed of blood which was sanctified to him by ancestral
example and the fundamental maxims of the state.
The surrender by Cassius of the leading voice in the enterprise
which he originated, is the homage of vice to virtue, at least of
personal to lofty principle. Not unconscious of the faulty motive
of his own passion, he has greater confidence in the influence of
Brutus' character and reputation than any other chance in favour
of success; moreover, he not only respects but loves him, even
while he is deceiving him, and is raised by the feeling far above
the level of the mere intriguer, and remains with all his faults, a
noble Roman. His interest in the affection of Brutus strengthens
as the consciousness of a desperate cause,-desperate through the
incongruity of the alliance of personal and patriotic motive,induces a melancholy that only invades hearts of great natural
sensibility. Nothing can be more remote from the process by
which Brutus deliberately advances to his resolution, than the
passion of pique and fury which Shakespeare has expanded from
Plutarch's hint of the bearing of Cassius at the great crisis, as
one almost beside himself. Engrossed by present animosity he
looks but little way forward, and even leans at an emergency,
on the suggestions of others, as when alarmed at the words and
behaviour of Popilius Lena. Least of all has he a preconcerted
plan for keeping the main direction of the enterprise in a sense
and intention of his own; he remonstrates, truly, but does not
assert and exercise the high hand that would support remonstrance or render it unnecessary. But he is redeemed to our
feelings by the very capability of sympathy with ideal virtue
and heroic friendship that leads him to his fate; and in his fall
and that of Brutus we recognize a nobler destiny than the success
which rewards the contrasted qualifications of the opposed alliance,-a greater glory in the losing day than Antony and young
Octavius attained to by their victory.
The influence of the character of Brutus is shown by its impression,-to say nothing of the rabble, on the conspirators of
meaner stamp. There is no aid for the character of Casca in
Plutarch beyond the significant fact that he was chosen to be the
first to raise his hand against Caesar, and is scarcely heard of
otherwise. Shakespeare turns him to admirable use in the storm
scene so wondrously imitative, where he is placed at equal distance
between Cicero, ambiguously contemptuous respecting omens as
busied in thought with the business of the house he lifts his draggled toga from the splashing street, and Cassius, baring his
bosom to the thunderstorm, and free from superstition as Cicero,
yet associating the horrors of the fiery night with the idea of his
enemy and all his acts. How entirely Cassius is the active soul




398


JULIUS CHESA R.


of the conspiracy is seen in his impatience at Cinna, allowing his
attention to be withdrawn from t e work in hand by the omens
in the streets and while he is in discourse with Brutus,-Brutus,
who only notes the exhalations wvhizzing in the air for the convenient light they give to read by,-the secondary group of Casca
and the rest are satisfied to occupy the time with gossiping conjectures as to the orientation of the Capitol.
In the alliance of their opponents, Antony and Octavius, the
very shadow of a patriotic cause is wanting, the very pretext
disregarded, and equally so the slightest approach to mutual
frankness and sympathy. Antony, the free, the festive, has true
attachment to and affection for Julius Csesar; but it is at the
expense of public loyalty, and he is an obsequious aider in his
treasonable schemes; still the warmth at his heart gives him a
place in the higher order of character where Brutus and Cassius find
still nobler position, while the passion of Octavius never exceeds
the calculated vehemence of the resentment of a cold-blooded
politician. It is Antony who cannot be content to fight without a
previous opportunity of venting his feelings in the personal parley
with the murderers of his friend, which Octavius breaks off, as
he would have willingly prevented it, by giving the sign of battle
at once. The scene of the triumvirs in consultation, which precedes that of the quarrel between Brutus and Cassius, is admirably
invented to define the characterization of either party. The proscription with which they commence deprives them of all moral
superiority to the so-called traitors and murderers they are leagued
against, and the little delicacy they evince in tampering with the
will of the friend whose death they are bound to avenge, shows
that the sacred motive is practically debased into a mock heroic
pretence. Antony having made a cat's-paw of Lepidus in the
bloody scheme of the proscription, has no further respect for him,
and is prepared to refuse him any further influence,-as indeed
he vanishes thenceforth, and will no more afford him any share of
the resources he helped to secure, than he would concede to a
treasure-bearing ass an interest in the golden burden he has
toilsomely and profitably brought home. We may perceive that
this illustration is not chosen by the poet without significance,
when the next scene commences with a dispute respecting free
communication of treasure between the two chief associates in
the assassination of Julius Caesar. Cassius whose nature, notwithstanding the general contrast between the lean and wrinkled
stoic and the lively reveller, has something in common with the
insidious management of Antony, is here exhibited in the blankest
contrast of disposition, as he surrenders to the ally, whom he had
inveigled into his schemes, not only the gold of his independent
acquisition, but still beyond this a heart richer than Plutus'
mine, dearer than gold; and instead of shaking him off with re
solute self-will, or endeavouring to do so, defers to him in fact
against his own conviction, as well as contrary to all prudence




CRITICAL ESSAY.                     399
and all reasonable claim, and follows or leads as he wills, instead
of attempting to send him on errands as Lepidus is sent to Caesar's
house and back again to an uncertain rendezvous-" or here or
at the Capitol "-which he may follow about and find out for
himself.
Already in this scene we have an adumbration of the future
relative attitudes of Octavius and Mark Antony, and of the predominant genius of the first. Lepidus and Antony give up brother
and sister's son, but no friend is demanded of Octavius as a sacrifice; afterwards he cautiously guards himself against giving an
unlimited assent to Antony's depreciation of their absent colleague,
and there is warning that he is prepared against such double-dealing if brought to bear upon himself in the concluding words:"Let us do so, for we are at the stake,
And bay'd about with many enemies;
And some that smile have in their hearts, I fear,
Millions of mischief."
The same spirit is still more marked in the opposition to implied
command:" Ant. Octavius, lead your battle softly on,
Upon the left hand of the even field.
Oct. Upon the right hand I, keep thou the left.
Ant. Why do you cross me in this exigent?
Oct. I do not cross you; but I will do so."
Iie afterwards defers to Antony to lull irritation and restore expedient cordiality, but the ultimate tendency in favour of the
stronger character is insinuated, as if by accident, when Antony
himself lets drop that head quarters are adjourned to the tent of
Octavius already as much his rival as ally.
" Go on
And see whe'r Brutus be alive or dead;
And bring us word unto Octavius' tent
How everything is chanced."
And, finally, as the play closes with the generous testimony of
Antony to the character of Brutus, Octavius coincides but with
an ulterior purpose, with the view to attract around himself the
more valuable portion of the dissolved faction of the tyrannicides,
and seeks to gain a separate personal hold upon Messala, Strato,
and Lucilius, already beholden to Antony:" Oct. All that served Brutus I will entertain them."
Such are the characteristics that commentary lingers upon,
and it may be thought neglects unduly the larger lines and
broader masses of this noble composition; these however establish their own effect independently and irresistibly. No illustration is required, or is competent to give additional distinctness
and effect to the marvellous sentiment that breathes from the
fourth and fifth acts of the play. Inexpressible pathos attends
the general decline into defeat and death of all that is most
estimable personally, and all that is most valuable in the public




400


JULIUS CESAR.


state of Rome. A great era dies out before our eyes, and we
must look forward for ages before the germs that lie hid amidst
the wider conditions that succeed, so far overmaster and develope
them as to vindicate the destiny that bore down an organism
that with all its limitations wrought out so pure a glory.
The simile of Titinius as introduced, anticipates the progress
of the hour, for there was then time for another battle yet ere
night, but nothing could more aptly or beautifully symbolize the
melancholy beauty that Shakespeare has diffused over the darkening hours of Republican Rome, and the last free citizens that
graced her annals:" But Cassius is no more.-O setting sun!
As in thy red rays thou dost sink to-night,
So in his red blood Cassius' day is set:
The sun of Rome is set; our day is gone,
Clouds, dews, and dangers come; our deeds are done."
Nineteen centuries within three years have elapsed since the
death of Caesar to the present time, when I find myself by a
coincidence, for which accident of the printing-office and not
design is answerable, endeavouring to set down an appreciation
of the event on its very anniversary. Even at this day, and in
the very arena of the ancient Empire, the spirit of Imperialism
inherited from the Ccesars is beset in its predominance by hostilities as lineally connected with the Republic, though no doubt
native and spontaneous also in the heart of man; even to this
day the nations have made but little progress in the problem
how present tyranny can be cast off, and the reaction avoided
to baser thraldom in the future.
Shakespeare found the model of the curt sententious oratory
of Brutus in Plutarch's description of his written style:-" He
was properly learned in the Latin tongue and able to make long
discourse in it, besides that he could also plead very well in
Latin. But for the Greek tongue they do note in some of his
Epistles that he counterfeited that brief compendious manner of
speech of the Lacedoemonians; as when the war was begun he
wrote unto the Pergamenians in this sort: 'I understand you
have given Dolabella money; if you have done it willingly, you
confess you have offended me; if against your will, show it then
by giving me willingly.' Another time again unto the Samians:
-' Your councils be long, your doings be slow, consider the end.'
And in another epistle he wrote unto the Patareians:-'The
Xanthians despising my goodwill, have made their country a
grave of despair, and the Patareians that put themselves into
my protection have lost no jot of their liberty, and therefore
whilst you have liberty either choose the judgment of the Patareians or the fortune of the Xanthians.' These were Brutus'
manner of letters which were honoured for their briefness."
For the speech of Antony it is quite certain that Shakespeare




CRITICAL      ESSAY.                401
availed himself, in addition to the very succinct description by
Plutarch, of materials, derived through whatever channels, from
other ancient sources. Thus I remark, as possibly others may
have done before, that the ambiguous tones in which he harps upon
his consideration for Brutus especially, and then his associates,
as honourable men, come down from Cicero; the second Philippic
(xii.) furnishes his very words: "Sed stuporem hominis vel
dicam pecudis attendite. Sic enim dixit: M. Brutus, quem ego
honoris caussa nomino, cruentum pugionem tenens, Ciceronem
exclamavit: ex quo intelligi debet, eum conscium fuisse. Ergo
ego sceleratus appellor a te quem tu suspicatum aliquid suspicaris: ille qui stillantem pugionem prae se tulit, is a te honoris
caussa nominatur;.... tu homo sapiens et considerate, quid
dicis? Si parricidas: cur honoris caussa a te sunt et in hoc
ordine et apud populum Romanum semper appellati."
Other details occur in the epistles of Cicero of which we trace
the suggestiveness in the play, as for example, the notice of Antony's colloquium non incommnodum with Brutus and Cassius after
their deed, and his seeming occupation with festivity immediately
after rather than with thoughts of mischief and revenge.
But assistance still more important flowed in from the history
of Appian, who sets before us the contrast of the argumentative
speech of Brutus with the adroit effect and moving pathos of
Antony's. In the draft of that of Brutus we meet with the interrogatory forms adopted by the dramatist,-the pause for a
reply answered from the crowd; it were long to follow the literal
coincidences, but suffice it to note that one leading topic of justification is Cmesar's arbitrary seizure of lands in Italy to confer on
his veterans by downright robbery,-the very motive that Brutus
assigns in a later scene:" Who slew the foremost man of all this world
But for supporting robbers."
The substance of Antony's oration is far more briefly indicated
by extract, but on the other hand the historian describes with
great particularity the artifices of tones and gestures which he
employed to rouse compassion and excite indignation, his cautiousness at commencement, his tentative boldness, his retractive
qualifications, his affecting to be carried beyond himself as he
descended and stood by the bier, and with a trick of stage effect
bent himself down over it and then rose up again, exhibited then
the pierced and bloodstained robe of Caesar, and having roused
the pity of the people for the dead and their rage against the
slayers as monsters of ingratitude, uncovered at last the body itself mangled with three and twenty wounds, and marred with
some inflicted savagely in the face.
I believe therefore that when Shakespeare wrote Julius Csesar
he resorted for materials to the Roman biographies in North's
Plutarch, but that he also made considerable use of hints and
D D




402


JULIUS CAESAR.


information of classic origin that came before him in other, probably in dramatic form. The play itself contains a notice how
familiar its subject had long been on the stage:" Cassius.       How many ages hence,
Shall this our lofty scene be acted over,
In states unborn and accents yet unknown?
Brutus. How many times shall Caesar bleed in sport,
That now on Pompev's basis lies along,
No worthier than the dust? "
Accordingly when Polonius in Hamlet is asked whether he did
not once act in the university, he replies that he played Julius
Caesar, and was killed by Brutus in the Capitol. Such a university play probably gave currency to the Et tu, Brute, which Shakespeare evidently adopted under the false impression that it was
the actual exclamation of Caesar at his fall, and which is met
with in the same sense in other plays and poems of the time.
Polonius then, or his college friends, or writers of this class, are
most likely to have brought within Shakespeare's convenient reach
the classical materials not furnished by Plutarch, and they must
take the responsibility of the error into which he followed them
with others, of confounding the Curia of Pompey where Caesar was
killed, with the Capitol. The error however is as old as the
Monk's Tale of Chaucer.
A play entitled The History of Caesar and Pompey is referred
to by Stephen Gosson in 1579. Mention occurs of a Latin academical play on the subject of Julius Caesar which has not been
preserved, written by Dr. Eedes, acted at Oxford in 1582. Nearer
to the time at which, from general considerations, it seems probable
that Shakespeare's play was written, we find the subject in other
hands and on the London stage. An entry in Henslow's diary
records under date 22nd May, 1602, a press of poetic energy,
Anthony Munday, Michael Drayton, John Webster, Thomas Middleton, and other poets being engaged together on a tragedy
entitled Caesar's fall. In the very next year, 1603, Drayton published his Barons' Wars, in which we find Mortimer characterized
in the following stanza,-curiously parallel to Shakespeare's
character of Brutus:"Such one he was, of him we boldly say,
In whose rich soul all sovereign powers did suit,
In whom in peace the elements all lay,
So mixed as none could sovereignty impute.
As all did govern yet all did obey:
His lively temper was so absolute,
That't seemed when heaven his model first began,
In him it show'd perfection in a man."
External evidence is unfortunately deficient for fixing the
dates of the three Roman plays of which no edition is known prior
to the first folio; Antony and Cleopatra alone appears on the




CRITICAL      ESSAY.               403
books of the Stationers' Company, entered 20th May, 1608: My
own impression is, as regards the play and poem of 1602-3, that
Shakespeare's drama was subsequent to them,-an impression,
however, due to little more than his readiness to welcome every
scattered beauty he encountered, and then to the preoccupation
of these years with the composition of other dramas of pretty
certain and confirmed chronology. If the conjecture be true,I have not had an opportunity of verifying it, that Shakespeare
betrays acquaintance with a drama on the same subject by the
Earl of Sterline, published in 1607, fresh in native Scotticism,
the same year would have strong claim to be considered that of
his own play, Antony and Cleopatra following consistently the
next year, and both taking possession of a period for which we
have no other claimants.
This play is of a single, and that the noblest projection from
beginning to end, flagging never, never confused, in n10 respect
disproportionate in its parts, or in their finish and elaboration.
Whatever contrast obtains between the earlier and later portions
flows on harmoniously, in proper rhythmical satisfaction to the
full and natural and necessary subsidence of every agitation set
in action from the beginning.
The metre of the play, it may be observed, admits the hemistich
with great frequency and very effectively; I think in every case
it will be found to be a duplication of a rhythmical member of
the preceding or following line,-to complete a line, that is, in
conjunction with a marked division, either going before or following; thus:" There was a Brutus once that would have brooked
The eternal devil to keep j his state in Rome
As easily as a king." I
Again:" Lucius. I I have slept, my lord, already.
Brutus. It was well done, j and thou shalt sleep again.
I will not hold thee long: I if I do live
I will be good to thee." I
and so in other instances various and numerous.




I




CRITICAL ESSAY ON MACBETH.


SK      HE story of Macbeth in leading outline is a tale of
cruel and barbarous ingratitude; a near kinsman of a
venerable monarch, to whom he is bound not only by
blood and loyalty but by recent honours and most
gracious kindness, receives him under his roof with treacherous
hospitality, and murders him in his bed with his own hands, in
order to usurp his throne; to add to the horror of the incident
the wife of the murderer is not only cognizant of the act but
aids and prepares it with well acted hypocrisy, busily drugs the
wine of the chamberlains, lays ready the daggers, and at last
actually smears her own hands with the warm blood of the aged
victim in order to bedaub the sleeping grooms and thus divert
suspicion; while massacre, pitiless of infancy or sex, is resorted
to to secure the ill-won crown. By what art and process does
such a frightful narrative become elevated to tragic dignity?
How is it that we look on at the agents in such a bloody business
with a degree of interest that so nearly approaches to qualified
admiration and pity as at least to deserve the name of sympathy,
and that we witness their punishment rather with awe than
exultation? These are questions that are applicable to the subject of almost every tragedy, and the answer, with moderate
variation, is ever substantially the same. We necessarily are
affected by an exhibition of passions set forth so naturally that
we cannot but recognize the germ of them as existing in our
own bosoms, and we cannot but look on with awe at the spectacle
of the tyranny the developed passion in full mastery can exert,
and what obstacles to its course, both from within and from without, it scorns and overbears when other combinations have once
effectually roused it, and it has gained its head and rushes onward to destruction in uncontrolled career.
Passion by its very name is suffering; it is the service and
subjection of one part of our nature to the inflictions and impositions of another part as its tyrant and task-master; and hence
the very power of mischief, which all our feelings rise up in arms
against by mere instinct of self-preservation, appears, when we
know more of it, less a master than a slave, and it is only ne



406


MACBETH.


cessary for the agent of mischievousness to be dying by selfinflicted or at least self-provoked death-wounds, for the ready
tear of pity to start for the misery that so often is our own. In
Macbeth himself the movings and strugglings of the better nature
are as evident as the tyrannous impression that overpowers them,
aided as it is from without; and the wifely interest of Lady Macbeth, though not atoning for misdirection, wipes off some soil of
selfishness, and the mere unconscious rebellion of her sleep evinces
a compassionable subjection to a tyranny from which it is in her
nature,-deep and oppressively overlaid it may be but still there,
under better circumstances to revolt. The terms therefore that
are bestowed by the victors in the last scene on the "dead
butcher and his fiendlike wife" appear, at first, too harsh and
unjust, and yet at the same time they remind us how such acts
must appear to all affected by them, and recal us to the duty of
severity by the challenge they imply to justify milder titles.
Ambition for sovereignty and masterdom is the mainspring
motive of Macbeth, but his wife participates in it only by sympathy. No expression falls from her that indicates it as her
independent passion, or hints that it was from her original suggestion that it was excited in her husband. If she mentions her
share at all, it is but in order to bring her husband's affection for
her in aid of his faltering purpose of sway. With all her exhibition of energy and power she is still a woman, and compared
with the true nobility of the sex not only a wicked but a weak
one. Subjected to the doom she has lost her own individuality
in that of her husband, and in the necessity to occupy the nearest
place in his interest and heart, she allies herself, as we observe
so frequently, with his master passion, and becomes its minister
and sycophant, and aids it to compress and conquer every better
instinct which a rarer nature would have dared to make party
with against it. Macbeth calls her in hisqetter his " dearest partner
of greatness," and exults in words in "the greatness promised
her," and it is true never disjoins the thought of their blended
interest in high fortune and its enjoyment; but this is sympathy
to gratify ambition by communication of hopes, not conjugal love
inciting to ambition. Ambition therefore in Lady Macbeth is
not absolute and self-dependent, it is the expression of another
feeling that with a different mate might have taken any other
form, and hence her association of the direst acts with the offices
and tenderness of maternity is as truly consistent and natural as
momentary compunction at the resemblance of the sleeping Duncan to her father. In her invocation to the murdering ministers
that wait unseen on nature's mischief, she winds herself up perforce to resist the visitings of which she knows herself susceptible,
and how little the passion of ambition alone is able to nerve her
is confessed in her resort when the murder is actually afoot, to
the lowest artificial stimulus of wine:



CRITICAL ESSAY.


407


" That which hath made them drunk hath made me bold:
What hath quench'd them hath given me fire."
Courage thus roused collapses as the crisis passes: Lady Macbeth
is only strong when her spirits are taxed to decide the hesitation
of her husband and secure his pleasure by the satisfaction of a
coveting desire, or when a sudden access of his nervous passion
renders her firmness indispensable for his safety. Hence her resolution and calm self-collectedness when Macbeth is utterly
prostrated after the deed is done, and he fears to look even on
his bloody hands: Lady Macbeth heard the shriek of the owl and
knew it, to her husband it was a noise he knew not what, to which
his thought gave voice and articulation; and afterwards when
left alone he exclaims at the knocking within,-" Whence is that
knocking?" while immediately on her re-entrance she notices
distinctly its seat and whereabouts:-m" I hear a knocking at the
south entry."
Macbeth recovers himself with the returning light, but his wife
scarcely fulfils the part she proposed for herself in the clamorous
grief, and I am never certain that when she sinks and is carried
out she is not really fainting. A lowered tone is very marked
in her next entrance and interview with Macbeth, when she puts
her comfort on no more daring ground than " that things without all remedy should be without regard: what's done is done."
Her consciousness of false result still does not keep her from
falling into her husband's purpose of yet another murder, that of
Banquo; but she speaks no more with eagerness, rather with
preference indirectly, and not now volunteering to prepare all, is
willingly put off from the inquiry. The disorder of Macbeth at
the ghost of Banquo rouses her again with force equal to her
earlier scenes, but the crisis past she sinks again as rapidly, speaks
shortly and almost abstractedly, and in a tone one may say of submissive respectfulness, expostulates no more nor upbraids and
abstains now when Macduff's ill will is alluded to, from repeating
her former suggestion of new violence, and seems indeed scarcely
to have the heart to offer consolation for a trouble that lays fatal
siege to her very sanity and life. Lady Macbeth, like the wife
of Brutus, can only abet her husband at the commencement of a
course of violence, and both break down with thickening dangers,
prolonged suspense, or ever accumulating horrors. We are probably to understand from the words of Macbeth that her own
sleep was disturbed by the terrible dreams by which he himself
was afflicted, and that single long-drawn sigh in the self-betrayal
of somnambulism reveals the misery of a remorse that his masculine depravity is not capable of, and could have but one conclusion.
The memory of the impersonation of Mrs. Siddons yet lives in
vivid memories,-long may they continue, and her own description
of her study of the character forms the most admirable commentary
on the poetic creation,-the depicture of the moral disturbance




408


MACBETH.


generated by the idea, much more by the reality, of barbarity
induced upon a naturally sympathetic disposition:-" It was my
custom to study my characters at night when all the domestic
cares and business of the day were over. On the night preceding that on which I was to appear in this part for the first time,
I shut myself up as usual when all the family were retired and
commenced my study of Lady Macbeth. As the character is very
short, I thought I should soon accomplish it. Being then only
twenty years of age, I believed, as many others do believe, that
little more was necessary than to get the words into my head; for
the necessity of discrimination and the development of character
at that time of my life had scarcely entered into my imagination.
But to proceed. I went on with tolerable composure in the
silence of the night (a night I can never forget) till I came to
the assassination scene, when the horrors of the scene rose to a
degree that made it impossible for me to get farther. I snatched
up my candle and hurried out of the room in a paroxysm of
terror. My dress was of silk and the rustling of it as I ascended
the stairs to go to bed seemed, to my panic-struck fancy, like
the movement of a spectre pursuing me. At last I reached my
chamber where I found my husband fast asleep. I clapped my
candlestick down upon the table, without the power of putting
it out; and I threw myself on my bed without daring to stay
even to take off my clothes."
Notwithstanding his response to the influence exerted upon
him, Macbeth is nothing less than uxorious; his leading aims
and purposes are those of an ambitious prince and soldier, and
from these he never swerves to inquire and adopt the special
wishes of his partner; his reference to her is ever of the nature
of a summons or an invitation to contribute the assistance of her
character to support his own, where he feels it to be relatively to
his purposes, deficient. Hence, when he has reached a certain
pitch of recklessness and pitiless resolution her function concludes
and she is withdrawn, and Macbeth concludes his desperate course
as in reality he commenced it, self-relying and alone.
The single respect in which she long appears to be his superior
in force, is her subjection of imagination to will, her preservation
of clearness and firmness of thought anda-hand, amidst all that
could excite and hurry, not to say alarm and horrify; but even
this superiority of steadfastness turns out to be but the artificial
or spasmodic vigour of a crisis. If free fromn her husband's waking
imaginings she shares those that disturb and keep him waking
in the night time, and at last the outrages of nature vindicate
themselves by the involuntary self-betrayal of guilty sleep-walking. She who upbraided the waking dreams of her compunctious
husband as womanish, is not allowed to retain the savage inde'pendence that would be as much at variance with her nature as
her sex, but here again succumbs to an inferior destiny.




CRITICAL ESSAY.


409


The supernatural machinery of the piece has a local and national
propriety, and is wrought out with ever-admired picturesqueness
and effect of reality, while it is still so managed as in no way to
interfere with our feeling of the strict nature of the piece. The
supernatural which is not so managed must obviously detach our
sympathies from all it is mixed up with: our interest in the
highest fiction is as a representation of the nature in the midst
of which we live, but if another arbitrary nature be substituted
for this, we can as little learn from it as sympathize. The supernatural regarded as matter of reality, matter of fact, is obviously
a countersense: Nature is a term co-extensive with Being, with
existence; and whatever is, whatever exists, or has existed, is therefore necessarily comprised in Nature. But if nature is used to
express our range of experience, or the recorded observation of
history, whatever lies without this has never yet interfered with
it, may in a sense still merely relative be called supernatural; and
still more laxly the word may be applied, and often is, to those
rarer phenomena and actions that are periodical at long intervals
or singular in the world's development. Thus if ghosts and incantations were facts in nature they obviously would not be supernatural, and no rarity of occurrence would render them so in an
accurate sense, for this would only imply a rarity of the conjunction of causes on which they depend, not independence of
causation.  Precisely on the same principle it would be an absurdity to regard the origination of species with which we may
be said to be familiar from geology as supernatural, on no better
ground than that this natural power once certainly so active, has
now lain dormant for many thousand years beyond the limits of
record or experience.
The witches of Macbeth, therefore, are to be regarded as part
of the nature of the time and country of the action of the play,
and regard for the sympathies it was written to affect required
that their agency should have an analogy with, should in fact be
exponent of tendencies that are rife to like effects then and there, if
not for all times and all the world over. In Macbeth, as in the
Iliad, the divine or demoniacal agencies are projected from the
dispositions of the human agents, and peculiarly from the more
recondite and mysterious capabilities of human nature, and the
world it is amidst and in sympathy with. In the manifestations
of these Scotland, and indeed England too, in Shakespeare's time
abounded. The reality of witchcraft was absolutely accepted in
single-minded reliance on plain texts that ingenuity had not yet
attempted to tamper with, and the book of nature was open to
all with plentiful confirmation. It is now sufficiently ascertained,
that most of the phenomena of witchcraft belonged to that class
of obscure, but most important natural phenomena, that are now
chiefly attended to in connection with experimental or therapeutic
Mesmerism. Thus the second-sight of the Highlands is but an




410


MLACBETH.


earlier clairvoyance, equally familiar, precarious and deceptive
in ancient as in modern times. The play is full of allusions to
this group of phenomena in all their variations. The disturbance
of the sleep of the sons of Duncan as the murderer passes their
door, is sympathetic; Lady Macbeth, when she laid violent hands
on herself, only fulfilled her prevoyance that such things so thought
on would "make them mad;" Macbeth's interpretation of the
shrieking owl," Methought I heard a voice cry, sleep no more!
Glamis hath murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor
Shall sleep no more;"anticipates his future restlessness and habitual lack of" the soother
of all natures, sleep." He has a prescience of his inability to look
again upon the murdered Duncan after the deed, when before it
he would have"The eye wink at the hand, yet let that be,
Which the eye fears when it is done to see."
Even the introduction into the play of the touching for the king's
evil has a significance from this point of view, as well as from
some others.
Shakespeare may be said to give a hint of his theory of the
real explanation of these phenomena, in the equally impressible
and imaginative nature he ascribes to Macbeth,-the proper subject for the display of the influences in all their tendencies and
energies. Of bravery unimpeached and fully approved, he is by
nature accessible to tremor at alarms that address less the senses
than the imagination. This is but one manifestation of his impressibility, though, from contrast to his valiantness and daring,
one of the most prominent. The very emphasis of the soldiers'
description of him, "Valiant Macbeth, well he deserves that
name," prepares for the qualification. Few words are more frequent in his mouth afterwards than admissions of fear. lie says:"I have almost forgot the taste of fears,
The time has been my senses would have cool'd
To hear a nightshriek, and my fell of hair
Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir,
As life were in't."
Thus Banquo, reading his expression when he seems wrapt in
the witches' words, inquires:-" Good sir, why do you start and
seem to fear."  He speaks of eating his meals in fear,-being
bound in with saucy doubts and fears,-present fears are less
than horrible imaginings, it is his utmost wish to be able to tell
pale-hearted fear it lies and sleeps in spite of thunder,-and so
throughout. The sting of his apprehension, both before and after
the deed, resides in his inner consciousness of the heinousness of
his crime, re-acting on unusual susceptibility and vividness of
imagination, by which the ideal becomes more stimulating than
the actual. As he debates aside on the promise of the witches,




CRITICAL ESSAY.


411


the idea of the murder of Duncan rises up in his mind with such
reality as to agitate not only his mind but his whole bodily constitution in a nervous access:" Why do I yield to that suggestion,
Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair,
And make my seated heart knock at my ribs
Against the use of nature? Present fears
Are less than horrible imaginings:
My thought whose murder yet is but fantastical,
Shakes so my single state of man, that function
Is smothered in surmise; and nothing is
But what is not."
Nothing is but what is not,-nothing in such a state of mind
affects as reality but that which is yet but an imagination; this
is'obviously the frame of mind that is competent to produce from
within itself the air-drawn dagger and the nodding ghost of
Banquo, and if the intervention of the witches is introduced with
such circumstances that they cannot be resolved into mere imagination, yet their function does little more than embody the ill
thoughts already brooding in the mind of Glamis, for it was not
by accident or oversight that Lady Macbeth indicates his deliberations to make the opportunity for the taking off of Duncan
before one offered of itself and backed by the encouragement of
fate and metaphysical aid.
The Weird sisters and their incantations are, I think, among
the most wonderful even of the poetical inventions of Shakespeare.
They are Scottish witches and none other, and yet, while they preserve both nationality and individuality, they are elevated above
the vulgarity of the disgusting superstition of the time, which
seems to us like the last debasement and fouler form of mischief of
the more dignified hatefulness of the days of the primeval kings.
Creative imagination has blended together the revolting horrors
of the witchcraft known to or imagined by the penal statutes,
and the boding solemnity of the nobler superstitions of the Highlands and the Western isles without any incongruity; and the
effect upon our sympathies vindicates the self-devotion of those
who assert in the teeth of the self-sufficient scientific that after
all abstraction made of delusion and collusion and hallucination,
somewhat still remains in nature that philosophy has yet to
fathom, and which meanwhile we must be fain to recognise if
even by such unsatisfactory names as intuition and sympathetic
divination. The future ever is wrapt up and latent in the present,-the most important future frequently thus lurks in our
own minds or those of others, the motives are there perdue, and
even the circumstances to be affected not inadequately represented; and it may be that there is no more in the matter than
that an imagination in a peculiar state of exalted sensitiveness is
capable of appreciating the predominant influence, and by some




412


MACBETH.


process unconscious to itself realizing its special reaction long
beforehand as distinctly as ordinary experience prefigures from
hour to hour the conduct of exertion or the play of thought.
Nature however will not be limited, and suffice it here to indicate
that in Macbeth the seeming temptation to crime comes but as
encouragement, and the struggles and air-drawn visions that
precede it in him, and the definite recognition of the guiltiness of
the deed suggested in Lady Macbeth, are signs of the very temperaments that must fall into disorder by the necessary conflict of
ideas that hold between each other a necessary feud of exhaustless virulence.
Throughout the play the poet brings forward into the brightest
light the daring courage of Macbeth, when opposed to mere physical danger and conflict, and his nervous prostration at every
alarm at the unseen dangers of destiny. Armed opponents he
will confront at any odds, but could turn pale at a dismal treatise
or a nightshriek, and would fly, almost surrender, at the failure of
a witch's charm. His weakness depends on his conscious weakness; in defying right and mercy and pity he knows, his nature
has sufficient nobleness to know, that he takes arms against omnipotence, and the thought lives and quells him, and haunts him
sleeping and awake with brainsick visions, and puts the resolution
of his challenge for ever to the blush. He looks forward to a
time when older in deed his sympathies will be deadened and he
will gain coolness in performance of ill deeds, but there is no such
hour in store for him; his very anticipation of it proves his heart
to be incapable of hardening in crime, it can only proceed from
hesitation before ill deeds to the very fury of blind and unreflecting violence. It is on the sense of his real want of bad courage
that Lady Macbeth works to screw it to the sticking place, and
though he has the true reply at hand to the impeachment of his
manliness, he allows himself,-ambition seducing too, to yield to
the taunt. It is remarkable,-it has in fact been remarked before, that, in working on the more vulgar instruments that are to be
incited against Banquo, he makes use of the same suggestion that
he had found most stimulant of his own ill resolves.
"When you durst do it then you were a man."
prepares for the subsequent:"Ay, in the catalogue ye stand for men," &c.
The treason and tyranny of Macbeth are urged or lured along
by the promises of the witches and the incitement of his wife, an
evil genius in wait for the fellest opportunity, but the downward
path is also cleared and opened by the fatal easiness of those who
from mere self-preservation should give him check and pause.
Duncan, Banquo, and Macduff, suffer in turn, in person or in those
most dear to them, by carelessness and security which they should
have been sufficiently warned against by the maxims of watchfulness proper to envied position, or by the sufficient notices given




CRITICAL ESSAY.


413


by their experience: the triumphant course of the usurper is
turned at last when he meets with an opponent who unites boldness and sagacity with caution, both diplomatically and in the
field.
The falsely gracious Duncan gathers no general sense, though
he enunciates laxly a general principle, from the fair-faced treachery of the Thane of Cawdor, and it is immediately after he
exclaims,"There is no art
To find the mind's construction in the face.:
He was a gentleman on whom I built
An absolute trust,"
that he springs forward to meet and greet Macbeth, already
known to the spectator for as deep a traitor, with trust still absolute, as if never undeceived,-" 0 worthiest cousin," and makes
acknowledgment of services in unlimited terms that would be
dangerous to the best:" Would thou hadst less deserved
That the proportion both of thanks and payment
Might have been mine; only I have left to say,
More is thy due than more than all can pay."
Not so his son Malcolm, when at the end of the play he responds to fuller services from tested loyalty, but still knows how
to requite them fully without renouncing his superiority to any
balance of obligation, though much of his payment is in the
monarchical currency of a title or a decoration:" We shall not spend a large expense of time,
Before we reckon with your several loves,
And make us even with you: My thanes and kinsmen,
Henceforth be earls; the first that ever Scotland
In such an honour named."
The carelessness of Banquo is as constitutional as the graciousness of the unsuspicious Duncan. In the encounter withl the
witches, he speaks as one who is all but free entirely from Macbeth's liability to nervous excitement at aught of supernatural
colour; he addresses and questions them fluently, while his partner
is recovering himself, and after their startling promises and when
they have vanished he says, "The earth hath bubbles as the
water hath, and these are of them," and confirms Macbeth's recapitulation with a jaunty phrase,-"Went it not so? — Banquo.
To the self-same tune and words," in a tone of lightness that is
not affected, and therefore the more expresses his unreflecting
character, for it fully appears that his mind had seized the prediction of royalty, though it was not like Macbeth's engrossed
and inflamed by it. As for himself so for another; he recognizes
distinctly, and in terms the tendency of such a prediction as that
to Macbeth to make a traitor, and yet is blind to all the palpable
signs that it is actually having its absolute operation before his




414


MACBETH.


eyes. He even lends his aid to make Duncan still more confiding in the kinsman who has just been tempted and incited to
aim at his seat; for thus we learn the gist of their discourse,
in simple good faith either way, while Macbeth soliloquized on
brooding murder:" Duncan. True, worthy Banquo; he is full so valiant,
And in his commendations I am fed;
It is a banquet to me."
Banquo is as incautious for himself as for his king, before and even
with the example of his fate, which he ought to have read more
shrewdly than in mere suspicions; he is incompetent to construe
the overwrought attention of which he is the object, or the curiosity as to the direction and companionship of his nocturnal ride.
He is, however, partly blinded by the same ambitious thoughts
that urge on his murderer, and thus he becomes, in one sense, his
accessary. While Duncan yet lived, he had occasion to check the
ill suggestions of a dream of the weird sisters by the prayer," Merciful powers!
Restrain in me the cursed thoughts that nature
Gives way to in repose."
And afterwards he allows himself far too complacently to recognize in the success of the foul play of Macbeth the presage of the
greatness promised to himself in his posterity, and half condones
the treachery for the sake of the good omen.
Macduff more easily tak -s alarm;-he absents himself from the
investiture at Scone in son:e mistrust:" Well, may you see things well done there:-adieuLest our old robes sit easier than our new!"
and then, as tyranny declares itself, from the great feast at Forres,
and at last quits his country, to urge Malcolm's return to recover
the throne. But with all his mistrust, he allows himself to rest
on false security, so far as to leave his wife and children in the
power of one whom he should have known that no compassion or
tenderness any longer had power over to restrain from any cruelty prompted by safety or revenge.
A spirit more befitting the emergency is exhibited in the sons
of Duncan; in the midst of the confusion after the discovery of
the murder, and around the fainting Lady Macbeth, their words
are to each other, and aside:" Malcolm.         Why do we hold our tongues,
That most may claim this argument for ours?
Don. What should be spoken
Here, where our fate hid in an auger hole,
May rush and seize us? Let's away: our tears
Are not yet brewed.
Male.            Nor our strong sorrow
Upon the foot of motion."




CRITICAL ESSAY.


415


And so they leave at once, without leave taking, and by separated
ways. The strongest expression of this sentiment is, of course,
the great scene in which Malcolm proves the sincerity of Macduff, before trusting him. The interposed dialogue on the king's
evil is noteworthy: Shakespeare, probably enough, was not indisposed to compliment the reigning English sovereign, but not
unless he served the purpose of his play at the same time; and
the unction with which Malcolm disserts on the miraculous power,
of his royal host displays a willingness to impress the prerogatives of legitimacy quite in accordance with his claims. The
anecdote, which was proffered by the source of the play, is also
useful as introductory to the Scottish scenes in which a doctor
figures. The virtue of healing, and the gift of prophecy, are chief
among the blessings that hang about the throne of the sainted
Edward; from holiness and virtue on a throne proceeds an influence that recovers a tainted bodily constitution, while its mental
manifestations are heightened into prescience. In the night scene
at Dunsinane, the tainted mind infects the body's functions, and
so far from superseding medicine, is irrecoverable by its aid,-is
left by it to minister for itself, a vain hope, when all its powers
are wrenched from their offices, and distorted into confused and
vain, torturing and morbid retrospect.
In the progress of retribution, the false security, mortal's
greatest enemy, passes over from the victims to the tyrant, though
unaccompanied by the composure that at least relieved its ill
effects, and absurd and self-confuting reliance upon the enigmas
of the witches, leads him at last, by the shortest and the steepest
road, to downfall and destruction.
We cannot but sympathize with Lady Macduff in her desertion,
especially since we know what fate hangs over her; but we also
know, besides the incaution of her husband, the patriotic motive
of his departure for England; and the very terms in which his
wife denounces his departure, declare to us that it was at least
wisely done for him to make her no confidant of his purposes. It
is clear that she is incapable of understanding any other principle of political conduct than the shortsighted and undignified
prudence that shuns all present personal risk, and in this interest
admits unquestioning the title of any usurper to unconditional
allegiance. Her husband, by his revolt from Macbeth, is, to her
narrow mind, a self-condemned traitor; and thus, while in other
respects we perceive that she is the directest contrast to Lady
Macbeth, by her disposition to counsel pusillanimity rather than
boldness, and by a petulant opposition and independence, which,
when mistaken, there can be no harm in calling unwifely, she is
almost as bad a wife for a nobleman in agitated times: but even
in later and more civil times, the typical misdirections of female
aristocracy have been towards debasing subservience to absolutism




416


MACBETH.


on the one hand, and the coldest unscrupulousness in advancing
their family or their order on the other.
Of the Porter's soliloquy and dialogue with the Lords, I can
say no more than that, interposed as it is between Macbeth's
horror after the murder and that of the Lords on its discovery,one pressing on the memory and the other on the anticipation, it
seems to me most wonderfully invented for preparing the mind
tby its relief for the renewed strain on its elasticity, and that the
mingled coarseness and pungency, irony and indifference, are the
only elements that, at such a time, could stimulate and retain
attention.
The distinctness with which the leading characters of this play
are marked in themselves, and commentated within the play
itself, by mutual observations, is an apparent indication of Shakespeare's later time. His hand, we will not say has acquired, but
at this period favours a bold and marked outline, which leaves
less to be divined by the sagacity of the reader or spectator, and
at the same time less excuse for false conception and rendering
in the actor. In this respect, and also by the frequency of the
hemistich and irregular lines, among versification perfect both in
vigour and ease, we are reminded of Julius Caesar, from which
play it was probably not far divided in time.
That Macbeth has always been one of the most successful of
the plays on the stage, is far too equivocal a fact to justify, or
even aid, the opinion that has not unfrequently been expressed,
that it is entitled to the very first place. Its comparative brevity,
however, and limited numbers of leading characters, and even the
order of character and passion it mainly rests on, must reduce
this exaggerated claim to superiority over Lear and Hamlet, or
even Othello. It is enough to say, that on its own ground, and
within its proper scope, it is perfect and unrivalled, independent
of any original, and for ever superior to imitation.
Macbeth was printed in the folio of 1623 for the first time, so
far as we know, and as it is probable, from the entry of it for that
edition in the Stationers' books among " the plays not formerly
entered to other men."  Internal evidence proves that in its present form it dates after the accession of James, in October, 1604;
the twofold balls and treble sceptres of the visionary kings being
an obvious compliment to the Stuart descendant of Banquo, who
was the first to rule over Scotland, England, and Ireland together.
On the 29th April, 1610, Dr. Simon Forman saw Macbeth acted
at the Globe, and entered an abstract of the plot in his diary,
preserved in MS. in the Ashmolean Museum; but whether or no
it was then new he does not mention, and we have yet to learn.
There is some interest in the following indication of the original
management of the banquet scene and its interruption: —" At
night being at supper with his noblemen, whom he had bid to a




CRITICAL      ESSAY.               417
feast (to the which also Banquo should have come), he began to
speak of noble Banquo, and to wish that he were there. And as
he thus did, standing up to drink a carouse to him, the ghost of
Banquo came and sat down in his chair behind him. And he,
turning about to sit down again, saw the ghost of Banquo, which
fronted him, so that he fell ill a great passion of fear and fury,
uttering many words about his murder, by which, when thev
heard that Banquo was murdered, they suspected Macbeth." It
will be observed, by comparison with the scene, that in the representation during the author's lifetime, the Ghost of Banquo, on
its second appearance, (for it is then that Macbeth is about to
drink, and is yet unseated,) as well as on the first, sat in his murderer's seat.
Skene's Highlanders of Scotland is referred to for the real history of Macbeth, as elucidated from Irish annals and Norwegian
Sagas, and it thence appears that the contest for the crown of
Scotland, between Duncan and Macbeth, was a contest of factions,
and that Macbeth was raised to the throne by his Norwegian
allies after a battle in which Duncan fell: in the same way, after
a long rule, was he vanquished and killed by the son of Duncan,
supported by English allies.
Very different from this, however, is the account given by
Holinshed in his History of Scotland, which was manifestly the
source made use of by Shakespeare. Thus begins the reign of
Duncan:-" After Malcolm succeeded his nephew Duncan, the
son of his daughter Beatrice: for Malcolm had two daughters, the
one of which, &c. &c.-the other, called Doada, was married unto
Sinell the thane of Glammis, by whom she had issue one Macbeth, a valiant gentleman, and one that, had he not been somewhat cruel of nature, might have been thought most worthy the
government of a realm. On the other part, Duncan was so soft
and gentle of nature, that the people wished the inclinations and
manners of these two cousins to have been so tempered and interchangeably bestowed betwixt them, that where the one had
too much of clemency and the other of cruelty, the mean virtue
betwixt these two extremities might have reigned by indifferent
partition in them both, so should Duncan have proved a worthy
king and Macbeth an excellent captain."
Tile exploits of Macbeth and Banquo over rebels and invaders
are related, and the story proceeds: -" It fortuned as Macbeth
and Banquo journied toward Forres, where the king then lay,
they went sporting by the way together without other company,
save only themselves, passing through the woods and fields, when
suddenly, in the middest of a laund, there met them three women,
in wild and strange apparel, resembling creatures of the elder
world, whom, when they attentively beheld, wondering much
at the sight, the first of them spake and said, 'All hail Macbeth,
E E




418


MACBETH.


thane of Glamis,' (for he had lately entered into that dignity and
office by the death of his father Sinell). The second of them
said, ' Hail, Macbeth, thane of Cawdor.' But the third said, 'All
hail, Macbeth, that hereafter shalt be king of Scotland.' Then
Banquo, ' What manner of women,' saith he, 'are you, that seem
so little favourable unto me; whereas, to my fellow here, besides
high offices, ye assign also the kingdom, appointing forth nothing
for me at all.' ' Yes,' saith the first of them, 'we promise greater
benefits unto thee than unto him, for he shall reign indeed, but
with an unlucky end; neither shall he leave any issue behind him
to succeed in his place, where, contrarily, thou indeed shalt not
reign at all, but of thee those shall be born which shall govern
the Scottish kingdom by long order of continual descent.' Herewith the foresaid women vanished immediately out of their sight.
This was reputed at the first but some vain fantastical illusion
by Macbeth and Banquo, insomuch that Banquo would call Macbeth in jest king of Scotland, and Macbeth again would call him
in sport likewise the father of many kings. But afterwards, the
common opinion was, that these women were either the weird
sisters, that is as ye should say, the goddesses of destiny, or else
some nymphs or fairies-(this is the precise guess of Dr. Forman)
-endued with knowledge of prophecy by their necromantical science, because every thing came to pass as they had spoken. For,
shortly after, the thane of Cawdor being condemned at Fores of
treason against the king committed, his lands, livings, and offices
were given of the king's liberality to Macbeth."
Macbeth is crossed in his views by Duncan's appointment of a
successor, and plans violence:-" The words of the three weird
sisters also greatly encouraged him hereunto; but specially his
wife lay sore upon him to attempt the thing, as she that was very
ambitious, burning in unquenchable desire to bear the name of a
queen. At length, therefore, communicating his purposed intent
with his trusty friends, amongst whom Banquo was the chiefest,
upon confidence of their promised aid he slew the king at Enuerus.
Then having a company about him of such as he had made privy
to his enterprise, he caused himself to be proclaimed king, and
forthwith went unto Scone, where, by common consent, he received the investiture of the kingdom."
The instigation of Macbeth by his wife is common to the history of another traitor, Donwald, in the earlier reign of Duffe,
and Shakespeare combined what possibly should never have been
separated. We find here the special trust of the king in his captain as one whom he never suspected, and his bestowal of sundry
honourable gifts on him the very night of his murder. The wife
of Donwald "counselled him, sith the king used oftentimes to
lodge in his house without any guard about him, to make him
away, and showed him the means whereby he might accomplish




CRITICAL ESSAY.                     419
r it. Donwald thus being more kindled in wrath by the words of
his wife, determined to follow her advice in the execution of so
heinous an act." The pair make the king's two chamberlains
dr —nk at supper, and " then Donwald, though he abhorred the
act greatly in heart, yet, through the instigation of his wife,
he called four of his servants," and by their hands the king is
murdered in his sleep. The discovery and slaughter of the chamberlains follow, as in the play, and also suspicions among the
lords. " For the space of six months together, after this heinous
murder thus committed, there appeared no sun by day nor moon
by night in any part of the realm, but still the sky was covered
wNitli continual clouds, &c. &c."-and so afterwards, " Monstrous
sights also that were seen within the Scottish kingdom that year
were these; horses in Lothian, being of singular beauty and
swiftness, did eat their own flesh,-there was a sparhawk also
strangled by an owl," &c.
The remainder of the play returns to the history of Macbeth,
and follows it through the murder of Banquo, the witches' warning against Macduff, and ambiguous promises of impunity, the
suspicion of the tyrant, his spies and cruelties, the return of
Malcolm with Old Siward and Macduff, and so forth, to the end.
The most remarkable section, however, is the dialogue set down
at length between Macduff and Malcolm, of which Shakespeare
adheres precisely to the tenor and also to the words. It had a
material influence on his treatment of the subject at large, and
is evidently the source of the suggestion for making unsuspiciousness, rather than mere over clemency, the failing of Duncan.
With one short extract I conclude:" Macduff to this made answer, ' How it (i. e. avarice) was a
far worse fault than the other; for avarice is the root of all mischief, and for that crime the most part of our kings have been
slain and brought to their final end. Yet, notwithstanding, follow my counsel, and take upon thee the crown; there is gold and
riches enough in Scotland to satisfy thy greedy desire.' Then
Malcolm said,' I am, furthermore, inclined to dissimulation, telling
of leasings and all other kinds of deceit, so that I naturally rejoice
in nothing so much as to betray and deceive such as put any trust
or confidence in my words. Then, sith there is nothing that more
becometh a prince than constancy, verity, truth, and justice, with
the other laudable fellowship of those fair and noble virtues which
are comprehended only in soothfastness, and that lieing utterly
overthroweth the same, you see how unable I am to govern any
province or region.'
"Then said Macduff, ' This yet is the worst of all, and there I
leave you, and therefore say-O ye unhappy and miserable Scottishmen-adieu Scotland, for now I account myself a banished
man for ever, without comfort or consolation:' and with these




420                  MACBETH.
words the brackish tears trickled down his cheeks very abundantly."
It is by no means improbable that Shakespeare may have
visited Scotland; his fellow actors were certainly there in 1 39
and 1599, on the invitation of James, but there is nothing in the
play that requires to be thus accounted for, for assuredly there is
no indication that the poet was more familiar with Scotland than
with Republican Rome.




CRITICAL ESSAY ON HAMLET.
HE character of Hamlet embodies the predominance of
the contemplative element over the practical in a mind
of the highest order, both intellectually and morally.
If merely in virtue of belonging to this elevated class,
the practical element is necessarily not entirely absent, it is even
present in manifestations of no ordinary force; but this force is
displayed fitfully, irregularly, by sudden provocation or unpremeditated impulse, and by its very effort exhausts itself and gives
way to the more even reign of the tendency to plan rather than
execute, and to reflect and generalize rather than to form a specific
plan. And this character is placed precisely amidst circumstances
that demand plan and purpose, and resolute execution, as they
combine all the motives of hope and fear, of love and hatred, of
personal interest and domestic sympathy and public duty, that
are capable of stimulating a passion and rousing to action. The
introduction of the supernatural in this play, as in Macbeth, is
managed with such art, and has such coherence with all that is
most purely natural in the play, that it does not remove the subject from ordinary nature, and we cannot therefore escape from admitting the weakness of Hamlet, by such palliation as the incon.gruity of his knowledge of his father's murder, with his means
of bringing it home to the satisfaction of others, - a tragic
motive quite conceivable, though it would require to be treated
with a more romantic freedom than Shakespeare ever indulges
in his more serious moods. There is therefore no enhancement of
embarrassment arising from the murder being revealed to Hamlet
by the ghost, a witness citable in no mortal court, of a different
nature than would have accrued had his information come by ordinary circumstances, or rather by divination of his prophetic soul
and the damnatory disorder at witnessing the play. It is true
that he proposes a doubt-" the spirit that I have seen may be the
devil-abusing me to damn me;" but this suspicion is no leading
motive, is merely a readily invented and embraced subterfuge
prompted by his general disposition. The humanity of the play




422                   HAMLET.
is in itself independent entirely of the supernatural world-if the
phrase be not a contradiction, and passion and action follow on
as though no ghost had ever risen. The dramatic value of the
apparition is however incalculable, and it becomes the highest
poetical expression of the sympathetic penetration accorded to
such souls as Hamlet's, and the index of the vagaries to which
wits, highly wrought by anxiety and thought, and false position
and ill-assorting circumstances, are liable at the crisis of tension
and distress.
When Hamlet first comes before us he stands in the black garb
of filial mourning, a shadow upon the splendour of the easily recomforted court. The shameful speed of his mother's second
marriage, marriage held incestuous, with her late husband's'brother, and his antipathy to and mistrust of his uncle have disgusted
him with life, with the world, with the sex. It is only afterwards
that we learn that political disappointment of the succession to
his father might have increased his depression, and that the bitterness of his mother's fault had poisoned the charm of his attachment to Ophelia. But thus minded, what does he at the court
where only irritation of his misery can await him; his first act
of concession in giving up his return to Wittenberg stamps the
characteristic of facility in falling from a resolution, and the same
scene commences the contrast in this respect that is extended
afterwards, between him and Laertes, - Laertes who carries
through his own purpose of departure against his father's stubborn
opposition. Thus the anger of his mind turns inward and preys
upon its energies, instead of passing away by the healthier course
and giving quickness and nerve to the immediate instruments
of action; he already contemplates suicide, at least considers it
as a refuge from his. troubles which only the conscientiousness of
his feelings restrains him from resorting to. Such minds so circumstanced, vexed, disappointed, objectless, depressed, declined
from that harmony with bodily stimulus that gives the recruiting refreshment known as the tide of animal spirits in their sobered
flow, are reckoned to be as near to derangement as to suicide,
which is but the catastrophe of derangement. Whether the
boundaries of sanity are really overpassed by Hamlet, whether
the very warning he gives of his purposed simulation may be but
one of the cunningnesses of the truly insane, are questions that
belong to a class most difficult to treat whether in life or literature.
I confess to be inclined to take the latter view, which by no means
excludes the recognition of a main stream of sanity running
through the action, and comprising very much that was really
but simulation of madness. But some such extremity of excitement seems to form part of the supernaturalism of the play; such
an effect was ordinarily ascribed to apparitions, and in this sense  Y
Horatio alludes to it, and it is noteworthy that Hamlet's manner
is already changed, and he has already given signs of an antic




CRITICAL ESSAY.


423


disposition without obvious motive, before he has given notice
that at some time thereafter he should probably think meet to
affect eccentricity as a disguise. His susceptibility of irritation
has received a wrench, and although he professes to his mother
with every appearance of conviction to be merely mad in craft,
a suspicion of something more is intimated in his thought that
possibly the ghost may have been but diabolical abuse of weakness and melancholy —ever subject to such ill influence; and
when he excuses his injuries to Laertes on the ground of madness,
distractions, it would be, I think, unworthy of him to suppose
that his apology was a mere and conscious fabrication. Some
palliation moreover must be borrowed hence for his treatment of
Ophelia, which otherwise more than verges on the brutal. So
we must pronounce with every recognition of the irritation he
was subjected to, and every allowance for the sudden irritability
of a usually tranquil but highly sensitive mind. "Frailty thy
name is woman," was already impressed upon him painfully, and
now his letters are repelled, his visits refused, and at last it is
pretty apparent that with the quickness that is characteristic of
madness, he discerns that Ophelia, seated with her book of prayers,
is lending herself as a decoy to the practices of contemptible eavesdropping politicians. But while his vehemence is as genuine as
when in towering passion he grapples with Laertes in her grave,
it is far too severe-I may say too coarse, to be admitted as compatible with even the passionate violence of the noble spirit that
Hamlet sufficiently approves himself. Ophelia herself,-the eyewitness, and subject of his rage and insult, suspects him as little
of pretence as of intention, and in the beauty of her own mild
nature ascribes the disorder entirely to the blasting ecstasy which
she weeps and. pities; and though the king, in his guilty consciousness of the drift of what he overheard, at first speaks of it
as "not like madness," though it wanted form a little,-yet he
unawares makes the admission at the conclusion of the scene:"It shall be so:
Madness in greatness must not unwatch'd go."
Whatever energy in action, therefore, is manifested by Hamlet
is in the form of passionate outburst, or reply to sudden provocation, or the impulse of the moment, and his liability to such
accesses of excitement appears to have been increased by the excitement of the apparition-itself from another point of view a
consequence of the excitability, till it carries his mind over the
balance that gives fair claim to sane composure. The transitions
from excessive violence to perfect repose are throughout remarkable, and the queen herself recognizes in them the recent disturbance of his mind, not its ordinary turn and character:" This is mere madness:
And thus awhile the fit will work on him;
Anon as patient as the female dove,




424


HAMLET.


When that her golden couplets are disclos'd,
His silence will sit brooding."
So it is immediately after Ophelia laments with so much apparent cause the overthrow of his noble mind, that he enters discoursing didactically with the players, and disserts with such
temperate acumen on the theory of their art, and the passionate
scuffle with Laertes is as closely succeeded by the tranquil relation of his sea adventures to Horatio.
As I have said then, the elements of energy were comprised in
germ or in occasional and irregular action in the character of
Hamlet,-to the full extent that renders the words of Fortinbras,
at his funeral, by no means suggestive of the inopportune cavil
they would provoke had he been a mere sluggard or unable
trifler:"Let four captains
Bear Hamlet like a soldier to the stage;
For he was likely had he been put on
To have proved most royally."
Such a putting-on might have consisted in more favourable
conjunction of circumstance; but, as it is, the efficiency of the
character in its position is vitiated by partial overgrowth and consequent want of harmonious interplay and combination. This is
a source of weakness of which Hamlet is perfectly aware theoretically, and he expresses it with admirable precision and force;
but he knows it only speculatively and outwardly, not from selfknowledge, and if his self-examination leads him near the error
that disables him, he dwells upon it too lightly to detect it, and
straightway lapses into new misdirections. It is before his encounter with the ghost that he comments on the weakness of
national character, and thus applies-with unknown aptness to
his own constitution, though still apologetically:" So, oft it chances in particular men,
That, for some vicious mole of nature in them,
As, in their birth (wherein they are not guilty,
Since nature cannot choose his origin),
By the o'ergrowth of some complexion,
Oft breaking down the pales and forts of reason;
Or by some habit, that too much o'erleavens
The form of plausive manners;-that these men,Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect,
Being nature's livery, or fortune's star,Their virtues else (be they as pure as grace,
As infinite as man may undergo,)
Shall in the general censure take corruption
From that particular fault: The dram of base
Doth all the noble substance of a doubt,
To his own scandal."
Hamlet fails in action not because he broods too deeply on the




CRITICAL ESSAY.


425


duty imposed upon him and the deed he has to do, entangled in
the over-refinement of his foresight of difficulties, but rather from
his aversion to brood upon it at all. His predilections are for the
arts and elegancies of life, for the studies of Wittenberg, the companionship of chosen fellow students, for poetry and the play, the
elegant accomplishments and exercises of his rank, riding and
the use of weapons, and for meditation on men and manners, and.
the collection of recorded observations. Hence, in his great soli —
loquy of " To be or not to be," he is not intent upon the purpose
he has owned of punishing the murderous usurper,-he has for
the time forgotten it, and is following out the remoter reflections
that are more connected with his previous melancholy. He is
ever reminded of the charge laid upon him by the ghost, to recognize it with a pang, to find some excuse for deferring-now
mistrust of the ghost, now inaptness of an opportunity, to accuse
himself of dullness and tardiness, even to declare a resolution, but
immediately to diverge into the generalities of a philosophical
deduction, and allow himself to be carried away from any definite
design entirely. He has the means, the skill, the courage, and
what should be sufficient motive, but the active stimulus is unequal to the contemplative inertia that opposes it, and never
thoroughly masters and possesses his nature; it gains no permanent hold on his attention; his spirit is soon wearied and
oppressed by the uncongenial intrusion, and he relapses into the
vein more natural to him; it is cursed spite to be called upon to
bring back to order an unhinged world,-we may believe front
his manner that he finds no great hardship or disgrace either, in
having lost the chance of governing the kingdom, of the foreign
affairs of which at least he has not cared to inform himself, and
there is such entire absence of expressions of regret for his frustrate
love that I am not sure he does not feel some relief in getting rid
of an importunate and interrupting passion. Hamlet's mind is
certainly unhinged, and I would prefer to say unsettled. He is
two entirely different Hamlets in different scenes, and we see him
in constant alternation of hurried and lucid intervals. If we
could assume for a moment that his madness is entirely feigned
we should stumble over the inconsistency that it is so carried out
as to answer no reasonable purpose, excites suspicion instead of
diverting it, covers not, and is not fitted to cover, any secondary
design, and would amount at best to a weak and childish escapade
of ill humour and spleen. This is the really difficult aspect of
Hamlet's character, and it is here-perhaps we may say alone in
the play-that the poet has left us to our own resources, has
placed the picture of nature before us, and called upon us to read
and interpret it with no aid from him of marginal interpretation.
It is here that the genius of a great Shakespearian actor, if ever
such arise again, may be displayed, in so rendering these equivocal
scenes by the inspiration that places in sympathy with the author




426


HAMLET.


and in its highest sense can only be allowed to actual impersonation, as to blend them harmoniously with those portions that
in themselves are perfectly illuminated and defined, and bring
home enlightenment and conviction at once to the understanding
and the heart.
For the rest, we meet throughout the play with scholia on the
leading topic of motive weakening by lapse of time, and unsustained engrossment. This is the very colour Laertes puts upon
his love:"Think it no more,
For nature crescent does not grow alone
In thews and bulk; but, as this temple waxes,
The inward service of the mind and soul
Grows wide withal. Perhaps he loves you now,
And now no soil nor cautel doth besmirch
The virtue of his will,-but you must fear."
So the king in the introduced play:" I do believe you think what now you speak,
But what we do determine oft we break;
Purpose is but the slave to memory
Of violent birth, but poor validity.What to ourselves in passion we propose,
The passion ending doth the purpose lose."
Hamlet himself describes his own ideal of a perfect character
which aptly illustrates his own,-he admires the steadfastness
that is born of due commixture of thought and feeling, but still
characteristically enough the error that he deprecates is not his
own, of sluggish answering to the requirements of exciting emergency, but the opposite fault of over sensibility to the spurs of
new occasion:" And bless'd are those,
Whose blood and judgement are so well co-mingled,
That they are not a pipe for fortune's finger
To sound what stop she please. Give me that man
That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him
In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart."
In his instructions to the players it is noteworthy that, while he
deprecates tameness on the one hand as well as extravagance on
the other, he is mainly emphatic in denouncing turbulence and
rant, the strutters and bellowers, and returns again to insist upon
smoothness, temperance, the special observance not to overstep
the modesty of nature. So he does not even counsel his mother
to break off a course that he regards as incest with abruptness,
but by gradual and temporizing estrangement.
The guilty king himself is so conscious of the tendency of time
and thought to sickly o'er the native hue of resolution, -to
quench passion the most violent, that he speaks thus to rouse
Laertes whom he had pacified with such difficulty:



CRITICAL ESSAY.


427


" Laertes, was your father dear to you?
Or are you like the painting of a sorrow
A face without a heart.
Laertes.             Why ask you this?
King. Not that I think you did not love your father,
But that I know love is begun by time;
And that I see in passages of proof
Time qualifies the spark and fire of it.
There lives within the very flame of love
A kind of wick or snuff that will abate it,
And nothing is at a like goodness still;
For goodness growing to a pleurisy
Dies in his own too-much. That we would do
We should do when we would; for this " would" changes,
And hath abatements and delays as many
As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents;
And then this "should" is like a spendthrift's sigh
That hurts by easing."
Hamlet's own self-accusations also are so distinct that we are
brought up by every aid to appreciate the difficulty that besets
his weakness. In his feeling for art he has the true Attic spirit,
as defined by Pericles, of passionate affection for beauty within
the limits of chaste and temperate effect; but he does not reach
the complement of the disciplined mind according to the idea of
the great statesman,-the attachment to habits of philosophizing
without relaxation of practical activity. Assuredly he is not a
coward, still less oblivious, still less unimpressible by sympathies
or affronts, and it is not even that his original genius utterly incapacitates him for action; it indisposes him no doubt, but this
indisposition he might probably have overcome but for the disadvantage at which the occasion and the duty are presented.
They might have given a direction to his interest in life, but
they are powerless to revive it; the contemptibleness and grossness of the world have been brought revoltingly before him at
his entrance into it, and with the same result upon a sensitive
nature that occurs so often when systematic harshness and unkindness exercised towards youth deprive all future age of interest, or hope from such a pestilent congregation of noxiousness
and ill-conditions. In comparison with such an injury the personal or political reverse that Hamlet has sustained is trifling and
unexciting, and, this being so, the motive of revenge for his
father's death is a retrospective feeling that lacks the backing
and support of others more positive in nature. Originally he was
destitute of that exuberant spirit of enterprise that welcomes all
excitement and provides it when it does not offer, and untoward
accident quenched even the warmth that excitement might have
provoked into a flame.
Thus succumbing to his destiny he is rescued to our respect




428


HAMLET.


and sympathy by his noble qualities and accomplishments, by the
very disorder of mind and passion that he gives way to, which
exemplify the conflict of feelings and influences under which he
suffers, and I know not, lastly, whether a main interest that we
feel in him be not due to recognizing in him the martyr to a
cause which more or less engages, perplexes, and persecutes all.
The nature of man-of the individual, will struggle wildly and
protest loudly in vindication of the rights of individuality-of
the claim of his proper nature to find its proper range and exercise uncontrolled by the tyranny of accident and position: it refuses to take its cue absolutely from aught that does not establish
a sympathetic title to tend it, and groans under the slavery of
having to drudge perforce in a field it never had the option of
declining, for ends in which it has no interest, and constraining
itself to an interest in which it feels would be self-betrayal and
self-corruption. Original genius enters the world with a charter
of special activity; the strongest and most original minds or the
minds strongest in their originality, will struggle most vehemently
against the substitution of another; and when accident and necessity bear them down with all the parade of vindicating the sanctities of duty and the paramount sovereignty of society, even
those who assent and take a warning will have misgivings at
heart that they were not wholly wrong,-that if blame must be
coupled with the cause of suffering somewhere it did not all attach to the sufferers-that, in fact, there is something more than
natural in it if philosophy could find it out.
7 /      The most obvious foil to Hamlet is Laertes; the contrast between them in their first scene has already been noticed, and when
Laertes is afterwards, as Hamlet himself says, much in his own
position in a quarrel for the death of a father, this contrast is still
further displayed in the prompt return from France, the hasty
revolt, reckless approach to royalty, and demand of vengeance at
all risks, temporal and eternal, concluded at last by agreement
in schemes of treachery, such as it is certain Hamlet would never
have been party to. The contrast therefore is at last to the
advantage of Hamlet, and the composition demands still another
harmonizing figure. This is provided by the seemingly episodical
Fortinbras, who however is most important and indispensable for
the effect of the play. We hear of his martial preparations in
the first scene, hinging again upon transactions of transferred
sovereignty from the death of a father,-he seeks to regain by
force lands lost when his father was slain, and forfeited with all
the sanctions of law and heraldry. In the course of the play we
hear again of the alacrity with which he renounces this enterprize when it appears hopeless, and turns his means and levies to
another where honour only is in question; he passes over the
stage and is momentarily confronted with Hamlet on his way to
England, and returning victorious appears in the last scene to




CRITICAL ESSAY.                      429
assert the claims that are opened to him by the catastrophe, to
close the scene witll some generous words, and bring out at last
the visible decree that sovereignty will at last, by its own propension, decline into the hands of those who have the living
motives of vigorous leadership in their nature in harmony with
the advantages of their position.
The players find nothing attractive in Fortinbras, and are too
happy to retrench the character and extirpate all possible allusions
to him; but there is a worse evil in this than the curtain falling
at last on an unking'd stage, with four princely corpses, and
Osric and Horatio only left alive: these foreign incidents give
range to the thoughts that relieves them in this the longest of
all the plays, that renders the voyage and return of Hamlet less
abrupt and remote and exceptional, and the idea which they
communicate of the Norwegian prince-the young and tender
leader of an adventurous expedition, remains in the mind insensibly from essential congruity with the theme of the play, so that
his appearance and mastery at last is satisfying as the closing in
of a grand outlying circuit and the fulfilment of an expectation.
It may be noticed that even in Laertes, and even in the king,
a certain disposition is observable to the occasional though not
predominant tone of generalization so habitual with Hamlet, as
though it were in some degree proper to the climate, and this is
the explanation of the "rational and consequential" reflection
on tradition and habit as the real foundation of monarchy, indulged in in the midst of his alarm by the announcer of the
popular revolt. Indeed Hamlet, which has been the most admired of all Shakespeare's plays in Germany, must be regarded
as rather Teutonic in genius than specifically Scandinavian, and so
far it seems accurately expressive of the great but hitherto somewhat uncollected and vacillating nation-they will excuse us at
this date above all, who, while they ascribe to England and
France the domination of the sea and land, have themselves
owned their special speculative realms as the region of air. But
this tendency which is profound philosophy in Hamlet is exhibited in its dotage in Polonius-a tedious old fool, doubtless, as
the prince splenetically calls him, and yet were it not for the
ridiculousness of this character we might more easily have erred
in rating too severely those weaknesses of Hamlet that are upon
the verge of ridiculousness. The parroted precepts of Polonius,
strung together with no leading principle, which are so much a
matter of rote that he regains the thread of his discourse like an
actor by a friendly cue, bring out the freshly welling originality
of the diverging rather than desultory reflections that carry Hamlet from time to time away from his theme. So the backstairs,
eaves-dropping politics that he professes, and the gross mistakes
he makes in practical judgment as to the designs of Hamlet on
Ophelia, and then as to the cause and nature of his madness are


I




430                    HAMLET.
such marked types of the faults and blunders thiat most beset the
speculative when they make their sagacity a ground for interference in business that is beyond them, as to reflect back some
glory on the better essays of the less experienced but far more
able, as well as more intellectual, prince of Denmark. Hence the
use and the effectiveness of such a scene as that between Polonius
and Reynaldo, with the instructions for roundabout enquiry as to
the proceedings of Laertes, in a style that it is obvious would liave
any other tendency than either to elicit truth or to benefit the
character of the person so equivocally cared for. Compared with
this, the scheme of Hamlet to entrap the conscience of the king
into self-betrayal by the play, is wisdom, is simplicity itself, and
we are prepared to appreciate his penetration in fathoming at
once the insidious questioning of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
These worthies, it may be observed, have their own turn for indulgence in a generalized reflection apiece which characteristically takes the form of flattery and assentation:" Guild. Most holy and religious fear it is
To keep those many many bodies safe,
That live and feed upon your majesty.
Ros. The single and peculiar life is bound,
With all the strength and armour of the mind,
To keep itself from 'noyance; but much more
That spirit, upon whose weal depend and rest
The lives of many. The cease of majesty
Dies not alone,"and so forth,-and so forth.
But as I have said the main difficulty in the way of our feeling that we have a perfect appreciation of the play, and of its
leading character, is the conduct of Hamlet towards Ophelia; even
if we exclude the scene of his excited violence towards her, and
forget the dumb-show mummery that she relates, there still remains a frigidness in all his allusions to her, and in the rarity of
these allusions also, that impeaches the sincerity of the passion
that he once professed for her, and even the ordinary consideration
and delicacy that were due to her misfortunes, though they had not
originated with himself. What then is the real palliation that
Shakespeare relied upon to save his hero from egtire desertion by
our sympathies, and which, though we may have difficulty in
detecting and stating it, does have that effect. Reserving the
plea of injured sanity, shall we say that the fault of Hamlet is
grievous, but that pity tempers our indignation? for it is too far
seen that abstract reflection is not in favour of sensibility of the
sympathies, and that those who are habitually wrapt in their
own thoughts will err too often in injury inflicted on the hearts
of those around them, from no cruelty of temper and no conscious
wantonness, but simply from inattention and disregard to hearts
and feelings as incidents of life: at least if this view be wrong




CRITICAL ESSAY.


431


let philos(v.ers defend themselves by furnishing another solution
of the diffi ulty that suggests it.
Certainly there is a marked contrast in respect to sympathy
with the sex between the musing;id reflective prince and his
warlike father, whose affection for his consort erred during his
life rather in over fondness —as well appears from Hamlet's
description of his tenderness and assiduity, and who, even when
he reappears as a ghost in intervals of torment to claim revenge
for murder upon her paramour, cannot bear that she should be
even distressed by reproaches, much less actually punished. Both
on the platform of the castle and in the chamber of the palace he
qualifies his urgency of appeal for vengeance by restraints in her
favour, and by injunctions to sooth and comfort her when her conscience seems to be touched with difficulty and at last.
Hamlet the Dane is apparently by his constitution, of which
we have seen and said enough, of a character essentially undramatic, yet has he the leading part of unusual extent in the
longest of the plays, in perhaps the most popular of all among
readers, and one of the most effective even on the stage. He is
the centre and the cause moreover of a series of events at the
conclusion of which a larger proportion of the principal agents have
met with violent deaths-the King, the Queen, Polonius, Laertes,
Ophelia, and Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern,-than in
any other of the Tragedies. Whence is this? it is nothing more
than an expression of the natural effect when powerful but ill-harmonized energies are led into or step into a combination they are
too irregular to master and conduct. Such interference only enhances complication or checks it by fits and starts that sometimes fall at random and are speedily exhausted; the catastrophe
struggles to its own extrication through manifold lapse and
disaster, aggravated and prolonged, and naturally involves at last
the guilty and some that are chiefly unfortunate, and the author
lastly, who but for our sympathies must stand equivocally between
the two.
On none of Shakespeare's plays, perhaps, has so much been
written, and so excellently, as on Hamlet,-so much that it is
hopeless either to recapitulate or to emulate, and, indeed, scarcely
necessary; for much of the criticism has become inseparably associated with the play, and familiar to all students of it. Coleridge
thus concludes his notes, in which, as usual, philosophical intention makes hard fight against the inertia of pedagogue and
preacher.
" Shakespeare seems to mean all the Hamlet's character to be
brought together before his final disappearance from the scene;
-his meditative excess in the grave-digging, his yielding to
passion with Laertes, his love for Ophelia blazing out, his tendency to generalize on all occasions in the dialogue with Horatio,
his fine gentlemanly manners with Osric, and his and Shake-,




432


HAMLET.


speare's own fondness for presentiment: ' But thou 'iould'st not
think, how ill all's here about my heart; but it is no matter."'
Excellently said, when it is qualified for the alloy; it is indeed by the closing up of the varied phases of the character in
brief, with which we have been familiarized in detail, that the
effect is given of such a final collision of many lines of action
that in plays more dependent upon incident become the catastrophe. But for the outblazing love,-alas, I see it not in the outburst provoked by the extravagance of Laertes, though no doubt
it is, as the progress of the play demanded, the most definite manifestation of the real nature and degree of his sentiment. Speculative philosophers-and possibly Coleridge himself is an instance
-must permit it to be said that Love is as ungermane to their
dispositions as Hatred, and that they will find themselves not more
hampered by an onerous duty sternly imposed from without to
redress a political grievance or aid the execution of God's revenge
for incest, tyrannous robbery, and murder, than embarrassed by a
passion,-whether they are detained by confiding and admiring
simplicity or limed by a flirt.
I presume, again, that Coleridge was serious when he spoke of
Hamlet's fine gentlemanly manners with Osric; but he would
have been nearer, though not close to the truth, had his terms
been ironical, or compounded into the more equivocal word " finegentlemanly." The waterfly Osric lies under the suspicion of
complicity in the treachery of the King and Laertes with the
foils, though Shakespeare has not thought it worth while to render the crime definite, or to condescend to punish it; he embodies,
however, at least whatever is most frivolous and contemptible in
the courtier and chamberlain, and continues into the last act the
motives of the departed Polonius and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, which brought out before so admirably the contrast between
the tastes, the nature of Hamlet, and the swarm,-marsh-born,
miasma-nourished, that are around him. Nothing certainly can
be more unroyal, or, for the position of a prince aspiring to royalty,
more impolitic than his betrayal of consciousness or disdain for
the falsehood and frivolity of etiquette and the unmixed selfishness lying below courtly manners. It is not thus that ceremony
is handled by potentates and aspirants, who are aware that they
are for the most part but ceremonies themselves, and may not lcng
remain that, if the fact gets wind and is talked about. But it is
by so much as Hamlet is recalcitrant against the habitudes of his
position that he gains dignity, and interests our affections as a
man. As the world goes-for that matter it goes now as it always
vwent-the arts and habits that make up the specific manners of
the gentleman have come to mean little less than cool dexterity
in offensiveness in one direction, balanced by efficient self-seeking
complaisance in the other, and there is probably no rarer wild
bird than your gentleman of gentlemanly feelings. But Hamlet
baits and perplexes and satirizes the qualities that are really base,




CRITICAL ESSAY.


4933


independently of relative position, and turns with fundamental
sincerity and geniality of character to familiar intercourse with
fiends and fellow-students, to genuine enjoyment and encouragenent of struggling art in right of his own critical taste, to pregnant colloquy incognito with grave-diggers, and observation of
social movement along all its intersecting tracks.  Hamlet assuredly is something better than a prince and courtier-scholar;
soldier as he is, he is in sympathy with that best democracy, of
which Novalis said that Christianity is the base, as it is the highest
fact in the rights of man.
The drama mirrors the world, we say, and Shakespeare's drama
above all; but the question occurs more than once, and sometimes nistrustfully, whether the theme so common on the stage,
of the mental torture of the tyrannous, is more than the rarest
exception in nature; the crime doubtless brings its punishment
ever, and not the less severely because not in the form most
dramatically effective; though even that,-as anguish or intolerable burden-may be a more frequent inmate of palace bedchambers than we suppose.
Certainly a spirit of divination seems to have guided Shakespeare to delineate the movement of German philosophy through
rationalism to a philosophical theory of the mythus both profane
and sacred. I have heard, says the student of Wittenberg"The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn,
Doth, with his lofty and shrill sounding throat,
Awake the god of day; and at his warning
Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air,
Th'extravagant and erring spirit hies
To his confine; and of the truth herein
This present object made probation."
This tradition, with its god of day opening wide eyes at the
summons of the officious cock, is a Pagan form, and Horatio is as
interested in noting the natural truth that it expresses as my
friends and colleagues of the Archeological Institute of Rome in
their ingenious reductions of the mythic decoration of a Greek
vase. Marcellus, of less recondite acquirements, follows up with
a contemporary and living superstition:" It faded on the crowing of the cock.
Some say, that ever 'gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
This bird of dawning singeth all night long:
And then they say no spirit dares stir abroad;
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallowed and so gracious is that time."
Hamlet receives the Christian illustration expressively:" So I have heard, and do in part believe it;"
but what form his belief takes, and which part he disbelieves, he
keeps to himself, with a reserve that the world has suffered less
F F




434


H AM LET.


from since in Germany than elsewhere; but even there, prudence
and self-interest will secure its mischievous continuance-mischievous, at least, to truth, so long as the maxim has a foundation,-" Populus vult decipi,-decipiatur."  "The people desire
to be hoodwinked,-please the people."
Many who have seen the frequent willows drooping into the
Avon about Stratford, will have had the thought that Ophelia,
falling with the envious sliver, and floating awhile among her
scattering flowers, is a picture of some misadventured maiden in
the poet's native town; there is even something particular in the
sneer at " crowner's quest law," that may intimate an opinion of
a stupid verdict in such cases that had untender consequences
centuries later; however, as in so many other cases the blundering attempt of a clown to express a distinction that is a falsity,
-the discrimination here between voluntary and involuntary suicide,-provides the verity with terse and strict expression.
" Give me leave. Here lies the water; good: here stands the
man; good: if the man go to this water and drown himself, it
is, will he, nill he, he goes, mark you that; but-(says the clown,
labouring for a difference that has already evaded him, and should
make him in consistency say, and again)-if the water comes to
him and drown him, he drowns not himself: argal, he that is not
guilty of his own death shortens not his own life."
But enough, enough; happy if not overmuch, though conmmentary may be forgiven for not knowing when to stop on a
subject that is inexhaustible.
The sources for the correction and settlement of the text of the
play are chiefly three. A quarto edition of the play in a crude form,
date 1603, preserved in a unique copy, but now reprinted; a quarto,
dated 1604, purporting to be " newly imprinted and enlarged to
almost as much again as it was according to the true and perfect
copy," with its numerous reprints; and, lastly, the folio 1623,
with the later folios that copied it. Every impression is entitled
to consideration in the correction of clerical or printer's errors,
but this mutual aid becomes elsewhere a conflict. The object
being to recover the play in the form finally approved by Shakespeare, fully matured and fully pruned and corrected, the first
quarto is found at once to be piratical in its origin, vilely printed,
and from the general change to which it was afterwards subjected, of no claim to have its peculiarities restored and interpolated. But the quarto of 1604 is in a different position; the
play it gives is for the most part that of the folio, but with passages of its own of great beauty and some extent. The folio,
which omits these, admits some less important passages from the
quarto of 1603, which are not in that of the next year, and has
additions of its own of extent and importance.
Some of the peculiarities of the enlarged quarto are brief enough
to be absent from the folio merely by accidental omission; but




CRITICAL       ESSAY.                435
the soliloquy on the expedition of Fortinbras is not of these;
beautiful as it is, I am, however, disposed to think that the excision of it may have been deliberate,-as unnecessary, prolonging action, and it may be exhibiting the weakness of Hamlet too
crudely, for it shows him making the most definite of his resolutions to revenge precisely as he turns his back upon the last
opportunity by quitting the country. The passage, however,
with some others, is too fine to be suppressed, though I am inclined to think the poet sacrificed them, and worthily and properly may take their place in brackets.
An allusion appears for the first time in the quarto of 1604,
from which Mr. Knight fairly infers that the extended form dates
about 1600. The players once resident are travelling, and it is
thought " their inhibition comes by the means of the late innovatiot," which is explained by an order of the Privy Council on
22nd June of that year, prescribing " that there shall be about
the city two houses and no more allowed, to serve for the use of
the common stage plays."  On the other hand, the allusion to the
extravagances of Herod's Termagants and Clowns, seems to have
been written when the stage had not acquired the last refinement,
and Shakespeare sought to aid, as a poet, the reforming exertions
of the manager. I confess, however, that the Hamlet of the first
quarto, marred and mangled as it is, does not give me the impression of one of Shakespeare's early works, and if some early
allusions to a play of Hamlet are to his, I should infer it must
have been in vet another prior phase. Certainly it is remarkable that in 1587, when Shakespeare was only twenty-three, we
meet with a sneer at an author of Hamlet as of but moderate
Latin acquirements and previous connection with law, so often
suspected of the poet, and that in a preface to a work of Greene,
who five years later left the world, bequeathing to it a posthumous slander on Shakespeare. The words are those of Thomas
Nash. " It is a common practice now-a-days among a sort of
shifting companions that run through every art and thrive by
none, to leave the trade of NToverint (== the law) whereto they
were born, and busy themselves with the endeavours of art, that
could scarcely latinize their neck-verse, if they should have need:
yet English Seneca read by candlelight yields many good sentences, as Blood is a beggar, and so forth: and if you intreat him
far in a frosty morning he will afford you whole ILamlets, I should
say handfuls, of tragical speeches."
This is the earliest of several hints of such a play, but there is
in most cases a general presumption that a subject of Shakespeare had already been handled, and this is confirmed in the
present case by the absence of any of the usual coincidences of
thought and expression between the play, as we have it, and the
prose narrative, that no doubt furnished to some one the original
materials. This a novel of the collection of Belleforest, of which
a separate translation is found in quarto, 1608, but no doubt ex



436                   HAMLET.
isted earlier. The story here is laid in days of Paganism, and
we hear nothing of scholars and colleges. Fengon of Denmark,
by open violence, murders Harvendile his brother, whose wife,
Geruth, he had corrupted and afterwards marries, and Hamlet,
the son, feigns madness, to disarm suspicion of his brooding revenge. His knowledge of the murder is notorious, and the policy
of his simulation is therefore obvious enough; but when, from
the change of the story, he is supposed to be in ignorance of it,
such an affectation would have been absurd, but for a reason
dependent on the altered nature assigned to the hero. There is
no apparition in the tale of Belleforest; the madness is doubted,
and a councillor keener than Polonius schemes the detection,
first, by the wiles of woman, and the antetype of Ophelia is a
lady of the court, treacherous against her will, beloved of Hamlet,
and at once facile and affectionate and disappointed, as are the
conspirators no less. Then the contrived interview of Hamlet
with his mother, and the death of the listening councillor runs
parallel with the play; and the tone of the Queen, in protestation
of innocence and proffer of aid or secrecy in revenge, more closely
with the play of the first quarto. Beyond the exclamation, " A
rat, a rat!" the dialogue is scarcely reminiscent in a phrase.
The Bellerophon message to England, substituted letter, and
return to Denmark follow, with much other divergent story, and
then the revenge is consummated at a heavy-headed revel, with
all order of device and forecast and determination. Nothing but
an odd incident of interchanged swords reminds of the fencing
match. Fengon is slain with his own sword as he vainly snatches
at Hamlet's, which has been fastened by the courtiers in the
scabbard. Nothing is said of the succession of Fortinbras, though
a wager combat of Horvendile is named; but more important,
neither hint nor suggestion occurs throughout of Hamlet's besetting
tendency to defer action; nothing of his self-accusations, his abstractions and speculative high reaching thoughts.
The story is continued by Hamlet's oration over the body of
Fengon, justifying the deed; he marries more than one wife, and
meets his own fate, as his father had done, by treachery of one
of them, and his over great confidence, trust, and vehement love
for her faintly adumbrates the failing of the elder Hamlet of the
drama.
The source of Belleforest was the Danish historian, Saxo
Grammaticus.
The names of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern appear in the
Council of Regency of Christian IV. of Denmark (1588), brother
of Anne, the consort of King James. A letter of James, on his
wedding expedition, furnishes note of the royal style of carousal
in these countries, he dates "From the castle of Cronenburg
(Elsinore) quhair we are drinking and driving our in the auld
manner."




CRITICAL ESSAY ON KING LEAR.
X   N the quarto edition of this play, published in 1608,
it is entitled, " The True Chronicle History of the Life
and Death of King Lear;" but in the folio edited by
the players it is rightly withdrawn from the list of the
Chronicle plays, where the proper dramatic spirit is held in check
by an admitted obligation to the narrative, and is placed in the
collection of Tragedies. Doubtless the change proceeded from a
feeling that significance of the political events was secondary to
the interest of the personal character of the old king, and this is
quite correct. Still, the difference in principle does not preclude
the tragedy from expressing the character of an historical period,
or an epoch of civilization; as, indeed, the full exhibition of a
phase of human character can only be given in connexion with
such support. Passion only reaches its most marked development when circumstances of age and state co-operate with predisposition; accordingly, the associations of time, and locality,
and climate are as defined and self-consistent for King Lear as
for Romeo and Juliet, only more wonderfully in the first of these
plays, as so nearly independent of all aid and precedent.
A story of King Leir and his three daughters was before
Shakespeare, in Holinshed, who had it from Geoffrey of Monmouth; it begins, " Leir, the son of Baldud, was admitted ruler
over the Britains in the year of the world 3105, at what time
Ioas reigned as yet in Juda;" and the whole sequence of the
Chronicle at this part reminds the reader incessantly of the remote date of the events, and especially of the Paganism of the
islanders. It proceeds:-" This Leir was a prince of noble demeanour, governing his land and subjects in great wealth. He
made the town of Cairleir, now called Leicester, which standeth
upon the river Dore. It is writ that he had by his wife three
daughters, without other issue, whose names were Gonorilla, Regan, and Cordilla, which daughters he greatly loved, but especially the youngest, Cordilla, far above the two elder.




438


KING LEAR.


" When this Leir was come to great years, and began to wear
unwieldy through age, he thought to understand the Affections
of his daughters towards him, and prefer her whom he b st loved
to the succession of the kingdom; therefore he first asked Gonorilla, the eldest, how well she loved him; the which, calling her
gods to record, protested that she loved him more than her own
life, which by right and reason should be most dear unto her; with
which answer the father being well pleased, turned to the second,
and demanded of her how well she loved him? which answered
(confirming her saying with great oaths), that she loved him more
than tongue can express, and far above all other creatures in the
world.
" Then he called his youngest daughter, Cordilla, before him,
and asked of her what account she made of him; unto whom she
made this answer as followeth:-' Knowing the great love and
fatherly zeal you have always borne towards me (for the which
that I may not answer you otherwise than I think, and as my
conscience leadeth me), I protest to you that I have always loved
you, and shall continually, while I live, love you as my natural
father; and if you would more understand of the love I bear you,
ascertain yourself that so much as you have, so much you are
worth, and so much I love you and no more.'
" The father being nothing content with this answer, married
the two eldest daughters, the one unto the Duke of Cornwall,
named Henninus, and the other unto the Duke of Albania, called
Maglanus; and betwixt them, after his death, he willed and ordained his land should be divided, and the one half thereof should
immediately be assigned to them in hand; but to the third daughter, Cordilla, he reserved nothing.
" Yet it fortuned that one of the princes of Gallia (which is
now called France), whose name was Aganippus, hearing of the
beauty, womanhood, and good conditions of the said Cordilla,
desired to have her in marriage, and sent over to her father, requiring that he might have her to wife; to whom answer was
made, that he might have his daughter, but for any dowry he
could have none, for all was promised and assured to her other
sisters already.
" Aganippus, notwithstanding this answer of denial to receive
anything by way of dower with Cordilla, took her to wife, only
moved thereto (I say) for respect of her person and amiable virtues. This Aganippus was one of the twelve kings that ruled
Gallia in those days, as in the British history it is recorded. But
to proceed; after that Leir was fallen into age, the two dukes
that had married his two eldest daughters, thinking it long ere
the government of the land did come to their hands, arose against
him in armour, and reft from him the governance of the land,
upon conditions to be continued for term of life, by the which he
was put to his portion; that is, to live after a rate assigned to




CRITICAL ESSAY.


439


him for 'he maintenance of his estate, which in process of time
was diminished as well by Maglianus as by Henninus.
" But the greatest grief that Leir took was to see the unkindness of his daughters, who seemed to think that all was too much
which their father had, the same being never so little, in so much
that going from one to the other, he was brought to that misery
that they would allow him only one servant to wait upon him.
In the end, such was the unkindness, or, as I may say, the unnaturalness which he found in his two daughters, notwithstanding their fair and pleasant words uttered in time past, that being
constrained of necessity he fled the land and sailed into Gallia,
there to seek some comfort of his youngest daughter Cordilla,
whom before he hated."
Cordilla and her husband not only receive him, but furnish
forces and invade Britain with him, slay the dukes in a decisive
battle, and restore him to his throne. On his death, two years
after, Cordilla succeeds, but her nephews " levied war against her
and destroyed a great part of the land, and, finally, took her
prisoner, and laid her fast in ward; wherewith she took such
grief, being a woman of manly courage, and despairing to recover
liberty there, she slew herself."
This is the story that Spenser versifies in six well bestowed
stanzas of the Faery Queene (Book II. x. 27), with some variations not lost on his successors; the reply of Cordilla-Cordelia
he calls her, and only for the sake of the verse Cordeill-assumes
the laconic form:" But Cordeill said she loved him as behooved."
For the sequel:" Their aged sire thus cased of his crown,
A private life led in Albania
With Gonarill long had in great renown,
That nought him grieved to be from rule deposed down.
" But true it is that when the oil is spent,
The light goes out and wick is thrown away;
So when he had resigned his regiment,
His daughter gan despise his drooping day,
And weary wax of his continual stay:
Tho to his daughter Regan he repaired,
Who him at first well used every way,
But when of his departure she despaired,
Her bounty she abated, and his cheer impaired."
Cordelia's fate at last is imprisonment, as in the Chronicle:" Till weary of that wretched life herself she hung."
The sojourn of Leir with Goneril in the first instance, and then
his resort to Regan with no better fortune, are adopted from
Spenser by a drama of unknown authority, which was evidently




440


KING LEAR.


known to Shakespeare, and has a claim to our respect f lom the
use that he made of it, and in itself it is by no means mttal so
base as much other that he transmuted by his wondrous alchemy.
The only edition of the True Chronicle History of King Leir and
his three Daughters, Gonorill, Ragan, and Cordella, that has come
down to us, is dated 1605; but it was probably the same play that
was entered on the Stationers' books as early as May, 1594. This
is confirmed to me by an appearance that it furnished motives
for a speech or two for an earlier Shakespearian work, the Merchant of Venice, that is, as early as 1598, if not earlier. Thus, at
least, I read in the following some hints of the humour and position of Gratiano. The sentimental king of France engages the
lively Mumford (Montfort) to attend him in his love quest to
Britain:" If Venus stand auspicious to my vows,
And fortune favour what I take in hand,
I will return seized of as rich a prize
As Jason, when he won the golden fleece.
Montfort. Heavens grant you may; the match were full of honour,
And well beseeming the young Gallian king.
I would your grace would favour me so much,
As make me partner of your pilgrimage:
I long to see the gallant British dames,
And feed mine eyes upon their rare perfections,
For till I know the contrary, I'll say
Our dames in France are far more fair than they.
King. Lord Montfort, you have saved me a labour
In offering that which I did mean to ask,
And I most willingly accept your company.
Yet first I will enjoin you to observe
Some few conditions which I shall propose.
Montfort. So that you do not tie mine eyes for looking
After the amorous glances of fair dames;
So that you do not tie my tongue from speaking,
My lips from kissing when occasion serves,
My hand from congees, and my knees to bow
To gallant girls, which were a task more hard
Than flesh and blood is able to endure;
Command what else you please, I rest content."And so forth. From several indications I am disposed to think
that borrowings and lendings between Shakespeare's dramas and
those of his contemporaries are to be traced far more extensively
than they have been yet by mere comparison of verbalities, and
that this is the source from which important corrections of the
chronology of the plays may still be looked for. This, however,
is by the way; to return to the old play of King Leir, dating
conjecturally 1594; this is a work which one might be well excused for not having the patience to read through; and yet Shake



CRITICAL ESSAY.


441


speare found fine gold in every page of it. From such a germ as
this sprung the expostulation of Kent:" Perillus. I have been silent all this time, my lord,
To see if any worthier than myself
Would once have spoke in fair Cordella's cause:
But love or fear ties silence to their tongues.
Oh, hear me speak for her, my gracious lord,
Whose deeds have not deserved this ruthless doom
As thus to disinherit her of all.
Leir. Urge this no more, an if thou love thy life:
I say, she is no daughter that doth scorn
To tell her father how she loveth him;
Whoever speaketh hereof to me again,
I will esteem him for my mortal foe."
Perillus is also the prototype of Kent in the faithful and devoted
service he yields to Leir in his distress. Another courtier, Scaliger, anticipates the villainous functions of the steward Oswald,
and a Messenger undertakes to murder Leir, as Oswald would
kill Gloster; struck, however, by the demeanour of Perillus and
the king, he relents, and some opportune thunder that assists his
conscience on the occasion, is all the hint that the old play affords
of the storm that is so important an incident in the new. So
here, also, the husband of Goneril interferes in favour of the King,
and is overruled by her. We have the same incident of the corruption of a messenger bearing letters, and towards the end, one
of the sisters is confounded by the exhibition of murderous letters
that she snatches at and tears. The entire episode of Gloster,
Edmund, and Edgar is wanting; there is no fool attached to
Leir, and Leir does not go mad, and the conclusion differs from
Shakespeare's as widely in this case as in the others.
Cordella arrived in England, relieves her father in disguise,
when he is fainting with hunger, and restrains her feelings by the
caution of her husband:"Forbear awhile, until his strength return,
Lest, being overjoyed with seeing thee,
His poor weak senses should forsake their office,
And so our cause of joy be turned to sorrow."
The recognition displays much feeling for the true pathos of the
situation. The battle is preceded by an angry interview, not to
}>:      say altercation between the two parties; and, in conclusion, the
army of Leir and his French allies is victorious; Gonorill and
Ragan, and their husbands, are permitted to escape by flight,
and their father resumes his kingdom, " sound drums and trumpets, and exeunt."
There is yet another old authority for the story, a ballad reprinted in Percy's Reliques, but of date uncertain, and I incline
to think later than the play of Shakespeare; it mentions the
madness of Lear, and closes the story by making Cordelia be




442


KING LEAR.


slain in the battle, Lear die of grief upon her body, the other two
sisters condemned and put to death by the nobles. Regan is
made the eldest daughter, apparently because the details of ill
treatment were remembered from the scene where Lear is an
applicant to Regan:"And living in Queen Ragan's court,
The eldest of the twain,
She took from him his chiefest means,
And most of all his train;
For whereas twenty men were wont
To wait with bended knee,
She gave allowance but to ten,
And after scarce to three.
Nay, one she thought too much for him,
So took she all away,
In hope that in her court, good king,
He would no longer stay."
" Goneril.              Hear me, my lord,
What need you five-and-twenty, ten, or five,
To follow in a house where twice so many
Have a command to attend you?
Regan.                    What need one?"
The story of Queen Cordila is told in the Mirror for Magistrates, for which it was versified by John Higgins, in 1586; the
work was very popular, and probably known to Shakespeare, and
in justice to John Higgins, in his absence, I record what is at
least a coincidence between his version of a leading motive and
that of Shakespeare:" But not content with this, he asked me likewise,
If I did not him love and honour well.
No cause, quoth T, there is I should your grace despise:
For nature so doth bind and nature me compel,
To love you as I ought, my father, well.
Yet shortly I may chance, if fortune will,
To find in heart to bear another more good will.
" Thus much I said, of nuptial loves that meant,
Not minding once of hatred vile or ire:
And partly taxing them, for which intent
They set my father's heart on wrathful fire."
This is nearer to the speech of Shakespeare's Cordelia than any
other predecessor comes:" Good, my lord,
You have begot me, bred me, lov'd me; I
Return those duties back as are right fit,
Obey you, love you, and most honour you.
Why have my sisters husbands, if they say




CRITICAL ESSAY.


443


They love you, all? Haply when I shall wed,
The lord whose hand must take my plight shall carry
Half my love with him, half my care, and duty:
Sure I shall never marry like my sisters,
To love my father all."
The story, or rather hints for the story of the bastard Edmund
have been traced to that strange tangle of stories, Sidney's Arcadia. A king of Paphlagonia there relates his own injustice
towards his legitimate son, urged and induced thereto "by the
poisonous hypocrisy, desperate fraud, smooth malice, hidden ambition, and smiling envy" of his bastard, by whom he is afterwards
deposed and deprived of sight. The son, whom he had sought
to kill, but who had been spared by his ministers, gives up hopes
and fortune to attend him in his misery, and thus voluntarily
exposes himself to the vengeance of the usurping brother. To
save him from this fate, the blind old king would fain destroy
himself-" and for this cause I craved him of late to lead me to
the top of this rock; indeed, I must confess, with meaning to free
him from so serpentine a companion as I am. But he, finding
what I purposed, only therein since he was born shewed himself
disobedient unto me."
By combining this story with that of Lear, Shakespeare obtained a subject comprising all the claims and interests of paternity, as relative to sons as well as daughters, at the same time
that he gained a source of contrast and relief to define the characteristics of the leading theme. His conception of this he
derived from the traditional incident of the division of the kingdom and the disinheriting of the only affectionate daughter. As
this stands in the Chronicle, it is a mere exponent of quaintness
and barbarism. The old king puts up his entire kingdom to an
auction of professing love among his daughters; and in pique at
the reply of one, divides it in equal parts between the other two.
The older dramatist saw the necessity for more subtlety of motive,
but erred in the other excess: the king, resolved to bestow his
daughters in marriage, and abdicate in their favour, has a crafty
scheme to entice Cordelia, with the others, into such excessive
professions of devotion to his will, that she will be unable to
refuse the husband he would urge upon her against her free
desire. Shakespeare also has a stratagem, but perfectly consistent
with those conditions of character which he saw would render all
natural and probable; we gather from the progress of the first
scenes, that the division of the kingdom is already proportioned
exactly as regards two of the daughters, and then that a third
more opulent is reserved for the youngest and favourite daughter,
and that the demand as to degree of love is a mere secondary
thought,-an exaction prompted by inordinate relish for flattery,
and for the pleasures of arbitrary though kindly ostentation.
But passions thus betray themselves with far too much vitality




444


KING LEAR.


in the age-weakened monarch to render abdication reasonable.
It is apparent that he must long have put the sincerest affection
to the sorest trials, and tasked the endurance even of sordid selfinterest, and now he manifests undiminished appetite for the
coarser luxury of sway, at the very moment that he releases unwilling purveyors from their bondage. The reserved train of a
hundred knights, and the alternate visits he proposes, prove that
in a most important respect he contemplates no abdication at all,
but expects to obtain still, on the strength of obligation, more
than all he had exacted so gallingly by the force of his regal
power and dignity. Much of this he is not conscious of, but it
lies in his character and in his position, and from this point of
view, and taking into account his fourscore years and general
disposition, the incident of the scene is fully accounted for, - is
as natural and as probable as any of its consequences.
The crudity of manners expressed in Lear's solicitation of flattery has its natural counterpart in the almost sullen and repulsive
tone of the virtue which preserves Cordelia from the degradation
he would tempt her to. The progress of the story required a reply
that should provoke the indignation of her father, and yet not
cause her to forfeit our esteem; the fawning falsehood of her sisters' replies makes us sympathize with her passion of disgust, and
the indelicacy of Lear's invitation to her to outbid these falsehoods, and obtain a larger share at the expense of her sisters,
rouses admiration for the self-respect and self-denial that declines
purchasing worldly advantage on such terms. Moreover, Shakespeare, it appears to me, has designed and succeeded to convey,
by the very terms and rhythm of the speeches of Cordelia, an
impression that her speech was usually reserved and low and
laconic, and thus that the very faculty was foreign to her that
might have enabled her to effect the same result for her own
dignity with milder method. Certain it is, and it is sufficiently
declared in the sequel of the scene, that she took too little thought
for the fact that her disinheriting was a greater misfortune to her
father than to herself, and that to prevent it for his sake were
worth incurring some misconstruction; this thought necessarily
arises from the terms in which she commends her father, whose
weakness she had not had the skill to humour honourably, to the
sisters, whose natures she knows too well not to foresee their
course, even without the irritation which the same weakness was
sure to give occasion and welcome pretext for. This then is the
incongruity of the social state on which the tragic action of the
play depends; and when Lear enters mad in the last scene, with
Cordelia dead in his arms, we have but the fulfilment for either
of the fate they equally provoked; we behold the common catastrophe of affection too much qualified by unreasonable anger on
one side, and unaccommodating rigour on the other. Kent is as
blunt and plain spoken as Cordelia, and, though more voluble,




CRITICAL ESSAY.


445


only confirms the purpose he would shake, and goes, like Cordelia,
into exile for his pains; and even in the duty and the service
that he renders in disguise, mistakes the point of moral support
where service was most wanted. The elements of society are in
harsh discordance, and the world must be disturbed to its depths
until anger can acquire consideration and self-control, and virtuous
motive be united to charitable sweetness and intellectual dexterity
as well as moral vigour.
It must be observed how carefully and emphatically Shakespeare has noted the Pagan period of the play by the repeated
appeals to heathen gods, though it is looking for that in his
writings which is not there, to pretend that he reduces the solution of the dramatic difficulty to the desideration of Christianity.
Rather it must be said that he exhibits in King Lear the sanctions
of morality as possessing full and independent force, and attaches
right and duty to the laws of nature, to the decrees of the personified universe that is more than once appealed to in the play
as the comprehensive divinity: vice and violence, on the other
hand, spring from the disorders of those feelings that as most
truly nature's are called universally the natural affections, —the
inspirations of the heart that as healthily manifested and cultivated, give order to the family relations, the germ and unit of
society at large that in its most complicated development only
reproduces this central homology. The Paganism of the play is
therefore insisted on merely as assisting the expression of civil
life in its formation, and with no dogmatic intention either one
way or the other, least of all to denote the insufficiency of its
conditions. Thus the bastardy of Edmund is visited upon his
father with a severity unknown to periods more advanced, because it involves a treason to those original sanctities as between
the sexes that rank along with the natural ties between successive generations which give the drama its more especial theme.
On casting a general view over the play and disregarding for
a time the qualifications and half-tints of feeling which blend the
whole into a composition, one may be struck with the determination of the poet in deepening all the distinctive marks of the
story, in heightening every contrast, in exaggerating, I had
almost said, every enormity. The wickedness of Goneril, Regan,
and Edmund, like the misery of Lear, is aggravated far beyond
the text of the old stories, and we seem to have concentrated in
the play the spirit of all the barbarities of our Saxon annals of
which the Saxon names remind, combined with the domestic or
family feuds and outrages among the sons and immediate successors of the bastard William the Conqueror, who were nearer than
any other royal race of Europe to Paganism in blood. In the
tearing out of Gloster's eyes upon the stage, Shakespeare has
been thought to have not only reached the extreme point in this
process of aggregation of all cruelty, but to have overpassed the




446


KING LEAR.


limit that taste,-that even the power of endurance permits to
exhibition. I am not disposed to evade the objection by an excuse to the effect that he knew his own audience best, and that
the bloody details of the execution of traitors and heretics were
too familiar to the eyes of most of them to admit of particular
squeamishness; the horrors, like the indelicacies that are met
with in Shakespeare's plays, are never admitted for their own
sakes, never but when absolutely indispensable for his great aim
and purpose, the defining of character, and that complete exhibition of nature with which,-recognizing in art the same rigour
that is challenged by science, he allowed nothing to interfere.
The mere convenience of stage-management it might be said
would dictate that Gloster should sit in the chair with his back
to the audience, and it is not then very apparent why the deed
of mutilation should be so much more shocking than the smothering and the death agonies of Desdemona; it is not worth denying, however, that if only by usage of theatrical associations it
would be so, and if, as I believe, the painfulness and the horror
would not be utterly insupportable, it must be from a different
cause. The cruel act that Goneril suggests, and Regan and her
husband execute, is revolting to think of, and much more to
behold, and yet is the revolting cruelty less heinous than the
treatment of Lear, though there the physical injury was comparatively slight-the exposure of age and weakness to a pitiless
storm, and in itself, however well the storm might be imitated,
less harrowing to the feelings. But Shakespeare evidently relied
upon the response of the sympathies of his audience to the appeal
of his art, and he had confidence in his power to depict the
mental anguish, and sufferings, and injuries of the king with such
force that no inferior infliction could supersede it in our interest.
If the heart is touched as it should be by the great scene of the
storm, and then by the pitiable spectacle of the wit-wrecked
monarch in the indoors scene, mingling the fantastic freaks of
lunacy with the majesty of sorrow, we shall be aware that the
mere narration of any physical suffering or cruelty whatever must
have failed to rouse another start of indignation. To any other
excitement the sensibilities might well seem lulled or seared, and
the exhibition of the act was therefore necessary if it was to take
place at all, and was therefore possible; and the poet daringly and
successfully availed himself of the opportunity to cast the last
disgrace upon filial ingratitude, by exposing its surpassing hatefulness in comparison with the direst crime acted under our eyes
with every detail of horror. Lear in the storm had said:" When the mind's free
The body's delicate; the tempest in my mind
Doth from my senses take all feeling else
Save what beats there;"and thus it is with the spectator also. The incident is also re



CRITICAL ESSAY.


447


quired to give the concluding and completest expression of the
fierceness proper to the time: an age, or at least the conclusion
of an age, is depicted when even the tenderest virtues have somewhat of rudeness and harshness, and in which therefore the vices
could not but be nearly savage, and general vindictiveness, sudden,
violent and cruel, could only be exhibited truly in relation to the
other degrees of the disordered moral scale by a present act of
tyranny and blood.
The heinousness of ingratitude, or rather of the want of natural
feeling independently of gratitude, is expressed the more forcibly
by the unnatural daughters being entirely hateful, though not
without what in other relations and to a minor extent it would
not be wickedness to call provocation.  Filial duty has a base,
independent of gratitude, or which, at least, if born and fostered
by parental kindness, lives on independently of it, and is manifested as tenderness for weakness and indulgent care for wilfulness, even when vented in unkindness. Hence we are revolted
at the accusations of Goneril, though not left in doubt to what
extent they are well founded. The disorders of the knights
presuming on their connection with such a master, are natural
enough, and would be in keeping with the noisy return from
hunting and the offensive reflections of the fool. Kent's first
service to his master in tripping up the steward is of a piece with
his indiscreetness-he admits it to be so, in renewing the quarrel
afterwards in the train of Regan, and in the terms which he
makes use of when it was most important to calm ill-feeling, or
at any rate give no tempting occasion to ill intentions. Tefool
is like the rest-he pjeies with true affection for his youn  mltress~,but has no better way of manifesting his attachment to his
master, which is no less real, than by harping on galling home
truths that only render him more alive to exasperation, andh.baten
the catastrophe. It is indicated that the fool is a boy, a pretty
knave, young that is, and of pleasant aspect, and the boundaries
of his intelligence lie somewhere between innocence and acuteness, but whereabouts is undefinable: it is only when the king is
conscious of the full extent of his injustice and his misery, that
the fool desists from probing the wounds and torturing by truth
told jestingly-and now " labours to outjest his heartstruck injuries." I have no doubt Shakespeare intended the fool should
be remembered in Lear's last exclamation, " And my poor fool is
hanged," though no more may be meant than that in his wandering state he confuses the image of the fool with that of his
daughter in his arms.
Players have been found who have imagined that Lear could
be effective, not to say improved, with the fool omitted:-what
have not players done and the public tolerated with Shakespeare,
when even at this day a player tells the world, and is accepted,
that inasmuch as Cibber's Richard suits his style of acting better




448


KING LEAR.


than Shakespeare's, Cibber was the better poet for the stage of
the two. The shivering boy is perfectly indispensable for the
effect of the storm scene, and without this figure, as his chatter is
gradually silenced by the conquering inclemency, we should fail
to realize the physical strait to which Lear's trouble can render
him almost insensible: moral illustration would equallybe maimed
by his loss; for his mixture of affection, playfulness, and childishness, wit, quaint common sense, and triviality, corresponds with
the chaotic disturbances of the king as he mingles raving with
wisdom and new-discovered humanities, but with the difference
of exemption from the stings of heartstruck anguish and selfreproach. When the fool is comparatively silenced, the contrast
is taken up and continued by the simulated madness of Edgar:
it is observable-and, speaking at an easy venture, I have no
doubt physiologically true that Lear's anticipations of madness
precede the fact, and that it is at last at the sudden and startling
spectacle of the Bedlam beggar that actual derangement is declared:"Did'st thou give all to thy daughters,
And art thou come to this?"
The impulse on the sudden to tear off his clothes is, I believe,
as true to the sad page that treats scientifically of the direst of all
human miseries.
It is characteristic of every mighty composition that it not
only suffers by deprivation of any part, however subordinate, but
that any one of the parts that contribute to its perfection has an
air of constraint or exaggeration when viewed apart, or even from
merely a false point of view. Thus the gibbering of Edgar,
whether considered as designed to imitate actual madness or not
rather to imitate imitation, to mock the mockery of impostors,
would be intolerable alone, or so presented as to be the chiet
object of attention, but subordinated as it is, is of invaluable effect
and interest. It is also necessary that the reader's imagination
should supply what would be more salient in representation, the
justification to the eye of the transformation of Edgar by his
proximity to his father, and imminent danger of recognition in
two scenes. That in the acting Gloster is intended to cast on the
Bedlam an eye of doubt or curiosity is indicated by what he says
afterwards, that on this occasion his son came obscurely into his
mind.
Lear, after the extravagance of his first passion and injustice,
would have fallen perhaps too low for our sympathies, but that he
to some extent recovers himself before the pinch of necessity
arrives to awaken him. A short speech is all that indicates this
directly, and it is expressive by its very brevity and abruptness,
when on his inquiry for his fool, " I have not seen him this two
days"-he is told, " Since my young lady's going into France,
sir, the fool hath much pined away;"-he checks the answerer




CRITICAL ESSAY.                       449
with a pang-" No more of that; I have noted it well." But we
perceive that this self-reproach has already told on his behaviour,
and the choleric old man, so sensitive to neglect, has for days
checked his conception of manifestly designed unkindness by
accusing his own jealous curiosity and over exaction. The influence of the same restraint is upon him more or less, and from
tine to time recurring obstinately in the altercations with Regan
and Cornwall. Even after the scene in which Goneril speaks so
plainly and so heartlessly as to leave no room for misconception,
it is quite possible that his soliloquizing ejaculation-" I did her
wrong" followed up as it is bv-" I will forget my nature," implies a mistrust that he had again been too hasty, and that some
of his daughter's fault was again due to his inconsiderateness.
The double lesson makes him exert a double force of self-restrairit:" Fiery! the fiery duke!-tell the hot duke, thatNo, but not yet:-may be he is not well:
Infirmity doth still neglect all office,
Whereto our health is bound; we are not ourselves
When nature, being oppressed, commands the mind
To suffer with the body: I'll forbear;
And am fallen out with my more headier will,
To take the indispos'd and sickly fit
For the sound man."
The thought-the sight of his stocked servant then throws him
back again into his unrestrained fit, but still when Regan efiters
he seems to forget this, and I have no doubt he does so; the
desultoriness of his passion is characteristic of the forms of excitement in extreme old age, when thoughts blend and combine
less readily, and various trains of association can only co-exist
by alternation. He persists, however, bravely in such control of
his passion as might almost appear beyond his strength; the
trumpet of Goneril and the entrance of the steward recall the
insult, but again he comes back to his enforced composure. In
principle, however, his character remains the same as when he
threw off Cordelia, measuring love as the want of it, by external
services appealing to his craving for flattery and attendance. The
diminution of his train by Goneril wounds the very same sensitiveness that had been irritated by the disappointing tardiness of
Cordelia, and his indignation for all his self-monition bursts away
again through the same breach as before. His most fearful imprecation is provoked, not by the unfeeling words of insult but by
the suppression of half his train, and he is in danger of degrading
himself irreparably, when after repeating his curses he can still
be so fr — misled and tempted as to be willing to return to Goneril,
in the reliance that reduced as her affection might be, double proportion of allowance evinces double love.
"I'll go with thee;       [ To Goneril.
IX.                         G G




450


KING LEAR.


Thy fifty yet doth double five-and-twenty,
And thou art twice her love."
From the height of overbearing egotism and self-confidence
Lear falls into the uttermost physical destitution and moral
humiliation, and thence to some recovery of a better nature. Indignation, rage, and revenge mingle in his thoughts tumultuously,
but as they exhaust themselves, even in his madness brighter
gleams appear from time to time: his injustice to Cordelia he
had already recognized, but he is by degrees undeceived in the
great error of his being; the glories of a larger sympathy than
self was ever yet the centre of, opens upon him on the one hand,
and he drinks, and is refreshed, of the waters of compassion; on
the other he glances with Epidaurian eyes through all the hypocrisies of state, and profession, and demeanlour of which he had
been so easily, so often, and so fatally the dupe.-Too late,-too
late! the roots of the old tree have reached fresh ground too
late;-the balmy showers of heaven fall upon a felled trunk, and
the fresh greens that spring about it, and seem to adorn it with a
promise, are the mere sap-shoots thrown out in the last escape of
vitality-the garnish of a day.
Goneril and Regan, equal in wickedness, are as distinct as possible in character and temperament. Regan throughout adopts the
mischief that Goneril suggests, but adopts it with such alacrity,
with such predisposition, and predilection that the shares of either
seem no more distinguishable than proportions of parentage of
some monstrous birth. It is Goneril's letter that makes the great
change in Kent's entertainment by Regan, and a word of the
elder sister suggests, as already noticed, the plucking out of
Gloster's eyes. There is something as positive in the defect of a
passion or a sentiment as in their excess, and desire does not
crave and search for an object and a gratification more perseveringly than a tendency to antipathy or hatred. When Goneril*
and Regan have exhausted their power of mischief upon their
father and sister, their vice has a natural tendency to find a prey
in their husbands, or in each other; as Edmund, after he has
succeeded in his first design of supplanting his brother, turns the
rage of embittered consanguinity upon his father. Cornwall is
removed by independent accident, but Albany is soon doomed;
and in the complications that follow, thie hatred of the rival appears
to be a stronger motive with either sister than passion for Edmund, and their punishment and destruction is thus directly
linked with the same disposition that was the prime mover of
their impiety.
With Gloster, as with Lear, parental error or injudiciousness
recoils in suffering, but the illustration is duly subordinated by
the difference tlhat the ties outraged by Edmund are of inferior
sanctity, and both from treatment in exclusion from home, and
in the jocund carelessness of his father in coarse allusion to his




CRITICAL ESSAY.                      451
origin there is more obvious cause for the mothering of mischief.
Calumny and credulity are the fall of Gloster as choler and flattery
of the king: the common fault seems dependent on the rudeness
of an inartificial time that lingers at its proper close, and incapable
of distinguishing the true from the false in profession and affection
by refined indications of a milder period. The rough habits of
patriarchal absolutism generate filial resentments and resistances
more or less excusable that were not dreamed of by the fathers of
a harsher age. Cordelia belongs rather to the anterior than to
the entering age, and it is in the development of the story of
Edgar that the poet provides a type of more perfectly harmonized
filial piety. The representation of his tendance of his father in
his weakness and despondency is very touching, and the skill with
which he humours his design of self-destruction in order to cure
him of it-a happy development of the incident in the Arcadiais in not unintended contrast to the check Cordelia offers to her
father's foolishness. Gloster falls his length along and rises cured
by the happy deception as madmen have been cured, while Lear
affronted with harsh truth, and to his nature unbelievable, ends
all in raving and distraction. Tenderly uind beautifully as the
story is told of Cordelia's last interposition, it will be observed
that the poet avoids committing our sympathies to the judicelns?ness of her course, or of her apparent proio-t 5 restore her father
to his abdicated throne by force of arms. It is against this that
the position of Albany is felt to be quite justifiable, that Edgar
is aloof; and that national feeling is pricked by mention-first of
the footing of a foreign power with uncertain designs in some of
our best ports, and then of the presence of the foreign army under
such generalship as "The Mareschal of France, Monsieur Le Fer."
It may be remarked that the superstitious nature of Gloster,
indicated in the first scene, not only prepared for his credulous
reception of Edmund's accusation, but also aids the probability of
his belief of the pious fraud of Edgar respecting his guiding and
betraying fiend. I find something very expressive of the versatile
and vigilant character of Edgar in his inquiry when the gentleman rushes in exclaiming, "Help, help, 0 help! "-" What kind
of help?"
Edgar, Albany, and Kent remain at the end of the play. Edgar, able, active, prompt, ingenious; Albany, mild, conscientious,
charitable; Kent, bold, blunt, devoted, loyal, all equally endowed
with resolution, sensibility and honour, and completing among
them and in combination all the requisite qualities for modelling
a new epoch of civilization, a later England, whether for sentiment
or for action both refined and resolute. The fate of Cordelia is
both natural and necessary, for thus only can the moral purport
of the theme obtain its last impressiveness. Kent survives, and
no less necessarily for the consolation demanded in closing a
history where so much is painful, and in acknowledgment of the




452


KING LEAR.


beauty and the truth of honesty,-some little drawback of indiscretion notwithstanding.
It would be impertinent to dilate in admiration on the general
beauties of this drama, of which the grandeur and the height
have never been approached unless by the Greeks; as in the
works of the Greeks they are patent to every reader in proportion
to his power of sensibility, and multiply and magnify for ever as
this power extends.
There are three quarto impressions of King Lear, varying just
enough to prove that they are not reprints from the same type,
otherwise they are all dated 1608, and are to be assigned to this
year unless there is a possibility that the figures were copied by
design or carelessness in subsequent years. The thought arises
as it seems strange that no other edition should be known from
this date to the folio of 1623. The folio has about fifty lines not
in the quartos, but the latter have above two hundred and twenty
that are not in the folio; these comprise at least one long passage
that is indispensable to the progress and connection of the scene
it belongs to, and on this ground we are at liberty to challenge
the incorporation of the rest, including the third scene of the
fourth act, the beauty of which has the higher claim of being in-:-e1pemzable to the sentiment and sorrow of the play.
The date of Kine, T.ar is approximately fixed by the entry in
the Stationers' books, from which it appears that it had been
played at Court the 26th of December, 1606, and then in the
other direction by the date of Harsnet's "Discovery of ropish
impostors," in 1603, which furnished the names of Edgar's family
of fiends.
An elegy on Burbage, printed by Mr. Collier, is reminiscent of
his impersonation of the king:" And his whole action he could change with ease
From ancient Lear to youthful Pericles."




CRITICAL ESSAY ON OTHELLO.


HE earliest record of the play of Othello that has hitherto
been discovered is an entry among the Bridgewater
papers (found by Mr. Collier), by which, if authentic,for it has been doubted,-it would appear, that it was
performed about the middle of 1602, at Harefield, the seat of Sir
Thomas Egerton, during the visit of Queen Elizabeth, a few
months only before her death. An entry in the accounts of the
master of the revels found by Mr. Cunningham is less open to cavil,
and proves that it was at least performed at Court on the first of
November, 1604.
The MSS. of Vertue, the engraver, are quoted for the fact that
it was played before King James, at Court, in 1613, with how
much or how little alteration we have no means of knowing.
Malone stated that it was played in 1604; but his authority
is unknown, unless indeed the assertion was merely a confident
inference from the names of some of the characters being used in
works of fiction (Euordamus) published in the following year.
A quarto edition of the play was printed in 1622, having been
entered at Stationers' Hall, 6th October, 1621, and it then appears
next in the first folio, date 1623.
The folio edition contains, according to Knight, 163 lines that
are not in the quarto, and, so far as I have traced them, they
appear to be such as Shakespeare may be more naturally thought
to have added in a second copy than to have struck out from the
first. The quarto has some ten lines peculiar to it which fall into
two classes-one comprising lines and half lines which by appropriateness and necessities of coherency seem to have dropped
out by accident, by the negligence of compositor or copier, and
to the other are assignable as erasures a few lines that we are
bound to believe were condemned by the author himself,-if indeed they were ever his at all.
The novel of Giraldi Cinthio,-Il Moro di Venezia, the 7th of
the 3rd decad of his Hecatommithi,-is the chief source of the
plot; it was translated into French in 1584, but no English translation of Shakespeare's time is known, and how he became acquainted with the story-whether in the original or a modified




454


OTHELIO.


form, remains uncertain. Whatever may have been his imm.iate
source the original materials must have been exactly retained or
used in it most liberally, for we find his trace in every page, almost
every paragraph, of the novel.
Desdemona is the only name given by Cinthio at all; Othello
is the name of "an old German soldier," in Reynolds's God's
Revenge against Adultery." What is the date of this? the
mention made of it in the prefaces implies that it is known to be
later than the play.
The movements of the Turkish fleet, not mentioned in the
novel, correspond so exactly with the historical facts that preceded the Turkish conquest of Cyprus in 1571, that they were
doubtless not absolute inventions of the poet. Rhodes, however,
was not at that time as represented by Shakespeare, still in
Venetian possession; but he may possibly have known this well
enough, and written as he did notwithstanding.
Various odd points of detail and management lead me to think
that the writer of the Italian novel worked up in his romance
the particulars of some contemporary atrocity, and in more important matters there is a coarse naturalness about his narration
that indicates obligation to nature of a not very skilful copier,
rather than the creative fantasy of Shakespeare or even the plausive quaintness of Defoe. But besides this it seems likely that
some romantic inspiration was due, as in so many other instances,
to an Eastern story-teller, and the tale of the Three Apples has
often been referred to in illustration of the Venetian fable, and
shall here be told again transferred from the collection that entertain a Thousand and one Arabian Nights:"Commander of the faithful, your majesty may be pleased to
know that this murdered lady was my wife, the daughter of this
old man you see here, who is my own uncle by the father's side.
She was not above twelve years old when he gave her to me, and
it is now eleven years ago. I have three children by her, all
boys, yet alive; and I must do her that justice to say that she
never gave me the least occasion for offence. She was chaste, of
good behaviour, and made it her whole business to please me,
and for my part I loved her entirely, and rather anticipated her
in granting anything she desired than opposed it.
" About two months ago she fell sick; I took all imaginable
care of her, and spared nothing that could procure her a speedy
recovery. After a month she began to grow better, and had a
mind to go to the bath. Before she went out of the house, 'Cousin,'
said she (for so she used to call me out of familiarity), ' I long
for some apples;-if you would get me any you would please me
extremely. I have longed for them a great while; and I must
own it is come to that height that if I be not satisfied very soon,
I fear some misfortune will befall me.' 'With all my heart,' said
I; 'I will do all that is in my power to make you easy.'
I went immediately round all the markets and shops in the


I




CRITICAL      ESSAY.               455
town to seek for apples, but I could not get one, though I offered
to pay a sequin apiece. I returned home very much dissatisfied
at my disappointment; and for my wife, when she returned from
the bath and saw no apples she became so very uneasy that she
could not sleep all night. I got up betimes in the morning and
went through all the gardens, but had no better success than the
day before; only I happened to meet an old gardener who told
me that all my pains would signify nothing, for I could not expect to find apples anywhere but in your majesty's garden at
Balsora. As I loved my wife passionately, and would not have
any neglect to satisfy her chargeable upon me, I dressed myself
in a traveller's habit, and after I had told her my design I went
to Balsora, and made my journey with so great diligence that I
returned at the end of fifteen days with three apples that cost me
a sequin apiece: there were no more left in the garden, so that
the gardener would not let me have them cheaper. As soon as
I came home I presented them to my wife; but her longing was
over, so she satisfied herself with receiving them and laid them
down by her. In the mean time she continued sickly and I
knew not what remedy to get for her.
Some few days after I returned from my journey I was sitting
in my shop, in the public place where all sorts of fine stuffs are
sold, and saw an ugly tall black slave come in with an apple in
his hand which I knew to be one of those I had brought froni
Balsora. I had no reason to doubt it, because I was certain there
was not one to be had in all Bagdad, nor in any of the gardens
about it. I called to him and said, ' Good slave, prithee tell me
where thou hadst this apple.' ' It is a present,' said he smiling,
'from my mistress. I went to see her to-day and found her out
of order. I saw three apples lying by her and asked her where
she had them. She told me the good man her husband had
made a fortnight's journey on purpose for them and brought
them her. We had a collation together, and when I took my
leave of her I brought away this apple that you see.'
" This discourse put me out of my senses. I rose, shut up my
shop, ran home with all speed, and going to my wife's chamber
looked immediately for the apples, and seeing only a couple asked
what was become of the third. Then my wife, turning her head
to the place where the apples lay and perceiving there were but
two, answered me coldly, 'Cousin, I know not what has become
of it.' At this answer I did verily believe what the slave told
me to be true; and at the same time giving myself up to madness and jealousy, I drew my knife from my girdle and thrust it
into the unfortunate creature's throat. I afterwards cut off her
head and divided her body into four quarters, which I packed up
in a bundle and hiding it in a basket, sewed it up with a thread
of red yarn, put all together in a trunk, and when night came I
carried it on my shoulder down to the Tigris, where I sunk it.
" The two youngest of my children were already put to bed




456                    OTHELLO.
and asleep, the third was gone abroad; but at my return I found
him sitting by my gate weeping very sore. I asked him the
reason: 'Father,' said he, ' I took this morning from my mother,
without her knowledge, one of those three apples you brought
her, and I kept it a long while; but, as I was playing sometime
ago with my little brother in the street, a tall slave that went
by snatched it out of my hands and carried it with him. I ran
after him demanding it back, and besides told him that it belonged to my mother who was sick, and that you had made a
fortnight's journey to fetch it; but all to no purpose-he would
not restore it. And, as I still followed him crying out, he turned
and beat me, and then ran away as fast as he could from one
lane to another till at last I lost sight of him. I have since
been walking without the town expecting your return to pray
you, dear father, not to tell my mother of it, lest it should make
her worse.' And when he had said'these words, he feel a weeping again more bitterly than before.
" My son's discourse afflicted me beyond all measure. I then
found myself guilty of an enormous crime, and repented too late
of having easily believed the calumnies of a wretched slave, who
from what he had learnt of my son, invented that fatal lie.
" My uncle, here present, came just at the time to see his
daughter; but instead of finding her alive understood from me
that she was dead, for I concealed nothing from him, and without
staying for his censure declared myself the greatest criminal in
the world.....
"h... This, commander of the faithful, is the sincere confession your majesty commanded from me: you have heard now
all the circumstances of my crime, and I most humbly beg of you
to order the punishment due for it, how severe soever it may be I
shall not in the least complain, but esteem it too easy and gentle."
The tale is told with a terse simplicity, as it is conceived with
ingenuity, and the contrast between affection almost doting, and
suspicion, furious, fatal, and sudden, is as marked as in the play;
as in the play the mistrust depends on a lost love-token, and the
error of the murderer is made palpable to him immediately after
his deed by the plainest process, and in his remorse he loses all
desire to live. The Arabian tale is strong in incident and highly
picturesque; we see the fitful gleams of the shadowy bazaar
playing upon the rich stuffs about the seated merchant, on his
haggard cheek and on the black face of the sauntering slave
stupidly mischievous rather than malignant as he dangles the
rosy apple: there are wanting however the finer and profounder
limitations of character that raise the anecdote, the tale, or the
coarse narration of crime to poetic, to tragic dignity: there is
nothing in the story to distinguish what share in the crime was
due to a jealous disposition, and what to general passionateness,
and we cannot measure the strength of the affection that was so
briefly cancelled by a single hint of doubt in the absence of any




CRITICAL ESSAY.                      457
intermediate struggle. The agency of the black, with all its
differences, must be reckoned among the coincidences with the
novel and the play, and it is quite within the range of the metamorphosis of fiction that the happy perception struck some relater of the tale how much would be gained for it by making the
black the husband, and making some mistrust of colour help the
rational explanation of the readiness with which the injurious
calumny was entertained. In this form the incident re-appears
in the novel, and motives are supplied to the calumniator as well
as perseverance and talents, that tend in the same direction to
add force to the pressure before which fondness gives way.
Still we shall see that the novelist was very far from realizing
the fearful mental chaos and its conditions that were turned to
form and shape by the poet, when assuming the germ of jealous
susceptibility in a noble and accomplished nature, he showed to
what monstrous proportions it might spread when fostered by a
concurrence of malignant intention and lax moralities in those
around, and by all the accidents that could in any way contribute
to the mischief by aiding enemies without, or disabling by vexation
the resistance from within.
The Iago of the novel is a coward, who, by carriage and conversation, puts on the semblance of a Hector or Achilles; the
Iago of Shakespeare is of unquestioned bravery-" the bold Iago,"
Cassio calls him,-and as his cowardice answers no end in the
novel, his soldierly qualities in the drama account for much of
Othello's good opinion of him, and save the intellect of the Moor
from the last degradation of mistaking a poltroon for a hero, as
well as a villain for an honest man.
The villain's motive, in the novel is, in the first instance, malignant revenged Desdemona, with whom he is in love, but —
who, in her artless simplicity and entire affection for the Moor,
never becomes even conscious of his attention-the same unsuspecting spirit that Shakespeare drew. His hatred of the Moor
is a less violent feeling, and springs from envy at his possession
of Desdemona; while he determines to destroy the Cassio of the
story, from a belief that he is a favoured rival.
For these motives we find substituted in the play, rankling feeling against Cassio, for having obtained the licutenancy over his
head, mingling with a hope of obtaining the office still by his ruin;
and an antipathy to him from conscious difference in manners:" There is a daily beauty in his life
That makes me ugly."
Thus his observation of the graceful politeness and frank courtesy
of Cassio to Desdemona vexes and stings him as much as the
affectionate greeting of Desdemona and Othello. " Ay, smile
upon her, do," &c. and " Oh, you are well tuned now," &c. An
envious motive of this kind, as virulently rancorous as diabolical,
lies at the root of much of the mischief that appears most motiveless; when constant and habitual, it is the proper malice of a bad




458


OTHEIIO.


heart, and as occasional outbreak it is the sign of basest nature.
Even Iago's self-avowal of his envious malice by no means strains
from nature for the sake of theatrical convenience. Hypocrisy,
to be complete, must be conscious; perfected as an accomplishment, it bases on self-knowledge-for it is self that it has to
mask, and self-betrayal that it must guard against; and strange
it may be, but I am sure it is true, that the fact of villainousness
will frame itself distinctly to the villain's mind, and exerts a
tempter's power over the tongue to utter it, till it is dropped in
seeming jest, or blurted out even in colloquy with bluntness that
takes the utterer by surprise no less than the auditor.
As regards Othello Iago hates him for the professional slight
passed upon him by the promotion of Cassio; and to these feelings, as respects them both, there is to be added the main impulse of inveterate jealousy. He suspects the Moor to have been
too familiar with his wife Emilia, and he fears Cassio "with his
night cap too." The thought, " like a poisonous mineral gnaws
his inwards," and he determines, for thie Moor, to be " even with
him, wife for wife."
Emilia, it must be said, is a Venetian wife, apt enough to raise
doubts ill the mind of a husband not conscious of much claim to
affection, and who "knows his country's dispositionwell," and who
though unsusceptible of the warmer affections and passions that
abound in southern climes, is fully alive to the incitements of
jealousy and vindictiveness that grow with them and beside them.
Iago is gnawn with jealousy and vindictiveness, on account of a
wife whom he cannot be suspected of loving, and it is in this
respect that his jealousy contrasts so strongly with that of Othello.
Hence the ruling impulse of Othello, when fully convinced, is to
destroy his wife, that of Iago is to ruin and destroy the suspected paramour. Othello breaks out into violence and immediate murder, while Iago can plot, intrigue, and elaborately circumvent and deceive, in order to destroy his victims. This is
an advantage gained by the deviation from the novel, which had
other recommendations. Consideration for the character of the
soldierly Othello forbade, as we have seen, that his betrayer should
be a coward or a blusterer; but then it remained inconsistent that
a nature bold and daring should revenge injuries and disappointments in love by artful machination. The motive of love is
withdrawn in the play, and the patient and persevering serpent
guile of the calumniator becomes consistent with both character
and position. Inasmuch, again, as sympathy was to be preserved
for Othello, it was required that his betrayer should be as far from a
fool as from a coward, and the conduct of artful misrepresentation
suggests that wonderful intellectual versatility and active vigour,
that almost excuses to our feelings the credulous fall of the Moor.
We recognize, again, in the possessor of these energies a pleasure
experienced in their exercise almost reaching at last to an enthusiasm, in which meaner advantages are freely sacrificed to the




CRITICAL ESSAY.


459


great success, and which further explains and renders natural the
peculiar form of Iago's vindictiveness, the multiplicity and active
complication of artifice, the going about for the compassing of his
revenge.
In heightening the characteristics of Iago, Shakespeare has
assigned several incidents to his contrivance which, in the novel,
offer themselves as accidental opportunities. Thus the interest
expressed by Desdemona there for the restoration of the lieutenant, who has been degraded for wounding a soldier on guard,
gives the ensign-I shall employ this title in quoting the novel
-his first opportunity to rouse suspicion in the Moor: but in
the play, the brawl on guard results, with all its aggravating
circumstances, from Iago's management, and he causes and counts
upon the urgent appeals of Desdemona. Iago designedly brings
Othello where he may see Cassio soliciting his wife, and he
throws out his first hint and alarm at his " stealing away so
guilty like;" this is an alteration of the clumsy incident of the
lieutenant going to restore the handkerchief to Desdemona, and
hastily retiring when he finds the Moor at home.
The lieutenant is set upon and wounded by the ensign as he
leaves the house of a courtezan, of whom no other mention is
made. This is the origin of the character of Bianca, who exhibits all the leading passions of the play in the most light and
frivolous form, and thus completes the display of human nature.
She is jealous and suspicious, fretful and petulant, fond and infatuated. The scene of dumb show, which Iago causes Othello
to misinterpret, obtains its distinctness by the reference to Bianca;
while, in the novel, the conversation witnessed at a distance by
the Moor is simply said to be " on a very different subject, with
great laughter and gestures of surprise;" and that the Moor
should see his handkerchief in the hands of Bianca, is a much
more significant incident than his seeing it in the hands of the
harmless embroidress in the novel.
The wife of the ensign is described as a " bella ed onesta
giovane," much loved by Desdemona, but not attending on her.
Desdemona, distressed at the alteration in her husband, begs her
to assist her in discovering the cause, and to consult also her
husband the ensign. The ensign had endeavoured to induce his
wife to become an accomplice in the murder of Desdemona, and,
although in vain, her fear of him prevented her revealing the
danger. We have here the germ of the scene in which Desdemona
appeals to Iago, and also of the wonderfully imagined character
of Emilia-her mingled laxity and determination, dishonesty and
conscientiousness.
The savage manner in which the innocent wife is murdered in
the novel, is ascribed to the plan of the perpetrators to avoid
suspicion; but in the play, the madness into which Othello is
wrought is such that we never hear a word of any thought oc



460


OTHELLO


curring to him of the consequences of his revenge to himself.
Even Iago, as the accomplishment of his purposes approaches,
seems less engrossed by considerations of ultimate safety than by
the present gratification of his hate; but Othello is entirely
wrapped up in his revenge.
Looking cursorily through the novel, we may note these materials and suggestions. Desdemona is enamoured of the Moor
for his virtue-" I saw Othello's visage in his mind;" her relatives endeavour to induce her to take another husband instead,and this is all the trace I find of a rudimentary Roderigo, a previous
suitor of her nation, though disapproved by her father. The
impatience of Desdemona to accompany her husband in his
honourable post at Cyprus is further commentary on her original
admiration of him for his virtue, and the coincidence is heightened by Shakespeare, and gave form to the whole course of wooing. The regret of the Moor at the prospect of having to quit
his wife, is, on the other hand, rejected by Shakespeare for an
unhesitating and soldierlike alacrity.  Shakespeare has avoided
the unhandsomeness of the retort of Desdemona, " You Moors are
of so warm a constitution, that every trifle transports you with
anger and revenge." But it may be observed that he retains the
characteristic temperament to a certain point. Othello commands our respect by his composure and self-control under the
insults of Brabantio, and the military collectedness that stamped
his reputation; but it is sufficiently conveyed to us that he has
to hold a fiery and irritable nature in restraint: lago throws his
mind off the balance too successfully by exciting his impatience
as well when he feigns reluctance to accuse Cassio as Desdemona; and Desdemona herself acts unwittingly, but as fatally,
on the same liability to impatience in her innocent prevarications
about the missing handkerchief, and she has had enough experience to say at last:"And yet I fear you, for you are fatal then,
When your eyes roll so."
On general comparison, however, very high praise, warranted
by the close adoption of Shakespeare, must be assigned to the
novellist for his picture of the artful insinuations, and then the
bold assertions and cunning confirmations of the ensign, and of
the sudden doubt, the violent challenge, the dejection, and the
fury of the unhappy Moor.
Othello describes himself as having spent his life from childhood till within nine months of the action of the play in actual
military service, in the tented field, among broil and battle, and
this his exclusively military experience materially assists his
Moorish origin in placing him in the position of a stranger to
civic life generally, and of a foreigner in Venice. Busy as his
previous experience has been, there is still much of the lore of
worldliness in which he is necessarily a novice; and it is thus
that Iago, in order to establish with him a character for honest




CRITICAL ESSAY.


461


'straightforwardness, is enabled to venture on such professions of
conscientiousness and declarations of artless impulsiveness as we
feel would have alarmed the suspicions of any other character in
the piece. He gains the confidence of Roderigo by the proper
force of his will, and by plain exposition of politic hypocrisy;
this is his course with a fool destitute of principles; his pretensions to honesty,-" Yet do I hold it very stuff o' the conscience,
&c." gain him the confidence of Othello, whose credulousness in
this respect would, in truth, appear to us as gross as that of Roderigo, but that it is not associated with the same circumstances of
disgracefulness.
Othello is prone to this mistake —" he believes every one honest
who but seems to be so;" this aids the explanation of his reliance on Iago, but not of his reliance on him as against his wife,
in whom not the slightest appearance other than of most genuine
honesty is before him throughout. It is the direction in which
Iago employs his credit that gives it his force; had he employed
it against Cassio in any ordinary matter, the just appreciation of
simple appearances would have kept the Moor right. Scrutiny
and deliberation would have had fair play to decide between conflicting prepossessions; but what shall we say of the husband
whose faith in his friend so entirely overmatches his faith in his
wife? and a wife both in conduct and carriage so absolutely independent of suspicion. The explanation is, that Othello is not
jealous by nature-from this disgrace the nobleness of his character generally exempts him, but prone or apt to receive impressions of jealousy-of the specific jealousy of a consort's purity,
that is a passion by itself, as much as conjugal love, and that
has ever been of fiercer virulence among southern nations, and
especially of oriental blood.
That this is no false accusation against Othello appears when
we note the effect of the first hint that Iago drops (Act iii. Sc.
3), and the readiness, almost eagerness with which the Moor
catches it up and applies and pursues it. The " Ha! I like not
that," of Iago, at the retirement of Cassio, at once receives its
interpretation from the suspicion of Othello, though it was quite
as naturally susceptible of many another explanation. He is
uneasy all through the scene, and hurries Desdemona away, with
no excuse or apology for doing so; and though her charming
ways have just regained their full power as she goes out, his exclamation that acknowledges it also admits the momentary chaos
Iago had brought into his mind. The flaw that weakens his
character and hampers his intellect is there unmistakeable; and
yet it is quite clear that were not all the odds of accident and
circumstance against him, he would have righted and recovered
himself. It is this that attaches our interest to him so entirely,
a;id touches us so deeply in witnessing both his fault and fate.
V'ithin himself his better angel is the stronger, but his evil
genius is allied with powers without, and between them he is




462                   OTHELLO.
overpowered. He contends with his worser impulses, and would
conquer, but that an enemy is against him whose knowledge of
his nature applies the most irritating stimulants exactly where
he is most susceptible of pain, anticipates every reaction, admits
of no repose-above all, loses not an instant of time, but presses
on the excitenrent through all its stages, and gives all aid and
opportunity and instrument to the crimes which are the last
catastrophe.
There is little need to add to the mass of commentary on the
sufferings of Othello and the arts of his tormentor; but I cannot
pass on without a word of astonishment and admiration at the
conception and execution of the first scene of the fourth act, in
which the mental bewilderment of the Moor now seems to drive
him to the verge of frensy, and now to stupify him, and his
physical agitation is in accordance with that of his moral constitution. Can this scene be acted? when an actor shall exhibit it
with the effect and force that truly belong to it, there will be hope
again for another age of acted Shakespearian drama. When this
scene, in which the fainting Othello appears as the suffering and
passive instrument of Iago, is left out in representation, the best
acting in the world, or to be in the world, will not preserve the
scene in the bedchamber from having, to well-ordered sympathies,
all the shockingness of a contrived coldblooded murder.
It seems a shame to speak of Roderigo and Othello in the same
sentence, but the criminal by whatever cause, must endure the
disgrace of such association. Both are dupes of Iago, and the
force and versatility of his powers become most fully evident by
the contrasted dispositions that he manages with equal facility.
Othello never doubts the honesty of Iago, while Roderigo is constantly suspicious that he is being cheated, and is as constantly
satisfied, notwithstanding the grossest indications, that should
have put him once for all on his guard. To gain his ends with
the Moor, it is necessary that the villain should struggle with and
keep down the constant endeavour of his victim to revert to a
faith in Desdemona's excellence and truth; but the enemy that
he encounters with the gulled Venetian is a pertinacious recurrence to mistrust and apprehension of covert rascality. The
credulousness of the gulled gentleman, who has not a spark of
moral quality that can be respected, and as little of intellectual,
is laughable, is ridiculous; but credulousness that involves in ruin
so many noble qualities as belong to Othello becomes most deeply
tragic, quite independently of our sympathy for the lovely and
innocent victim of his suspicions.
The first act of the play is separate from the others both in time
and space, and comprises a very brief and abstract of all the tendencies and influences that mingle in such fearful complication in
the incidents at Cvprus. It exhibits the credit, and the grou:id
of the credit, in which Iago stands with the Moor, as well as wi h
Roderigo, and gives in its course preliminary exercise to the mind




CRITICAL ESSAY.


463


in recognizing the disturbances of belief by passion, whether in the
direction of credulity or incredulity, and enables us to measure
extent of deviation by standard examples of happy elucidation
and well conducted analysis.
Central in the act is the scene in the Council Chamber; and
the consideration, by the Duke and Senators, of the news from
Cyprus is no mere surplusage; it strikes a tone of dispassionate
appreciation of evidence and opinion that dominates all the succeeding scenes of agitation and disorders. From inconsistent intelligence, the main point of agreement is carefully adopted for
further examination, notwithstanding predisposition to underrate
it; intelligence, otherwise of good authority, is condemned as fallacious from collateral indications, and lastly thus prepared for, the
last courier has full credence, and the critical circumstances once
understood, action follows at once. " Tis certain, then, for Cyprus
-Marcus Luccicos, is he not in town.-He's now in Florence;write from us to him, post-post-haste, despatch;"-and Othello
is despatched that very night.
The same solid perspicacity distinguishes the reception of the
complaint of Brabantio. Brabantio himself, when roused by lago
and Roderigo, is obstinately incredulous; in the disposition of the
rejected suitor he sees a probable cause of the disturbance, and
is satisfied to look no further. Pardonably enough, perhaps, he
does not believe the flight of his daughter, when blurted unceremoniously by profane wretches and ruffians; yet when a more
sober assertion gains attention, he becomes at once alarmed. His
exclamation " This accident is not unlike my dream," betrays the
same peculiar credulity that afterwards appears in his accusation
against Othello" Are there not charms
By which the property of youth and maidhood
May be abused?   Have you not read, Roderigo,
Of some such thing? "
and the superstition is a characteristic perfectly in harmony with
his fondness for the society of Othello, his curiosity respecting an
adventurous history. Desdemona's belief of her husband's magical myth about the handkerchief, to say nothing of the Anthropophagi and men whose heads grow beneath their shoulders,
exemplifies the household atmosphere of wonders in which she
had been bred. Othello, plainly enough, indicates that he followed the natural suggestion of such an audience, and heightened
his " traveller's history " to increase the interest it excited in his
listener. In truth, his tale of wooing exhibits him as playing
upon the credulity of Desdemona with as much art as he himself
was afterwards wrought upon, for darker ends, by Iago; he stimulated her curiosity, until she seemed to prevail upon him to
relate the very tale he was anxious for his own purposes to tell:" Which I observing




464


OTHELLO.


Took once a pliant hour, and found good means
To draw from her a prayer of earnest heart
That I would all my pilgrimage dilate, &c."
Brabantio, senator as he is, is at fault among the probabilities
of his own misfortune, and pronounces too rashly on the freaks of
feminine nature;
" It is a judgement maimed and most imperfect
That will confess perfection could so err, &c. &c.
I therefore vouch again
That with some mixtures powerful o'er the blood, &c."
The Duke is more clear sighted" To vouch this is no proof
Without more wider and more overt tests
Than these thin habits and poor likelihoods "and the first Senator fully recognizes the value of another alternative, and the equal chance at least that Desdemona was won
"by request, and such fair question
As soul to soul affordeth."
The round unvarnished tale of the Moor carries conviction to
all-even to Brabantio, himself; for though he professes to reserve his belief till his daughter shall confess whether she was
half the wooer, he never asks her that question, but another instead, which she could not have answered otherwise than she did,
had the accusation of witchcraft been well founded.
Thus it is that the Venetian Senate comes to the truth of a
matter, and the impression thus gained of its judiciousness gives
great emphasis to the parting words of the Senator as he goes out"Farewell, brave Moor, use Desdemona well."
The words fall on the heart like an omen; it is true, then, that
the Senator recognizes as no improbability the ill treatment of
Desdemona by the gallant husband she has chosen for herself at
such a sacrifice. Even so, and the words strengthen the sense of
separation between the Moorish and the Venetian noble, for addressed by one equal to another they would justify an answer
with the hand at the sword hilt.
The news in the last act that Othello is superseded in his government, and Cassio appointed in his room, recalls the impressions of the earlier scenes, and seems to complete the proof of the
infallible instincts of the statesmen.
Othello has always been one of the most favourite and successful of all the tragedies of Shakespeare on the stage; and partly
for other causes besides its absolute and sovereign perfection.
The intrinsic interest and variety of the mere story are very great,
and, as it can scarcely be said to have a secondary plot, the effect
requires comparatively few excellent actors-opportunity though
there be for excellence in the very meanest parts. My own theatrical recollections include the performance of the Moor by Edmund
Kean, and beside it, admirable as it was, and only below it, that
of Emilia by Mrs. Glover. The latter character is, in the main,




CRITICAL ESSAY.                     465
divided between expressive silence and plain or bold speaking;
but there are also moments at which a thought flashes across her
mind, but for a moment, and then is lost again; as when she suspects too much meaning in Desdemona's praise of Lodovico; so,
in the last scene, she hints in agony at an earlier suspicion of her
husband's malice-" I thought so, then,-I'll kill myself for grief "
— no doubt this was when she broke out before her husband in a
tirade against the calumnious, and there it was that Mrs. Glover
with consummate art-since twenty years the scene is yet before
me, and the tones are in my ears, conveyed exactly the vitality
of the thought, as it was only born to perish, and striking just
between the too little and too much, avoided giving to her words
the force of an accusation which they seemed to take in spite of her.
Great efforts are often made to show that Othello as conceived
by Shakespeare was not a Negro; and true it is that such an addition as " thick lips," given contemptuously, does not prove it.
Othello, however, himself, says that he is black; and I have been
convinced that Shakespeare had in his mind the proper negro
complexion and physiognomy too, and that he even assigned some
mental characteristics of the negro type. To these I think belong an over-affection for high sounding words, for the sake of
the sound, an affectation of stateliness that verges upon stiffness,
and value for conspicuous position with somewhat excessive feeling
for parade-for the pride and pomp and circumstance, the report
of the artillery and the waving of the ensign. There are other
coincidences besides these, and I cannot divest myself of the
sense that Othello embodies the ennobled characteristics of the
coloured division of the human family; and in his position relatively to the proudest aristocracy of Europe, his story exemplifies
the difficulty the world has yet to solve between the white and
the black. The feuds and antipathies of race can be fully conciliated at no other altar than the nuptial bed; and the marriage
of Desdemona, and its consequences, typify the obstacles to this
conclusion. Some critics moralize the fate of Desdemona as punishment for undutiful and ill-assorted marriage, yet the punishment falls quite as severely on the severity of Brabantio-on his
cruelty, we may say, for he is the first-and out of unnatural
pique, to belie his own daughter's chastity"Look to her, Moor-have a quick eye to see;"
and if we must needs make out a scrupulous law of retribution,
we shall come at last to an incongruity, and that can in no sense
be pious. The revolt of Desdemona was a revolt against custom
and tradition, but it was in favour of the affections of the heart;
and if the result was pitiable, it may have been not because custom and tradition were right, but because they were strong, and
because there was the greater reason for abating their strength
by proving it assailable; the justest war does not demand the
fewest victims; and the heroes who are left on the field were no
whit less right, but only less fortunate, than their comrades who
H H




466


OTHELLO.


survive to carry home the laurels. For the matter in hand, however, it is most certain that the most important advance that has
yet been made towards establishing even common cordiality between the races has been due as in the case of Desdemona and the
redeemed slave, Othello, if not to the love at least to the compassionate sympathy of woman.
The same preponderance of the affections and imagination that
led to the marriage of Desdemona, is leading cause of her destruction, by inducing her excessive passiveness in a position where a
single energetic step would have saved her; the tendency to credulousness or to superstition weakened, as ever, the faculty of
connecting causes and effects, and seems to have destroyed all
thought of relying on evidence or urging inquiry. It is perhaps
more than a mere, more than an odd, coincidence with character,
that the name, Desdemona, derived from the novel, signifies-is
the Greek word for, devoutness or superstition-a point on which,
for many reasons, I am tempted to quote an early predecessor in
Shakespearian criticism, my Lord Shaftesbury (A.D. 1710), and
thus conclude:" This Humour our old Tragick Poet (an obliging note supplies
the name of Shakespeare) seems to have discover'd. He hit our
taste in giving us a Moorish hero, full fraught with prodigy: a
wondrous story-teller! But for the attentive part, the poet chose
to give it to womankind. What passionate reader of travels, or
student in the prodigious sciences can refuse to pity that fair lady
who fell in love with the miraculous Moor; especially considering
with what suitable grace such a lover could relate the most monstrous adventures, and satisfy the wondering appetite with the
most wondrous tales; Wherein (says the Hero Traveller)
I Of antres vast, and deserts idle,
It was my hint to speak;
And of the cannibals that each other eat,
The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads
Do graw beneath their shoulders. These to hear
Would Desdemona seriously incline.'
Seriously, 'twas a woful tale! unfit, one would think, to win a
tender Fair one. It's true the Poet sufficiently condemns her fancy,
and makes her (poor Lady!) pay dearly for it in the end. But
why amongst his Greek names he should have chosen one which
denoted the Lady Superstitious, I can't imagine, unless as poets
are sometimes prophets too, he should, figuratively, under this
dark type, have represented to us that about a hundred years
after his time, the fair sex of this island should, by other monstrous tales, be so seduced, as to turn their favour chiefly on the
persons of the tale-tellers, and change their natural inclination
for fair, candid, and courteous knights into a passion for a Inysterious race of black enchanters: such as of old were said to
creep into houses and lead captive silly women." The Satirist!




CRITICAL ESSAY ON ANTONY AND
CLEOPATRA.
VAC     HE order in which the Tragedies are arranged in the
first folio has been usually followed in later editions,
but there is no appearance that it was made on any
principle whatever, much less on one that should override the natural dependency of subject matter. The Roman
Tragedies form a set-a trilogy if you will, and the transition
from Julius Caesar to Antony and Cleopatra is most distinctly
provided for, as distinctly as between any of the English Chronicle
plays. Already, as we have seen, before the battle of Philippi,
Octavius has manifested his spirit of opposition and independence,
and already the genius of Mark Antony retires before that of his
younger colleague. In the play of Coriolanus the Roman people
are struggling through the embarrassments of faction, and the
dissension of orders, to that degree of self-possession and united
purpose that enabled them to conquer the world. In the play of
Julius Casar we find the virtual completion of this conquest by
one great administrative genius, while the Roman people have
become so debased by the process as to enable Csesar, after conquering the world for Rome, to conquer Rome for himself; and
with the deaths of Brutus and Cassius the forlorn hope of the
prolonged vitality of the nobler form of republican establishment
is wrecked and lost. The transition, however, is not yet complete to that exhausting and stupefying autocracy that carried
on through so many centuries the lingering degradation, the decline and fall of the Empire. This is the theme of the tragedy
of Antony and Cleopatra; the vigorous virtue of the republic
was all but extirpated at Philippi, but there was a wild constitutional vigour in its vices also which night have proved a stock
for a happier graft, and the prostration of this too was necessary
to completely tranquillize the pride of solitary empire. The
pride of absolutism is equally disturbed by the struggles of manliness, and by the vagaries of the dissolute, because both are
alike the signs of independence or even enterprise, and it is not




468        ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA.
to be satisfied till it reduces subject society to one dead indifferent
level of the smaller and more timid moralities, and of the meaner,
duller, and more sordid forms and growths of depravity.
The leading contrast therefore that gives consistence and unity
to the play is between the characters of the triumvirs Antony
and Octavius; these are displayed with unmatched vivacity and
force, and if the catastrophe neither touches deeply with awe nor
melts us with pity, it comes on through a series of events so
linked with the causation of disposition, temperament, and motive
that we are engaged and interested to the last; and the brilliancy
and truth that occupy and satisfy the imagination and intellect
are in this case accepted entertainment in lieu of the emotions of
the heart. The passion of Antony for Cleopatra is too obviously
spurious to command our sympathy, but at least it is passion; it
is in its way sympathetic, and so far unselfish; and the course of
the action makes us feel the value of this quality, however debased, when set against the cold negation of all sympathetic
feeling, the barren materialism of unsocial ambition that covets
possession of the instruments of gratification at the cost of the
very sense that gives the faculty of being gratified. Notwithstanding therefore that the folly of Antony and the falsehood of
the Egyptian Queen are made most manifest, the modified triumph
of the piece is theirs, and Caesar and his soldiers are left duped
and defied and disappointed.
The Roman people who were active or influential and conspicuous in the two earlier plays are here only heard of, and then in
such terms as to intimate that their political interference has
become a mere form, unless so far as it serves without their consent for a pretext useful to their military master, who manages
them with carelessness and mentions them with contempt. They
have to listen, it seems, to Caesar's imputations on his absent rival,
but whether before or after the measures they justify does not
appear,-in any case there is no enquiry or anxiety about how
they received them,-no doubt as they were expected and as they
must,
In Julius Caesar we have a glimpse of the ennobling developments that arose when sincere Romans stooped to drink from the
well-springs of Greek philosophy and science; in Antony and
Cleopatra we behold the counter influence and contamination from
too close proximity to Asia,-for Egypt is in nature Asiatic,the school of courtiers and of all the arts of servility and seduction
that courts give harbour and protection to. In this respect again
the play foreshadows a large future of the Roman Empire: Octavius, with all his faults, is a type of the better Roman Emperor,
for in his function he never was surpassed, while the wild Sway
of the dissolute, flighty and, under provocation or excitement,
furious Antony, is premonitory of the disorders awaiting the empire under a Nero or a Caligula, under the reckless tyranny that




CRITICAL ESSAY.                     469
however after all is perhaps at last one degree less mischievous
than the tyranny that provides and calculates-for itself.
How conscientiously Shakespeare kept in view the resolve to
indicate the proceeding metamorphosis of the Roman State and
Roman society, at the same time that he set forth the characters
and fortunes of the triumvir and his paramour, is well seen in the
short Parthian entrance of Ventidius. He has embodied the biography of Antony by Plutarch from the point at which he takes it up
with as much skill as comprehensiveness, but the scheme of his
play rendered necessary the omission of the personal campaign in
Parthia, which interposes in the period of its action. The expedition elucidated nothing particular in the relations with Caesar
that is not otherwise provided for, and its disasters would be such
a blemish of military reputation as to take off from the suddenness
and dramatic effect of the false conduct of Antony at the last catastrophe. If therefore he went out of his way for a Parthian
episode it was not without a purpose, which is well justified in
the geographical extension given to our thoughts, and in the important contrast in tendency of the new spirit of imperialism to
the old tradition of consular enterprise and aggression. The
materials of the scene in Plutarch are brief enough:-" In the
meantime (while Antony feasted at Athens) Ventidius once again
overcame Pacorus, Orodes son, king of Parthia, in a battle fought
in the country of Cyrrhestica, he being come again with a great
army to invade Syria, at which battle was slain a great number
of the Parthians, and among them Pacorus, the king's own son.
This noble exploit, as famous as any ever was, was a full revenge
to the Romans of the shame and loss they had received before by
the death of Marcus Crassus, and he made the Parthians fly and
glad to keep themselves within the confines and territories of
Mesopotamia and Media, after they had been thrice together
overcome in several battles. Howbeit Ventidius durst not undertake to follow them any farther, fearing lest he should have
gotten Antonius displeasure by it." The political insight of
Shakespeare seized upon the hint at once, and signalized it as
truly characteristic of the opening period for the exploits and
disappointments of Agricola or Corbulo. To Silius, who urges
prosecution of success, Ventidius replies:"0 Silius, Silius,
I have done enough: a lower place note well
May make too great an act: for learn this, Silius;
Better leave undone, than by our deed acquire
Too high a fame, when he we serve's away.
Caesar and Antony have ever won
More in their officer than person: Sossius,
One of my place in Syria, his lieutenant,
For quick accumulation of renown,
Which he achieved by the minute, lost his favour.




470       ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA.
Who does i' the wars more than his captain can
Becomes his captain's captain, and ambition,
The soldier's virtue, rather makes choice of loss
Than gain which darkens him.
I could do more to do Antonius good,
But 'twould offend him, and in his offence
Should my performance perish.
Sil. Thou hast, Ventidius,
That without which a soldier and his sword
Grants scarce distinction. Thou wilt write to Antony?
Vent. I'll humbly signify what in his name
That magical word of war, we have effected;
How, with his banners and his well paid ranks,
The ne'er yet beaten horse of Parthia
We have jaded out o' the field."
The self-imposing sophistry with which Ventidius persuades
himself that in prudentially foregoing a military success to save
or curry favour with Antony, he is still true to the principle of
soldierly ambition, only proves how entirely the ancient warlike
spirit is debased and lost. Beati quondam duces Romani! was
the simple word of Domitius Corbulo-at one degree, if only one
degree, more lofty-when the sudden letters of Claudius checked
the confident advance of his disciplined legions upon Germany, and
bade him withdraw all his garrisons from beyond the Rhine.
For Antony and Cleopatra, as for the other Roman plays, it is
quite certain that the general plan and large materials were obtained by Shakespeare at first hand from North's Plutarch; but
there is some proof that there was a play on the subject still
earlier. In May, 1608, Edwd. Blount entered in the Stationers'
books, " a book called Antony and Cleopatra," and that this was
not Shakespeare's seems presumable from Blount and his partner,
Iaggard, including this play in their entry for the folio edition
among "the copies not formerly entered to other men." Shakespeare doubtless would readily avail himself of any aid from previous treatment by others; but, as the play stands, it is very
rarely that the thought of such an obligation occurs to the reader,
unless it may be that the poet sometimes seems to assume more
familiarity with persons and incidents lightly touched upon, than
could be gathered from the play itself.
Reckoning from the battle of Philippi, Octavius-it is not
worth while to make confusion for the sake of accuracy in following the changes of his name as Octavianus or Augustus,-Qctavius and Antony were partners or rivals in the mastery of the
world for some twelve years, and this entire period is comprehended in the play, and with what accuracy represented on the
whole,-with what judgment modified occasionally, may be seen
from the chronology.
B. c. 42. The deaths of Brutus and Cassius at Philippi.




CRITICAL ESSAY.


471


41. The wars of Fulvia and L. Antonius with each other, and
with Octavianus. Cleopatra meets Antony on the Cydnus. Antony winters at Alexandria.
40. The death of Fulvia; it is with the announcement of this
that the play commences. In the same year Antony visits Italy,
and closes his differences with Octavianus by marrying his sister
Octavia.
39. The interview of the triumvirs with Sext. Pompeius at
Misenum.
38. Ventidius defeats the Parthians; Pacorus is slain,-the
war between Sext. Pompeius and Octavianus this year, and the
visit of Antony to Italy in the next (37), are omitted in the play
as confusing by repetition of incidents before or after.
36. Sextus Pompeius defeated. Lepidus deposed from triumvirate. Antony's disastrous expedition to Parthia this year is
omitted, as already noticed.
35. Sextus Pompeius put to death in Asia.
34. Antony subdues Armenia.
33. Rupture between Octavianus and Antony.
32. Antony divorces Octavia.-War declared.
31. Battle of Actium, 2nd September.
30. The deaths of Antony and Cleopatra in Egypt.
It appears, therefore, that Shakespeare did set some limits to the
wide dispersion of his subject, and that he placed them where
they are and did not contract the action of his play into even
the precincts of the unities was, doubtless, due to his sense of the
treatment that was most characteristic, and to his confident power
in the management and execution of it. A certain lack of grandeur of mass in the play corresponds with the dispositions of the
pair from whom its chief action springs. When scattered composition is appropriate it may become quite as artistic as the
severe and compact, which would be quite out of place in the
exhibition of reckless or frantic dissoluteness, and indeed would
prove unequal to it. Cleopatra, with all her cunning, is as much
a subject of impulse, and the passion that is born of the circumstances, and the moment, as the doting Antony; their figures
compose together, whether in agreement or quarrel, like the members of a pictured group, similar yet unlike, and though obtaining their relative value from difference and contrast appearing to
imply and necessitate each other. Hence the wild starts and
changes of the action which each has part in, interchanging all
moral, as well as material extremes and revulsions —rom Egypt
to Rome, from love to reviling, from revelry to battle, and from
life to death. Still with all this turbulence the interest is continuous, and the dramatic action has natural progress onward to
its close. This is effected by the progressive weakening in Antony of self-intelligence and self-control under the infatuating
power of Cleopatra, and then by the steady movement of the




472


ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA.


ambition of Octavius closing round him and urging him to inevitable downfal.
The liability of Antony to become the prize of a bold and skilful
flatterer is set forth by Plutarch in terms that aided Shakespeare's
conception of the secret of Cleopatra's fascination. " He was a
plain man and without subtlety. Now for his outrageous manner
of railing he commonly used mocking and flouting of every man,
that was remedied by itself: for a man might as boldly exchange
a mock with him, and he was as well contented to be mocked as
to mock others, and yet it oftentimes marred all. For he thought
that those which told him so plainly and truly in mirth would
never flatter him in good earnest in any matters of weight; but
thus he was easily abused by the praises they gave him, not
finding how these flatterers mingled their flattery under this
familiar and plain manner of speech unto him, as a fine device to
mnlake difference of meats with sharp and tart sauce.....
' ntony being thus inclined, the last and extremest mischief of
all other, to wit, the love of Cleopatra lighted on him, who did
waken and stir up many vices yet hidden in him and were never
seen of any: and if any spark of goodness or hope of rising were
left him, Cleopatra quenched it straight and made it worse than
before. The manner how he fell in love with her was this.
Guessing by the former access and credit she had with Julius
Caesar and C. Pompey (the son of Pompey the Great) only for
her beauty, she began to have good hope that she might more
easily win Antonius. For Cnesar and Pompey knew her when she
was but a young thing and knew not then what the world meant,
but now she went to Antonius at the age that a woman's beauty
is at the prime, and she also of best judgment. So she furnished
herself with a world of gifts, store of gold and silver.
but yet she carried nothing with her wherein she trusted more
than in herself, and in the charms and enchantment of her passing beauty and grace. Therefore when she was sent unto by
divers letters both from Antonius himself and also from his friends,
she made so light of it and mocked Antonius so much that she
disdained to set forward otherwise, but to take her barge in the
river of Cydnus, the poop whereof was of gold, the sails of purple,
and the oars of silver, which kept time in rowing after the sound
of the music of flutes, hautboys, citherns, viols and such other
instruments as they played on in the barge. And now for the
person of herself, she was layed under a pavilion of cloth of gold
tissue, apparelled and attired like the goddess Venus, commonly
drawn in picture, and hard by her on either hand of her pretty
fair boys, apparelled as painters do set forth god Cupid with
little fans in their hands with the which they fanned wind upon
her. Her ladies and gentlewomen also, the fairest of them were
apparelled like the Nymphs Nereides (which are the mermaids
of the waters), and like the Graces, some steering the helm, others




CRITICAL ESSAY.


473


tending the tackle and ropes of the barge, out of which there
came a wonderful passing sweet savour of perfumes that perfumed
the wharf's side, pestered with innumerable multitudes of people.
Some of them followed the barge all along the river side, others
also ran out of the city to see her coming in. So that in the end
there ran such multitudes of people one after another to see her
that Antonius was left post alone in the market place in his imperial seat to give audience, and there went a rumour in the
people's mouths that the goddess Venus was come to play with
the god Bacchus for the general good of all Asia..
And when Cleopatra found Antonius jests and slents to be but
gross and soldierlike, in plain manner, she gave it him finely and
without fear taunted him thoroughly. Now her beauty, as it is
reported, was not so passing as unmatchable of other women, nor
yet such as upon present view did enamour men with her, but so
sweet was her company and conversation that a man could not
possibly but be taken. And besides her beauty the good grace
she had to talk and discourse, her courteous manner that tempered her words and deeds was a spur that pricked to the quick.
Furthermore, besides all these, her voice and words were marvellous pleasant, for her tongue was an instrument of music to
divers sports and pastimes, the which she easily turned into any
language that pleased her." ---
" Cleopatra knowing that Octavia would have Antonius from
her, and fearing also that if with her virtue and honest behaviour,
besides the great power of her brother Csesar, she did add thereunto her modest kind love to please her husband, that she would
then be too strong for her and in the end win him away, she
subtly seemed to languish for the love of Antonius pining her
body for lack of meat. Furthermore, she every way so framed
her countenance that when Antonius came to see her she cast
her eyes upon him like a woman ravished for joy. Straight
again, when he went from her she fell a weeping and blubbering,
looking ruefully on the matter, and still found the means that
Antonius should find her oftentimes weeping, and then when he
came suddenly upon her she made as though she dried her eyes
and turned her face away as if she were unwilling that he should
see her weep. All these tricks she used, Antonius being in readiness to go into Syria, &c. &c."
In the first act of the play Antony, fettered as he is, is still
sufficiently self-possessed to accuse himself of doting, to exclaim
upon the cunning of his enchantress, and actually to break away.
Still in the struggle and rupture his resolution becomes fatuity
and inconsistent with itself, for he goes at last with a pledge
upon his lips of such subservience to Egypt in its Queen as makes
him a traitor to Rome, to all his own more extended ambition
and career. For Cleopatra she plays upon him with art as contrived and conscious, with skill as versatile and unfailing as




474       ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA.
musician on the strings, and yet is she in her trickery a being as
uncertain as Antony in his virtue of resolution; even again like
the musician she is not without enjoyment in the arts she'exercises, she pursues them with the zest and abandonment that
mimic at least the dignity of enthusiasm; the sense of desertion
seizes her in the absence of the object of her wiles, and it turns
out that she is so far in companionship with Antony's dotage
that her women can plague her, sportively though it be, with the
same contradiction and crossing that she played off upon Antony.
All the elements of action are already declared in the first act
-the looseness both in manners and ceremoniousness of the
Egyptian court, its riot and voluptuousness are exhibited with
the greatest liveliness and truth; the jests of Enobarbus on Cleopatra's celerity in dying are prophetic, in their irony, of the last
catastrophe, but do not forewarn Antony even against her affected
qualms at his parting; and the indication of the hold that Fulvia
retained upon his mind, even when absent and at odds, bespeaks
the disposition that cannot divest itself of interest in feminine
relationship, even when it is irksome —how much less when a
gratification. The distinctness with which the Roman friends of
Antony perceive his bondage, whether they sorrow or jest over
it, bodes ill for their fidelity, through its consequences; and behind all this revelry and idleness and disorder, the cold and formal
frown of Caesar scowls with the air of heightened indignation and
surprise, so much in favour with the unimaginative martinets of
ambition.
The fated superiority of the cool and steadfast gamester for
power, over the ardent and dissipated, is set forth with admirable
effect in the long scene between the triumvirs, which never
pauses, and flags not in a line, though its subject matter is no
whit more vivacious in itself than the contents of interchanging
protocols. The opening is highly characteristic; Antony enters,
inviting conversation with his officer, not pertinent to the present, as though he would shirk it willingly:" If we compose well here, to Parthia,Hark thee, Ventidius."
Octavius, with mind engrossed, and eyes fixed on Antony, puts
aside an interruption of the same kind that Antony invited:" I do not know Meczenas, ask Agrippa."
As the conference begins, Octavius opens with pertinacious charges
of so little foundation, as only to evidence his will to make a
heavy catalogue; and when Antony fairly rebuts them, he has
too little of dialectic and diplomatic art to follow the parry by a
thrust and make a defence give the advantage of victory. Thus
he feels himself hedged in, when, in truth, he is at liberty; and
escapes from present annoyance by falling into the marriage that
has been planned and prepared for him, and is to prove his ruin.
The threatening importance of Sextus Pompey is so set forth as




CRITICAL ESSAY.


475


quite to explain the desire of Csesar for present reconciliation with
Antony, and with a few of those marked touches that Shakespeare
so often contents himself with, as he considers they should be sufficient for the spectator, he indicates that the mode and instrument
of reconciliation are providently chosen to furnish in due time
an occasion and plea for deadly quarrel.
The motive is indicated in Plutarch:-" It is reported that
Caesar dearly loved his sister Octavia, for indeed she was a noble
lady..... Thereupon every man did set forward this marriage,
hoping thereby that this lady Octavia, having an excellent grace,
wisdom, and honesty, joined unto so rare a beauty, when she
were with Antonius, he loving her as so worthy a lady deserveth,
she should be a good mean to keep good love and amity betwixt
her brother and him..... Now whilst Antonius was busy in this
preparation, Octavia his wife, whom he had left at Rome, would
needs take sea to come unto him. Her brother, Octavius Caesar,
was willing to it, not for his respect at all, as most authors do
report, as for that he might have an honest colour to make war
with Antonius if he did misuse her and not esteem of her as she
ought to be."
In the play, we are at first left to infer much of this from the
disregard by the affectionate brother of the probabilities that are
so obvious, and that could only be overlooked by one so clearsighted and cautious, from set intention. It is after the marriage
has taken place, and the train is laid, that he finds no harm in
laying open what, from his character, must necessarily have been
in his mind all along:" Most noble Antony,
Let not the piece of virtue which is set
Betwixt us, as the cement of our love,
To keep it builded, be the ram to batter
The fortress of it; for better might we
Have loved without this mean, if on both parts
This be not cherished,"
Domitius Enobarbus speaks his prophetic mind frankly to Agrippa
and Mecsenas, the well disciplined councillors of Caesar, who are
in such contrast to his own easv freedom with Antony. His invitation of confidence is quite artless, but not the less disregarded; and Mecaenas, with a solemn countenance, enunciates
the formality:" If beauty, wisdom, modesty can settle
The heart of Antony(as if it could, and as if he supposed that it could)Octavia is
A blessed lottery to him."
An infallible conclusion in a case that is impossible, and the con.
versation of course comes to an end with a pause which is employed in arriving at some such impression. Octavia, of " a holy,




476        ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA.
cold, and still conversation," accepts the match of policy with a
chilling propriety of expression, that makes the excitability of
Cleopatra engaging in its violence, and, licentious as it is, almost
respectable.
Sextus Pompey is as powerless as Antony or Lepidus to escape
from the toils that are closing round him. He affects a style of
heightened political morality in colloquy with his supporter, who
is a notorious pirate, and who adopts the sanctimonious tone just
as he is brooding over a nefarious treachery. Pompey, like Antony, allows himself to be enticed into reconciliation when he is
at his strongest, with the result of giving up to his arch enemy
the choice of time for striking at him fatally. He is true to the
point of honour that Antony would have respected, but his inferior nature is seen in the vain gratification he feels at being of
sufficient importance to consolidate a union of enemies that will
crush him. The revel aboard the galley is a picture executed
with the rampant facility, copiousness, and vigour of Peter Paul
Rubens. To have been made a party to the weakness of such an
excess, and to suffer its uncompensated headache, would be matters of rankling self-reproach to such a spirit as Octavis, certain
to vent itself in some vindictive stroke.
Restless, unsettled, and inconsequent, Antony broke away from
Egypt, and while he did so, gave a pledge that bound him to
return, and made his going idle; again, he makes a reconciliation
at Rome, and straightway turns from its condition in disgust,
and looks again to the East, where his pleasure lies, and to seek
which, or revert to it, is to forfeit all the venture of his policy;
when he next appears, it is evident at once that infatuation has
reached another crisis; he obtains no counsel from within; can
listen to none from without, and has no better screen for his mere
subjugation of soul than dogged obstinacy. The resolutionlJo
~Mba1                          t,      -whe*haztties
Antony fallxws, as suddenly, as necessar9  i~j&-io.bedjint to
attractive force. -ex Re4r"acerin,
he loads her with reproaches; and then, at a tear, as suddenly
as he turned to chase her galley from Actium, he is again her
supplicant and slave.-Even this is not enough, and infatuation
in affection keeps pace with the wild extravagance of his personal
challenge to Caesar; he surprises Cleopatra unmistakeably encouraging the messenger of Ceesar, and vents his rage upon the
messenger by scourging, and his anger in high reproaches and
complaints; and then, as soon as the Queen can gain a hearing
for honeyed words and high protestation, he is soothed and satisfied
at once, and turns again to his old revelry that she had taught
him and so often shared.
So to the last, when he believes that she has betrayed him, and
packed cards with Caesar in the treachery of the fleet, the news
that she has destroyed herself at once turns back his feelings,




CRITICAL ESSAY.                     477
without the slightest hesitation or delay in weighing probabilities
or considering them reconcileable. Repeated proofs and strongest
presumptions are forgotten at once, and, in clear admiration and
devotion to her, he falls on his sword, and learns too late that
her death was feigned, without uttering a word of reproachfulness.
It is the certain proportion of genuine sympathy in preference
and similarity of nature that does exist between Antony and
Cleopatra that saves him from the lowest degradation of rushing
in frantic vehemence to destruction as a dupe absolute. A third
of the measure of his follies and weaknesses would condemn any
character whatever to ridicule that should commit them as the
victim of interest and sordid or political intrigue. Plutarch, the
poet's authority, takes a milder view of her character than Dion,
Cassius and others, who impute the coldest treachery, and, accordingly, he does not implicate her in producing the last desertion
of the fleet. Her entertainment of Thyreus is her most salient
insincerity, and it is hard to decide how far this might not have
proceeded. It was a yielding to temptation, if it was anything
-the temptation of the ruling passion to fascinate and influence
the powerful. Distinct plan is not to be considered in the matter;
and, accordingly, in the last act, though she leaves open the oppor
tunity for a new intrigue, and does not hasten to follow Antony
until the unimpressible character of Octavius has told upon her,
yet she only lays herself open to receive and give impressions so
far as they may follow spontaneously and smoothly, and with no
forcing of the disposition that was innate in her. Hence she
seeks her honour-honour as she could conceive it,-with her
safety of Octavius, as Antony had advised her, though she did
avouch that they did not lie together; but when it proves even
so, and that they must be disjoined, it is safety that she sacrifices, with a decision and dignity that go far to palliate any
transitory unsteadiness, and to wipe out the memory of some
ambiguities.. dramatic value of the character of Enobarbus, as Shakespfeaxa hasjugve opedit a
3ithi    a themL a  Besides  emonstrance    eagji-tr  a's
r~e  i~    thear, Plutarch fur'isheses l ts  e more towards  e
character than this:-" Furthermore, he dealt very friendly and
courteously with Domitius, and against Cleopatra's mind. Fort
he being sick of an ague when he went and took a little boat to\
go unto Caesar's camp, Antonius was very sorry for it, but yet he \
sent after him all his carriage train and men; and the said Domitius, as though he gave him to understand that he repented of
his open treason, died immediately after." In the play, Domitius,
while he is largely participant in riot and irregularity, and largely
accessary to hasty imprudence, and yields to none in appreciation
of the seductive charm of Cleopatra, is still in perfect contrast to




478       ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA.
Antony by his freedom from infatuation. In some respects he is
like Cleopatra too, who looks on at the ruin she has made, and
mingles pity with her return for the passion that in itself is too
degenerate to be called love unmingled. It is when Antony is
gradually overtasking the sympathies of the spectator, that they
are recalled by his proofs of nobility of nature on the desertion of
Domitius, and the example holds us truer to the end. Bad
master as Antonius might be, his followers, at least, would never
find a better; and the choice of service that was made mistakenly
at the best time, is not to be corrected by desertion of the falling
fortune. The spectator who has looked on too indulgently at
luxury and extravagance, must be content as their consequences
come on to condemn himself along with Antony, and feel a sympathetic commiseration for his fate, that is not by any means
acquittal, and yet not merely pity.
Of the errors of Cleopatra, too, it is strange if we do not feel ourselves-patent as her arts are from the first-in some degree the
accomplices. It is hard if we have not conceded, it might be too
willingly, that she is a spirited and noble creature, inspiriting all
that approach her, and compensating by the joyous excitement
she confers in the present for all the loss and self-accusation that
may ensue afterwards. Certainly if we have conceded thus much
we have gone too far, and the mistake is brought home to us in
the revulsion; and, as the play draws to a close, it is with purged
eyes and purified sympathies that we look on with observant and
curious interest at the deeds that finish all. Ruined in fortune
as disgraced in fame, shamed by the disproving revelations of her
slave, disconcerted by the chill encouragements of Caesar, who
would have her " feed and sleep," like a caged beast, to be kept
in sleek condition for a barbarous show, the once enchanting
queen is on the brink of the greatest shame and suffering of all,
the most absolute self-contempt. As it is, her resolution to follow Antony has been long enough postponed to deprive it of the
first heroic splendour, and to save us from the illusion of belief
that such a life and such a close of it could combine either for
genuine enjoyment or genuine glory. True, Shakespeare so far
indulges her for the sake of what was truly excellent in her
original nature as to allow-the gleam before departure, the lightning before death. Her spirits rouse themselves again to a certain pitch of former powers of fascination, as reverting in enthusiasm to the idea of Antony, she attracts the heart of Dolabella
to a last obligation, and exerts herself to nerve the resolution of
her women by eloquence, well aimed though indirect, and by
stately bearing. This, with her triumph over the vulgar intention of Csesar, to subject her to the misery of public exhibition,
as a grace to his military show, enables her to fall at last with a
relative advantage, and relieves the necessary flatness inherent in
natural conclusion of the theme. There is an involuntary and un



CRITICAL ESSAY.


47 9


conscious irony in the concluding words of Coesar, that not only
applies to Antony and Cleopatra, but is reflected lpon himself:" Take up her bed,
And bear her women from the monument:She shall be buried by her Antony:
No grave upon the earth shall clip in it
A pair so famous. High events as these
Strike those that make them: and their story is
No less in pity, than his glory, which
Brought them to be lamented."
This is the tone that Octavius reaches, when, making the best of
an untoward event, he strains for a display of magnanimityand indeed it is literally true, and it is but little it amounts to,
that when gifted natures have carried down themselves and their
country to ruin, by voluptuous indulgence and recklessness, the
tenderness with which the spectacle touches our common humanity at least countervails our admiration for the conqueror
who was the instrument of their destruction, and who survives
to inaugurate a period from which the seeds of geniality have
been extirpated, and in which, apart from some memory and
some remainder from the immediately preceding age, there is
nothing left remarkable-there is a general destitution of originating faculty, below the visiting moon.
It were superfluous to dilate on the distinct and accurate conceptions the poet could realize and convey of the scene of his
drama, of Egypt in its last age of independence, its natural wonders, its primeval monuments, its living monsters, and immortal
superstitions, and the intermingled populations and customs
making it the seat and centre of all that was novel, and all that
should be obsolete, the sink and confluence of the still procreant
corruptions of two degenerate worlds.
The play throughout evinces the master hand of Shakespeare
-it reads with unchecked freshness, as though it flowed with
quickest facility from his pen, at the same time that every line is
charged with the maturest autumn of his ripened mind. Luxuriant as the execution is, it is so governed by appropriateness,
that I doubt whether any of Shakespeare's plays can be more
justly entitled correct, in the technical sense, than Antony and
Cleopatra,-whether from any other a single line could less easily
be struck out without apparent injury and loss.
I conclude with one more extract from the biography, in illustration of the skill with which Shakespeare availed himself of
presented materials,-a skill only less remarkable than his fulness of native resource when assistance was not forthcoming.
" When he heard that she was alive, he very earnestly prayed
his men to carryhis body thither, and so he was carried in his men's
arms into the entry of the monument. Notwithstanding, Cleopatra
would not open the gates, but came to the high windows and




480       ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA.
cast out certain chains and ropes, in the which Antonius was
trussed. And Cleopatra her own self, with two women only,
which she had suffered to come with her into these monuments,
trised Antonius up. They that were present to behold it said
they never saw so pitiful a sight, for they plucked up poor Antony, all bloody as he was, and drawing on with pangs of death,
who, holding up his hands to Cleopatra, raised himself up as well
as he could. It was a hard thing for these women to do to lift
him up, but Cleopatra, stooping down with her head, putting too
all her strength to her uttermost power, did lift him up with
much ado, and never let go her hold, with the help of the women
beneath, that bade her be of good courage, and were as sorry to
see her labour so as she herself. So when she had gotten him in
after that sort, and laid him on a bed, she rent her garments and
laid upon him, clapping her breast and scratching her face and
stomach. Then she dried up his blood that had bewrayed his face,
and called him her lord, her husband, and emperor, forgetting her
own misery and calamity for the pity and compassion she took of
him. Antonius made her cease her lamenting, and called for wine,
either because he was athirst, or else for that he thought thereby
to hasten his death. When he had drunk, he earnestly prayed
her and persuaded her that she would seek to save her life, if
she could possible, without reproach and dishonour, and that
chiefly she should trust Proculeius above any man else about
Caesar. And as for himself, that she should not lament nor sorrow for the miserable change of his fortune at the end of his days,
but rather that she should think him the more fortunate for the
former triumphs and honours he had received, considering that,
while he lived, he was the noblest and greatest prince of the
world, and that now he was overcome not cowardly, but valiantly,
a Roman by another Roman."




CRITICAL ESSAY ON CYMBELINE.


YMBELINE was first published, so far as is known, in
the original folio of 1623, where it is placed last of the
tragedies, and, indeed, last of the collection, I could
almost think settling into this place from some hesitation of the editors how it should be classified. It lacks the
predominance of historical interest and steady adherence to literal
detail that mark the English Chronicle plays, and yet it has an
historical element which, together with some severities, —the
slaughter of Cloten, the despair of his raving mother, and the
pitched battle between Britons and Romans, take it-despite the
happiness and reconciliations of its ending-out of the class of
comedies. The mistrusts of lovers, when they are once married,
are no longer subjects for comedy; and had Perdita and Florizel
been married before the commencement of their drama, instead
of in the course of it, The Winter's Tale must have rated as a
tragedy too. These two plays, it has often been remarked, are
very similar in style of versification and general treatment, and
The Tempest makes a third. We observe in all of them a tempered combination of serious policy, picturesque and romantic
adventure, and the sharper pangs as well as the tenderness of the
affections. These resemblances, no doubt, partly express the manner and especial facility of the artist at a period, and partly even his
consideration for the exigence of a period of public taste. Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, and Henry VIII. again may be compared
together in the frequent resort to a convenience —so managed,
however, as to rise to an artifice-in the employment of dialogues
between lords and walking gentlemen, who bring narrative to
the relief of action, and disencumber the drama of passion, of the
dead weight of flat or overcrowded incident, which, nevertheless,
is requisite to be known. All the plays thus compared with
Cymbeline belong to the poet's mature period, when he wrote
with equal richness and chasteness, facility and severity; or,
rather, they are among the plays that bespeak and evidence the
attainment and range of these qualifications, and it happens that
preserved indications of date support the hints of style and exeI I




482              CRITICAL ESSAY.
cution. The Tempest was acted in 1611, The Winter's Tale in
the same year, Henry VIII. was new in 1613, and Dr. Forman's
Book of Plays and Notes thereof gives a dry abstract of Cymbeline as seen on the stage by him either in 1610 or 1611, that is,
when Shakespeare was some forty-six years old.
Proceeding, however, upon judgement by internal evidence,
there seems reason for conjecturing that Cymbeline has some
obligations to an earlier year. Despite the unembarrassed mastery that pervades the greater part of it, some traces of quaintness obtrude themselves that are of a lower tone than Shakespeare's absolute inspirations, and we are disposed to ask whether,
for instance, in the vision of Posthumus and the interpretation
of the tablet, it is a remainder from another hand or from his
own at an earlier period, that he did not trouble himself to obliterate at his last revision.
Sooth to say, I have never been disposed to number Cymbeline among the chiefest works of its author, even while asserting
its origin for his ripened art; to do so would be to wrong the
perfections of works of larger scope, of deeper interest, of nobler
capabilities of concentration and development. In this respect I
would compare it with Timon of Athens, which remains like a
statue half sculptured from the block, and left so on account of a
natural flaw that would make further labour thrown away. The
elaboration of Cymbeline is much more extensive and much
nearer to completeness, but still I believe it incomplete, and from
the same feeling and conscience not to mask an essential weakness by gauds of ornament or false declamation. Cymbeline,
from whom the play takes its name, is the personage in whom all
the lines of interest, from both the plots, cross and converge; but
he is far too weak and vacillating to assert the dignity of the
drama to which he lends his name, as of the same stamp as the
other dramas with personal titles, —as the regal plays generally,
or as Hamlet, as Lear, Othello, or Macbeth. Management, sequence, and development dominate over characterisation, and the
highest creative power which we know to be in Shakespeare is
never throughout the play in highest manifestation. Had Johnson applied to this play his remark on the leading female character of Henry VIII., I should have been less disposed to murmur
at such a dictum as, " the genius of Shakespeare comes in and
goes out with Imogen; the other parts are easily conceived and
easily written." Easily, that is for Shakespeare, and so far easily,
that we may conceive not absolutely impossible by one or two
other poets near his age.
In Cymbeline, also, we may note what has -presented itself in
the plays of admitted inferiority, a recurrence of hints of motive
and character that are fully worked out in more perfect pieces.
This is sometimes an anticipation, but sometimes a memory; and
possibly the appearance that lachimo is a first idea of Iago, and




CYMBELINE.                     483
Posthumus the crude conception of the passion of Othello, as
Cymbeline of the weakness and tyranny of Lear, may be but fallacious. Indeed, the thought has sometimes occurred to me, that
Shakespeare indulged himself designedly in this drama in playing with the same motives in less severe combination, and in
falling back for relief, after the tension of his great tragic actions,
upon the milder harmonies that might be evoked as truly from the
self-same themes.
The chief incident of the slander of Imogen is traceable to a
story of Boccaccio, by such evidence of detail that it is clear the
poet must have had access to its substance, though in what form,
or by what channel, it is not given to us to know. For any thing
we can say, he may have read it in the original, or in a translation, or he may have followed it at second hand through some
other dramatist, as I think is, on the whole, most likely. Boccaccio tells the tale of a party of Italian merchants at an hotel
in Paris, who encourage each other in irregularities by general
agreement, that no doubt their wives are as apt to make holiday
at home during their absence. Bernabo Lomellin alone demurs
and dilates in confident enthusiasm on the virtue as well as the
beauty and accomplishments of his wife. This provokes the
coarse derision of Ambrogiuolo da Piacenza, who vaunts his invariable success against the weakness of the sex, and promises
himself as easy a victory over the paragon. Bernabd declares
that he would stake his head against a thousand gold florins of
the scoffer that he would be foiled, and the end is a wager of odds
in money upon his wife's chastity, which he agrees and arranges
should be put to the test. Shakespeare, it will be observed, avoids
the indecency of making the idea of the wager, in whatever form,
originate with the husband, and has somewhat farther protected
him by his amendment of its terms. The amendment the Italian
merchant consents to is of the romantic into the mercantile; Posthumus declines the chance of gain from such a wager, but demands
that the calumniator, in the event of failure, shall undergo his
challenge. There is also some palliation for him,-if palliation
can be thought of in such a matter,-that the dispute is not
originated by him, but brought up in continuation of younger indiscreetness, and that the conversation before his entrance gave
his opponent a motive of envious malice against him that he was
not in a position to suspect.
Ambrogiuolo is so convinced by report, that he does not once
address the lady, but bribing a female whom she befriends, procures himself to be conveyed into a bedchamber in a chest, deposited there under a false pretence. " The chest, therefore, remaining in the chamber, and night come, when Ambrogiuolo
became aware that the lady was asleep, he opened it by a certain
contrivance of his and stealthily got out into the room, where
she had a light burning. He thus began to observe and confirm




484


CRITICAL ESSAY.


in his memory the situation of the room, the pictures, and every
thing else in it remarkable." He notices the mole on the breast,
takes various personal ornaments, &c. that are about, and retires
to his hiding-place. His report to the husband is thus related:
-" Returned to Paris, he called together the merchants who were
present when the wager was agreed, and told Bernabo that he
had gained the wager laid between them, inasmuch as he had
accomplished his vaunt; and, to prove this true, he first described
the form of the chamber, its decoration, and then showed the
things he had brought with him, averring that he had received
them from her. Bernabo confessed that his description of the
chamber was correct, and, moreover, that he recognized the various articles as having belonged to his wife; but he said that he
might have learned the particulars respecting the room from some
of the servants of the house, and obtained the things he exhibited
by the same means; therefore, unless he had more to say, it did
not appear that this implied that he had conquered." Ambrogiuolo therefore said:-" In reality this ought to suffice, but since
you wish that I should tell you something more yet, tell it I
will; I say that Madonna Zinevra, your wife, has below the left
breast a mole very distinct, and around it are some six little
hairs as bright as gold (un neo ben grandicello, dintorno al quale
son forse sei peluzzi biondi come oro). When Bernabo heard
this, he seemed struck to the heart with a knife," &c.
Bernabo returns to Italy, writes a letter to his wife to come
to him, and lays the injunction on the trusty servant who conducts her, to kill her by the way, but does not tell him for what
offence. The wife easily begs her life from the reluctant murderer, on the promise that she will quit the country, and never
endanger him by letting her escape be known. He takes some
of her clothes to show to her husband in proof of her death, and
leaves her to her fortune with a little money.
She assumes male attire, takes service with a Spanish gentleman, proceeds with him to Alexandria, and is transferred to the
service of the Soldan, whose notice she attracted by those handy
ways of attendance that her husband admired so, and that are
continued in the Fidele of the play. (" Oltre a questo niuno
scudiere o famigliar che dir vogliamo, diceva trovarsi, il quale
meglio nb piu accortamente servisse ad una tavola d'un signore,
che serviva ella, si come colei che era costumatissima, savia e
discreta molto.") Here the locality seems to suggest an adaptation of the denouement of the story of Joseph; the wagering
husbands may already have reminded of the primitive-if primitive, tale of Collatine and Tarquin. Zinevra, now Sicurano, rises
in favour and power, and it is as captain and lord of the guard
of a mercantile congress that she recognizes her stolen ornaments;
discovers, by interrogating the owner, the story he still connects
with them, and thus the cause of her husband's anger. Still




CYMBELINE.


485


preserving her disguise, she confronts the two merchants in the
presence of the Soldan, extorts the truth from both, and at last
discovers herself, almost to their equal confusion. It is at her
request that the Soldan " remits to Bernabo the death he had
deserved;" and likewise, at her request, that Ambrogiuolo is
forthwith tied to a stake in the sun, in an exposed part of the
city, and anointed with honey to attract the flies and vermin, and
thence not to be removed till he was not only dead but eaten
away to the bones. "E cosi rimase lo' ngannatore a'pie dello
'ngannato."
There is no indication given in this tale of the compunction for
calumny expressed by Iachimo before detection, and by which
we are reconciled to a pardon, but as little appears on the part of
the injured husband for his savage revenge. There was little
either of compliment or consolation for his wife in hearing that
he ordered her death, " overcome with anger for the loss of my
money, and with shame at the disgrace I seemed to have received." The Italian author does not appear to have appreciated
like Shakespeare the relative delinquencies, for the injustice lies
at the door of the heroine, whom he intended to send home to
Genoa with her husband and the goods of her injurer, not only
happy but approved and applauded.
Boccaccio's life occupies the middle of the fourteenth century
(1313-1375), and two old French romances that give variations
of the same story are supposed to date a century earlier. Mr.
Collier has given an analysis of them from Le Journal de Savans,
and they furnish certain parallels to the play not to be found in
the tale of the Decameron, and certain germs of incident that
evidently were hints of invention to intermediate fabulists whose
wits are not unrepresented in the play. The Roman de la Violette was printed in France in 1834, and takes its name from the
description that is itself a parallel. The traitor Liziart gains
opportunity of espial at the bath of Oriant:" I voit
De sur sa destre mamelete
Le semblant d'une violete."
Compare:"On her left breast
A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops
I' the bottom of a cowslip."
In the other romance, Le Compte de Poitiers, we find verbalities
that are as close to the terms of Boccaccio:"Ensagnes ai qui font, croire
Yes chi X de cheveux sors,
Qui plus reluisent que fins ors,
Yes qui l'anel qui li donastes,
A icel jor que l'espousastes;
Et ceste ensagne de cendal




486


CRITICAL ESSAY.


Fu pris au bon samit roial,
Que votre feme avoit vestu.
J' ai gaagnie et vous perdu."
In both the romances the story is laid, as in Shakespeare, at a
court and among kings, courtiers and counties; in both the traitor
makes a declaration to the lady and meets with a rebuff, and
gains his information and false signs of success by aid of a corrupted servant,-nothing being said of the stratagem of the chest.
It is the husband himself in both who is on the point of killing
his wife in a forest when a lion or a serpent rushes on them; he
kills the savage and then spares his wife-the abstract given
does not note the reason why, who remains behind in despair and
faints," Sor i perron de marbre bis
Que sanglent en a tot le vis;"
and it is beside the bloody carcase in the woody scene, as Imogen
by the bleeding trunk of Cloten in the glen, that she is found and
rescued by the Duke of Metz-by Harpin. Abundant adventures
nothing to cur purpose ensue in both stories, except perhaps that
the Count of Poitiers confronts his deceiver in the disguise of a
pilgrim. In both it is the husband who detects the fraud without any aid from the stolen trinkets as in the novel and the play,
and both romances end as they are wont to do and should, with
a challenge and a combat in which the felon is defeated and dies
confessing his crime.
" Or est la contesse joians,
Car ele est dames des Normans;
Pepin l'en a donne le don,
Voiant maint prince et maint baron."
The same incidents are again contained in an old French play,
published in 1839, in the "Thaftre Francais au Moyen-age,"Un miracle de Nostre Dame; and here we find that Shakespeare
nad a precedent for his introduction of the supernatural element,
for "not only the characters engaged in the story, but the Creator,
the Virgin, the archangels Gabriel and Michael, and St. John are
interlocutors." The scene is laid in Spain and at Rome, and the
play very probably followed a Spanish original, if in such a series
of interchanges originality can come in question. The heroine
here again is betrayed by a false attendant, and loses her husband's keepsake-un os d'un des doigts du pied de son mari, I
do not quite comprehend this-when laid asleep by a potion,the first appearance of the draught recommended by Pisanio.
Denise disguises herself and challenges her calumniator, but her
husband anticipates her, and her discovery ensues upon confession
extorted by his victory.
Mr. Collier draws attention to two points of resemblance between the French Miracle play and Shakespeare. Thus at the
proposal of the wager:



CYMIBELINE.


487


" Et vous dy bien que je me vant,
Que je ne scay femme vivant,
Mais que ij foiz k li parlasse,
Que le tierce avoir n'en cuidasse
Tout mon delit."
Compare lachimo, Act i. Sc. 5. " With no more advantage than
the opportunity of a second conference, and I will bring you from
thence that honour of hers which you imagine so reserved."
Again it is here that we find a precedent for the slander against
Posthumus in aid of the attempted seduction of his wife.
" De Romme vien, oh j'ai laissie
Vostre seigneur, qui vous ne prise,
Pas la queue d'une serise;
D'une garce c'est accointid
Qu'il a en si grand amistie,
Qu'il ne scet de elle departir."
The only English variant of this part of the story of Cymbeline that is known is contained in a publication entitled Westward for Smelts, and only known in an edition dated 1620, or
four years after the death of Shakespeare. Malone stated that it
was first published in 1603, but on what authority is not known,
and the preserved edition corresponds with an entry in the
Stationers' books implying that it was the first. The question is
of no great moment, for it is so clear by evidence within that the
author knew nothing of Cymbeline, and that Shakespeare knew
nothing or borrowed nothing of this tale, that there can be little
doubt the resemblances are due to common sources, and from this
point of view they have their interest. The Tale told by a fishwife of Strand on the Green-this is the special title, is for the
most part as coarse and common-place as any night-charge summed
up, and commented on by the sitting alderman; but, nevertheless,
the course of events towards the conclusion is the closest parallel
we have to the end of the story of Imogen, as Boccaccio has
supplied the closest parallel to its beginning. The incidents take
place among the English middle class during the civil wars between Henry VI. and Edward IV. The slandered wife wanders
about the country in man's apparel, and now at the last extremity
living on herbs in a solitary place beside York. "' In this time it
chanced that King Edward being come out of France and lying
thereabout with the small forces he had, came that way with some
two or three noblemen.      He seeing there this gentlewoman
whom he supposed to be a boy, asked her what she was, and what
she made there in that private place. To whom sh6 very wisely
and modestly withal answered, that she was a poor boy whose
bringing up had been better than her outward parts then showed,
but at that time she was both friendless and comfortless by reason
of the late war. He being moved to see one so well featured as she
was to want, entertained her for one of his pages, to whom she




488              CRITICAL     ESSAY.
showed herself so dutiful and loving that in short time she had
his love above all her fellows. Still followed she the fortunes of
King Edward hoping at last (as not long after it did fall out),
to be reconciled to her husband. After the battle at Barnet,
where King Edward got the best, she going up and down amongst
the slain men, to know whether her husband, which was on King
Henry's side, were dead or escaped, happened to see the other
who had been her guest lying there for dead, and thinking him
to be one whom her husband loved went to him, and finding him
not dead she caused one to help her with him to a house thereby,
when opening of his breast to dress his wounds she espied her
crucifix," &c.
He drops expressions to the disguised wife that prove or imply
the extent of his guilt, and she confronts him with her husband
who is among the prisoners, in the presence of the king, and demands an explanation which is obtained at last, though not very
cleverly, and all is discovered. "The king wondered how he
durst (knowing God to be just) commit so great a villany, but
much more admired he to see his page turn to a gentlewoman;
but ceasing to admire he said: Sir (speaking to her husband),
you did the part of an unwise man to lay so foolish a wager, for
which offence the remembrance of your folly is punishment enough,
but seeing it concerns me not, your wife shall be your judge.
With that Mistress Darrill (thanking his majesty) went to her
husband saying, all my anger to you I lay down with this kiss."
By King Edward's award the slanderer is quit for refunding his
wrongful gains threefold, and a year's imprisonment.
Now whose whim it was first, and how he conceived it to
transplant this tale into the reign of Cymbeline, is a mystery and
a puzzle. One might think that in the desire to dramatize early
British history-of which Gorboduc and Ferrex and Porrex are
evidence, the very meagreness of this reign provoked a supply of
incident at random. Holinshed, an authority familiar to Shakespeare, gives little enough aid or hint for expansion. The 18th
chapter of his third book is headed-" Of Kymbeline within the
time of whose government Christ Jesus our Saviour was born, all
nations content to obey the Roman Emperors, and consequently
Britain."
" Kymbeline, or Cimbeline, the son of Theomantius, was of the
Britains made king after the decease of his father.....
This man, as some write, was brought up at Rome, and there
made knight by Augustus Caesar, under whom he served in the
wars, and was in such favour with him that he was at liberty to
pay his tribute or not. Little other mention is made of his
doings, except that during his reign our Lord Jesus Christ, the
only Son of God, was born of a virgin.
" Touching the continuance of the years of Kymbeline's reign
some writers do vary, but the best approved affirm that he reigned




CYMBELINE.


489


thirty-five years, and then died and was buried at London,
leaving behind him two sons, Guiderius and Arviragus."  He
proceeds to advert to the several designs of Augustus to pass
over into Britain to compel payment of the tribute, designs always stayed by interruptions nearer home, by the Pannonians
and Dalmatians or others. " But whether this controversy which
appeareth to fall forth betwixt the Britains and Augustus was
occasioned by Kymbeline or some other prince of the Britains, I
have not to vouch: for that by our writers it is reported that
Kymbeline being brought up in Rome, and knighted in the court
of Augustus, ever showed himself a friend to the Romans, and
chiefly was loth to break with them, because the youth of the
British nation should not be deprived of the benefit to be trained
and brought up among the Romans, whereby they might learn
both to behave themselves like civil men and to attain to the
knowledge of feats of war."
The names Cloten or Cloton and Sicilius are furnished by the
Chronicle. It appears then that what has been collected respecting the source of the plot of Cymbeline may be interesting as
affording contrasted views of many of the motives concerned,
and as illustrative of the general history and transformations of
a fiction, but instructs us little as to Shakespeare's treatment of
his materials in this instance, as we have not the form in which
they reached him. As it is, we have not even general indications
of any source for the tale of the stolen princes; but when we consider from what various quarters, and what far distances descended
to the poet the rays of inspiration that he focalized, we may be
well content to have to follow no further and no more, in a research where each step removes us from the attractive point. It
is nearer to our design to give thought to the consideration in
what interest and with what degree of perfection the ultimate
concentration in the drama was brought about. The non-appearance of the story of the stolen princes in Holinshed is in
favour of some anterior and rudimentary play, and confirms the
presumption derivable from the tone of some of the scenes and
incidents: not of course that Shakespeare could not invent such
an incident, but that it is not in his way to have done so merely
to connect the story of Imogen the princess with the age of Cymbeline. The Chronicle furnishes no hint for either anecdote, and
displays no aptitude for their insertion and association. I suspect
that the story of the foundlings had been previously grafted on
the Chronicle, and that perhaps to Shakespeare alone was due
the addition of the slandered Imogen to the group: perhaps in
an older story Belarius and Posthumus were but one.
Following the hint from the title of the play, that Shakespeare
meant something more than a mere drama of intrigue, or even
passion, I glance generally over the play and receive from it
the impression that-with all its lapses of detail and keeping, it




490


CRITICAL ESSAY.


embodies a definite phase in the history and civilization of our
island. There is no discord in the proper Roman plays that jars
so harshly as the knighting of Cymbeline by Augustus transferred from Holinshed, though Shakespeare can dextrously evade
the quaint anachronisms in the language of North's Plutarch; the
mediaeval Italian names Iachimo and Philario are still more uneasy, otherwise I suspect these discordances are rather with our
associations than with the facts, that envoys-say of the Allobroges, used barbaric names for Roman customs, and that the
manners of at least provincial Italy were much nearer to the
modern than to those reflected in the preserved literature of a
small though metropolitan class. The drama then attempts and,
with due and free allowance, has a certain claim to be the representation of a long period, that we infer rather than know, when
British princes like Cunobelin, within a generation after the invasion by Julius Caesar, struck coins bearing types of Roman
gods, reminiscent even of the Greek ideal, in many points of art
a better and more varied series than has been current among us
at any time since, and when as visitors, tributary, supplicant or
hostage, they might talk of Rome and contrast its splendour and
vices with the simplicity of Britain, or lament or contribute to
that introduction of Roman culture that furnished a sneer to
Juvenal, a maxim of policy to Tacitus.
If we follow the origin of the dramatic movement to its roots,
we find it to spring from the facile reception by Cymbeline of
calumny against Belarius, and a hasty obedience to first impressions in revenge-characteristics that cling to him in his treatment of Posthumus, of his own daughter and in his impulsesthough happily prevented, against Guiderius and Belarius again
in the last scene of the play:" 0 boys, this story-(the arts and injustice of courts)
The world may read in me; my body's marked
With Roman swords: and my report was once
First with the best of note: Cymbeline loved me;
And when a soldier was the theme, my name
Was not far off....... My fault being nothing (as I have told you oft)
But that two villains whose false oaths prevailed
Before my perfect honour, swore to Cymbeline
I was confederate with the Romans: so,
Followed my banishment."
Belarius by as hasty retaliation steals away the heirs of the
kingdom, and the weak king is thrown upon the arts of his second
wife, and leans for counsel even upon Cloten. Their unpolicied
boldness is carrying the realm to destruction; Imogen, meanwhile, not born the heir, has so little of political force that she
would willingly change her state for love in a cow-shed with
Posthumus, who for his part too, accomplished as he is, professes




CYMBELINE.                       491
himself no statist and none like to be. Cymbeline allows himself to be wrought to the banishment of his son-in-law as easily
as he banished his general, and to be excited to the most unnatural severity towards his daughter.
Posthumus, highly endowed, refined and sensitive, is in directest
contrast in most respects to Cymbeline, his father-in-law, and yet
participates in the characteristic weakness of want of balance
between intellect and passion which renders him the prey of
treacherous and calumnious malice.
The eulogies upon him with which the play opens, and that
excite the envy of Iachimo afterwards, are no more than are due
to the excellencies and capacities of his nature; but the crudeness of the inexperienced islander is still about him, and he is no
match for the serpent guile of an Italian liar and slanderer who
works upon him against his better sense, until he is a party to a
wager that no circumstances and no conditions can palliate or
justify. Something of simplicity mingles with the frankness of
both husband and wife, and therein also are they sympathetic;
though the husband is less pardonable. It is a grievous fault
that he accepts so disgraceful a challenge, and argues defective
acumen that he does not discern base motive when it is put upon
the footing of a wager for his priceless diamond. Imogen at first
seems quicker in detecting the serpent by his glistening eye when
she repels the tempter; but in truth she is little wiser, and is as
inconsiderate in putting any trust in the beguiling Italian afterwards, as her husband in making covenants of honour with one
so self-convicted of baseness and mean thoughts. When the revulsion comes, the heart of Posthumus is still more nearly right
than his judgement, and while he expresses repentance for his
precipitate cruelty to Imogen, he continues in the belief that she
was guilty. The slander of Iachimo springs up again in the
bosom of Imogen, and when she reads her husband's command
to kill her, she ascribes it to the seduction of some painted jay of
Italy.
The poet, it must be said, struggles manfully to countervail
the repulsiveness of the wager that was a condition of his plot,
by giving Posthumus the benefit of every excuse that could
come from provocation and the dexterity of his assailant, both in
seducing him to the contract and deceiving him as to the result;
but the repulsiveness still remains, for it is essential and inseparable, and all that remained was to supply another group to relieve by more hearty interest, and to withdraw some attention
from the wretchedness of the story by interest in the ingenuity
— and this is quite unrivalled, of its progress and elucidation.
The British court, its princes and people are depicted at their
first contact with civilization, already participating in some of its
corruptions, the victims of others, in either case with symptoms
that are proper to the working of the virus on constitutions re



492


CRITICAL ESSAY.


taining much of the vigour of barbarism,-Britain in its pupil
age.
The princely brothers in the cave are in a manner common
types of natural Britain, divided off and lying separate from Mae
continental world; they are brought up in simplicity but in rudeness, in purity but in inexperience, in safety but in dulness, but
their breed and blood declare themselves when their spirits rebel
at the seclusion, and prefer to take the noble chances of glory,
experience, usefulness, recollections, even though scathed in the
trial. Posthumus describes two stages of British progress, undisciplined but daring against Julius Coesar, now of improved
knowledge and skill to aid their valour, but his own example
proves his country still a tyro when culture of yesterday is matched
with the veteran craft and villany of centuries. The young princes
are rather representatives of the earlier state, but they convey the
idea of a fund of healthy vigour in the background to reinforce
the failures of first attempts, and by their aspirations they set a
mark that declares the country's destiny. It is as vile for England
as for her princes to sit out in dull satisfaction with animal comforts, while the work of the world is calling for hands and hearts
to,aid, and though disaster may wound or diplomacy perplex,
danger and entanglement alike must be encountered and reduced, and where purpose is sound, and resolution staunch, and
wits well meaning, no doubt dexterity, alertness, penetration,
and prudence will come in good time to aid hard blows and
manly opposition.
The story of Imogen is therefore in truth an episode in the
play, and will so be recognized by those whose interest is proof
against the all-engrossing fascination of a love story. The beauty
of the character of Imogen has always had admirers, and it has
not been left for me to indicate her excellencies; among them,
however, I know not that it has been reckoned yet, that when she
believes the husband who had done her such injury lies slaughtered beside her, her grief does not reach the last pitch of desperation, and-though it may be only by the mercy of the poetit is not until she knows the treachery that deceived him, that
the full tide of love flows back and mingles undividedly with perfect oblivion and forgiveness;-a love indeed worthy the ambition
of those whose years have not desolately gone by, or who have
not other and better work in the world than love, as the world
now goes is easily compatible with.
The vision and the oracular tablet are so utterly unnecessary
to the disknotting of the main intrigue of the play, that they
must have been recommended by some special purpose and propriety, if we are only wise enough to see it. It will be found
that they only contribute to the arrangement of the terms of
peace at last, and thus Jupiter with his thunderbolts from the
machine is rendered available for what the poet thought a worthy




CYMBELINE.


493


service,-the same for which Holihshed, as we have seen, was
fain to fall back on the anniversary of the Nativity and the
fated peace,-an apology for a submission that made Britain
tributary.
Of Cymbeline and the immediate suggestions of the playalbeit abundant and yet unexhausted, I am not now minded to
say more. I touch now the conclusion of a long review of the
works by which Shakespeare is supreme over all dramatic poetry
as Homer over Epic. I shall not be surprised if it be thought
that I have sometimes interpreted my author with a settled
seriousness wrongly applied to plays-plays that could only gain
an audience and keep it and recall it on the condition of giving
gratification, amusement, even flattery. What space is still remaining I might claim then for a few more sentences of yet
calmer sobriety to justify the relation assumed between Ethics
and.Esthetics in principle,-operative in the lightest comedy as
in the severest virtue; but that Philosophy at her brightest is
but a haze when we have been moving through the more than
Eleusinian illumination with which Shakespeare entrances the
imagination, while he controls conscience and touches the heart.


THE END.




CHISWICK PRES * —WHITTINGHAM AND WILKINS
TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE.




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