j-   
 
 
 
 
 Ex Libris 
 C. K. OGDEN 
 
 
 
 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES

 
 PEiZE ESSAYS 
 
 CHIEFLY 
 
 SHAKSPEREAN STUDIES.
 
 "In the discovery of truth, in the rtovclopenient of man's mental powers and 
 privilefjes, each generation has its assigned part ; and it is for us to endeavour to 
 perform our portion of this perpetual task of our species." — Wiiewklu
 
 PRIZE ESSAYS 
 
 OHIEFLY 
 
 SHAKSPEREAN STUDIES. 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN J. WALLER, 
 
 Eilltorof "The (Jniwrsity College of WaLe^t Magazine," Sglventer Peti/t Scliolar 
 
 of the Shipton (h-ammar School, Prize-man of the Neiv Shakupere 
 
 Society, Fellow of the Rognl Society of Literature. 
 
 ABERYSTWYTH : 
 
 J. GIBSON, "CAMBRIAN NEWS" PRINTING WORKS, MILL STREET. 
 
 MDCCCLXXXII.
 
 ' Tho liononr of L,Tcat names 'tis just to guard ; 
 They are a trust but lent us, which we talcc, 
 And should, in rc^•erence to the donor's fame, 
 With care transmit them down to other hands.' 
 
 Shirley.
 
 I ' \ 
 
 
 THESE ESSAYS ARE RESPECTFULLY 
 To THK Right Honourable LORD ABERDARE 
 
 (PEKSIDENT OF THE COUNCIL), 
 
 LEWIS MORRIS, Esq., M.A. 
 
 (secretary op the council), 
 
 The Rev. T. 0. EDWARDS, M.A. 
 
 (principal). 
 
 Of the UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF WALES, 
 
 1 3()82'72
 
 " I look upon every true tliou.nht as a valuable acquisition to society, which 
 cannot possibly hurt or obstruct the tfood effect of any other truth whatsoever 
 for they all partake of one common essence, and necessarily coincide with each 
 other ; and, like the drops of rain which fall separately into the river, mix 
 themselves at once with the stream, and strunythen the ','eneral current." 
 
 Dr. Miuuleto.n.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 I. — FORESPEECH 
 
 II. — Shakspere's Hypocrites 
 III.— The Supernatural in Shakspere 
 
 IV.— Shakspere's Clowns 
 
 V. — Style and Thouoht 
 
 VI. — The Drama: Its Decline and Reformation 
 
 IX 
 
 1 
 
 83 
 
 99 
 
 141 
 
 157
 
 ' Go, little Ijookc ; tiod send tlicc c;ood passaire, 
 And sppciallj- let this be thy praycro, 
 Unto thcni all that thee will read or hear, 
 Where thou art wrong' after their help to call. 
 Thee to correct in any part, or all." 
 
 Chaucer.
 
 FORESPEECH. 
 
 It is very difficult to write an Introduction— sach a thing is 
 generally looked upon as a superfluity, stale, flat, and unprofitable. 
 It has been likened to "a pilaster put upon the face of a building 
 for look's sake," and to a "Caryatid holding upon her head a 
 structure which she did not build, and which could stand just as 
 well without her support." But if one will persist in blotting and 
 spoiling good paper, and in sending out to the world some sort of a 
 book, I suppose one must either justify the presumption, or make 
 some apology for it. Perhaps I may do both. 
 
 Somebody has said that it is a very laudable ambition, the wish to 
 bring into the world a new book— a thing that can speak as soon as 
 it is born (that is, if the world will only let it !). Unfortunately, a 
 man cannot do that. No doubt it is a praiseworthy desire, but at 
 the same time it is a very serious matter, this bringing forth of 
 intellectual offspring. Witness to the pangs and throes with which 
 it has been produced, the pai-ental partiality with whish it has been 
 welcomed when born in secret, and the fond affection which follows 
 it still ! Who can understand (save members of the craft) the 
 tremulous anxiety of this young intellectual father ? — the hopes and 
 fears, the thoughts and dreams that hover around his child ; the 
 yearnings, and the heartfelt wishes that accompany its sending out 
 into the world ; the palpitating apprehensions, the strange mixture 
 of fear and impatience with which the decision and sentence of its 
 readers are anticipated — the decree of those who will either return 
 it with scorn and ridicule, or send it on to other friends with the 
 dignity and honour of a reasonable production.* Truly, no fond 
 
   Compare Binney's lecture (Exeter Hall scries) on "x\uthorship."
 
 FORESPEECH. 
 
 mother could be more sensible of such feelings than the young 
 aspirant to literary fame : 
 
 " None but an author knows an author's cares, 
 Or Fancy's fondness for the child she bears." 
 
 "Come, come, that's enough : no more of your idle dreamings !" 
 you say. But, "my gentle reader" (for you must allow me to 
 address you by this familiar title), as for you, I know you well, and 
 perhaps can say more about you than you would care to say about 
 yourself — revealing virtues which your modesty would veil, and 
 feelings which your reticence would hide. Do I not know of your 
 kindness in the past to another ward of mine?" — the interest you 
 had manifested in its infancy — the loyal love that looked so 
 anxiously for its periodical visits — the pious care that perused its 
 every word — the devotion that made it your pride and pleasure to 
 contribute with uncomplaining punctuality v\hatever was necessary 
 for its welfare and support ? Ali ! I see at once the conscious blush 
 upon your face owns all my praises true. What, then, have I to 
 fear? Surely you will extend your favours towards this finer and 
 better nourished specimen of intellectual offspring ! I know you are 
 mj' friend, faithful and just to me, so I have little need to pray for 
 your leniency, since you know that I myself am, as yet, but a 
 beardless boy. Still I am sure there are some amongst you, dear 
 readers, who like to find fault, or to criticize, as you prefer to call 
 it. Let me warn you before you say a word, not to intermeddle 
 with affairs or works which in no way concern you, for unless you 
 produce the written authority by which you are constituted judges, 
 I shall most assuredly decline to plead to your jurisdiction. But I 
 think I hear you reply that an author ought to try to please 
 everybody -like the honest man who keeps the public "ordinary," 
 at which all persons are welcome, provided they poy their money, 
 and if everything is not agreeable to their taste, however nice and 
 whimsical that may be, will challenge the right to censure — and 
 abuse if they like. Yes, I hear what you say, bixt I would rather 
 have you consider me as the modest, good natui'cd individual who 
 
 * The University College of Wales Magazine.
 
 FORESPEECIL xi 
 
 provides a private or eleemosynary treat for his more intelligent 
 friends, with a fare depreciated by the mob, and not intended for 
 them. How can you, then, find fault ? Why, your good-breeding 
 forbids it, and despite yourself, you are forced to approve, and even 
 commend whatever is set before you, whether you like it or not. ''' 
 
 It is generally understood that if a reader is to have a thorough 
 appreciation of a writer's thoughts, he cannot do better than put 
 himself somewhat into the position of the writer when such thoughts 
 were transmitted to paper. I have little apprehension that anything 
 in these essays will not be thoroughly understood ; nor have I any 
 extraordinary statement to make in connection with the writing of 
 them — as, for instance. Swift, who, to assist the reader in so delicate 
 an affair as the proper appreciation of all that is sublime and witty 
 in him, thinks it his duty to say that the shrewdest pieces of his 
 treatise were conceived in bed in a garret ; at other times he had 
 thought fit to sharpen his intention with hunger, and in general the 
 whole work was begun, continued, and ended under a long course of 
 physic, and a great want of money — though 1 can heartily apply this 
 last remark ; yet, I think it necessary to explain the circumstances 
 under which these Essays were written, together with some justifica- 
 tion for publishing them. Some of them have appeared elsewhere, 
 and I reprint them here with little or no alteration, though not 
 without some reluctance ; but to re-construct them entirely would 
 entail too much labour. The short Essays on "Style and Thought" 
 and "The Decline of the Drama" must necessarily be looked upon as 
 meagre and unfinished, being first efforts in collegiate competition, 
 but since they were awarded first place in the class lists, I am led to 
 include them. In the first mentioned the remarks will no doubt 
 appear dogmatic and paradoxical, but it must be borne in mind that 
 this is simply an attempt to prove that there is truth in Bufion's 
 famous aphorism, "The style is the man. " A rejoinder and some 
 remarks thereon have now been added. 
 
 The bulk of this book, however, consists of Shakspercan studies 
 upon subjects given out for competition amongst the students of the 
 University College of Wales, by the New Shakspere Society. I can 
 
 Compare Henry Fielding's Introduction to "Tom Jones."
 
 xii FORESPEEGH. 
 
 only look with pleasure upon the labour spent in the making of these 
 Essays, and from the way in which they had been received by the 
 examiner, the press, and others, together with the fact that the 
 subjects are entirely new,— this being the first attempt at any 
 collected account of "Shakspere's Hypocrites" or "Shakspere's 
 Clowns"* yet published— I am emboldened to print them and send 
 them forth to friends. And I shall be well repaid for all the trouble 
 taken if those who peruse them find as much pleasure in reading as 
 I have had in investigating ; or even if they are the means of 
 sending a single enquirer to the pages of the poet to study for 
 himself. For what depths and heights have we in Shaksperc to 
 explore]! — no man ever fathomed deeper ; no man ever soared 
 higher ; no human being using the best weapons of intellectual 
 accomplishment ever accomplished so much,— he stands on the very 
 pinnacle of fame in intellectual attainment. Listen to his companion 
 dramatist : — 
 
 "Triumph, my Britain ! thou hast one to show, 
 To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe. 
 He loan not for an a<jc, hut for all time.' 
 And all the muses still were in their prime, 
 When, like Apollo, he came forth to warm 
 Our cars, or like a Mercury to charm ! 
 Nature herself was proud of his designs, 
 And joyed to wear the dressing of his lines ! 
 Yet, must I not give Nature all ; thy art, 
 My gentle Shaksperc must enjoy a part. 
 For, though the poet's matter nature be, 
 His art doth give the fashion ... . . 
 
 Look, how the father's face 
 
 Lives in his issue, even so the race 
 
 Of Shakspere's mind and manners brightly shines 
 
 In his well torned and true filed lines. 
 
 Sweet Swan of Avon ! what a sight it were 
 
 To sec thee in our waters yet appear, 
 
 And make those flights upon the banks of Thames, 
 
 That so did take Eliza and our James ! 
 
 But stay ! I sec thee in the hemisphere 
 
 Advanc'd, and made a constellation there ! 
 
 * This is not quite correct, for I find that an essay on The Cloionn and Fmls of 
 ShakiijKvc has been written by Douce, though I have not been able to see it, and it 
 is now out of print.
 
 FORESPEECIL xiii 
 
 Shine forth thou Star of Poets, and with rage, 
 
 Or influence, chide or cheer the drooping- stage, 
 
 Which, since thy flight from hence, hath mourned lilve night. 
 
 And despairs daj', but for thy \olumcs light." ' 
 
 In conclusion, I beg to acknowledge with gratitude the able and 
 judicious criticism of Prof. MacCallum, M.A., when these Essays 
 were first submitted to him ; the kindness of Prof. Angus, M.A., for 
 several happy hints ; and to thank most sincerely those whose names 
 appear in the list of subscribers at the end of the book, for their help 
 in defraying the cost of printing and publishing. 
 
 Universiti/ College of Wales, 
 June, 1S82. 
 
 ' From Bon Jonson's poem in the folio of 1623— "To the memory of my beloved, 
 
 the AiTiioR William SiiAKEsrEARE : and what he hath left us."— Ben Jonson's 
 works, page (i'J3.
 
 SHAKSPERE'S HYPOGPJTES.
 
 The New Shakspere Society oft'er annually a valuable prize of 
 books, for open competition, at the University College of Wales, 
 for the best essay upon a Shaksperean subject. The following 
 essay was awarded the prize in 1881.
 
 THE HYPOCRITES OF SHAKSPERE. 
 
 "A Hypocrite is good for nothing but sight.'" — rEiucLES 
 
 "Thy very looks are lies; 
 Eternal falsehood smiles in thy lips, and flashes in thine eyes." 
 
 Smith. 
 
 "A man who stole the livery of the Conrt of Heaven to serve the 
 devil in." — Pollock. 
 
 E might wish for a more genial subject than the 
 detested quality of hypocrisy in the works of our 
 greatest dramatist, but we could not wish for a 
 l)etter, since its consideration will involve the study 
 of some of our favourite author's most forcible crea- 
 tions. Moreover, these rogues, these villains of Shakspere 
 are amongst the characters he liked most to portray ; 
 he takes delight in ixniting great intellectual vigour-, 
 great mental power, -svith physical deformity or moral 
 depravity, and in giving them success over the forces 
 of the world and the powers of men brought in contact with 
 them. But Shakspere has been blamed for his villains ; it 
 is said that he displays in them pictures too disgusting, 
 pictures whioh harrow up the mind unmercifully, and torture
 
 SHA KSPERFS HYPOCRITES. 
 
 tho senses beyond the limit. It is true that our poet paints 
 for us some hideous portraits, but after all they are human, 
 they are natural. He never "varnishes over wild and 
 blood-thirsty passions with a pleasant exterior, never clothes 
 crime, and want of principle with a false show of greatness 
 of soul," and surely he is not to be blamed for this — he is 
 rather to be praised. If the pictures are revolting and 
 distasteful, we shall hate them the more as we meet them 
 in real life, but if sin be varnished over we are all the more 
 likely to fall victims to its beguiling snares. 
 
 The universality of Shakspere's work is everywhere 
 manifest. He does not content himself with a picture of 
 one side of life ; he gives us every phase of it, every 
 diversity of rank, sex, and age — from the dawnings of 
 infancy to feeblest old age ; the king and the beggar, the 
 hero and the pickpocket, the savage and the idiot, the 
 warrior and the coward. And he not only paints men and 
 women, he shades out also the world of spirits, summons 
 before us the midnight ghost ; he peoples the air with 
 winged sylphs, the beauteous groves with sportive fairies, 
 the black and blasted heath with weird and sexless witches ; 
 and all this is described with such wonderful power and 
 truth, that we believe, if such beings existed, they would act 
 and speak just as the poet has made them. This great truth 
 of conception distinguishes our poet from the rest of the 
 dramatists of his own age, or indeed from those of any age. 
 
 So too may be noticed his gradual development of character 
 in its sphere of action. His men and women are not like 
 those of Marlowe, or of Ben Johnson, with one iixed 
 characteristic, one great ruling passion, begun and carried 
 out all through the play. Bhakspere's characters grow in
 
 SHAKSPERE'S HYPOCRITES. 5 
 
 goodness oi^ in crime as the action proceeds. We 
 can form some estimate of them, we can often say a great 
 deal about them, but when we have said all, we feel that 
 something remains which we cannot fully understand, some 
 liidden mystery underlying which we cannot explain — in 
 short we feel that they are like ourselves, that they are 
 natural, and being natural we know we can never get at 
 their full meaning. 
 
 This quality of hypocrisy, although it may not be so un- 
 attractive, allows the poet full scope for his power, as the 
 analysis of the different types of hypocrisy in his characters 
 is a very difficult thing. He has not merely to analyse a 
 real, natural man, he has to analyse a mask which a man 
 puts on ; and as a mask can be assumed in so many differ- 
 ent ways, so Shakspere gives us a great many different 
 varieties of hypocrites. For instance, we shall have to 
 speak of Richard III., and his hypocrisy used to satisfy 
 a boundless ambition for the crown ; of lago, with his 
 ensnaring trap to accomplish his revenge, and to satisfy his 
 love for dangerous action ; of Edmund, with the character- 
 istics of both — he is a villain and a traitor combined. Then, 
 there is Buckingham — a faint shadow of his master Richard 
 III. and his ambition; and King John, the hard-hearted 
 tyrant, without any of the refined feelings of human nature. 
 Tliere is Falstaff, too, whose hypocrisy is of quite a different 
 kind — devoid of serious crime, malice, or envy ; and Parolles, 
 of the same type, but without an} of Falstaff's sparkling wit, 
 frankness, and good fellowship. He is simply a selfish, 
 deceitful, inventive scoundrel. Angelo is of another type — 
 hypocrisy used in the service of self-love by one who has an 
 exaggerated idea of his own goodness ; a man aspiring to
 
 SUA KSPERES H YPO C RITES. 
 
 honour, dignity, and political power, and to be a saint in 
 moral life ; but in the hour of temptation, he is found to be 
 as false and tyrannical in the one, as he is hypocritical and 
 base in the other. And lastly, we shall notice the female 
 hypocrites — Goneril and Regan, prompted by their selfish 
 desire, their covetousness for their father's land and power. 
 In the consideration of our subject we shall take the 
 characters in the chronological order of the plays — following 
 the "Leopold Shakspere," the text from which all quotations 
 are given.
 
 RICHAPvD III.
 
 ALLUSION IN CHRISTOPHER BROOKE (1614).* 
 
 I. 
 
 My tongue in firie dragon's spleene I steepe, 
 That acts, with accents, ci'uelty may found ; 
 
 Part 1. Stanza viii. 
 
 II. 
 
 To him that impt my fame with Clio's quill, 
 
 Whose magick rais'd me from oblivion's den ; 
 
 That writ my story on the Muses hill, 
 
 And with my actions dignifi'd his pen: 
 
 He that from Helicon sends many a rill, 
 
 Whose nectared veines are drunke by thirstie men ; 
 
 Crown'd be his stile with fame, his head with bayes; 
 
 And none deti'act, but gratulate his praise. 
 
 Yet, if his scames have not engrost all grace. 
 The much-fam'd action could extend on stage. 
 
 Part 2. Stanza!^ i. 11. 
 
 III. 
 
 My working head (my counscU's consistory) 
 Debates how I might raigne, the princes living : 
 
 Ihid. Stanza xrr!. 
 
 The devlish fury in my brest entends 
 
 In spite of danger and all opposite barrs ; 
 To cut this knot the mistick fates conteyne. 
 And set my life and kingdom on this mayne. 
 
 Part u. Stanza xxxviii. 
 
 * From the Poems of Christopher Brooke. The Ghost of Richard III. expressing 
 himself in three parts— (1) His character, (2) his legend, (3) his traKedic. Reprinted 
 from Shaksi)ere's> CenUirieof Prayse, New Shakspere Society's papers. 1879, pp. 109.
 
 RICHARD 111. 
 
 Tetchy aiul wayward was thj' infancy, 
 Thy school-days fii;4'htful, desperate, wild, and furious, 
 Thy prime of manhood darinif, bold, and venturous. 
 Thy nge confirmed, proud, subtle, sly, and bloody : 
 More mild and yet more harmful, kind in hatred. 
 
 Act. IV. ir. li!'.)—17J. 
 
 Richard III. is the first great drama in A\hich Shakspere 
 proves himself to l)o the first gi^eat genius of his time. 
 Although it is written upon the plan of Marlowe, whose 
 great characteristic was to portray the workings of a single 
 passion in a character — as, for instance, in Dr. Faustus, the 
 lust of dominion — yet, the Richard HI. of Shakspere is far 
 more complex, he is described with far more precision and 
 power than the characters of the earlier dramatist. The 
 great idea of the play is to set forth the dangers of a supreme 
 personal genius which enacts the laws of society and the 
 world, and the weakness of a mediocre talent which respects 
 those laws. The nation has just survived a period of great 
 disorder, suffering, and loss — disasters so often resulting 
 from dependence upon the passion and power of despotic 
 kings. The Civil War has at last been closed by the 
 victory of the House of York, but there is still universal 
 unquiet and dissatisfaction. The position of things was such, 
 says the Chronicler, and (he temper of men such that no 
 one can say whom he ought to trust, and whom he ought to
 
 10 SHAKSPERFS HYPOCRITES. 
 
 fear ; there wfis a universal birth of hostility, liypocrisy, 
 and dissimulation ; there was a ripe field for intrigues and 
 sneaking wickedness which had grown up luxuriantly in a 
 sudden change to peace and Circean luxury at court. "The 
 natural and usual close of such a period of tierce and demoral- 
 izina: conteiition is the absolute decline of all to the ambition 
 that unites activity, boldness, and sagacity, with hypocrisy, 
 unscrupulousness, and selfishness in extremest develope- 
 ment." 
 
 At this period Richard of Glo'ster comes forward with all 
 his self-confidence and superior endowments of mind, and 
 with his great insight into the weakness and inability of the 
 "simpletons" around him. The historian. Sir Thos. More — 
 the source, through l/oJmshed's Chronicle of Shakspere's 
 Richard III. — says that Richard was the third son, and in 
 wit and courage was equal with either of his brothers 
 (Edward and Clarence), in body and prowess far under 
 them both. He was born with teeth in his mouth ; he was 
 little of stature, ill-featured of limbs, crookbacked, his left 
 shoulder much higher than his right, and hard featured of 
 visage. He was malicious, envious, wrathful, and ever 
 f roward. He was close and secret, a great dissimuler, lowly of 
 countenance, arrogant of heart, outwardly compinable where 
 he inwardly hated, not letting to kiss where he thought to 
 kill, dispiteous and cruel, not for evil will always, but often 
 for ambition, and ever for the surety and increase of his 
 estate. Friend or foe was indifferent, where his advantage 
 grew he spared no man's death whose life withstood his 
 purpose. The Richard of Shakspere is said to be a 
 modification of this picture, but he could scarcely be blacker, 
 raoie fierce and terrible, than our poet has depicted him,
 
 SI/ A KSPERFS HYPOCRITES. 1 1 
 
 Richard is incainiate ambition itself, and ho devotes it all 
 to one great end — the seizure of the English Crown — 
 
 "I'll make my lieaven to dream upon the Crown." 
 
 Ambition is the main spring of his actions ; to obtain 
 greatness and power is his object, and hypocrisy is the 
 great instrument in his hand for its attainment. He is 
 quite as ambitious as Macbeth, but his ambition is of a 
 different quality. Macbeth was fascinated with the gaudy 
 glitter and pomp of royalty ; Eichard's desire was for power, 
 not pomp — "to command, check, o'erbear all that are of 
 better person than myself." He desires not only to be great, 
 but to be greater than anybody else ; and to gain his end he 
 commits the most horrible crimes, he has no scruples, and 
 he is always successful so long as there is a goal to aim at, — 
 it is when he has murdered all his friends and overcome all 
 the forces that are against him that he fails. 
 
 Like Edmund (King Lear) feels the brand of "base" and 
 "bastard," so Richard feels keenly his distorted and 
 misshapen form. It wounds his pride, it irritates his spite, 
 and he makes this deformity the plea for cherishing a 
 deep-rooted hatred against all who are more comely than 
 himself — 
 
 I that am cni-tailcd of this fair proportion, 
 Cheated of feature by dissembling- nature, 
 Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time 
 Into this breathing world, scarce half made up. 
 And that so lamely and unfashionable. 
 That dogs bark at me as I halt by them— 
 
 I am determined to prove a villain. 
 
 Act T. !. is—r.o. 
 
 And his outwaixl misshapen body i^eflects his inward 
 villainous nature. He has no pity in his heart, he has no
 
 1 2 SHA KSPERE'S HYPOCRITES. 
 
 love, nor has he any fear ; to him conscience is a word for 
 cowards, and )jy the strength of his will putting it aside he 
 ruthlessly sheds the blood of those who should have been 
 his nearest and dearest friends. Deeds of blood are to him 
 songs of sweet music, and a dozen lives weight but lightly 
 on his depi'aved and villainous soul. He does not hesitate 
 a moment, nor think long upon the means he will employ to 
 effect his pui-pose. He determines to "hew his way out 
 with a bloody axe" to the Crown, and we must confess that 
 he carries out his resolve right faithfully. 
 
 But despite his outward deformity, Richard is conscious 
 of his great intellectual superiority and high birth — 
 
 I was horn so hig-h, 
 Our aiiry buildoth on the Cedar's top, 
 Anil dalHes witli the wind, and scorns the sun. 
 
 He treats the rest of mankind with contempt ; he regards 
 them all as good-natured inoffensive simpletons ; the subtlest 
 statesmen are to him mere bungler.s — mere tools for his 
 special use. Richard is a warrior, too, of unequivocal 
 valour ; his braveiy is unquestioned, and he has that in his 
 character which is most at variance with hypocrisy. His 
 delight is in the battle field, but now he says — 
 
 Grim-visag'd war has smoothed his wrinkled front, 
 And now instead of niountini; barbed steeds, 
 To friifht the soul of fearful adversaries. 
 He capers nimbly in the ladies chamber 
 To the lascivious pleasing' of a lute. 
 
 Act I. i. 0—13. 
 
 He hates the idle pleasures of these days, he feels his 
 occupation gone, and how uninformed he is in deeds of love, 
 so he is determined to prove himself a villain.
 
 SUA KSl'ERE'S IIY HOC RITES. 1 3 
 
 It is in hypocrisy, liowcver, that Richard is most 
 accojuplished ; as a dissonibler he is most profound : 
 
 Why I can sniilc, and nmrthcr whiles I smile, 
 And crj' content to that which jjrievcs my heart, 
 And wet my face with artificial tears. 
 And frame my face to all occasions. 
 
 He is very fond of using religious expressions, as if deter- 
 min(;d to prostitute to the service of hell a religion which he 
 inwardly abjured ; while he is in " body and soul a devil, he 
 can appear like an angel of light." We see him at one time 
 in affecting humility, at another in decoying amiability ; 
 to-day a foul murderer, to-morrow a pious and saintly 
 penitent ; he has the double guise of a passionate and raging- 
 tyrant, and of a sweet and honied lover ; he makes men 
 believe he is persecuted and maltreated, while at the same 
 time he is undermining and plotting the death of everybody 
 around him. As 'Furnival has pointed out, Richard's 
 hypocrisies, his exultations in them, his despising and 
 insulting of his victims, his grim humour, and delight in 
 gulling fools, and in his own villany — all this is very forcibly 
 brought out no less than thirteen times in the play. 
 
 His first victim is Clarence, whom he has determined to 
 set in dead hatred against the king. Richard has been 
 instrumental in having Clarence put in prison, and then he 
 promises very feelingly to do all he can to get the victim 
 released. But he never intends to do anything of the kind — 
 
 Simple plain Clarence, I do love thee so 
 That I will shortly send thy soul to Hea\en. 
 
 Act 1. Sc. (. lis— 120. 
 
 He destroys his brother, and glories in his treachery ; 
 beweeps the cause to his friends — "simple gulls," as he calls
 
 1 4 SHA KSPERE'S HYPOCRITES. 
 
 thein — (juotes scripture, and then goes to plan another 
 wicked scheme. His next dupe is Hastings. He makes 
 his friend believe how grievously he feels the King's illness, 
 but his selfish wish when alone is something different — 
 
 God take king Edward to his mercy, 
 And Icaxe the world for me to bustle in. 
 
 Act I. Sc. a. iM—l-Jl. 
 
 But Richard is most proud of his power to deceive and 
 fascinate women by his hypocrisy and honied tongue, and 
 judging from his astonishing success in this direction, he 
 places a just estimate upon his ability. The courtship 
 scene with Lady Anne is one of the most striking examples 
 of the extent of his wily power. Here he brings the whole 
 of his resources into play ; personal attractiveness he has 
 none — but action, voice, and eye, these he uses with the clever- 
 ness of an accomplished actor. He approaches the young and 
 beautiful widow at first boldly, quite confident of success, 
 but finding her not so easily overcome, he turns penitent, 
 and tells her that her beauty was the sole cause of the 
 murder of her father, Henry VI. He had never shed a 
 tear for anything but her beauty. At first the Lady Anne 
 scorns his flattery, but his wily arts prevail, and his 
 hypocrisy reaches its climax when he bares his bi'east, gives 
 her his sword, and bids her 
 
 Let forth the soul that adoreth thee, 
 
 I lay it naked to the deadly stroke. 
 
 And humbly bej; the death on bended knee. 
 
 Act I. Sc. ii. 17G—17S. 
 
 She yields to his desires, and with this triumph Richard 
 gets more contempt for man than ever. He laughs in his
 
 SIIAKSPERF8 HYPOCRITES. 15 
 
 sleeve, and is himself astonished that a lady could be Avooed 
 and won in such a humour. But he will not keep her 
 long — he who has killed her husband, and her father cannot 
 rest satisticd with even this victory. She, too, must make 
 room for another to suit his wicked purpose. 
 
 His next piece of hyprocrisy is before Queen Elizabeth, 
 Hastings, and Dorset. He complains that they do him 
 wrong to say that he does not love the King and Queen. 
 Because he cannot flatter and speak fair, smile in men's 
 faces and deceive them, he must be held a rancorous enemy. 
 He pretends to be ignorant of his brother's imprisonment, 
 believes himself disgraced, and all the nobility held in 
 contempt. How truly he reveals his own character in 
 professing to be what he is not ! 
 
 I would to God my heart were flint like Edward's, 
 Or Edward's soft and pitiful like mine, 
 I am too childish-foolish for this world. 
 
 Act I. Sc. iii. 130— W. 
 
 His friends advise him to be revenged of Rivers, Vaughan, 
 and Grey, he quotes Scriptures in' reply, and tells them that 
 " God bids us do good for evil," He continues his art with 
 King Edward on his death-bed. He pleads forgiveness for 
 anything done unwittingly, or in I'age. He wants to be 
 friendly with everybody, for it is as death to him to be at 
 enmity : he hates it, and desires all good men's love. In 
 fact he does not know that there is an Englishman alive 
 with whom his soul is any jot at odds ; and to crown it all 
 he thanks God for his humility. Then he aniaounces the 
 death of Clarence — Clarence, his brother, so cruelly 
 murdered — in the coolest manner possible ; and with what 
 heartlessness does he try to shift the blame from himself to
 
 1 6 ,S11A KSrERE\S IIYPOCRITE.S. 
 
 the Queen ? To the eliildrcii of Clarence the hypocrite goes 
 and weeps, as the lad afterwards tells us, 
 
 And when my uiiclu told inc so he wept, 
 And pitied me, and kiss'd my cheek. 
 Bade me rely on him as on my father, 
 And he would love mc truly as his child. 
 
 Act II. Sc. tit. ..'o—JO. 
 
 He craves a blessing from his mother on his knees, and 
 when it is given him he says " Amen ! and make me die a 
 good old man." The young prince, Edward V., goes to 
 Richard in his sorrow for loss of friends, little knowing that 
 he is standing before their very murderer. The villain 
 comforts him, and warns him against his uncles in 
 language which could be most fittingly applied to himself : — 
 
 The uncles which you want were dangerous ; 
 
 Your Ki'ace attended to their sugar'd words ; 
 
 But look not on the poison of their hearts ; 
 
 God keep you from them ; and from such false friends. 
 
 Act III. i. n—w. 
 
 One of Richard's finest strokes is the scene in Avhich he 
 leads Hastings into the trap for his own destruction. And 
 he does this at a time when Hastings thinks himself most 
 secure, and in a manner which would lead him to think he 
 was Richard's most trusted frioid. But he has to die for 
 his faithfulness, and when his head is produced, Richard 
 declares — 
 
 So dear I loved him that I must weep, 
 
 I took him for the plainest, harmless creature 
 
 That breathed upon the earth a Christian. 
 
 Act III. Sc.V.23—25. 
 
 He deceives the Mayor too in the same way ; and sends 
 Buckingham to make that most brutal and base insinuation 
 of his mother's adultery. Then he resolves himself upon 
 the murder of the two princes — "now will I go and draw
 
 SHA KSPER E' S H YPOC RITES. 1 7 
 
 the brats of Clarence out of sight." He has now reached 
 the goal of his ambition, the Crown, and Buckingham goes 
 to address the courtiers and citizens on his behalf — to tell 
 the people what a good old man Richard is, that he is not 
 "lolling on liis hide day-bed," but meditating with two deep 
 divines. The pretended saint then appears to the crowd 
 from the balcony above, between two bishops — "two props 
 of virtue for a Christian prince "^ — with a book of prayer in 
 his hand. They press him to take the crown, but with well 
 feigned reluctance, he pretends how unwilling he is to 
 accept such a heavy responsibility. He cannot tell why so 
 many good citizens should have disturbed him from his 
 earnest in the service of his God. He pleads his unfitness 
 for royalty ; he cannot, and will not yield to them in 
 accepting the crown. But after more .sham persuasion on 
 the part of his dupe, Buckingham, the hypocrite tells them 
 that hi& heart is not made of stone; he will yield to their 
 entreaties, though against his conscience and his soul, and 
 he prays for patience to endure the load. 
 
 The scene in which Richard broaches to Buckingham his 
 desire for the death of the princes is one of those which our 
 poet could so forcibly picture. We shall have to notice 
 similar and more powerful scenes in King John and Othello, 
 where the villains, by mere suggestion, make known their 
 purpose, and excite their dupes to immediate action. But 
 Buckingham is staggered at Richard's hint of "Death!" — 
 he must have breathing time before he can commit such an 
 arch deed of piteous massacre. Richard, however, is not a 
 man to shrink from anything, be it the bloodiest deed 
 possible, and he is sharp in his resolve that "the deep- 
 revolving, witty Buckingham, no more shall be the 
 
 B
 
 1 8 SHA KS FERE'S HYPOCRITES. 
 
 neighbour of my counsels." We marvel how he can go on 
 from one black deed to another so rapidly, for no sooner ho 
 has despatched his two nephews, and banished Buckingham, 
 than he resolves that his wife must die. He orders Catesby 
 to give it out abroad that she is sick, for he must speedily 
 be married to his brother's daughter that his ill-gotten 
 kingdom may be more secufe. 
 
 Away he goes on his mission, and thinks himself a "jolly 
 thriving wooer." He is intercepted in his mission by his 
 mother and Queen Elizabeth, mother to the beautiful maiden 
 he now resolves to wed. The Queen demands from him her 
 children, whom he has so ruthlessly slain, and E-ichard sets 
 himself to work at the difficult task of gaining her to 
 compliance with his vile wishes. He renews with her the 
 honied words which were so successful with Anne. This 
 villain who has murdered hei- children, and almost all her 
 relations, has the deep-rooted hypocrisy to plead that he did 
 it all for the love of her daughter. lb is as if he profaned 
 and insulted this his last sanctuary of refuge ; we feel that 
 he must have run the length of his wickedness, and that 
 this, his crowning piece of villainy, must bring down his 
 blood upon his head. His well-aifected kiss to the Queen is 
 followed by the expression of his real self — 
 
 Relenting fool, and shallow, changing woman. 
 
 Act IV. iv. 4S?. 
 
 shewing how contemptuously he regarded mankind when 
 he had made it serve his purpose. 
 
 But his end comes at last. Such wickedness, treachery, 
 and hypocrisy will bring their reward in one way or 
 another. Richard is upset by the landing of Richmond, the 
 great avenger, yet he is confident in himself and his own
 
 SIIAKSPERFS ITT POC RITES. 19 
 
 strons will ; but his conscience — and we have often 
 wondered where it was — now demands to be heard. This 
 involuntary force, this voice of God, which he has all 
 through his life time bound down within him, now rises up 
 against him. As the spirits of those so pitilessly murdered 
 appear before him in his dream, the thousand tongues of 
 conscience remind him of their many warnings throughout 
 his career. He who has denied the existence of any higher 
 power than himself; he who has stamped out every feeling 
 of pity, every spring of love and tenderness from his heart; 
 who, by his hypocrisy, has deceived Heaven itself, at last 
 gives way before this supernatural power — 
 
 Guilty, guilty ! 
 
 I shall despair — there is no creature loves me, 
 
 And if I die, no soul shall pity me : — 
 
 Nay, wherefore, should they since that I myself 
 
 Find in myself no pity to myself. 
 
 Act V. Hi. 9.01— ".or,. 
 
 But the day of the battle conies, and Richard regains his 
 self-reliance ; it was only when half awake that ho felt 
 intimidated, and in addressing his forces he calls conscience 
 a word for cowards only ; again he puts his confidence in his 
 strong arm, and bids them — 
 
 March on again bravely, let us to 't pell-mell, 
 If not to Heaven, then hand in hand to hell. 
 
 Act V. Hi. 3U—Sir>. 
 
 He calls Richmond a "milksop," a man who has never felt 
 as much cold "as over shoes in snow;" and it is Richard's 
 humiliation to Richmond which is the great secret of his 
 fall. The fact that he, the Richard who has overcome 
 everything, conquered the very forces of the world ; he, who 
 has been too much for everybody, made them all instruments 
 to his hand, and never failed, should be overcome by a
 
 20 SHAKSPERFS HYPOCRITES. 
 
 "mere milksop," is more than he can bear. He feels how 
 lonely he is, he has murdered all his friends, he has attained 
 his unworthy end ; but now his mighty intellect becomes 
 over-clouded, his warlike dexterity, as if conscious that it 
 was misplaced in so great a hypocrite, deserts him — he 
 descends from the valiant soldier to the doomed desperado, 
 and he falls a vietim to his long practised treachery. 
 
 BUCKINGHAM. 
 
 The Duke of Buckingham is a faint reflection of Richard's 
 ambition, and of his hypocrisy. He tells us that he too 
 
 Can counterfeit the deep tragedian, 
 Speak and look back, and pry on every side, — 
 Tremble and start at the wagging of a straw, 
 Intending deep suspicion ; ghastly looks 
 Are at my service, like enforced smiles ; 
 And both are readj- in their offices 
 At any time to grace my stratagems. 
 
 A ct III. V. 5—11. 
 
 He promises to use, and does use all these powers to help 
 Richard to the throne ; and in return ho is to receive the 
 Earldom of Hereford. Of course Richard dupes him, and 
 Buckingham, who has been one of his best friends, looses 
 his head for his faithfulness. Like Richard, Buckingham 
 feels remorse of conscience j the "high all-seer," whom he 
 has so shamefully wronged, visits him also, and turns his 
 hypocrisy to his own destruction.
 
 KING JOHN.
 
 " ! when the last account 'twixt Heaven and earth 
 Is to be made, then shall this hand and seal 
 Witness against us to damnation. 
 How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds 
 Makes ill deeds done ! " 
 
 Act IV. a. 216—'^
 
 KING JOHN. 
 
 In "King John," Shakspere strikes out in a new direction, 
 he does not here devote the whole play to one prominent 
 character with one great ruling passion: we have a group of 
 fine characters moving round a subtle tyrant. Constance is 
 a new figure with our poet,— a passionate, sorrowing mother, 
 the very essence of maternal tenderness and love. Then 
 there is Arthur, who moves about with a pathetic beauty, 
 gentleness, and innocence — like a lamb amongst ravening 
 wolves. The most serious and poignant phases of the play 
 are relieved by the accompaniment of the comic character 
 in Falconbridge, who begins in Shakspere a kind of humour 
 which the poet knows so well how to blend with his more 
 terrible characters. Falconbridge is a typical Englishman 
 with his courage, frankness, and national pride. The 
 Bastard, too, with his blufl', out-spoken manner, contributes 
 much to the relief of the play. 
 
 The poet here unites all the evils of a disputed succession ; 
 society is only in a semi-barbarous state, a time when the 
 King is vested with more power than he can safely wield
 
 24 SHAKSPERE'S HYPOCRITES. 
 
 without corruption, unless he have a mighty intellect, and a 
 hrm and generous will. When these qualitications fail, 
 disturbance, faction, and fighting for the crown is the i-esult. 
 This is the case now, and there is added to it the difficulty 
 of foreign interference in English afiairs, both civil and 
 ecclesiastical. The prince Arthur is the hereditary heir to 
 the crown, but John has a better allegiance, and he has also 
 nationality on his side, so that we are drawn to his party in 
 spite of his selfishness. But John has not the intellect of 
 Richard III., nor the strength of will to maintain his claim, 
 which, if he had only known it, was the very best he could 
 have had. He had no faith in such a title, so he is tempted 
 by, and succumbs to the brutal thought of the murder of 
 Arthur ; and though he does not actually commit the deed, 
 we can never forgive him the boy's death. 
 
 As a hypocrite. King John is but a shadow compared 
 with Richard III. He is more a hard-hearted coward than 
 a deep, wily, and villainous hypocrite like Richaixl. He 
 does not seek his crime and take delight in pursuing it ; it 
 is thrust upon him by outward circumstances, and he yields 
 to the temptation. As Gervinus tells us, "he is not the 
 image of a brutal tyrant, but only the type of a hard nature, 
 without any of the enamel of finer feelings, without any 
 other motives for action than those of the instinct of this same 
 inflexible nature, and of personal interest. He is severe 
 and earnest, an enemy to cheerfulness and merry laughter, 
 conversant with dark thoughts, of a restless, excited spirit. 
 He is uncommunicative to his best advisers, laconic and 
 reserved." 
 
 The scene in which John suggests the murder of Arthur 
 to Hubert, like that between Hubert and Arthur, is one of
 
 i^UAKSPERFS UYPOCRITES. 25 
 
 those mastorpieces of Shakspere. Hero he shews his 
 hypocrisy; he speaks to Hubert of love, and Hubert 
 professes his allection for the king ; he loves him so well 
 that he will do anything for him, though his "death were 
 adjunct to the act." Then, having caught his victim, John 
 says — 
 
 "Hubert throw thine eye 
 On yon good boy. I'll tell thee what, my friend, 
 He is a very serpent in my way, 
 And whoresoe'er this foot of mine doth tread. 
 He lies before me. Dost thou understand me ? 
 Thou art his keeper. 
 Huh. And I'll keep him so, 
 
 That he shall not offend your majesty. 
 K. John. Death. 
 Hub. My Lord. 
 
 K. John. A grave. 
 
 Huh. He shall not live. 
 
 K. John. Enough. 
 
 I could be merry now. Hubert, I love thee 
 Well, I'll not say what I intend for thee." 
 
 Act III. Ul. 50—71. 
 
 King John moralizes upon the foul deed before his lords, 
 tells us we cannot stand against mortality's strong hand, 
 nor have commandment on the pulse of life. But the lords 
 swear to be revenged, and John's conscience, defiant as it is, 
 gives way. 
 
 "I repent; 
 
 There is no sure foundation set on blood. 
 No certain life achieved by others' death." 
 
 Act IV. ii. 103— G. 
 
 He seeks to shift the blame of Arthur's death upon Hubert, 
 who, he says, offered such abhorred and fit aspect for the 
 villainy. He shews now the real cowardice of his nature, 
 and exhibits an amount of faint-heartedness and fear that 
 make him contemptible. True, he repented of his sin, but 
 he repented too late ; Arthur, the tender object of his fear 
 and hypocrisy, loses his life, and we cannot forgive him the 
 death of the gentle boy.
 
 FALSTAFF
 
 " Perhaps the most sulistantial comic character ever invented. Sir John carries 
 a most portly presence in tiie mind's eye ; and in him we Ijehold tlie 'fulness of the 
 spirit of wit and humour bodily.' "—IlazlUt, in " Shakespeare' ti Characters."
 
 FALSTAFF. 
 
 We have now to consider a widely different character, 
 and one far more pleasing, for who is there that does 
 not take delight in jolly old Sir John FalstafF^ We 
 feel annoyed that we have to include him in this 
 list of Shakspere's Hypocrites ; we are not yet con- 
 vinced that he is in heart a hypocrite, but others 
 have thought him such, and we must either concur or 
 prove him to be " an honest and true-hearted man ! " We 
 feel keenly the difficulty of the position ; the character of 
 FalstafF is so complex, his motive so peculiar that we 
 scarcely know how to think of him as he deserves; he 
 himself tells us that it would be " better than a dukedom " 
 to be able to do so, whatever the value of that estimate 
 may be. He appears to us in so many different aspects, and 
 every change reveals something new. He is at once a dupe 
 and a wit ; he is both harmless and wicked, cowardly and 
 courageous; a liar without deceit, a knight, a gentleman, 
 and a soldier without either dignity or honour. Surely he 
 must be a consummate hypocrite! But we cannot believe it; 
 we like him too much for that. The business of hypocrisy 
 is to mask self, to guard against self- betrayal; the true 
 hypocrite is generally a sly, wily, treacherous fellow, full of 
 ambition — the most inordinate — envy, and malice. He
 
 30 SIIAKSPEFE'S HYPOCRITES. 
 
 loves few men, and hates many, especially those who 
 prosper better than he, for he is extremely selfish, and 
 delights to elevate himself by pulling others down. But 
 Falstaff has none of this about him ; true he assumes many 
 similar traits, but he has no malicious intent, he simply 
 does it to make others laugh ; as Hazlitt tells us " he 
 openly assumes the characters to shew the humorous side of 
 them : he does it to amuse others as much as to gratify 
 himself ; his unrestrained indulgence in his own appetites 
 has neither malice nor hypocrisy in it." Our main justifica- 
 tion for FalstafF is that he does no great mischief, no evil 
 consequences follow from his many humorous jokes and 
 tricks. He has none of the villany of Richard III., nor 
 the heartless treachery of lago ; the worst of FalstafF is his 
 " lie with a good round oath," and his unpaid bills for sack 
 and sugar, and other refreshment for his " fat sides," owing 
 to Mrs Quickly. 
 
 Gervinus has painfed him black enough. He thinks 
 FalstafF the very personification of the inferior side of man, 
 and his animal sensual nature. He is the very embodi- 
 ment of laziness, epicurean comfort and idleness; selfishness 
 alone, puts this unwieldy machine in motion. He is a 
 robber, a plunderer of the poor, a coward, a. braggart, and a 
 liar. We grant that he appears in all these dresses, and 
 appears in them to the life, but the dresses are not his own, 
 he only borrows them for the nonce. FalstafF could not 
 live if he was not making fun for somebody, and he assumes 
 these characters, both to please others and to amuse himself. 
 We delight in FalstafF so much that he has now become a 
 typical character, and there are many in the world to be 
 found, in a greater or less degree, like him. The writer
 
 SHAKSPERE'S HYPOCRITES. 31 
 
 had the good fortune, if good fortune it may be called, of 
 livins near a faint shadow of Falstaff during a vacation — a 
 big, round-faced, jolly-looking, easy-going fellow. He 
 seldom does any work, unless he can help it, he says it does 
 not agree with him. His good wife provides for him the 
 necessaries of life, and yet she seldom grumbles, for he 
 makes her laugh so much, and everybody else near him, 
 that she would do anything for him, lazy as he is. He, too, 
 believes in the exhilarating influence of "sack," but he 
 never loses his temper, he is always good humoured, and 
 good natured. Despite his faults, those around him will 
 never see him want ; they can aflford to keep him for the 
 enjoyment they get from his amusing tricks, and his queer 
 and laughable sayings. 
 
 Falstafl" and his companions have been called "caterpillars 
 of the common-wealth ; " they are bound together in a life 
 of idleness and easy living ; and the poet has shewn us how 
 such a band is held together, and the kind of attachment 
 existing between them ; but if ever roguery and swindling 
 had a chance of being popular, it was when combined with 
 such wit, good humour, and amusement, as that of Falstaff. 
 Laxness and grossness of bodily life and manners could 
 never go so far to assert their independence as when 
 accompanied by suoh equally sharp intellect and invention. 
 There can be no doubt that Falstaff dislikes work ; it 
 disagrees with him ; but then he has so much flesh — " more 
 flesh than any other man, and therefore more frailty." 
 He is, in fact, " a tun of man," and nothing but 
 Colossus could bestride him. His means are slender, and 
 his vmste great, which can be taken two ways, but Falstaff 
 says, " I would my means were greater, and my waist less."
 
 32 SHAKSPEEE'S HYPOCRITES. 
 
 Ho makes this great bulk of his "the ground tone of his 
 character;" he makes it an excuse for idleness and dissipa- 
 tion ; and he affords amusement for others by exaggerating 
 this personal unwieldiness. He shakes his jolly old fat 
 sides with laughter, and "his jokes come upon us with double 
 force and relish from the quantity of flesh through which 
 they make their way." We should not enjoy him half so 
 much were it not for his "portly presence ;" we begin to 
 smile to ourselves whenever we think of him — larding the 
 lean earth as he walks along. His jokes are not the dry 
 emanations from a thin, shrivelled wit ; they are the outcome 
 of a fine constitution, full of good humour and good nature, 
 overflowing with laughter and good fellowship. He drinks 
 sack to clear his brain, it is to him the soul of his wit, and 
 without sack there is no skill in war, for it "sets the sword 
 a- work." 
 
 Falstaff"'s power is unquestionably in his wit and his 
 intellectual quickness ; this is his great redeeming feature, 
 it covers a multitude of his sins. And he has implicit 
 confidence in its power, for if he succeeds in exciting a 
 laugh he feels that he has made a conquest. He is never 
 fast for an answer, and though he be found out in the 
 biggest of lies, he gets out of the difiiculty with the greatest 
 ease. He says, "a good wit will make use of anything," 
 and he is not only witty himself, but the cause that wit is 
 in other men ; half the wit that seems the Prince's is really 
 his. The rogue blames the young Pi'ince Henry for having 
 corrupted him, and vows " I will be daran'd for never a 
 King's son in Christendom ; " but in the next sentence when 
 the Prince suggests taking a purse he responds briskly 
 enough " Where thou wilt lad, I'll make one." His account
 
 SHAKSP FEE'S HYPOCRITES. 33 
 
 of the robbery is truly an inimitable scene : how his tAvo men 
 
 in buckram grew into eleven as the imagination of his own 
 
 valour increased. He had only escaped by a miracle : 
 
 eight times thrust through the doublet, four through the 
 
 hose, his buckler cut through and through, and his sword 
 
 hacked like a hand-saw. And with what dexterity does he 
 
 get out of the dilemma when the true story is related 1 
 
 Falstaff had run away, and torn his clothes, and hacked his 
 
 sword himself ; but he says he knew it was the Prince who 
 
 attacked him, and " was it for him to kill the heir 
 
 apparent % " So too, in the scene in which he lectures the 
 
 Prince in the assumed character of the old King, he takes 
 
 care to give himself a good word, as if he was the most 
 
 virtuous man in the world. Some have called him a 
 
 coward, but he is courageous enough to fall asleep behind 
 
 the arras Avhen officers are in the room ready to charge him 
 
 with a capital offence. He is searched while asleep ; they 
 
 turn out of his pockets nothing but bills for sack and sugar, 
 
 yet he swears that there were at least three or four bonds 
 
 of £40 a piece, and a seal ring of his grandfather's. We 
 
 may also notice the scene in which he pretends to be deaf 
 
 to the Chief Justice ; and the reconciliation with Mrs 
 
 Quickly — where he not only settles old debts, but persuades 
 
 her to sell her plate to lend him £10 more — as instances of 
 
 his sharpness and quick wit. 
 
 He takes delight too in joking with the appearances of 
 others. He says the Prince is a good shallow fellow, and 
 would have made a good pantler, or chipped bread well. 
 He accounts for the Prince's friendship with Poins from 
 the fact that their legs are both of a bigness, or if put in 
 the scales, they would be of the same weight. But when 
 c
 
 34 SHAKSPERE'S HYPOCRITES. 
 
 the Prince overhears his abuse FalstafF is quick enougli 
 with a reason. " I despise him before the wicked that the 
 wicked might not fall in love with him." He compares 
 Justice Shallow to " a man made after supper of a cheese 
 paring," and his wit in the recruiting scene, and those with 
 Shallow and Silence are beyond praise. 
 
 Falstaff has a reputation as a soldier, and seems to have 
 been professed, he was sought out, and got a commission at 
 the outbreak of the war. Gervinus calls him a coward ; 
 but surely he was not in truth a coward ! He could fight 
 if he compelled to do so by circumstances, but he would 
 much rather " be first in a feast." He asks himself which 
 will pay best — fighting or running away, and having satis- 
 fied himself he acts accordingly. He runs away at 
 Gadshill because he thinks it safest to run when he is left 
 single handed to fight two younger, and more active men. • 
 He has recruited for himself a fine company of soldiers, 150 
 of them, all ragged as Lazarus, with "not a shirt and a half 
 in all the company." But he thinks them good enough to 
 toss, for they'll fill a pit as well as better men. He leads 
 them into the part of the field where they will get well 
 peppered, and withdraws himself to a quiet place to breath 
 a while, where he finds time to rest, and to refresh himself 
 with a bottle of sack, just within reach of a battle which 
 disposes of the lives of princes. His soliloquy on Honour 
 is characteristic. He fully believes that his honour pricks 
 him on to the fight, but he cannot convince himself that the 
 same honour will set on a leg or an arm, or even take away 
 the grief of a wound : so he will have none of it. He 
 shows that discretion is the better part of his valour, in 
 his fight with Douglas, when he falls down after two or
 
 SlIAKSPERFS HYPOCRITES. 35 
 
 three passes of tlio sword, and l»y the act saves his life. He 
 reaches tlie heiglit of his ingenuity when he claims to have 
 killed Hotspur, and in the taking of Coleville in the second 
 part. This must be " booked with the rest of the valourous 
 deeds of the day." 
 
 Very just indignation has been expressed at the Prince's 
 treatment of Falstaff. He has relied throughout upon the 
 Prince rewarding him on his attaining the crown; but at 
 the coronation the Prince does not know FalstafF. Lloyd 
 excuses his conduct by saying that this was the fii'st public 
 act of the Prince, and it must form the turning point 
 in his history ; he must display something more than 
 ordinary self-command. This may be ti'ue, but we cannot 
 forgive the Prince his heartless conduct in ordering 
 FalstafF's banishment : the least he could have done would 
 have been to provide for the last days of one who had 
 afFoi'ded him so much harmless amusement and pleasure. 
 What becomes of Falstaff we know not, but we are assured 
 that we could " better have spared a better man."
 
 PAKOLLES.
 
 ' A most notable coward, an intinite and endless liar, au hourly iiromise b ker, 
 the owner of no good (luality." 
 
 Act 111. vi 3—12.
 
 PAROLLES. 
 
 "All's well that ends well" is one of Shakspere's most 
 pleasant comedies ; but the humour here is of a more serious 
 nature. Parolles has some of FalstafF's qualities, but they 
 are of the worst kind. He has all the bragging and the 
 lying of Falstaff, and he is a bigger coward ; but he has 
 none of Sir John's sparkling Avit, none of his good fellowship 
 and good humour ; there is no trait in his character which 
 reconciles us to him. We can tolerate FalstafF, with all his 
 faults, but Parolles has not one redeeming feature. 
 
 Like Falstaff, he is the hanger-on to a prince — the parasite 
 of Bertram, Count of Rousillon, who is young and handsome, 
 but careless, and with little insight into human character ; 
 he allows himself to be led too much by this shallow clown, 
 whose very name suggests that he has no stability in him. 
 Lafeu, the ancient Lord, who has more experience than the 
 Prince, makes a true estimate of Parolles ; he had thought 
 him at one time to be a pretty wise fellow, but the more 
 he saw of him the more he disliked him, and soon became 
 convinced that he was a vessel of no great burden : 
 
 "You arc moru siaucy with Lords and honourable jiursonaycs than the coiiimissioii 
 of your birth and virtue yives you heraldry. You are not worth another word else 
 I'd call you Knave." 
 
 He has been called a counterfoil of Helena — one of the 
 sweetest of our poet's creations — who is in love with
 
 40 SHAKSPEBE'S HYPOCRITES. 
 
 Bertram, but the Count disregards her, he says ho hates her, 
 and his heartlessness is encouraged hy this unprincipled 
 knave Parolles. He persuades Bertram to leave the 
 country, and join the wars in France ; it is cowardly and 
 boyish, he says, to spend his days at home, it is simply 
 putting his "honour in a box." They go to Florence, 
 where Parolles' bragging pretensions to bravery are put to 
 test, and he is found wanting. The episode of "bringing 
 off the drum" is almost as amusing as the robbery scene 
 with Falstaff. He is sent on this mission at the suggestion 
 of the lords, who wish to expose the coward to the young 
 Count, for they are well assured that he will return with 
 some invention with "two or three probable lies clapp'd 
 upon it." Parolles goes on his mission, and is closely 
 followed by one of the lords and some soldiers ; he appears 
 on the battle-field — but not far from his own camp — at ten 
 o'clock, two hours before the appointed time for his return. 
 He comes, however, not to find his drum, but rather to 
 find out 
 
 "What shall I say I have done?" 
 
 for it must be some plausible invention. He feels that of 
 late his beguiling artifices have not succeeded as they were 
 wont, and disgraces have knocked too often at his door ; he 
 has been too foolhardy with his tongue — talked much and 
 done little, so he will redeem himself by a monster inven- 
 tion. He thinks he will give himself some hurts, and say 
 he got them in exploit, yet he is too cowardly for this, it 
 will pain him too much ; he would like the cutting of his 
 garments, the baring of his beard, or the breaking of his 
 sword, to sei've the same purpose ; or to drown his clothes 
 and say he was stripped of them. But in the midst of this
 
 SIIAKSPERE'S HYPOCRITES. 41 
 
 useless reasoning he is seized by the sham enemy, who have 
 heard it all, and he is blind-folded. Then how the coward 
 pleads for his life ! — for he loves himself most dearly — he 
 will do anything, disclose all the affairs of his camp, tell the 
 number of their forces, if he may only live. They put him 
 in the stocks all night, and in the mor-ning they take him 
 befoi'e one whom he supposes to be the general of the enemy, 
   in reality his own Count Bertram. Then what a fool he makes 
 of himself ; what a hypocrite and what a coward he proves 
 himself to be ! He betrays all the secrets of his camp, and 
 blackballs the Count and the officers. Duke Dumain is 
 everything that is bad, the Count nothing but a foolish, 
 dangerous, and lascivious boy. When he is unmufflled, he 
 is rather surprised, but he soon gets over it — 
 
 "Yet am I tliankful : if my heart were great 
 
 'T would burst at this. Captain I'll be no more ; 
 
 But I will eat and drink, and sleep as soft 
 
 As captain shall : simply the thing I am 
 
 Shall make me live. Who knows himself a braggart, 
 
 Let him fear this ; for it will come to pass, 
 
 That every braggart shall be found an ass. 
 
 Rust, sword ! cool, blushes ! and Tarollcs, live ! 
 
 Safest in shame ! being fool'd, by foolery thrive ! 
 
 There 's place and means for every man ali\c ! " 
 
 Act IV. Hi. 338—337. 
 
 What becomes of him, we do not know, nor do we care, for 
 he has nothing about him that would make us interested in 
 his future.
 
 CLAUDIUS, KING OF DENMAEK.
 
 "Like a mildcw'd ear, 
 Blasting his wholesome brother." 
 
 Hamlet, Act III., io. (jo — C. 
 
 "Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother's hand, 
 
 Of life, of crown, of queen, at once despatched ; 
 
 Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin, 
 
 No reckoning made, and sent to my account 
 
 With all my imperfections on my head : 
 
 O, horrible 1 0, horrible ! most horrible 1 
 
 The Ghost, Act I. o. 7U—S0.
 
 CLAUDIUS, KING OF DENMARK. 
 
 Our poet is now in the third period of his dramatic 
 writings, and "Hamlet'" represents his entrance to his 
 series of great tragic productions. He is now beginning to 
 sound the depths of the human heart, to study the great 
 mystery of life, and man's tendency to evil ; for crime is no 
 longer a small thing with him ; it is not now as in his 
 youth, when he looked at sin with some indifference, when 
 he passed over faults with a light heart, and judged crime 
 with an easy verdict. Henceforth the "universe of the 
 law" must prevail ; if the law be broken, the offender must 
 suffer to the utmost extent. It has been said that in this 
 period the poet judges too harshly, for he lets liis characters 
 bring about their own destruction, without giving them 
 warning of the approaching danger — "man lives in a world 
 where he is his own providence." 
 
 So much has been said about Hamlet that we have no 
 need to add anything to it. His story is well known— how 
 his father has been murdered by his uncle, now married to 
 liis mother, and thus snatched the crown from him, the 
 sole heir ; we have only to deal in a few words with this
 
 4G SHAKSPERFS HYPOCRITES. 
 
 villain of an uncle, this traitor who robbed Denmark of its 
 wisest king — of a 
 
 "Combination and form indeed 
 Where every god did seem to set his seal 
 To give the world the assurance of a man. " 
 
 After the King has committed the murder, with feigned 
 affection lie pretends to console Hamlet on his loss. He 
 says it is commendable, a sweet thing, in Hamlet, to be 
 sorrowful for his father, but to persevere in obstinate 
 condolement is contrary to the will of Heaven. He prays 
 Hamlet to think of him as a father, for he bears towards 
 him the dearest love possible for a father to a son. But 
 how can Hamlet love him — he, who has murdered his 
 father, he, who has married his mother but two months 
 after ! Handet is visited by his dead father's spirit, and 
 urged to take his revenge ; but Hamlet is a man of thought 
 and meditation, not of action ; so he delays, he can see no 
 justice in committing a sin for which he condemns another. 
 He reasons with himself, and then devises a play to 
 ascertain the real guilt of Claudius, and his guilt is 
 established beyond a doubt, for no sooner does the actor 
 Lucanius pour the rank mixture into the sleeper's ear than 
 the King starts up, his perjured soul smiting him, and he 
 hastens from the place. When the King is alone he feels 
 the weight of his sin — 
 
 Oh ! my offence is rank, it smells to heaven." 
 
 The hypocrite would fain look up and pray ; but what forrxi 
 of prayer would serve him 1 How can he be forgiven for 
 so foul a murder — the murder of a brother ! Hamlet finds 
 Inm upon his knees ; now he thinks he might venture to 
 have his revenge, and thus send his soul to heaven ; but he
 
 SrrAKSPERE'S HYPOCRITES. W 
 
 liositates again, he thinks this no revenge, he will wait a 
 while ; he will catch the King in some of his viler acts, and 
 then despatch him. The King thus finds his foe in Hamlet, 
 and he wants to send him to a hloody death in England ; 
 finally, he leads Hamlet into the trap of playing swords 
 with Laertes with poisoned weapons. But, after all, there 
 is in Hamlet a terrible reserve power — a power of desperate 
 and sudden action ; and in the last scene, with a final 
 effort, with a strength which leaps up before it is finally 
 extinguished, he accomplishes the revenge of his murdered 
 father, and the punishment of the vile murderer.
 
 ANGELO. 
 
 D
 
 Shame to him, whose cruel striking- 
 Kills for faults of his own liking- ; 
 Twice treble shame on Angelo, 
 To weed ray vice, and let his grow. 
 Oh ! what may man within hun hide. 
 Though angel on the outward side !" 
 
 Duke, Act HI. it. ii60—J?i.
 
 ANGELO. 
 
 In "measure for measure" the predominant idea of the 
 "universe of law" is more clearly marked. Shakspere 
 preaches here his doctrine of "an eye for an eye, a tooth 
 for a tooth," "an Angelo for a Claudio, death for death." 
 Weakness yielding to temptation must be punished to the 
 utmost. 
 
 The play is full of genius, and wise and deep sayings, but 
 it is a very repulsive one ; we cannot take a deep interest 
 in it, nor feel pleased, the subject is so unattractive. As 
 W. Watkiss Lloyd says, "We never throughout the play 
 get into the free, open, joyous atmosphere, so invigorating 
 in other works of Shakspere ; 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." Its pictures are disgusting 
 and contemptible, not only for its sin, but for its hypocrisy ; 
 we have dissoluteness on one side, with religious austerity 
 on the other ; pride and unblushing vice contrasted with a 
 great show of ostentatious virtue. 
 
 The scene is Vienna, which is represented as the very 
 centre of sensual defilement and moral corruption ; here it 
 "boils and bubbles till it o'er-runs." All virtue and decorum 
 has been lost ; in the streets we meet only wayward and 
 dissolute men and women, witli a desire for nothing but
 
 52 SIIAKSPERE'S HYPOCRITES. 
 
 wickedness and self-indulgence. Debauchery is the common 
 custom, it has become the talk and daily business of life. 
 This miserable state of things is the result of neglect in 
 carrying out the laws ; they have been for fourteen years 
 entirely suspended. They are severe enough and sufficient 
 to check the crime, but the reigning Duke has been too 
 kind-hearted, too full of the "milk of human kindness" to 
 apply them. They have been laid aside and allowed to 
 slumber; things have come to such a pitch that some- 
 thing must be done. But the Duke cannot do it himself ; 
 it is too much for his "innate mildness," so he resolves to 
 withdraw from the scene and appoint a deputy. Angelo is 
 the man chosen for this office, for, as Escalus say — 
 
 "If any man in Vienna be of worth 
 
 To undergo such ample grace and honour, 
 
 It is Lord Angelo." 
 
 He is a man of strict and firm abstinence ; he is precise, 
 stands on his guard with envy — scarcely confesses that his 
 blood flows, or that "his appetite is more to bread than to 
 stone." Lucio says that his blood is very "snow-broth" — a 
 "man who never felt the wanton stings and motions of the 
 senses." This is the man whom the Duke selects as his 
 deputy, and at first sight he seems to be most suitable for 
 the office : just the man to bring the city back to a state of 
 happiness, purity, and virtue — to put down a sin which 
 seems to be so much at variance with the character of the 
 deputy. He is a man of ability, well versed in politics and 
 law, and in the study of these weighty subjects, he seems 
 to have suppressed all feelings of affection; he has formed 
 or himself severe principles of moral conduct, and has 
 aughed at the foolish devotion of love in others. He is
 
 SlIAKSPERE'S HYPOCRITES. 53 
 
 ambitious too, as most hypocrites are, and he makes his 
 seeming virtue an instrument to his ambition ; he aspires to 
 be powerful, to outward rank and dignity, and to attain his 
 object, he must never for a moment forget his hitherto 
 reputation of virtue. 
 
 But Angelo's meanness is revealed at the very outset. 
 The Duke knew that the Deputy had been betrothed to 
 Marianna, sister to Frederick, a famous naval hero. But 
 the brother had perished, and her dowry had gone to the 
 bottom of the sea with him: so Angelo forsakes her. 
 Without money she is of no use to him, and he seeks to 
 cover his heartlessness by pretended discoveries against her 
 virtue and honour ; to colour his proceedings by the 
 basest insinuations against her chastity. The Duke has, 
 therefore, determined to test Angelo's strength of character — 
 how he will be affected in a wider sphei'e of action — how 
 this precise and severely moral man will conduct himself 
 when brought in contact with evil and temptation. He 
 disguises himself as a friar, pretending that he is going on 
 a journey, and retires to watch the course of events as 
 it developes around him. 
 
 The official career of Angelo now begins. He hunts up 
 all the corrupt houses, and orders them to be plucked down. 
 He fills his prisons with offensive criminals of all sorts ; all 
 the lower mischiefs and abuses are rooted out ; the 
 constabulary, hitherto appoini-ed indifferently, is corrected 
 once for all. Angelo has no mercy, his character is most 
 inflexible ; whatever else is left undone, these wrong doers 
 must be severely punished, the dignity of the law must be 
 upheld. This man, who prides himself on his virtue, takes 
 a delight in intimidating others ; he is aaibitious, and his
 
 54 SHAKSPERFS HYPOCRITES. 
 
 great desire is to make himself a name, to have power, and 
 to govern. This trait in his character leads him to treat 
 all classes alike — to deal out justice impartially, without 
 respect of persons ; so he is not content with bringing up the 
 loose vagabonds of the street, he ilies at higher game, and 
 must needs arrest a young nobleman, Claudio, whom he 
 publicly leads to prison, to the scandal of the whole town, 
 for the sake of one single offence. He and Julietta have 
 been guilty of this severely denounced frailty, but surely in 
 its most venial form, for the lovers are still faithful to each 
 other, they are united by all the bonds except the outward 
 ceremony. Yet Claudio is adjudged by Angelo to die. 
 Escalus intercedes with the Deputy for the young nobleman ; 
 he is conscious of the recent laxness of the law, and of man's 
 proneness to evil. He suggests to Angelo the possibility 
 that even he may fall a victim to the same crime. Angelo 
 replies almost with a sneer, and with implicit confidence in 
 his own virtue — 
 
 " It is one thing to be tempted, Escalus, 
 
 Another thing to fall * * * 
 
 * * But rather tell me 
 
 When I that censure him do so offend. 
 
 Let my own judgment pattern out my death, 
 
 And nothing come in partial." 
 
 He little knew how soon he was to have this very judgment 
 brought upon him ; he little knew that he, who had prided 
 himself that sensual delight had never stirred his feelings— 
 "when men were fond, he had smiled as at a contemptible 
 and incredible thing" — was to fall a victim to that veiy 
 passion which he so much ridiculed. But this feeling of 
 virtue in Angelo is exaggerated, it is all outward show ; he 
 lays greater stress upon the outward appearance of virtue 
 than upon the inward reality.
 
 SffAKSPEEE'S HYPOCRITES. 55 
 
 Claudio has a sister, Isabella, a novice of the sisterhood 
 of Saint Clare ; she is beautiful and accomplished, and 
 has many intellectual qualities, and mental endowments. 
 And Claudio sends a request to his sister that she go and 
 petition Angelo for his life. He knows that she has 
 many persuasive powers, that "she will play with reason in 
 discourse." Isabella visits Angelo, and now the real 
 character of this would-be saint reveals itself. He is 
 inflamed with lust at the sight of the beautiful maiden ; he 
 has never before been exposed to such temptation ; he has 
 always laughed at it, and gone his way rejoicing in his 
 own strength. But now his conduct at the very sight of 
 the maiden, and his " come again to-morrow," reveal the 
 hold that the temptation has upon him. When alone he 
 wonders at his own weakness — how he that has professed 
 himself a saint could be so tempted by a saint ; but he has 
 entered upon the road to his ruin, he cannot stifle his 
 passion, he can think of nothing but his desire for 
 Isabel. Even his prayers are a mockery — 
 
 " Heaven hath my empty words, 
 Whilst my invention, hearing not my tongue, 
 
 vriinsb 111 J' iiivciitiui 
 
 Anchors on Isabel." 
 
 On the morrow Isabel visits Angelo again, and repeats 
 her request. Angelo is now fully given up to his desires, 
 and he makes his base proposal to allow the ransom of her 
 brother if she will submit to his desires. She understands 
 him perfectly, but thinks he is perhaps only testing her 
 virtue ; she comments upon the frailty of her sex, and then 
 he speaks with more confidence, and urges his demand. 
 With what hypocrisy does this tongue of his, which has so 
 often uttered the'sentence of death against this abominable
 
 56 SHAKSPERE'S HYPOCRITES. 
 
 sin, invite the maiden to a far more disgraceful perpetration 
 of the same sin ! Through the management of the Duke, 
 however, his vile purpose is frustrated, though he himself 
 thinks he has effected it, and the forsaken Marianna takes 
 the place of Isabel. Angelo has now reached the length of 
 his crime, and remorse seizes him. He feels keenly the 
 dishonour which will now be placed upon him. This precise 
 man, this would-be model of virtue, is proved to be nothing 
 but "an outward-sainted deputy;" he is floored upon his 
 own ground, upon the very trait in his character he was 
 most proud of; such is his downfall that the "very body 
 and soul of his digr ity and honour are lacerated at the 
 same moment." 
 
 The Duke saves the life of CI audio, which Angelo would 
 have so ruthlessly sacrificed. In the sham scene of the 
 last act the hypocrisy of Angelo is publicly exposed. 
 The sneak feels his position bitterly, he knows not where 
 to hide his face before the now undisguised Duke. He 
 cannot conceal his guilt, he is " guiltier than the guiltiness ;" 
 he begs for nothing but " immediate sentence and sequent 
 death." But Isabel pleads for him, "since his act did not 
 o'ertake his bad intent," and the hypocrite is forgiven on the 
 condition that he at once marry Marianna. It was not 
 likely that the Duke could sentence to death Angelo, who 
 had been tempted, and had given way to the temptation, in 
 the prosecution of a work which he himself did not feel 
 equal to ; a temptation which had been laid upon him by 
 the revival of that severe discipline which had been for 
 so many years neglected.
 
 lAGO.
 
 " Oh ! Sparton dog- ! 
 More fell than anguish, hunger, or the sea ! 
 Look on the tragic loading of this bod ; 
 This is thy work : the object poison's sight. 
 Let it be hid." 
 
 Ladovico, Act V. ii. 363—367.
 
 lAGO. 
 
 In cruel and wicked invention, and in heartless treachery, 
 lago stands second to none amongst Shakspere's hypocrites ; 
 and he is one of the most powerful of our poet's inventions — 
 "one of the supererogations of his genius." lago has the 
 two-fold quality of being both repulsive and attractive, for 
 while we are incensed at his extreme wickedness, we are 
 interested in the skilful means he adopts to gain his ends. 
 He is indeed a genius, gifted with great mental vigour and 
 a penetrating intellect. He is a great observer of men and 
 manners ; he looks deep down into men's characters, into 
 their springs of action, with a far-seeing eye, and he knows 
 exactly how to use every one of them to suit his own 
 purpose. He never seems to be embarassed ; he spreads his 
 nets with such skill that no one can escape. He brings 
 every one near him, within his grip, and like a ruling 
 despot makes them serve him ; he thinks the men and 
 women around him mere puppets to dance to his fiddling. 
 Roderigo is simply a machine to do as he is told, though 
 needing at times a little persuasion ; Othello — poor deluded 
 Othello — is to him "an ass to be led by the nose;" con- 
 sciencious Cassio a "mere moraller ;" the pure and faithful 
 Desdemona, a poor and worthless thing. As Hazlitt very 
 forcibly puts it — " he gets up an amateur tragedy in real 
 life, but instead of employing his invention upon imaginery
 
 60 SHAKSPERE'S HYPOCRITES. 
 
 characters, he gets up a plot at home, casts the principal 
 parts amongst his friends and connections, and rehearses it 
 in a downright good earnest, with steady nerves and 
 unabated resolution." lago is one of those dangerously- 
 endowed beings whose brains have become sharp and 
 inventive with the hardening of their hearts. He plots the 
 ruin of his friends as an exercise of his ingenuity ; his 
 gaiety arises from the success of his treachery, and his ease 
 from the torture he inflicts upon others. 
 
 He is an absolute infidel, a confirmed sceptic with regard 
 to all that is pure and good and noble ; moral beauty is a 
 quality unknown to him. He thinks it quite consistent to 
 live in a world in vhich all men are knaves and fools, and 
 everything that is beautiful and noble " a gross element of 
 the earth." There is no such thing as virtue, it is "a fig" 
 to him ; and reputation, even this is an indifferent thing. 
 He talks of it nicely enough to Othello, and bursts into a 
 fit of passion at the expression of doubt of his sincerity ; 
 but to Cassio he says that reputation is an idle and most 
 false imposition, got without merit, and lost without 
 deserving. There is much more sense in having received 
 material harm than in having lost one's reputation, lago 
 is something of a philosopher, too, and has been compared 
 to Hamlet in his turn of mind. But how strikingly 
 different are they in character ! While Hamlet is free from 
 everything that is mean and villainous, lago is free from 
 everything that is great and noble. In his soliloquies, what 
 fiendish delight he takes in the contemplation of his own 
 hideous plans 1 Hs revels in the thought that his nefarious 
 schemes are progressing towards a successful end. He 
 regards it as a triumph of his intellect that he has almost
 
 SIIAKSPERE'S HYPOCRITES. 61 
 
 equalled the demons of dai'kness in the ingenuity of his 
 devices. Nay, he surpasses the arch-iiend himself, for he, 
 in the contemplation of disturbing the unsullied happiness 
 of our tirst parents, had some pricks of conscience. 
 
 "And should I at your harmless innocence 
 
 Melt, as I do, yet public reason just. 
 
 Honour and empire with revenge enlarged. 
 
 By conquering this new world, compels me now 
 
 To do, what else, though damn'd. I should abhor." 
 
 Milton, Paradise Lout, Book IV. 
 
 But lago has no such compuiictions ; he rather derives 
 pleasure from the thought that he has power to mar such 
 happiness. 
 
 "Oh ! you are well tuned now ; 
 But I will set down the keys that make the nuisic 
 As honest as I am." 
 
 And he has such assurance in his plans that every time he 
 undermines their peace he appears to be their best friend 
 and their most faithful adviser; he always contrives to 
 clothe his malicious lies with a semblance of truth. The 
 difficult thing to understand in lago is to find a motive 
 sufficient for the display of so much villainy and hypocrisy. 
 Some have called the character altogether un-natural because 
 they have failed to find it. But his motive is undoubtedly 
 one of the love of power — "an insatiable craving for action 
 of the most difficult and dangerous kind," coupled with an 
 unquenchable desire for revenge on being slighted. To 
 form, therefore, a true estimate of this character we must 
 consider in detail his connection with the characters around 
 him in the play. 
 
 He has engendered a bitter hatred against Cassio for having 
 obtained the lieutenancy to Othello over his head. At once 
 he fixes his mind upon Cassio's ruin and gaining the office
 
 62 SHAKSPERES HYPOCRITES. 
 
 for himself. He cannot brook the thought that he has been 
 more lightly estimated than the "great arithmetician," as 
 he contemptuously calls Cassio — 
 
 "A man that never set a squadron in the field, 
 Nor the division of a battle knows, 
 More than a spinster." 
 
 Still he feels Cassio's superiority in manners, for "there is 
 a dull beauty in his life that makes me ugly." With what 
 cunning he succeeds in making Cassio drunk, excites 
 Roderigo against him, and brings him into such disfavour 
 with the Moor that the lieutenant is dismissed ! And then 
 he has the impudence to tell Othello — 
 
 "I had rather have this tongue cut from my mouth 
 Than it should do offence to Michael Cassio ; 
 Yet, I persuade myself, to speak the truth 
 Shall nothing wrong him." 
 
 He expressed his sympathy with Cassio, and moralizes upon 
 the worthlessness of reputation. But he is not satisfied 
 yet. Having succeeded thus far, he forms new plans 
 Cassio, thus disgraced, must now be an instrument to incite 
 a feeling of jealousy in the breast of the Moor. He, 
 therefore, counsels Cassio to solicit Desdemona to intercede 
 for him. Here his opinion of the fair lady is exactly the 
 opposite of that expressed to Roderigo — "she is of so free, 
 so kind, so apt, so blessed disposition that she holds it a 
 vice in her goodness not to do more than she is requested." 
 And what is he then that says lago is a villain 1 Surely 
 this is the very best advice he could give Cassio. But his 
 good advice is accompanied by the resolve — 
 
 "Whiles this honest follow 
 Plies Desdemona to repair his fortunes, 
 And she for him pleads strongly to the Moor, 
 1 will pour this pestilence into liis ear, 
 That she repeals him lor her body's lust ;
 
 SHAKSPERE S HYPOCRITES. 63 
 
 And by how much she strives to do hiin good, 
 She shall undo her credit with the Moor. 
 So will I turn her virtue into pitch, 
 And out of her own goodness make a net 
 That shall enmesh them all." 
 
 II. Hi. 350—350. 
 
 He has yet two things to do, he says : first, his wife must 
 get Cassio and Desdemona together, while he will bring the 
 Moor to see the interview. This done, Cassio will be best 
 out of the way, so he excites Roderigo against him, sees 
 Cassio wound him, and then by giving Cassio a thrust, he 
 removes both at one stroke, and after he has done it, seeks 
 to lay all the blame on Bianca. 
 
 Roderigo is perhaps the greatest tool in the hands of 
 lago ; like Othello, he is completely duped by the villain, 
 but while Othello never doubts his sincerity, Roderigo is 
 repeatedly suspicious that he is being cheated, and he is as 
 often overcome by the subtle arguments of lago. If he 
 cannot gain attention any other way, he turns moralist : 
 
 "Our bodies are as gardens to the which our wills are gardeners; so that if we 
 will plant nettles, or sow lettuce ; set hyssop and weed up uhyme ; supply it with 
 one gender of herbs, or distract it with many; either to have it sterile with 
 idleness, or manured with industry ; why, the power and corrigible authority in 
 this lies in our wills." — Act I. Hi. 331 — 333. 
 
 He scoffs at Roderigo for thinking to drown himself; 
 laughs at his qualms of conscience, and bids him put money 
 in his purse. He gains the victory, and succeeds in getting 
 Roderigo to watch Cassio, so as to find some fault with him, 
 "to provoke his sudden choler" and then to strike him. His 
 plan is again successful. In the fourth act Roderigo begins 
 again to be dissatisfied. He has found that the words and the 
 performances of lago are in no way akin. He has wasted 
 his means, and received none of lago's promised rewards for 
 the jewels lent as presents to Desdemona, But lago 
 entangles him in another plot, and this time the inhuman
 
 64 SHAKSPERFS HYPOCRITES. 
 
 dog succeeds in bringing about the end of the too devoted 
 Roderigo. 
 
 There is, perhaps, no greater contrast in all the main 
 figures of Shakspere than between Othello and lago. The 
 former has been compared to the lion of the desert, but the 
 latter, "assuredly some malignant power that lurks in the 
 eye, and that fills with venom the fang of the serpent, 
 would seem to have brought lihn into existence." Both are 
 possessed with a feeling of jealousy, but compared with 
 Othello's, the jealousy of lago is only artificial, it is merely 
 the means to other ends — his revenge on the Moor. The 
 ruling thought in Othello's mind is to destroy his wife ; the 
 ruling thought in lago's is to destroy the suspected paramour. 
 
 As we have seen, the Moor has preferred Oassio to lago 
 for the lieutenancy, and this has awakened lago's bitter 
 hatred. Gervinus very justly finds fault with Othello for 
 this preferment of "the bookish theoric" to lago, whose 
 bravery and excellent soldierly qualities are unquestioned. 
 Othello should have thought twice before he had acted thus 
 towards lago, who, once excited, filled all his soul with 
 schemes of revenge. But to the unsuspecting Moor, all 
 this was unknown. lago was to him a man of honesty and 
 trust, and he little thought that his action would bring 
 about such painful results. lago resolves at once that he 
 will be revenged ; henceforth he will follow the Moor only 
 "to serve his turn upon him." He says there are some 
 servants who wear out their time like their master's ass, 
 "for nought but provender." There are others, trimmed in 
 the forms and visages of duty, who 
 
 "Keep yet their hearts attending on themselves, 
 And throwing but shows of service on their lords, 
 Do well thrive by them."
 
 SHA KSPERE S HYPOCRITES. 65 
 
 Such a soul as this he professes himself to be, and here he 
 gives us the key-note of his hypocrisy, resolving in future 
 to wear his heart upon his sleeve for "daws to peck at." 
 He is not long before he gets to work — for this play is the 
 swiftest in action in all Shakspere— and his first act is to 
 incite Brabantio against the Moor, and to disturb the first 
 hour the married couple spent together. In the next scene 
 he is the apparent friend of Othello, as opposed to Brabantio. 
 He pretends to "show out a flag and sign of love" towards 
 the Moor, who trusts him so much as to assign to him the 
 conveyance of his fair wife (Desdemona) on the journey 
 across the sea. At the close of Act I. he reveals the first 
 thoughts of his evil scheme ; as yet it is a mere bubble, it 
 floats but dimly in his mind, but it afterwards grows to 
 proportions which he himself would scarcely have dreamed 
 
 of. 
 
 "I hate the Moor ; 
 
 -» * 
 
 He holds mc well ; 
 The better shall my purpose work on him. 
 Cassio's a proper man : let me see now ; 
 To get his place, and to plume up my will, 
 In double knavery,— How, how?— Let's see: — 
 After some time to abuse Othello's ear, 
 That he is too familiar with his wife ; 
 He hath a person, and a smooth dispose, 
 To be suspected : fram'd to make women false. 
 The Moor is of a free and open nature, 
 That thinks men honest that but seem to be so, 
 And will as tenderly be led by the nose 
 As asses are,^ 
 
 I have 't ;— it is engendered :— hell and night 
 Must bring this monstrous birth to the world's light. " 
 
 Act II. i:i. fm—itOh. 
 
 At the close of Act II. his plan has assumed a more definite 
 shape, and in Act III. — which Furnival thinks the most 
 powerful in all the plays — he sets himself to the work of 
 arousing the feeling of deep jealousy in the breast of the
 
 66 SHAKSPERES HYPOCRITES. 
 
 Moor. Here his hypocritical arts display their most 
 masterly power ; nothing ever equalled the profound 
 dissimulation and the dexterous artifice displayed in this 
 dialogue. He stops and brooks the deep workings of 
 treachery under the mask of love and interest, anxious 
 watchfulness, and cool earnestness. There is "a passion of 
 hypocrisy," as Hazlitt puts it, marked in every line. He 
 instills drop by drop, the subtle and deadly poison into the 
 soul of Othello ; with diabolical ingenuity he feeds the 
 jealous flame he has kindled in the breast of the Moor, and 
 that, too, without making any direct statement. He simply 
 suggests in a hesitating manner, half expressing, half 
 repressing, that the Moor has need to beware of jealousy, 
 that "green-eye'd monster which doth make the meat it 
 feeds on," and then he turns the suspicion on Cassio, and 
 bids Othello guard well his wife. 
 
 After this victory lago's task is an easy one. He devises 
 the scheme of the handkerchief : 
 
 "For trifles light as air are to the jealous 
 Forms strong as proofs of Holy writ." 
 
 When the two meet again Othello wants further proof of 
 his wife's unfaithfulness, and expresses a doubt as to 
 "honest" lago's sincerity. At this the villain adds a 
 finishing touch to his hypocrisy by that almost inconceivable 
 outburst of pretended rage : 
 
 " O grace ! Heaven forgive me ! 
 Are you a man ? have you a soul, or sense ? — 
 God be wi' you ; take mine office. — O wretched fool, 
 That liv'st to make thine honesty a vice ! — 
 
 monstrous world ! Take note, take note, O world ! 
 To be direct and honest is not safe. — 
 
 1 thank you for this profit ; and, from hence, 
 I'll lo\e no friend sith lore breeds such offence." 
 
 Act in. Hi. 375— SSI.
 
 SHAKSPERFS HYPOCRITES. 67 
 
 But lago is by no means bewildered : he will give Othello 
 further proof. He entangles the Moor in another delusion, 
 and poisons his mind with the revolting images of Cassio's 
 dream. He touches the weakest thread in the Moor's 
 nature, and fills his mind with thoughts that never subse- 
 quently lose their hold upon him. Then follows the 
 interview between Othello and Desdemona ; and as soon as 
 lago hears that they have parted in anger he hastens to the 
 Moor in triumph to ply again his wicked arts. But it is too 
 much for Othello ; he falls in a swoon, and with what 
 brutal coldness lago sees it all, and glories in the success of 
 his schemes, — 
 
 "Work on. 
 My medicine work ! Thus credulous fools are caught ; 
 And many worthy and chaste dames, e^en thus, 
 All guiltless, meet reproach." 
 
 ActTV.n.^lt—U7. 
 
 lago's work with Othello is now complete. He has so 
 tirmly planted the feeling of jealousy in his bx'east that 
 nothing can erase it — not even the heart-rending pleadings 
 of the beautiful and innocent Desdemona. The Moor 
 entertains all the doubts possilile against his wife, but not 
 the slightest doubt of lago's honesty ever crosses his mind, 
 and we are pained to see lago's wicked plans succeed, and 
 the lives of the innocent sacrificed. 
 
 We could forgive lago his sin against Othello, and Cassio, 
 and Roderigo, but of his sin against Desdemona, we could 
 never forgive him. With what pitiless insensibility, with 
 what brutal indifference does he see her fall a victim to his 
 malignity 1 The depth of his wickedness is manifested 
 towards her, for she has done him no wrong, she has 
 excluded him from no office or higher rank. He must,
 
 68 SHAKSPERE'S HYPOCRITES. 
 
 therefore, direct himself to her inward perfection, to her 
 chastity, and the beauty of her character : 
 
 " A maiden never bold ; 
 Of spirit so still and quiet, that her motion 
 Blushed at hevself." 
 
 But he tries to make himself believe that her virtue and 
 sroodness are mere mockery. Roderio;o thinks her " full of 
 the most blessed condition." laafo thinks her no better 
 than other people, that she too must understand the art of 
 deceiving, that sensuality and fickleness belong to her as 
 well as to others. He seems to take a delight in finding out 
 the worst side of everybody, and to prove himself an over- 
 match for all. If he finds no evil he will devise means to 
 make believe there is some. The hypocrite disguises his 
 opinions from Desdemona by relating " old paradoxes." 
 He declares himself a slanderer, and proves it by 
 characterising different women, and praising the worst best. 
 His reply to her demand as to what he would bestow upon 
 the most deserving woman is, indeed, a masterpiece of 
 satire : it has " light without warmth, clearness without 
 feeling," — and he declares her most truly deserving good 
 to enough " suckle fools and chronicle small beer." 
 
 We have thus traced the development of this hateful 
 character : how he has grown in wickedness, depth after 
 depth of his sinful depravity disclosed. We stand aghast 
 at the contemplation of him, and were he not a creation of 
 Shakspere's we could scarcely believe him to be human. 
 To think that a man who has only looked upon this world 
 for four-times seven years, should be so destitute of the " milk 
 of human kindness"' and all the better impulses of human 
 nature ! But lago has an inherent proneness to evil, and
 
 SIIAKSPERFS HYPOCRITES. 69 
 
 this is accompanied by a great and brilliant intellect. 
 Were it not for this — for his indefatigable industry and 
 inexhaustible resources, which divert our attention from the 
 wicked end he has in view — the character could never be 
 tolerated. 
 
 Of lago's end we know nothing ; he himself asks us — 
 
 " Demand from me nothing; what you know, you know 
 B'rom this time forth, I never mil speak word." 
 
 The triumph of vice is of short duration — '■'magna est 
 Veritas et p7-aevalebit," and though the lives of Desdemona 
 and Othello are sacrificed to the cowardly vengeance of 
 lago, their virtue and honour are more valued than their 
 lives. We admire too the devoted fidelity of Emilia — the 
 wife of lago — when she perceives her husband's guilt, and 
 we participate in the hope — 
 
 "But for this slave lago, 
 
 If there be any cunning cruelty 
 
 That can torment him much, and hold him long 
 
 It shall be so."
 
 THE HYPOCRITES IN "KING LEAK."
 
 " King Lkar is the greatest single achievement in the jioctry of ttie Teutonic or 
 Northern irciiius." — Doivden.
 
 THE HYPOCRITES IN 'KING LEAR" 
 
 We now come to the study of the hyprocrites in King 
 Lear : to the story of the passionate King and the 
 ingratitude of his daughters ; and the story of the deluded 
 Earl and the ingratitude and treachery of his bastard son. 
 We are now in Shakspere's sorrowful period — ■" in the 
 depths " — the period when he is sounding the very founda- 
 tions of the human heart, and the great mysteries of life. 
 In Kirig Lear the poet found a subject giving full scope 
 to his power of representing unrestrained nature. He has 
 here pictured a society in which every man's hand seems 
 lifted against his fellow, where even the powerful restraint 
 of the family tie has no hold whatever upon men and 
 women ; the dearest and most sacred bonds are disregarded, 
 and unrestrained passion in full sway. 
 
 The play is one of Shakspere's greatest achievements. 
 Hazlitt gives it first place amongst the poet's works, for 
 it is the one in which he is most in earnest. Othello 
 touches the heart of Furnival more, yet he places it 
 amongst the first three of the poet's greatest works, while 
 Dowden thinks it " the greatest achievement in the poetry 
 of the Teutonic or Northern genius. In its largeness of 
 conception and the variety of its details, in its grotesqueness 
 and sublimity, it owns kinship with the great cathedrals of
 
 74 SHAKSPERE'S HYPOCRITES. 
 
 gothic architecture." It has been compared to a tempest in 
 which everything is in motion, with Lear, like a great 
 unmanageable vessel tossed about by its fury ; a victim to 
 his unrestrained passion he is lashed about in all directions 
 by the unmerciful waves — stripped tirst of his affection, then 
 of power ; then of home and shelter, last of reason ; and 
 finally learning the preciousness of true love at the moment 
 when it must for ever be renounced. 
 
 GONERIL AND REGAN. 
 
 " Gorgons rather than women : monsters of inf;ratitudc." — Dowden. 
 "They are thoroughly hateful. "—HazZitt. 
 
 The story of King Lear and the ingratitude of his two 
 daughters is well known. The first words of the play lead 
 us to believe that the kingdom has been divided into three 
 parts — two equal parts for his elder daughters, Goneril and 
 Regan, and a third more opulent portion for his youngest 
 and favourite daughter Cordelia. But the King is 
 eccentric and very passionate, he has ever " but slenderly 
 known himself," and his love of flattery demands some test 
 of the affection of his daughters ; they must make a public 
 confession of it before they receive the dowry — as if he 
 would bribe them into a false avowal of their love, a 
 temptation to which two of them yield. The three 
 dauchters are called before him. Goneril, the first born, in 
 answer to the question of the extent of her love, pleads
 
 SIIAKSPERE'S HYPOCRITES, 75 
 
 that she loves her father more than words can express — 
 " clearer than eyesight, space, and liberty ... no less 
 than life." Regan wishes to be valued at the same price as 
 her sister, only Goneril has come too short, for she finds her 
 highest joys, joys which the most sensitive part of her 
 nature is capable of possessing, in the love of her father. 
 But Cordelia, the young and beautiful Cordelia, the joy and 
 the happiness of her aged father, the one he loved most, 
 what is her answer 1 — Simply " nothing ! " She is so 
 conscious of her love, and so disgusted with the false 
 pretensions of her sisters that she will answer — " nothing ! " 
 With indiscreet simplicity ^e tells her father the truth of 
 her love, that she loved him according to her bond, as a 
 child to a father — no more, no less. Then the impetuous 
 and ungoverned nature of Lear bursts forth in all its fury. 
 He divides Cordelia's portion between the other sisters, 
 banishes the faithful Keiat for trying to show the King his 
 injustice, disclaims Cordelia, and gives her to France with a 
 curse as her dowry. But Cordelia knows what hypocrites 
 her sisters are, and would scorn to have professed as they 
 had done, a love she did not feel. With a sorrowful heart 
 she commits her father to their care, though she would 
 gladly leave him in a better place, and bids them use him 
 well. Their hypocrisy is revealed in the first words they 
 utter — "prescribe us not our duties" — conscience pricks 
 them on being thus reminded of their duty ; naturally they 
 hate such advice, having l9.id their wicked plans, having 
 determined to do wrong, and made hypocritical pretensions 
 to do the right. Cordelia leaves them with many misgivings 
 for the safety and welfare of her father. But time will 
 prove her devotedness and the truthfulness of her affection ;
 
 76 ^HAKSPEBE'S HYPOCRITES. 
 
 it will unfold, too, the "plaited cunning" of her wicked 
 sisters, for — 
 
 "Who cover faults at last shame them derides." 
 
 It is arranged that Lear shall stay with his two daughters 
 alternately month by month, with Goneril first. But no 
 sooner does the King get there than she begins to be 
 disrespectful towards him, and to find all manner of fault. 
 The sisters have mutually arranged that he shall no longer 
 be his own master ; he has given away his power, and must 
 no longer have a will of his own, or, as the fool puts it, 
 since he has "made his daughters his mother"* he must 
 suffer himself to be treated as a child. The King has not 
 been with Goneril a fortnight before she proposes to rob 
 him of the hundred followers he has reserved for himself — 
 "a little to disquantity his train." Now Lear begins to 
 feel his true position — how woeful indeed it is ! He per- 
 ceives the ingratitude — that marble-hearted fiend — of this 
 his love-professing daughter. How he repents his haste 
 with Cordelia ! how he has magnified her simple sin in his 
 heart ! He will stay no longer with Goneril. He has yet 
 another daughter, who, he is sure, will be kind and com- 
 forting to him, and he will at once go to her. The heartless 
 Goneril lets him go, having received the curse of her aged 
 father, and she laughs in her sleeve at his foolishness. The 
 sisters have arranged how to treat the old man ; he is to 
 have no peace and no happiness while near them ; they 
 know his infirmity and his waywardness, they are sure he 
 will give them some trouble, they must, therefore, act at 
 
 " Compare Essay on Shakspere's Clowns — third period. King 
 Lear's Fool.
 
 SHAKSPERE S HYPOCRITES. 77 
 
 once — "T' the heat" — for they will never be content until 
 he is out of the way. 
 
 The unhappy Lear goes to Regan now, but, alas ! for him, 
 she is too much like her sister — as like her as "a ciab is to 
 a crab." Regan tells him she cannot believe that her sister 
 would be so unkind, reminds him of his age and infirmi<-y, 
 and asks him to go back to Goneril, to be ruled and led by 
 a discretion that knows him better than he knows himself. 
 Poor Lear ! he is bewildered, dumfounded — he who has 
 been so powerful, so high-minded, so dignified, and com- 
 manding, reduced to such a state of dependence ! He 
 cannot, and will not go back to Goneril ; he is so dejected, 
 brought so low, that he even goes on his knees and begs 
 that Regan will give him "raiment, bed, and food." But 
 Regan, too, has become so hardened, she has listened so 
 much to the evil suggestions of her sister that she cannot 
 be moved ; she, too, denies him residence, she pleads that 
 her house is too small to receive the old man — in fact, any 
 excuse to get rid of him. 
 
 Lear leaves his daughters in despair, they have turned 
 him out of doors, he may go where he will. What a 
 pitiful and heart-rending picture is that of the old man in 
 the storm : such a night — rain, thunder, wind, and fire. 
 But these are as nothing compared with the unkindness of 
 his daughters; he can endure the storm, but the ingratitude 
 of his daughters, Oh ! 'tis foul, 'tis foul ! He wanders about 
 in the storm, a filthy hovel his only place of shelter, until 
 he is deprived of that most precious gift of all — his reason. 
 There is, however, one consolation, he proves the precious- 
 ness of the despised love of Cordelia — that she at least was 
 faithful to her bond, though a little obstinate in her
 
 78 SHAKSPEREPS HYPOCRITES. 
 
 expression of it. But Lear's happiness is not to last long ; 
 the villainous sisters deprive him of this his latest joy; 
 their vile instrument, Edmund, gives the order for Cordelia's 
 death, and the brightest and best of them all is mercilessly 
 hung, while Lear dies with anguish of heart. 
 
 And these two monsters of ingratitude, what of them 1 
 It jars against our sense of justice that their wickedness 
 should have the upper hand. Of the two, Goneril is the 
 vilest, for she is the initiator of all the cruelty and criaie. 
 She has been truly described as a masculine woman, with a 
 selfish visage and a dark frontlet. She seems to have no 
 conscience, she has no misgivings ; she spurns her husband 
 for his milky gentleness ; thinks him nothing but a moral 
 fool, and treats her father's curses with a coolness terrible 
 to think of. She is extremely selfish and jealous ; when 
 her father is got out of the way, she must have some other 
 wicked thing to do, so she sets her mind on possessing the 
 whole Kingdom, and her sister Regan must be got rid of. 
 She betrothes herself to the villain Edmund while her 
 husband is alive, poisons her own sister, plans the life of 
 her husband, and finally destroys herself. 
 
 Regan is a much more feminine character ; she is less 
 fierce, and in her wickedness greatly dependant upon 
 Goneril. She has some conscience, and trem.bles to draw 
 her father's curses upon her. She, too, has fixed her 
 affection on Edmund, but it is not before her husband's 
 death, and this, perhaps, not so much because she loved 
 him as to get advantage over her sister, for there was much 
 rivalry, after all, between them. But Regan falls a victim 
 to the viler hand of her unworthy sister.
 
 SHAKSPERE'S HYPOCRITES. 79 
 
 EDMUND. 
 
 "With as much poisonous hypocrisie, desperate fraud, smooth malice, hidden 
 ambition, and smiling- envie, as in any living person could be harboured." 
 
 Sir Philip Sydney's Arcadia. 
 
 Sliakspere has interwoven with King Lear another story 
 of ingratitude, the story of another father brought to ruin 
 and misery by tlie ungrateful conduct of a son. But in this 
 case Glo'ster suffers for a former sin of self-indulgence, 
 while Lear was "far more sinned against than sinning." 
 Glo'ster brings his misery upon himself, for he makes fun 
 of the origin of his bastard son, keeps him away from home 
 for nine years, and intends to send him out of the way 
 again ; in fact he has done everything that would tend to 
 foster the spirit of hatred, deceit, and villainy in Edmund. 
 His legitimate son Edgar has been far more reasonably 
 treated, he has had all that home comfort could give him, 
 but Edmund has been despised as an intruder in the family. 
 There is no wonder then that he determines to be a villain, 
 to be on an equal footing with his more favoured brother. 
 
 Edmund is Shakspere's typical villain, and perhaps his 
 greatest hypocrite. He has all the boundless ambition of 
 Richard III., and like him shrinks from no crime; he has 
 the cynicism, treachery, and deceit of lago to some extent 
 developed in him. He has the same cause for discontent 
 as Richard in the defect of his birth, though he is 
 represented as having great outward beauty ; he has much 
 of lairo's "selfish calculation" and "cold reason" in the 
 furtherance of his own ambitious designs ; he has the same 
 realistic free thinking and utter disbelief in all human 
 virtue, the same indifference to the means which suit his
 
 80 SHAKSPERE'l^ HYPOCRITES. 
 
 purpose, the same hypocrisy which considers lack of 
 dissimulation an unmanly thing and a weakness of the 
 mind. 
 
 In his opening soliloquy he argues with himself upon the 
 subject of his birth : wherefore is he "base" when he is as 
 handsome, and as intelligent as his brother ? And yet they 
 brand him with that epithet base ! But he will be equal 
 with them, he will have his brother's land, and if his 
 cunning invention only thrives "the base shall top the 
 legitimate." He must first stir up ill-feeling between 
 brother and father ; and he writes a letter, feigning his 
 brother's handwriting, to himself — purporting to be from 
 his brother — suggesting conspiracy against the father, and 
 hinting at the enjoyment they would have from his revenue. 
 He sees his father coming towards him, and with well 
 feigned innocence is reading the letter when Glo'ster enters. 
 He pretends to be very reluctant to tell its contents, and 
 when his father's indignation is stirred, he persuades him 
 not to take action against his brother hastily, but to suspend 
 his indignation until they have had better testimony of 
 Edgar's intention, for after all, Edmund says, the brother 
 may only be trying his aflfection towards their father. 
 Edmund does this not so much to shield his brother, but 
 finding his first plan serve him so well he would like more 
 time to complete his evil schemes. Then he practises his 
 deceit upon his brother, warns him against the father, and 
 bids him go armed lest he be ill treated. Edgar unsus- 
 pectingly believes him, and keeps out of the way of his 
 father, while Edmund takes advantage of Cornwall's 
 unexpected arrival to make his brother fly from the place, 
 gets up a sham fight, and when Edgar is gone wounds his
 
 SIIAKSPERE'S HYPOCRITES. 81 
 
 own arm " to beget opinion of a fierce endeavour," and then 
 tells liis father that Edgar wounded him. 
 
 His brother out of the way Edmund must next be quit of 
 his father ; he is not satisfied to have gained possession of 
 his brother's land, he must have his father's also. Glo'ster 
 is touched at heart with the misfortunes of Lear, and he is 
 determined to avenge his wrongs ; he discloses his plans to 
 Edmund, who, with feai'ful heartlessness, goes and betrays 
 his father to Cornwall and Regan. This action, he says, 
 will draw towards him : 
 
 "That which my father loses, no less than all : 
 The younger rises when the old doth fall." 
 
 Glo'ster's eyes are put out, and the villain inherits his lands 
 and title. Surely he will be content now 1 Not he ; success, 
 makes him bold, and he pushes on still further with his 
 artful intrigues ; he covets now the land of Albany and 
 Cornwall, the sons-in-law to Lear, and in order to gain them 
 betrothes himself to both their wives. ConiAvall is killed 
 by mere accident, but Edmund and Goneril are baffled in 
 their design for the murder of Albany, who stops their 
 marriage. 
 
 Edmund has distinguished liimself in the war against 
 France, and has earned the loudest praises from the sisters, 
 and even from Albany ; this over-elevates him, and forget- 
 ting his many evil deeds he challenges any one to prove him 
 a traitor. Now Edgar, his wronged brother, he who, 
 disguised, has been the faithful companion of his father in 
 his wanderings, and has prevented his death, conies forward 
 as the representative of truth and justice, to meet the villain 
 with the sword. He, at any rate, in spite of Edmund's 
 boasted strength— the eminence to which he has exalted
 
 82 SHAKSPERE'S HYPOCRITES. 
 
 himself, his victor-sword and his ill earned fortune, he does 
 not hesitate to tell Edmund: 
 
 ' ' Thou art a traitor, 
 False to thy gods, thy brother, and thy father, 
 Conspirant 'gainst this high illustrious prince, 
 And from the extreniest upward of thy head 
 To tlie descent and dust below thy foot, 
 A most toad-spotted traitor." 
 
 Edmund, however, is courageous enough to fight the 
 avenger, but he falls a victim to the sword of the brother 
 he has so cruelly wronged. Before he dies he confesses to 
 have done all that Edgar charges him with, and more, 
 much more, which time only will serve to show. Through 
 the influence of Goneril he has ordered the death of 
 Cordelia, to hang her in the prison ; now he is wounded, he 
 is anxious to withdraw his order, for there is blood enough 
 on his head already. But it is too late ; Cordelia is dead 
 and in the arms of her heart-broken father. 
 
 Uvdvertsity College of Wales, 
 June, 1881.
 
 THE SUPERNATURAL IN SHAKSPERE: 
 
 AND ITS USES.
 
 "The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, 
 
 Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven, 
 
 And, as iniaginatiou bodies forth 
 
 The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen 
 
 Turns them into shapes, and gives to airy nothing 
 
 A local habitation and a na,mc.—M idiiuniner Ni(jht's Dream. 
 
 Act V. i. 12—17.
 
 THE SUPERNATURAL IN SHAKSPERE. 
 
 There are manj' agencies at work which influence the 
 character of a man's life — agencies external and internal, 
 visible and invisible, manifest and mysterious. But amongst 
 them all the supernatural is perhaps the most powerful. 
 There is an inherent tendency in man to believe in that 
 which exceeds the terms of his own nature. His soul will 
 rise above itself in search of some higher, some ruling 
 power, to guide it through the vicissitudes of this life. The 
 most barbarous savage is conscious that there is something 
 in the universe which demands his recognition. He has no 
 real knowledge of it, nor of its attributes, but obeying 
 instinct he sets up some visible object, some likely symbol 
 of that higher power, and gives it his adoration. It is true 
 that civilization has produced men who have denied the 
 existence of any such Divine angency ; men who have 
 believed in their own self-sufliciency to measure and to 
 comprehend all things; but the higher feelings of our nature 
 rebel against such assumption. The philosophy of the 
 Ancients supported this theory, but at the same time they 
 peopled the universe with celestial powers, who presided 
 over their actions and over the workings of nature. Jove 
 is seated on the summit of " cloud-capped Olympus," while 
 the minor gods charioteer in the sun, rule the tempests, and 
 rage in the storms. They wage war with each other ; mix
 
 86 SUPERNATURAL IN SHAKSPERE. 
 
 with their chosen people in their conflicts ; turn the 
 poisoned arrows of the enemy in their flight ; and shield 
 their favourites from all harm. Every department and 
 region of the woi'ld is full of their miraculous activity. 
 Above, they manage the thunders ; below, they stir up 
 volcanic fires, and wrestle in the earthquakes. The 
 universe itself is a vast arena in which these gods and 
 demi-gods are acting their parts. 
 
 In modern times a somewhat similar feeling has existed, 
 and to a certain extent exists still. The idea that there is 
 some intermediate power between man and the Divine has 
 been very prevalent. Men have been ready enough to 
 believe in fairies, ghosts, and witches, and even great and 
 cultured minds have been affected by such a belief. Happily 
 reason and Christianity have done much to annihilate these 
 ancient superstitions ; but after all we cannot but feel that 
 there is something still in nature which philosophy has to 
 fathom. 
 
 It is this intermediate phase of the supernatural which 
 is made use of by Shakspere. The belief in witchcraft and 
 magic was very prevalent in his time. This is, no doubt, 
 his main justification for employing it — a wish to gratify 
 the public taste. There is, however, a worthier purpose 
 underlying, for it has been truly said that Shakepere never 
 wrote a line without a purpose. His object was to illustrate 
 his story, to facilitate the working out of his plot, to bring 
 more forcibly to the minds of his hearers the truth of the 
 principles he wished to impart. The manner in which he 
 accomplished his object remains for us to consider. If we 
 were to grant that this phase of the supernatural really 
 existed, we should say that Shakspere had painted it most
 
 SUPERNATURAL IN SIIAKSPERE. 87 
 
 naturally, for by the aid of his uiibouiidocl imagination and 
 the wide range of his fancy he had the same insight into 
 the supernatural that he had into the natural worid. Our 
 consideration of the subject will be confined to the most 
 forcible examples as pictured in the plays Midsummer 
 Night's Dream, Macbeth, Hamlet, and The Tempest. 
 
 The first of these is, as its name implies, simply a dream 
 — full of marvel, surprise, splendour, and flourish. The 
 poet's gi'eat characteristic is here laid aside ; instead of 
 natural impulse, flowing from real life and characters, 
 caprice — the pursuit of fairies and elves — reigns supreme. 
 He does not seem to endow thssc blithe spirits with any 
 powers of mind, for nowhere is reflection imparted to them. 
 They are the embodiment of fancy, freak, and frolic. They 
 interfere at every turn with the real characters of the play : 
 careless and unscrupulous they lead men and women into 
 error and place them in opposite relations. They live a 
 most luxurious and merry life — 
 
 Over hill, over dale, 
 Through bush, through briar, 
 
 they scamper. They sing, and they dance, while their 
 ringlets float in the whistling wind. They sleep in the 
 beauteous dells of flowers, lulled by the sweet scent of the 
 musk rose, and the luxurious woodbine ; and when they 
 wake 
 
 Pluck the wings from painted butterflies, 
 
 To fan the moonbeans from their sleeping eyes. 
 
 They seek the friendship of the nightingale and all the 
 lovelier birds, but wage a sprightly war with the uglier 
 creatures of bats, owls, and hedgehogs. Led l)y Puck, the 
 prince of mischief in Fairyland, they pursue their wanton
 
 88 SUPERNATURAL IK SIIAKSPERE. 
 
 tricks, and make fearful havoc witli the lovers, whom they 
 perplex with opposite interests, and then "esteem it sport 
 to see them jangle." They torment decrepid old age, and 
 sipping gossips ; skim the house- wife's milk, and take 
 delight in punishing sluts and sluttcry. Night-mares and 
 dreams are under their control; they mislead the night 
 wanderer, and then laugh at his confusion when he awakes. 
 But their tricks are not confined to men, they play their 
 pranks upon each other. By virtue of the juice of a 
 favourite flower, the jealous Oberon compels the fair Titinia 
 to dote upon the quaint old Bottom, adorned by Puck with 
 "an ass's nowl," — to think him wise and beautiful, to give 
 him fairy attendance and fairy courtesy.* In the end, 
 however, all things are transformed, all mistakes rectified, 
 all hopes consummated in the happiest manner, and Puck 
 entreats us to think it all a dream. 
 
 But what is the purpose which underlies it all '? Of 
 what use to us is this dream % The poet's object was to 
 portray certain capricious characters which, unfortunately, 
 exist in the world, — to bring before his hearers the mis- 
 chievous influence of such beings, and their relation with 
 other mortals. Such types of humanity are not difficult to 
 find, even in the society of our own day — men and women 
 altogether insensible of the higher interests of life, devoid of 
 serious thought, i-eckless and careless in all their actions. 
 They can admire the beautiful, the agreealile, and the 
 fantastic, but they shrink from grappling with the earnest, 
 the real, and the difficult. Their whole life is one of 
 pleasure and romance ; they delight in deceiving ; they are 
 
 * Compare Essay on Shakspere's Clowns — Second period — The 
 Mechanics.
 
 SUPERNATURAL IN SIIAKSPERE. 89 
 
 very skilful in acting artificial parts, in assuming appear- 
 ances, and in making life one string of festivity, sport, and 
 jest. These sylphlike creatures have no higher aim than to 
 torment and irritate rrjankind ; and these Shakspere has 
 chosen with remarkable skill as the oi'iginals "from whose 
 fixed characteristics he has given form and life to his airy 
 spirits." 
 
 There is a strange difference between Midsummer Night's 
 Dream and the tragedy of Macbeth, and there is a strange 
 contrast, too, in the supernatural agents employed in them. 
 Instead of caprice and fantasy, base and cruel ingratitude 
 — "ingratitude more strong than traitors' arms" — is the 
 theme for the poet's power. Macbeth receives a venerable 
 monarch, and a near kinsman, under his roof, with well 
 feigned hospitality, and then murders him with his own 
 hands in order to usurp his throne. Tlie subject, indeed, is 
 a black one, and in less skilful hands would have little 
 attractiveness ; but Macbeth has been called by Drake "the 
 most sublime and impressive drama the world has ever 
 beheld : the greatest effort of our author's genius." We are 
 transported into the Highlands of Scotland, where every- 
 thing seems tinged with superstition : " with tangible inter- 
 communication with the supernatural world." Instead of 
 the merry revels of the faii'ies, w^e have the hideous work of 
 the witches ; harmless tricks are replaced by cruel and 
 wicked temptations. Merited praise has often been 
 bestowed upon the powerful representation of these weird 
 spirits, and their incantations. They are unquestionably 
 among the most wonderful of the imaginative inventions 
 of our poet. Their first appearance on the scene gives the 
 key-note to the whole drama —
 
 90 SUPERNATURAL IX SHAKSPERE. 
 
 Fair is foul, and foul is fair, 
 
 Hover through the fotf, ond filthy air. 
 
 Thoy meet in thunder, lightening, hail, and rain, upon the 
 blasted heath to plan their wicked schemes. Withered, 
 wild; and weather-beaten in appearance, sexless, and ugly as 
 the evil-one, "they look not like the inhabitants of the 
 earth and yet are on it." They are utterly devoid of human 
 sympathy, their whole delight is in evil, — to tempt a way- 
 ward and ambitious son. They make him spurn fate, and 
 scorn death ; they spur him on in his wicked course against 
 all reason, and without fear. These terrible creatures 
 "tangle in every fibre with evil energy ; they are souls of 
 sin springing up into everlasting death ; they have their 
 raptures, and their ecstacies in crime." What could be 
 more hideous than the scene in the dark cave, where, in the 
 boiling cauldron they make their foul "hell-broth" with all 
 that is vile, unclean, and venomous. They ape the harm- 
 less dance of the fairies as they caper around, enchanting 
 the foul ingredients as they throw them in. These secret, 
 black, and midnight hags can find no name vile enough for 
 their deeds. When Macbeth asks them to foretell his fate, 
 they encourage him to be bloody, bold, and resolute : to 
 laugh to scorn the power of man ; they warn him against 
 his enemy Macduff", whom alone he has to fear ; but in the 
 eagerness of the moment he pays little heed to their warn- 
 ing, and spurred on by their encouraging prophecies ho 
 dashes on to his deeds of blood. 
 
 It is comparatively difficult to arri^^e at any definite 
 conclusions respecting Shakspere's purpose in his imperson- 
 ation of the witches, and many theories have been put forth 
 on the subject, Gervinus says of them "they are not the
 
 SUPERNATURAL IN SIIAKSPERE. 91 
 
 avengers in a deed, but the tempters to it, the panderers of 
 sin." Lamb believes that they generated deeds of l>lood, 
 and originated the evil impulses of the soul ; and Schlegel 
 maintains that Macbeth sunk under a deep-laid hellish 
 temptation, and under their supernatural impulses. It 
 cannot, however, be .said that the witches represent the 
 whole nature of Macbeth, nor that they have an independent 
 existence. It is most probable that Shakspere intended 
 them to represent that peculiar kind of temptation to which 
 man is subjected,— temptation which at one time seems to 
 originate in ourselves, and at another to be suggested by 
 some external influence. In so far as man yields to this 
 temptation he makes it his own, but at the same time its 
 first suggestion may come from some power outside himself. 
 This seems to be the peculiar position of Macbeth, and 
 Shakspere has given us in a plastic form this mystery in 
 nature which is so difficult to solve, — where do these evil 
 suggestions come from 1 Recognizing the difficulty of this 
 question our conception of the character of Macbeth must 
 be very carefully estimated. If all the promptings to 
 crime of which he is guilty originated in himself his 
 character would indeed be a black one. He would seem 
 to be the victim of developed passion with full mastery 
 over him ; but if we remember that there are external 
 influences at work spurring him on in his evil deeds, this 
 estimate of him will require considerable modification. 
 He does not come before us as completely under the; 
 influence of unbridled passion and inordinate ambition. 
 We have in Macbeth a man capable of accomplishing much 
 good as well as much evil. He lias no need to encourage in 
 himself the inspiring promises of the witches ; ample room
 
 92 SUPERNATURAL IK SHAKSPERE. 
 
 is left for the exercise of his own will. This is evident 
 from the fact that Banquo saw the witches too, and was 
 equally tempted by them, but his firmer will enabled him to 
 withstand their temptings. Macbeth listens to them, and 
 the goodness of his nature is gradually overcome by the 
 evil. He is t'ery undecided in his action at first, and his 
 wife. Lady Macbeth, says that his nature is 
 
 Too full of the milk of human kindness 
 To catch the nearest waj'. 
 
 Lady Macbeth is fully decided in her action. She is fully 
 bent upon the crime. She bids Macbeth to screw up his 
 courage to the sticking place, and urges him on to the 
 bloody deed. His complex nature compels him to decide 
 for the good or for the evil, and ultimately the evil is 
 triumphant. This gives him his great decision, and he goes 
 on boldly and assuredly to the murderous work. 
 
 Shakspere in this play uses the supeniatural agencies to 
 picture more strikingly the sad effects of pandering with, or 
 giving way to evil temptations. In the end Macbeth meets 
 the great avenger, Macduff, the only one he had to fear, 
 and then the cowardliness of his evil nature manifests itself. 
 " My soul is too much charged with blood of thine already" 
 escapes from him as he shrinks under the piercing and 
 revengeful look of Macduff. His hitherto undaunted 
 courage forsakes him, and he falls a victim to his evil 
 passion. Thus Shakspere shews very forcibly how justice 
 must sooner or later visit with its sternest hand those who 
 revel in deeds of blood. 
 
 Hamlet is an agreeable change after considering so cruel 
 a plot as Macbeth. In Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark, we 
 have the predominance of the contemplative over the
 
 SUPERNATURAL IN SlIAKSPERE. 93 
 
 practical in a mind of the highest order, both intellectually 
 and morally. He is placed in the most trying circumstances. 
 He is heir apparent to the throne ; his father has died very 
 suspiciously, and his mother thrusts him — her only son — 
 from the crown by marrying his dead father's brother.* 
 It is a questioned point as to whether Hamlet knew or 
 suspected that his father had been murdered by his uncle. 
 If he did, he takes no steps to punish the murderer. He is 
 too abstracted ; but when his mother marries his uncle, 
 " but two months " after his father's death, he seems to 
 realize his position. In the solitude of his thought he pours 
 forth, with all the agony of his soul, that most impassioned 
 address : — 
 
 oh, that this too, too sohd flesh would melt, 
 Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew. 
 
 He loses himself again in meditation — how weary, stale, 
 fiat, and unprofitable seem to him all the uses of the 
 world — and again he delays to take action. Shakspere, 
 therefore, has recourse to supernatural power in order to 
 rouse Hamlet to a sense of the injustice he is suffering. 
 But he does this not by the playful trick of the fairy, nor 
 yet by the inspiring prophecy of the witch. The mind of 
 Hamlet is too sensitive, too critical for either ; he must 
 have something more convincing, " an honest ghost," the 
 spirit of his father. The poet prepares Hamlet for receiving 
 the sad and strange story by preliminary appearances of 
 the ghost to Horatio. After relating his sufferings in an 
 imaginary purgatory, the spirit unfolds the sad tale of his 
 murder — a murder " most foul, strange, and unnatural " — 
 
 *Compare Sliak&pere'a Hypocrite& — the King iu Hamlet.
 
 94 SUPERNATURAL IN SHAKSPERE. 
 
 how he was cut off from the world by his own brother, 
 oven in the blossoms of his sin, with no reckoning made, 
 but sent to his account with all his imperfections on his 
 head. He speaks of the deceitfulness of his wife, but 
 leaving her to Heaven and to "those fires that in her 
 bosom lodge to prick and sting her," he pleads with his 
 son, in the name of the love that he has for an affectionate 
 father, to avenge him. Hamlet, on the impulse of the 
 moment, is eager to learn more, so that with "wings swift 
 as meditation" he may sweep to his revenge. The father 
 reveals all ; but does the son carry out his resolve 'i No ! 
 He must needs meditate again ; he must reason with 
 himself as to the justice of taking revenge: — 
 
 Whether 'tis nobler in the mind 
 
 To suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, 
 
 Or to take up arms against a sea of troubles, 
 
 And by opposing end them. 
 
 How can he justify such a deed to the world 1 How can 
 he vindicate in himself a crime which he must lodge 
 against another 1 He has no spirit of revenge about him, 
 he cannot satisfy himself that there is any justice in it. 
 He delays taking action; puts it off until some more 
 convenient time. He meditates again, and reproaches 
 himself for his inertness, but still he takes no steps to 
 gratify his father's wish. We cannot, however, charge 
 Hamlet with cowardice or want of courage. All his 
 inaction must be attributed to the critical, the contem- 
 plative nature of his mind, and his utter aversion to the 
 spirit of revenge. 
 
 The great lesson to be learned from the use of the 
 supernatural in Hamlet is, tlie iDijwrtance of action ; that 
 this is the chief end of our existence ; that all our faculties,
 
 SUPERNATURAL IN SIIAKSPERE. 05 
 
 all our intellectual powers are rather misfortunes to us than 
 otherwise, if they keep us from duty. In Hamlet we have 
 a character in whom all that is amiable and excellent is 
 combined, but he lives in meditation, his whole life is 
 dwindled away by "continually resolving to do, yet doing 
 nothing but resolve." And this failing of Hamlet may bo 
 placed to the general account of humanity. All his distress, 
 his abstractedness, his depression, his laxity in action, may 
 be applied to ourselves, as well as the unhappy results 
 which spring therefrom. 
 
 The Temi^est has been placed in the final period of 
 Shakspere's writings, and very justly so. The manner in 
 which it is worked out, especially that part which we have 
 to consider, shows that Shakspere was no longer in his 
 apprenticeship, but that he had reached the zenith of his 
 power. In his latter days the poet seems to have been 
 much engaged with the ingratitude of men : how we arc to 
 receive the injuries inflicted on us by others.* The story 
 of The Tempest is one of rebellion and usurpation by one 
 brother against another, — an ungrateful brother against a 
 beneficent one. And in Prospero Shakspere has pictured 
 the noblest attitude a brother so wronged could take: an 
 attitude of forbearance and forgiveness. To impart these 
 lessons more forcibly, the poet has recourse to the super- 
 natural. Still adhering to popular belief, he takes 
 advantage of the strange stories related by travellers of the 
 wonders in newly discovered quarters of the globe. In the 
 character of Prospero he portrays a venerable Magician, 
 who has complete power over the spirit world on a desert 
 
 *Compare Shakspere'a Clowns —conclusion of Third Period.
 
 96 SUPERNATURAL IN SlIAKSPERE. 
 
 island in the Bermudas. But the supernatural agents in 
 this work are of quite a superior order. It is no longer as 
 in Shakspere's youth when men and women were mere toys 
 for fairy pranks, nor as in Macbeth, where man submits to 
 the evil promptings of the witches ; the poet has a higher 
 purpose in view. In Ariel we have a spirit whose mission 
 it is to help and encourage man in the nobler deeds of 
 mercy and forgiveness. And to accomplish his work 
 Prospero has under his command spirits which rule the four 
 elements. By their aid he bedims the noonday sun, calls 
 forth the mutinous winds, lashes the sea into furious war, 
 gives fire to the rattling thunder, and bids the earth yield 
 forth her dead. In Ariel, however, Shakspere embodies 
 the power of all these minor spirits. First, he appears as a 
 sea nymph, swimming and careering on the foamy waves ; 
 then as a spirit of fire, diving into flame ; and then as a 
 spirit of earth, penetrating its heated veins. But his real 
 nature is (as his name implies) that of a Sylph, a spirit of 
 the air. In this shape he is pictured as riding on the curled 
 clouds ; running on the sharp winds, while he pursues his 
 mission to deceive, to scatter, and to frighten evil-doers. 
 He has much more freedom than the rest of the spirits. 
 Prospero bids him do his will, but leaves the spirit to 
 choose the method ; and in every case he serves his master 
 faithfully and well — without a mistake, grudge or grumble. 
 It is not difficult to find Shakspere's object in using the 
 supernatural here; it is plainly as Dowden puts it, — "The 
 winning back to good of souls given to evil." The spirit 
 Ariel represents Prospero's self — his truest nature. His 
 throne usui'ped by a Ijrother, and banished to a desert 
 island, his finer character developes itself. His brother, at
 
 SUPERNATURAL IN SHAKSPERE. 97 
 
 last, com OS within his power, he can deprive him of his life, 
 of all, if he wishes, but does he let vindictiveness possess 
 him 1 No. He sends the spirit Ariel — his own nobler 
 will — on a mission of forgiveness, to bring his brother to 
 repentance. In the wide extent of Ariel's exploits through 
 the spirit world we have the extensive field of usefulness in 
 which a character such as Prospero's can employ itself. In 
 Ariel's pleading for freedom we recognize Prospero's wish 
 to be relieved from the anxieties of this life ; he feels that, 
 like the spirits over which he has such complete control, he 
 too must vanish into "thin and empty air;" that 
 
 " We are all such stuff 
 
 As dreams are made of, and our little life 
 
 Is rounded by a sleep."* 
 
 Considering the supernatural in Shakspere as a whole 
 we have seen that his main justification for its use is that 
 the age in which he lived believed very much in it ; but at 
 the same time he had something more in view than simply 
 the gratification or the amusement of his audience. He 
 employed it as a symbol of the most natural relations, 
 and thus appealed to his hearers much more powerfully. 
 We have seen how in Midsummer Night's Dream the fairies 
 represent those capricious, whimsical, fantastical characters 
 whose only aim is their ow^n enjoyment, and who seek to 
 accomplish this end by mortifying and tormenting humanity; 
 how in Macbeth the witches mirror those viler temptations 
 which spur men on to cursed and wicked deeds ; how in 
 Hamlet the spirit of a murdered father pleads with the 
 sluggish soul of a too meditative son, seeking to rouse him 
 
 * Compare Carlyle — "But whence? — 0! Heaven, whither? Sense 
 know s not ; Faith knows not ; only that it is through Mystery to 
 Mystery, from God to God." — Sartor Re.sartus, Boo): iii., cp. 9. 
 G
 
 98 SUPERNATURAL IN SHAKSPERE. 
 
 to action in the cause of justice ; how in the Tempest Ariel, 
 representing Prospero's better nature, seeks to bring remorse 
 to an erring and ungrateful bi'other, and in the end to give 
 him pardon. In the Dream the supernatural agents have 
 man completely under their control ; in Hamlet and 
 Macbeth they are co-agents with man, and in the Tempest 
 they are altogether under man's control. And all this is 
 worked out with so much skill, such form, character, and 
 consistency is given to this ideal supernatural world that 
 " nature seems elevated above herself," the impossible is 
 brought into the region of the possible, and through it all 
 our reason is never offended. We cannot but admire the 
 underlying purpose of our author; and we cannot but 
 believe that he fulfilled his purpose in a manner impossible 
 to any but himself.
 
 SHAKSPERE'S CLOWNS.
 
 Now Mercury endue thee with leasing-, for thon speakest well of fools. 
 
 Twelfth Miiht. Act I. v. <i:i. 
 
 O ! that I were a fool I 
 I am ambitions for a motley coat, 
 To speak my mind ; and I will throiinh and throni;'h 
 Cleanse the foul liody of the infected world; 
 If they will patiently receive my medicine. 
 
 J.'^CQUKS (Aii i/dK like it). Act II. vii. 42— (10. 
 
 Wit, an't lie thy will, put me into y'ood foolinij ! Those wits that tliink they have 
 thee, do very oft prove fools; and I, that am sure 1 lack thee, may pass for a wise 
 man : for what says Cjiuinapalus? Better a witty fool, than a foolish wit. 
 
 Tvielfth Xiffht. Act I. v. 30—34.
 
 SHAKSPERE'S CLOWNS. 
 
 Shakspere was the most universal genius that ever lived 
 — a fact often asserted, and seldom, if ever, contradicted. 
 The more we read of him the more its truth is impressed 
 upon us. There seems to be no phase of human existence 
 upon which he has not placed his linger. He has the same 
 "absolute command over our laughter and our tears, all the 
 resources of passion, wit, of thought, of observation ; he has 
 the same unbounded range of fanciful invention, whether 
 terrible or playful ; the same insight into the world of 
 imagination as he has into the world of reality." * And 
 not only this : he is the most original genius that ever 
 lived. The poetry of Shakspere was inspiration : indeed ho 
 is not so much an imitator as an instrument of nature ; and 
 it is not so just to say that he speaks from her, as that she 
 speaks through him. His characters are so much nature 
 herself, that it is a sort of injury to call them by so distant 
 a name as copies of her f. 
 
 And one of the most original branches of Shakspere's art 
 is the comic element, in which he has indulged so freely, 
 and with such power. For Shakspere could laugh, he 
 could laugh heartily ; and this, we have been told, is a 
 comforting fact to be borne in mind, a fact which serves to 
 
 Hazlitt — "Shakspere's Characters," t Pope.
 
 102 SHAKSPERES CLOWNS. 
 
 rescue us from the domination of intense and narrow 
 natures, who claim authority by virtue of their grasp of one 
 half the realities of our existence, and their denial of the 
 rest. The wit and humour of Shakspere, like his total 
 genius, is many-sided : he knew every nook and corner 
 of it, every quip and quirk, every quiditty and oddity 
 capable of moving any laughter-loving man. His power 
 of wit and repartee is forcibly told by Fuller: — "Many 
 were the wit-combates betwixt him and Ben Johnson ; 
 which two I behold like a Spanish great Galleon, 
 and an English man of War : Master Johnson (like the 
 former) was built far higher in Learning ; solid but slow 
 in his performances. Shakespear, with the English Man of 
 War, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with 
 all tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds by the 
 quickness of his Wit and Invention.* Shakspere abounds 
 in kindly mirth — " he can dandle a fool as tenderly as any 
 nurse qualified to take a baby from the birth, can deal with 
 her charge." Through his clowns and fools the poet scoffs 
 at the world, and yet remains aloof from its interests ; he 
 smiles at human greatness, and yet pays homage to the 
 great ; he makes fun of human love and human joy, and yet 
 they are deeply real to him ; he jokes with human sorrow, 
 but he enters into the deepest anguish of the soul ; he sees 
 through it all, and knows that it has an end and a quietus. 
 This comic genius of Shakspere has been compared to the 
 bee, in its power to extract honey from weeds and poisons, 
 rather than in its power of leaving a sting behind it. He 
 gives a most amusing exaggeration to the prevailing foibles 
 
 ♦Fuller: "The History of the Worthies of England "—Quoted 
 in "Shakspere'a Centurie of Prayae."' — N. S. S. papers, 1879.
 
 SIIAKSPEEE'S CLOWNS. 10.} 
 
 of his characters, and in such a way that they themselves, 
 instead of being offended at it, are inclined to join in the 
 fun ; he contrives opportunities for such characters to shew 
 themselves oft" in the happiest light, rather than render them 
 contemptible in the perverse construction of the wit or 
 malice of others. Thus we understand how it is that he 
 allows folly to shoot out and grow with such unchecked 
 luxuriance. He gives absurdity every encouragement, and 
 nonsense room to flourish in. He runs riot in conceits, and 
 idolizes a quibble : his whole object is to turn the meanest 
 and rudest objects to pleasurable account. The relish which 
 he has of a pun, or the quaint humour of a low character, 
 does not interfere with the delight with which he describes 
 a beautiful image, or the most refined sentiment. Touchstone 
 and Jacques in no Avay disturb the picture of the beautiful 
 Rosalind : we have additional pleasure from her quick wit 
 and good sense through their railings ; the clowns do not 
 spoil the sweetness of the character of Viola, nor the purity 
 and faithfulness of Desdemona. 
 
 But we must say something of these Clowns as they 
 existed in real life. Fools and Jesters have had their place 
 in all times and in all countries : they reached the 
 culminating point of their influence in the middle ages, 
 when they had a recognized place and recognized functions 
 in the social organism. They were not only naturally 
 inclined and endowed with qualities for the amusement of 
 others, but they used their powers, or weaknesses, as a 
 regular means of getting a livelihood. Savage Jugglers, 
 Medicinemen, and Pardoners have much in common with 
 the Fools and Jesters by profession. There existed in 
 ancient Greece a distinct class of professional Fools, Avhose
 
 104 SIIAKSPERE'S CLOWNS. 
 
 habits very much resembled those of the Jesters of the 
 middle ages."^ It A\as the same in Rome, and Fools have 
 existed from time immemorial at the Eastern courts. On 
 the conquest of Mexico, Court Fools and deformed creatures 
 of all kinds were found at the court of Montezuma, who 
 believed that more instruction could be gathered from them 
 than from court favourites, for they dared to tell the truth. 
 The dress of the regular Court Fool was not altogether a 
 rigid uniform — it seems to have changed considerably from 
 time to time. The head was shaved, the coat motley, the 
 breeches tight and generally one leg ditferent in colour 
 from the other. The head was covered with a piece 
 resembling a monk's cowl, which fell over the breast and 
 shoulders, and often bore asses ears, and was crested with a 
 coxcomb, while small bells hung from vai-ious parts of the 
 attire. The fool's bauble was a short staff, bearing a 
 ridiculous head, to which was sometimes attached aii 
 inflated bladder, by means of which sham castigations were 
 inflicted. A long petticoat was also occasionally worn, but 
 this seems to have belonged rather to the idiots than to the 
 wits, for some of these fools were chosen to excite laughter 
 from their deformity of mind or body, while others were 
 chosen for a certain alertness, and power of repartee — these 
 were the buts and wits. The Fool's business was to amuse 
 his master, to excite him to laughter hj witty comparison 
 and sharp contrast, to prevent the over-oppression of state 
 artairs, and, in harmony Avith the well-known physiological 
 precept, by his liveliness at meals, to assist his lord's 
 digestion. In England the list of Court Fools is a long 
 
 * Xeuophon gives a pioturebciue accovmt of one of these in 
 Ths Banquet.
 
 SlhiKSPERFS CLOWNS. 105 
 
 ouo — from Hitard, the Fool of Edmund Ironside, to Muckle 
 John, the Fool of Charles I., probably the last official Royal 
 Fool. The private Fool existed as late as last century, as is 
 proved by Swift's epitaph on Dicky Pearce, the Earl of 
 Surtolk's Jester. The type still exists in its lowest and 
 most burlesque form as the Fool of the travelling circus and 
 the comic Clown of the pantomime. 
 
 Shakspere invariably held up the mirror to the age in 
 which he lived: every prevailing habit and usage of his 
 time was seized for the purpose of his art ; and the Fool 
 received his special attention. The function of the Clown 
 on the staije had been much abused — more license had been 
 taken with this than any other character. The Fool's part 
 was generally written out, but he was allowed to alter it as 
 he wished, to introduce extempore jokes, and the scenes 
 were often stretched out until the comic elements of the 
 play predominated.* Shakspere at once set his mark upon 
 the practice, and he determined to dignify the character 
 and rescue it from its deplorable condition. But from the 
 coarseness of the actors and the fostered inclination of the 
 people to laugh solely at the clumsy, ludicrous jokes of the 
 Clown, his task was a difficult one. Gervinus mentions 
 what a misuse of the privileges of the Clown Tarlton and 
 Kempe made upon the stage ; and as long as this continued, 
 as long as the principal art of these actors, and the principal 
 pleasure of the public was that they should stretch out the 
 chin, let their arms hang lose, and twirl their wooden 
 swords, Shakspere could hardly venture to bring a more 
 reiined character of this sort upon the stage. Kempe twice 
 
 * Compare Marlowe's Dr. Faustus.
 
 106 SHAKSPERE'S CLOWNS. 
 
 withdrew from the company at tlie Blackfriars Theatre, and 
 it was only when he and his like were removed that 
 Shakspere could write that more refined programme in 
 Hamlet for the actor of the Fool. Although our poet 
 indulged his comic vein quite as liberally as any other, he 
 reprobates at once both the dramatist and the actor for 
 thus degrading his art and his subject by inopportune 
 drollery. He admits the important and leading function of 
 the Clown, but he restricts the actor to the part written 
 down for him. At the same time he gives a rule of 
 restriction to the dramatist also : 
 
 "And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for thcni, 
 for there be of them that will themselves laujjh, to set on some quantity of barren 
 spectators to laugh too ; thou;4h in the mean time some necessary question of the 
 play be then to be considered : that is \ illainous, and shews a most pitiful ambition 
 in the fool that uses it." 
 
 Haxtlet -to the Players. Act III. ii. 30— UG. 
 
 Shakspei'e ascribes the highest value to these Fools and 
 men of wit, and he gives them full and unlimited power to 
 speak the truth, to rend asunder as often as they will the 
 veil of mere propriety and hypocrisy, and wittily to unmask 
 the folly of others under the cover of their own folly. This 
 appeared to the poet "a practice as full of labour as a wise 
 man's art," and as useful as a preacher's discourse. To use 
 px'operly and wisely the sting of seeming folly belonged to 
 the most expert knowledge of the world and of men — "of the 
 quality of persons and the time," for men in general he 
 considered the presence of the Fool as a very useful test of 
 head and heart. And so far as Shakspere's art is concerned 
 he rendered complete homage to the notion of the age that 
 the Fool had something of a divine and foretelling nature in 
 him : hence his elevation of the character. He often invests 
 his simple Clown with a deeper sigiiihcance than his main
 
 SHAKSPERE'S CLOWNS. 107 
 
 characters in the piece, giving him power to solve almost 
 unconsciously problems of life over which the wise have 
 laboured without profit. 
 
 In the treatment of the sul>ject we shall distinguish three 
 periods in the growth of Shakspere's art as shewn in his 
 Fools :— 
 
 First — The Tentative or Experimental period, chiefly 
 noticeable for its verbal jokes, with its representative clown 
 Launce. 
 
 Second — The Ambidexterous or Vivacious period, with its 
 mirth and laughter-loving innocence, as opposed to senti- 
 mentalism, and its representative Touchstone. 
 
 Third — -The Soul-stirring and Censorious, with its finest 
 and fullest development of Shakspere's clowns in Kiny Lear — 
 almost the last faithful creature of the ruined king.
 
 FIRST PERIOD. 
 
 TENTATIVE-YOUNGMANISTT-LOQUACTOUS. 
 
 I. — Character istics. 
 
 II. — Lauxck and Spkeo. 
 
 ( Tvm GentUmPH of Verona.) 
 
 Ill, — Love's Labour Lost. 
 ( Costard. ) 
 
 IV. — Launcelot Gobbo. 
 
 (}ferchant of Venice.) 
 
 Y. — The Mechanics. 
 
 ( Midsimmpr Niyht's Dream. )
 
 FIRST PERIOD. 
 
 The clowns and fools of this period present the same 
 characteristics as the rest of Shakspere's early work — they 
 are merely sketched. This is the period of experiments : as 
 yet he is deficient in the subjects of deep thought and emo- 
 tion, he has not got a thorough grasp of life. Still all his 
 work is marked by his extraordinary mental gifts, his viva- 
 city, his cleverness, and his delight in the beautiful. He 
 took pleasure in the mere play of his wits ; he had felt none 
 of the graver influences of life. With his high spirits he 
 could enjoy fun pure and simple ; he was full of comic sur- 
 prises and grotesque incidents ; his satire consists solely in 
 gay attacks upon the superficial oddities, follies, and affecta- 
 tions of the world. He shews us through his first-period 
 Fools the pleasure which he derived from the quick encounter 
 of his wits, from the bandying of a jest to and fro in the air, 
 until at last it falls into an elaborate play of words — "Now, 
 by the salt we have of the Mediterranean, a sweet touch : 
 a quick venew of wit ; snip, snap, quick, and home ; it 
 rejoiceth my intellect." The comic and the serious, the 
 tender and the sentimental elements of the drama exist side 
 by side, and serve as a kind of criticism each upon the 
 other : the lover convicts the clown of insensibility to the 
 higher facts of life ; the clown convicts the lover of blind-
 
 112 SHAKSPERE'S CLOWNS. 
 
 ness or extravagance of passion. The elements do not as yet 
 interpenetrate ; one set of personages is reserved for the 
 grave or tender business of the drama, and a different set of 
 personages is told off to the comic business. Afterwards we 
 shall see how they intermingle. 
 
 SPEED AND LAUNCE (Tioo Gentlemen of Verona). 
 
 Here the comic part of the business is entrusted to a pair 
 of clowns, servants of Valentine and Proteus, to whom they 
 are placed in characteristic opposition — the witty Speed to 
 the amiable Valentine, awkward Launce to clever Proteus — 
 and, by actions of their own, exist as a kind of parody by 
 the side of the main characters of the piece. Launce's 
 account of his farewell is a parody on Juliet's silent parting 
 with Proteus. The scene in which Speed " thrust himself" 
 into Launce's love affairs caricatures the false intrusion of 
 Proteus into Valentine's love. And the scenes of Launce 
 and his dog Crab, which will occur to the general reader as 
 most offensive, have been shown to have a still deeper 
 meaning. To this silly, semi-brute man, who sympathizes 
 with his beast more than with men, his dog is his best friend. 
 He has received stripes for this dog, taken his faults upon 
 him ; he has been willing to sacrifice everything for him ; 
 and at last even this friend he will resign, his best possession 
 he will abandon to do service to his master. With this 
 capacity for sacrifice, this simple child of nature is placed 
 by the side of that splendid model of manly endowments, 
 Proteus, who, self-seeking, betrayed friend and lover. And 
 then this fine relation of the lower to the higher parts of the
 
 SHAKSrERE'S CLOWNS. 113 
 
 piece is so skillfully concealed by the removal of all 
 moralizing from the action, that the cultivated examiner of 
 the play finds the objective effect of the action in no wise 
 interfered with, while the groundling of the pit tastes unim- 
 peded his pure delight in common nature.* 
 
 Both the clowns are shrewder than their masters. Speed, 
 who is the professed wit, and skilled at " word-matching " 
 and making puns, recognizes the love of Silvia before Valen- 
 tine ; he knows his master to be in love almost before he 
 knows it himself, for he says — 
 
 " You have learned, like Sir Proteus, to wreath your arms, like a malcontent ; to 
 relish a love-song, like a robin redbreast ; to walk alone, like one that had the 
 pestilence ; to sigh, like a schoolboy that had lost his A B C ; to weep, like a young 
 wench that had buried her grandam ; to fast, like one that takes diet ; to watch, 
 like one that fears rol)bing ; to speak, puling like a beggar at Hallowmas. You were 
 wont, when you laughed, to crow like a cock ; when you walked, to walk like one 
 of the lions ; when you fasted, it was presently after dinner ; when you looked 
 sadly, it was for want of money ; and now you are metamorphosed with a mistress, 
 that, when 1 look on you, I can hardly think you my master." 
 
 Act II. I. 17— SO. 
 
 They discuss together the virtues of Silvia ; Valentine says 
 that her beauty is exquisite and her favour infinite, which, 
 Speed retorts, is " because the one is painted, and the other 
 out of count " — she is so painted to make her fair that no 
 man counts of her beauty. But it does not matter at all 
 what she looks like, for " Love is blind," and Valentine can 
 see no defects. 
 
 Launce is the broad humorist who blunders into matter 
 of a more vital, more pregnant kind than the tongue of 
 Speed can command. With his dog Crab, a most important 
 personage in this play, and his not less important stick, 
 Launce leads the procession of Shakspere's Clowns, and 
 there march behind him in a straggling train as well nigh 
 
 * Gervinus. — Vide Shakespeare Commentaries. 
 H
 
 114 SIIAKSPERFS CLOWNS. 
 
 motley a crew of mirth-provoking, side-splitting Fools as one 
 could think of. The scenes of Launce and his dog are 
 inimitable in the way of farcical drollery and invention. 
 Just think of this dog's ungratefulness in the parting 
 scene ! Here has Launce been weeping for an hour, his 
 mother weeping too, his father wailing, his sister crying, the 
 maid howling, the cat wringing her hands, and all the house 
 in great perplexity, yet, this cruel-hearted cur all the while 
 shed not a tear, nor spoke a word : surely he was the sour- 
 est-natured dog alive ; he is a stone, a very pebble-stone, 
 and hath no pity in him ; why a Jew would have wept to 
 have seen such a parting, but this dog shed not a teai\ 
 The mischievous little pup is equally troublesome when 
 sent as a present to Mistress Silvia, and it is very provoking 
 after the bringing-up he has had. " Oh ! it is a foul thing 
 when a cur cannot keep himself in all companies I" For 
 Launce had taught him even as one would say expressly 
 "thus I would teach my dog;" he had saved him from 
 drowning, sat in the stocks for the puddings he had stolen, 
 stood in the pillory for the geese he had killed, and yet 
 withal this little beast could not behave himself. 
 
 The scene where Speed "thrusts himself into the secrets" 
 of Launce is equally amusing, for Launce is very deeply in 
 love, so deep that a team of horses could not pluck him 
 from it, and in love too with a woman, a maiden. And 
 she has many Christian qualities in addition to her domestic 
 virtues : she talks in her sleep, which is much better than 
 sleeping in her talk ; she is slow in words — surely woman's 
 only virtue; she has no teeth, but no matter (n'importe) 
 he likes crusts; she has more hair than wit, more faults 
 than hairs, and more wealth than faults — and that latter
 
 SHAKSPERES CLOWNS. \\r^ 
 
 word makes all lior faults gracious, so lio will have her, come 
 what may. Launce gets Speed into trouble for interesting 
 himself so much in this love-attair, and rejoices in it ; he 
 looks forward with pleasure to a sight of the boy's correct- 
 ion, and he will stand aside to enjoy the completion of the 
 fun. 
 
 LOVE'S LABOUR LOST (Costard). 
 
 This play is entirely Shakspere's invention, and, says 
 Hazlitt, if we were to part with any of his comedies, it 
 would be this. Still we should be loth to part with Don 
 Andrean de Armado, that mighty potentate of nonsense, 
 or his page, that handful of wit ; with Nathaniel, the 
 curate, or Holofernes, the schoolmaster, with Costard, the 
 clown, or Dull, the constable. So he thinks we had better 
 let the play stand as it is, and not venture " to set a mark 
 of reprobation upon it." So far as we are concerned, it 
 matters little, for Costard has no attraction ; he does 
 nothing but turn a phrase now and then, and pollute it 
 with his " odd taint of endemic contagion." The whole 
 comedy concerns itself with " self-culture," and the poet 
 takes the opportunity of having his laugh at tlie fashionable 
 atfectations of the time. 
 
 LAUNCELOT GOBBO (Merchant of Venice.). 
 
 Launcelot boars the same relation to the main chai\acters 
 
 of tlie piece as we have noticed with Launce and Speed. 
 
 The scene between Launcelot and liis father is a parody 
 
 , upon the scene between Jessica and her's. Launcelot's
 
 116 SHAKSPUEE'S CLOWKS. 
 
 dialogue with his conscience and the fiend is very amusing, 
 and it proves him after all to be an honest fellow. The 
 fiend tempts him to run away from the Jew, while his 
 conscience bids him stay, and ultimately he yields to the 
 fiend, who, he says, gives him better counsel, for though he 
 could live better in the house of the rich old Jew, yet his 
 sense of honour bids him go and live with the poor generous 
 man. On the way he plays a prank with his father, but we 
 feel that after all it is not from an unkind heart. 
 
 THE MECHANICS ( Midsmnmer Xighfi< Dream). 
 
 We recognize at once, in the " rude mechanicals," an 
 advance in Shakspere's comic ai't. Hitherto all the poet's 
 faculties have been accustomed to go to work separately : 
 now they are beginning to approach one another. Here, 
 Bottom, the weaver, and Titinia, the fairy, meet — the 
 humour enriches itself by coalescing with the fancy ; the 
 comic is no longer purely comic, " it is a mingled web, shot 
 through by the beautiful." At a subsequent period, when 
 the highest powers of the poet are aroused, we shall see 
 how all his faculties have become fused together. 
 
 Bottom is unquestionably a finer comic than any 
 preceding character we have noticed. How lean and 
 impoverished his fellows, the Athenian craftsmen, find 
 themselves in the presence of this many-sided genius, Nick 
 Bottom ! Rarely is a great artist appreciated in the 
 degree that he is — " he hath simply the best head of any 
 handicraftman in Athens ; yea, and the best person too ; 
 he is a very paramour for a sweet voice." With what a
 
 SIIAKSPERE'S CLOWNS. 117 
 
 iiiagniticent multiplicity of gifts he is endowed ! How vast 
 has the bounty of nature been to him ! And he has a line 
 set of companions — 
 
 " A crew of patches, rude mechanicals, 
 That work for bread upon Athenian stalls." 
 
 Act III. Sc. I. 
 
 There is Quince, the carpenter; Snug, the joiner; Flute, the 
 bellows-mender; Snout, the tinker; and Starvelling, the 
 tailor. But Bottom is very conceited and fantastical, and 
 in calling over the role for the coming play, he is ready to 
 undertake anything, as if it was as much a matter of course 
 as the motion of his loom and shuttle. First of all Quince 
 assigns to him the part of Pyramus — " a lover that kills 
 himself most gallantly for love. Then let the audience 
 look to their eyes, for Bottom can move storms — he can 
 condole in some measure. Still he prefers to play the 
 tyrant, " the Ercles' vein, is more to his humour. Flute 
 does not like to play a woman's part because he has a beard 
 coming, but, no matter, Bottom will undertake it, "an I may 
 hide my face, let me play Thisby too, I will speak in a 
 monstrous little voice — ' Thisne, Thisne, — Ah ! Pyramus, 
 my lover dear ! thy Thisby dear, and lady dear ! " And 
 as for the lion's part, alloted to the bashful Snug, why he 
 will take that too — " I will roar, that I will do any man's 
 heart good to hear me : I will roar that I will make the 
 Duke say, let him roar again, let him roar again." This 
 being objected to as improper, for he would frighten the 
 Duchess and the ladies, he has still a resource in the good 
 opinion of himself — " I will roar as gently as any sucking 
 dove; I will roar you an't were any nightingale." But 
 from all these wild dreams of universal ambition he is
 
 118 SUAKSPERFS CLOWNS. 
 
 recalled by the less presumptious Quince to his proper 
 impersonation, " You can play no part but Pyramus." 
 And this wonderful genius who rules the roast amongst his 
 fellow mechanics is quite as much at home in his new 
 character of the ass of Titinia — with his amiable cheeks and 
 fair large ears.* All at once he acquires a most learned 
 taste, and grows fastidious in everything. He thinks he 
 will to the barber's, for he is such a tender ass that if his 
 hair do but tickle him he must needs scratch ; he has a good 
 reasonable ear for music : — ■" let us have the tongues and 
 bones ; " and as for eating he has a great desire for a bottle 
 of hay — good, sweet hay, — and a handful or two of sweet 
 peas. He is quite as familiar with his new fairy attendants, 
 and assigns them their part with due gravity: — " Monsieur 
 Cobweb, get your weapons in your hand, and kill me a red- 
 hipped humble-bee, on the top of a thistle, and good 
 monsieur bring me a honey-bag." But when he awakes he 
 is rather surprised ; what a rare vision he has had ! — past 
 the wit of man to say what dream it was : a man was but 
 an ass if he go about and try to expound it. " The eye of 
 man hath not heard, the ear of man hatli not seen, man's 
 hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his 
 heart to report, what my dream was. I will get to Peter 
 Quince to write a ballad of this dream : it shall be called 
 Bottom's dream, because it hath no bottom." Then when 
 they come to play before the duke, Bottom proves himself 
 to be as much a stage-manager as he is an actor. He 
 conceives the device for obviating the danger of frightening 
 the ladies by writing a prologue to describe the killing of 
 
 * Compare the e&bay on "The Supernatural in Shakspere."
 
 SHAKSPEKE'S CLOWNS. 119 
 
 Pyra)iuis ; moonshine is to be represented Ijy opening a 
 window or else one must come in with a bush of thorns and 
 a lanthorn : and Snout must stand to represent a wall, aiad 
 open his fingers for a cranny hole through which the lover's 
 must whisper. 
 
 This play acted by the clowns is the reverse of the poet's 
 own work, which demands all the spectator's reilective and 
 imitative fancy to open to him this aerial world ; whilst in 
 the other nothing at all is left to the imagination of the 
 spectator. This great contrast between the rough 
 
 mechanics and the tender and delicate fairies, between the 
 awkward and the beautiful, the real and the truly imagina- 
 tive, gives greater prominence to both.
 
 SECOND PEKIOD. 
 
 AMBIDEXTEROUS— MIRTH-LAUGHTER-LOVING- 
 VIVACIOUS. 
 
 I. — Characteristics. 
 
 II. — Clown. 
 
 (AlVn ivdl that end's ivcU.) 
 
 III. — Feste. 
 
 (Tvuelfth night.) 
 
 IV. — Touchstone. 
 
 (As you like it.)
 
 SECOND PERIOD. 
 
 The poet is now beginning to leave behind him the spirit 
 of "clever younginanishness," and to lay hold of the 
 principles of life, to understand the purpose of the world, 
 and of men ; and he begins to deal with it in a very power- 
 ful way through his histories. "The compression of the 
 age, and the rough matter of history into dramatic form, 
 demanded the vigorous exercise of the plastic energy of the 
 imagination ; and the circumstance that he was dealing 
 with reality and positive facts of the world, must have 
 served to make clear to Shakspere that there was sterner 
 stuff" of poetry, material more precious — even for purposes 
 of art — in active life, than could be found in the conceits, 
 and prettinesses, and affections, which at times led him 
 astray in his earlier writings." Still he did not start upon 
 any profound enquiry concerning the deeper and more 
 terrible problems of existence, so that this period of his 
 clowns may be regarded as the freshest and most enjoyable. 
 Their wit is genuine, and full of vivacity and truth, and it 
 is striking that ia almost all the plays of this period the 
 musical element appears ; Shakspere's laughter, therefore, 
 could not be more clear and musical than it is now.
 
 124 SUAKSFERFS CLOWNS. 
 
 "ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL." 
 
 Of this work little need be said; it is amongst our 
 author's less genial plays, but it serves our purpose to mark 
 the poet's transition from the florid and exaggerated style of 
 wit to the more substantial English tone of the second 
 period. Only the comic parts of the play — the characters 
 of Parolles, Lafeu, the Clown, and the Countess — are the 
 real property and invention of Shakspere. The Clown 
 seems to think that his forte lies in the fit answering of 
 every question put to him. He says of Parolles that "to 
 say nothing, to know nothing, to have nothing, is to be a 
 great part of your title, which is very little of nothing." 
 The witticisms of this fool to Parolles, and such like 
 cowards, are like "inopportune bullets," but to the generoiis 
 and the guiltless who have a free conscience they are mere 
 "bird-bolts" — the wit of the fool shoots vainly over their 
 heads, whilst it discovers at once the folly of those who 
 shrink at the whizzing of its arrows. 
 
 FESTE (Twelfth Night). 
 
 The comic elements of Twelfth Night are again entirely 
 Shakspere's own, and it has been called the purest and 
 merriest comedy he has written. The play was intended 
 for the night of the twelfth of December, the eve which 
 ushers in the Carnival — the season in which at that day in 
 England bean Kings were chosen by lot, merry court scenes 
 were kept in family circles, and Masquerades for the
 
 SHAKSPERFS CLOWXS. 125 
 
 purpose were performed in the theatres. For a marl 
 season like this, mad jests are here represented as it were 
 for choice (what you vnll), and the play is full of sweet- 
 ness, good-nature, and pleasantry. There is some satire 
 but no spleen, it aims at the ludicrous rather than the 
 ridiculous. Two strata of society are represented, characters 
 of a more refined organization, and characters in which the 
 vices of human nature grow luxuriantly as weeds. The 
 poet hits out right and left at their follies, but he does not 
 despise the characters nor bear them any ill-will, for "there 
 is no slander in an allowed fool, though he do nothing but 
 rail ; nor no railing in a known discreet man though he do 
 nothing but reprove." * 
 
 We have to notice in Feste — for he deserves his name 
 quite as much as Launcelot or Touchstone — one of the best 
 creations of our poet : he dares for the first time to hold up 
 before his bearers a fool of the first order, and of the most 
 varied powers : — 
 
 This fellow's wise eiiouyh to play the fool, 
 
 And to do that \vi 11 craves a kind of wit : 
 
 He must observe their mood on whom he jests, 
 
 The quality of persons, and tlie time, 
 
 And, like uhe halyard, check at every feather 
 
 That comes before his eye. This is a practice 
 
 As full of labour as a wise man's art ; 
 
 For folly, that he wisely shows, is fit. 
 
 But wise men, folly laden, qiiite taint their wit. 
 
 Act III. Sc. ii). Git— 7^1. 
 
 He throws off the rudeness and vulgarity of Launcelot and 
 Costard, and puts upon the stage a clown who dares to 
 assert his powers and his superiority. Feste has a finger 
 in everything throughout the piece : thinks himself at 
 
 * Act I. V. 90—92.
 
 1-2G SIIAKSPERFS CLOWNS. 
 
 lilierty to speak his mind upon every subject tliat conies 
 l)efor(^ his notice, and yet he is out of the reach of every- 
 body, and through the sharpness of his wit he generally 
 gets the best of an ai'gument. He is not only a humorist, 
 he is a singei', a witty entertainer, and a "corrupter of 
 words " as he calls himself. No other of Shakspere's Fools 
 has so shewn his supei'iority as this ; in fact he says he is 
 no Fool at all, it is a great mistake to call him so, or to call 
 his foolish wisdom folly, for he avows that his brain is 
 nothing like so motley as his dress. 
 
 He is opposed in some way or otlier to every character in 
 the play, and the passage above quoted shows how well he 
 understood them all " to observe their mood on whom he 
 jests, the quality of persons, and the time." He studies all 
 his characters and his manner of speech to them — taking 
 care in the meantime always to ask for what he knows he 
 will get — knowing all their weaknesses, considering their 
 nature, adapting everything to the mood of the moment. 
 He searches to the depth of his mistress's sorrow, pene- 
 ti'ates the destiny of Maria, and Sir Toby's weak pia 
 mater, "holds up the mirror to the opalescent humours 
 of the duke," and yet with all this he is a careless, 
 cheerful fellow, troubling himself about nothing,- placed 
 in the midst of this l)ustling company, " a wise fool 
 amongst the foolish wise." He thinks himself much 
 better off for his enemies tlian for liis friends, for his 
 friends make an ass of him by praising him, but 
 his foes tell him plainly that he is an ass ; so that 
 by his foes lie profits in the knowledge of himself, and by 
 his friends he is abused. And he has a musical talent, whicii 
 is most diversified — " a most mellifluous voice, and a very
 
 SIIAKSPEPiES CLOWNS. 12; 
 
 swf'ot and contagious l)reath." H(> appears as a sing-or liy 
 profession, and sings with equal skill love-songs of a merry 
 or tragic nature to suit either the dreamy and poetical being 
 of the duke, or the noisy company of Sir Toby, who shakes the 
 house with liis laughter, and calls up the straight-laced Malvolio 
 at midnight. He says he takes pleasure in his singing, and 
 refuses recompense : he deprecates expressly the idea of liis 
 begging being construed into covetousness. 
 
 He is most faithfully devoted to his mistress, and speaks 
 with her as one belonging to her house ; he condemns the 
 extravagance of her melancholy, and proves her foolish for 
 mourning a brother, because he has gone to Heaven — a 
 much better place. He promotes the connection between 
 Viola and Sebastian, and is at once on a friendly footing 
 with these naturally fresli and free natures. With Sir 
 Andrew he talks glaring nonsense, because he knows it 
 enchants him, and witli Sir Toby he passes for no fox. 
 They praise his personal appearance ; " the fool has an 
 excellent breast ; I had rather than forty shillings I liad 
 such a leg and so sweet a breath to sing."* He watches the 
 actions of Maria, and praises her as the most witty of her 
 sex if she can win Sir Toby from drinking. But with 
 Malvolio he cannot agree. Malvolio is an austere Puritan : 
 his crossed garters distinguish him at once ; and he speaks 
 with contempt of the fool and his profession. The fool's 
 pride is at once wounded, and he joins i-eadily enough in the 
 trick to cure Malvolio of his self-conceit and, in the chai-ac- 
 ter of Sir Topas, plagues him till he is nigh mad indeed, and 
 then leaves him in his misery. 
 
 * Act II., So.JII., 9,
 
 1 28 SUA KSPL RFS CL WNS. 
 
 TOUCHSTONE (As You Like It). 
 
 The two characters Jacques and Touchstone shew us a just 
 view of the two kinds of life of which the play consists — 
 that of the court, and that of the country. In the anecdotes, 
 reflections, and declamations of these two, we have the cor- 
 ruptions of affected society brought into contact with wood- 
 land habits witli remarkable force. Both are characters of 
 the court, and of highly sophisticated society ; their actions 
 and conversation partake largely of the court, and therefore 
 few things under the greenwood tree are genial to them. 
 
 We have seen how, in the earlier comedies, the wit of the 
 fools has been a mere play upon words, and given out almost 
 unconsciously; but now the poet begins to invest his clowns 
 with that prophetic vein they were said to possess, and to 
 which the age gave credence. Touchstone is not quite so 
 expert, nor so sensible of his wit as Feste, but he is of a 
 more elevated nature : he stands on the doubtful limit of 
 instinct and consciousness. Jacques says that he is a clown 
 who has crammed the strange places of his dry brain with 
 observation, " which he vents in mingled forms" ; he con- 
 siders him one of those natural philosophers (natural fools) 
 of whom Touchstone himself says they have learned no wit 
 by nature nor art. He assumes the appearance of being 
 wiser than he himself knew he was ; he is " ne'er aware of 
 his wit till he breaks his shins against it." Celia ascribes to 
 him the dulness of the fool as the whetstone of his wit, 
 while to the true fool the folly of others is the whetstone 
 of wit. But he regards himself as far superior to the clown 
 and the natural philosopher, which the duke readily perceives :
 
 SIIAKSPERE'S CLOWNS. 129 
 
 " he uses his folly like a stalking-horse, and under the pre- 
 sentation of that shoots his wit." 
 
 Touchstone recognises the analogies of court and country 
 life, and makes fun of both. He comments with shrewd 
 observation upon the coarseness and unhandsomeness of 
 shepherd life, but he gives way soon enough to the influence 
 of Audrey. He makes fun of the trivialities of court life 
 in his stories of the courtier who swore on his honour when 
 he had'nt any ; he destroys at once all the courage and 
 honour of the courtier in his famous account of the seven 
 lies and his panegyric on the virtues of an if : — 
 
 "The first, the retort courteous; the second, the quip modest; the third, the 
 reply churlish ; the fourth, the reproof valiant ; the fifth, the countercheck quarrel, 
 some; the sixth, the lie with circumstance; the seventh, the lie direct. All these 
 you may avoid, but the lie direct ; and you may a\'oid that, too, with an if. I 
 Ivnew when seven justices could not take up a quarrel ; but when the parties were 
 met themselves, one of them thought but of an (/, as if ijou said so, then I said so ; 
 and they shook hands and swore brothers. Your if is the only peace-maker ; much 
 virtue in if." 
 
 Act V. iv. 00—103. 
 
 And refined manners are also satirized in his conversation 
 with Corin, who, he says, is cursed because he never was at 
 court : 
 
 "Why if thou never wast at court, thou never saw'st good manners ; if thou 
 never saw'st good manners, then thy manners must be wicked ; and wickedness is sin, 
 and sin is damnation. Thou art in a parlous state, Shepherd." 
 
 Act III. a. liO—hh. 
 
 Touchstone takes things as he finds them, he criticizes 
 
 them even more severely than Jacques, and he knows how 
 
 to make the best of his opportunities. He is no longer a 
 
 mere clown, he is one of Shakspere's faithful fellows ; he 
 
 follows his mistress into exile ; he takes advantage of his 
 
 court education to become a great figure amongst the rustics. 
 I
 
 130 SHAKSPERE'S CLOWNS. 
 
 When he goes back to the court he will assume the airs of 
 the forest in the servant's hall. Meanwhile he accepts 
 either court or country, and acts in harmony with his 
 surroundings, criticizing both without any spitefulness.
 
 THIRD PERIOD. 
 
 Ab imo Pectore: 
 SOUL-STIRRING-CENSORIOUS-MAJESTIC. 
 
 I. — Characteristics. 
 
 II. — The Grave-diggers. 
 
 ( Ilaialet.) 
 
 III. — King Lear's Fool. 
 
 (King Lear.) 
 
 IV.— The Winter's Tale.
 
 THIRD PERIOD. 
 
 This is the period of Shakspere's great tragedies. He 
 had now ceased to care for tales of mirth and love, for the 
 movement of history or the pomp of war ; his son is now 
 dead, and he has tasted of human sorrow ; he is beginning 
 to sound the depths of the human heart, to enquire into the 
 darkest and saddest parts of human life, to study the great 
 mysteries of evil. His humour is now more pathetic than 
 it has ever been before, it is also ti'agic and terrible ; we 
 have no longer his pleasant unalloyed mirth, or bright and 
 sparkling fancy ; his whole thought seems to be concentrated 
 upon the evil and folly in man's heart. Shakspere's art 
 now attains its most intense, its deepest significance, the 
 interpenetration of the humourous, the pathetic, and the 
 tragic, is now complete. 
 
 The Fool in King Lmr is the type of this pei'iod. 
 Through him the poet seems to be looking down upon life 
 fi'om a point outside and above life "from which the whole 
 appears as some monstrous farce-tragedy, in which all that 
 is terrible is ludicrous, and all that is ludicrous terrible."* 
 
 THE GRAVE-DIGGERS (Hamlet). 
 
 The clowns in Havilet are interesting to us because they 
 perpetuate the memory of poor Yorick: "a fellow of infinite 
 jest, of most excellent fancy." As Hamlet holds up his 
 
 * Powden — " His mind and arti"
 
 134 SHAKSPERE'S CLOWNS. 
 
 skull, how many happy recollections of him are aroused — 
 "he hath borne nie on his back a thousand times, and now 
 how abhorred by my imagination! my gorge rises at it. 
 Here hung these lips that I have kissed I know not how 
 oft. Where be your gibes now — your gambles — your songs 
 
 your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table 
 
 on a roar."-* The Clowns, "these ancient gentlemen," as 
 they call themselves, have a very grim grotesqueness ; they 
 meet like humourous jesters in the court of death, 
 connoisseurs in corpses, chroniclers of dead men's bones. 
 Their conversation is interesting and quaint, and has 
 perhaps something more than outward significance. There is 
 something particular in the sneer at "Crowner Quest's Law," 
 it strikes at those stupid verdicts given in such cases which 
 had so many untender consequences centuries latei\ The 
 Clown attempts to draw a distinction, to discriminate 
 between voluntary and involuntary suicide : 
 
 "Here lies the water, g-ood ; hero 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 if the 
 water come to him, and drown him, he drowns not himself; argal, he that is not 
 guilty of his own death shortens not his own life. " 
 
 Act v., Sc. i. 15— n. 
 
 They find fault with the fact that great folk should have 
 countenance in this world to hang or drown themselves 
 more than their even christians, and conclude with an 
 expression upon the high standing of their profession — there 
 are no ancient gentlemen but gardeners, ditchers, and 
 grave-diggers, they hold up Adam's profession, and he was 
 "the first man who bore arms." 
 
 * Act v.. Sc. i. 191—200,
 
 SriA KSPERFS CL WXS. 1 3.") 
 
 KING LEAR'S FOOL (Kin,, Lea,-). 
 
 This, the last Fool we shall notice, is the most important 
 of our poet's creations. He is no buffoon "to make the 
 groundlings laugh," and though he contributes much towaixls 
 the relief of the heart-rending scenes, he is a most faithful 
 fool, and is brought into living connection with the pathos 
 of the play— a thing we have hitherto been unable to say. 
 The first three acts of King Lear have been pronounced the 
 great masterpieces of Shakspere in logic and passion. The 
 heart of Lear is torn asundei' by the "petrifying inditler- 
 ence, the cold calculating, obdurate selfishness of his 
 daughters."* The sense of sympathy in the reader or 
 listenei' to this uncontrollable anguish w ould be too painful 
 to be l)orn(' but for tlie intervention of the fool, whose well- 
 timed levity comes in to bi-eak the continuity of feeling 
 when it can no longei' be borne. Kent and the fool stick to 
 Lear through all his misery, the one brings about his re- 
 union with Coi'delia, the other contrives by his jest to divert 
 his ill-humour, ancV to keep him from madness. They both 
 possess a mastery over nature and inclination : they put to 
 shame the daughters of the old King by their faithful 
 devotion to him. Kent suppresses his own indignation and 
 sense of injury, and does all in his power to assist his 
 ma.«ter; the fool mockingly praises Kent for it, and offers 
 him his cap and bells for such true service to the neglected 
 man — "for taking one's part that's out of favour." The 
 fool himself cleaves just as much to Lear, and carries on his 
 jests with a heavy and care-worn heart, suppressing his 
 own anguish with songs and jokes. He taunts Lear with 
 
 * Compare Shakspere's Hypocrites— Goneril and Regan,
 
 136 SHAKSPERE'S CLOWNS. 
 
 having given away all that he has to liis daughters : he is 
 even worse off than a fool, who at the extremity can claim 
 his coxcomb. So he gives Lear a speech : — 
 
 " Have more than thou showest, 
 Speak less than thou knowest, 
 Lend less than thou owest, 
 Ride more than thou goest, 
 Learn more than thou trowest, 
 Set less than thou throwest." 
 
 Act I. V. 120—125. 
 
 Lear had little wit in his crown when he gave his golden 
 one away, and made his daughters his mothers : 
 
 Then they for sudden joy did weep. 
 And I for sorrow simg, 
 That such a kiny should play bo-peep, 
 And go the fools amony. 
 
 Act I. V. 176—180. 
 
 He is worse than a snail, which has a shell to put its head 
 in — even this slow thing does not give his case away and 
 leave his horns without a covering. The King should not 
 have grown old before he had grown wise, for by giving his 
 fortune to his daughters, he had proved himself to have as 
 little wit in his bald crown as there was in the empty crowns 
 of two eggs. 
 
 After one of his daughters has turned him to the door 
 Lear still takes heart, for he has yet another daughter who 
 will treat him kindly; but the fool knows lietter than he — 
 she is as like her sister as a crab is to aii apple ; and 
 '•winter's not gone yet if the wild geese fly that way : 
 
 Fathers that wear rags 
 Do make their children Wind ; 
 But fathers that bear ba^s, 
 Shall see their children kind." 
 
 Act II. iv. IS— 51. 
 
 When Lear is finally turned out in the storm the fool is
 
 SHAKSPERE'S CLOWNS. 137 
 
 still with him, his faithful follower, but continuing his 
 taunts, trying to prevent Lear, as he thinks, from going 
 mad. 
 
 It has been said that the fool by his wit does not alleviate 
 the inward pangs, and outward woes of Lear, but that he 
 rather augments them; from the first the fool's strokes at 
 Lear's follies are beyond a joke: instead of distracting his 
 thoughts, they drive him to dwell upon those which torture 
 him; and however well his jests may serve the aesthetic end 
 of not allowing the spectator to dwell too painfully and 
 continually upon the violent outbursts of Lear's madness, 
 they are on the other hand, psychologically considered, 
 improper and injudicious as a remedy against this very 
 malady.* But considering the character as a work of art 
 the fool is indispensable. The storm scene would not be 
 half so effective if his chatter and taunt were missing: we 
 should fail to realize the physical strait to which Lear is 
 reduced; "moral illustrations would equally be marred by 
 his loss, for his mixture of affection, playfulness, wit, child- 
 ishness, innocence, and triviality, corresponds with the 
 chaotic disturbances of the King as he mingles raving with 
 wisdom, and new discovered humanities, but with the differ- 
 ence of exemption from the stings of heartstruck anguish 
 and self-reproach." In another point also it is indispensable 
 inasmuch as while it is a diversion to the too great intensity 
 of our disgust, it carries the pathos to the highest possible 
 pitch by showing the pitiable weakness of the old King's 
 conduct, and its irretrievable consequences from the most 
 familiar point of view. 
 
 * Gervinus — Shakspere Commentaries,
 
 138 SHAKSPERE'S CLOWNS. 
 
 THE WINTER'S TALE, 
 
 At last, Shakspere passes out of this pei"iod of depression 
 and sorrow, and once again before his end attains the calm 
 serenity over the world ; his mirth and humour is once more 
 bright and tender, and from this elevation he can pass again 
 into the simple merriment of rustic festivity; he can enjoy 
 the broad open-mouthed humour of the country clowns. 
 
 The impression left upon the reader by our poet's last 
 plays is, that whatever his trials and sorrows and errors may 
 liave been, he comes forth from them wise, lax'ge-hearted, 
 calm-souled. He seems to have learned the secret of life, 
 and while taking his share in it, to be yet disengaged from 
 it; he looks down upon life, its joys, its griefs, its errors, 
 with a grave tenderness, which is almost pity. The spirit 
 of these last plays is that of serenity which results from 
 fortitude and the recognition of human frailty ; all of them 
 express a deep sense of the need of repentance, and the duty 
 of forgiveness. And they all show a delight in youth and 
 the lovliness of youthful joy, such as one feels who looks on 
 these things without possessing them, or any longer desiring 
 to possess them. Shakspere in this period is most like his 
 own Prospero. In these " Romances," and in the " Frag- 
 ments," a supernatural element is present ; man does not 
 strive with circumstances and with his passions in dark- 
 ness ; the gods preside over our human lives and fortunes, 
 they communicate with us by visions, by oracles, through 
 the elemental powers of nature. Shakspere's faith .seems to 
 have been that there is something without and around our 
 human lives, of which we know little, yet which we know
 
 SHAKSPERE'S CLOWNS. 139 
 
 to be beneficient and divine. He had ascended out of the 
 turmoil and trouble of action, out of the darkness and tragic 
 mystery, the places inhabited by terror and crime, and by 
 love contending with these to a pure and serene elevation.* 
 
 University College of Wales, 
 May, 1882. 
 
 * Uowden — Shakspere Primer p. 60.
 
 STYLE AND THOUGHT.
 
 "Style is the dress of thoughts; and let them be ever so just, if your style 
 is homely, coarse, and vulp;ar, they will appear to as much disad\antage, and be as 
 ill recei\ ed, as your person, though ever so well proportioned, would, if dressed in 
 rags, dirt, and tatters."— Chesterfield.
 
 STYLE AND THOUGHT. 
 
 'Le atyle cut I'homme meme-The atijlc Is the man."— Bnvoii. 
 
 One of the finest, one of the most essential and important 
 
 attainments to which we aspire is unquestionably that of 
 
 being able to give expression to our thoughts in a suitable 
 
 manner. We admire the orator who can entertain and 
 
 instruct the cx'owd with his eloquence ; we are inclined to 
 
 envy the man who can enliven a social circle with his 
 
 conversational powers; the painter and the musician arc 
 
 the objects, too, of our praise ; but above all we honour the 
 
 writer and the poet — he who can give to us his thoughts in 
 
 a clear and intelligible manner ; and we esteem him the 
 
 more if he can combine with this all the beauty and 
 
 elegance of his lamjuage. For we can read and meditate 
 
 upon his sayings when those of the mere talker have long 
 
 since been forgotten. Through him wc hold converse with 
 
 the great minds of the past, men continue to live after 
 
 they are dead, and be felt as a power and presence in the 
 
 earth ; he unfolds to us the pages of history ; he reveals to 
 
 us the mysteries of science ; and his work does not fade 
 
 with the lapse of time, line pictures drawn by the pen will 
 
 * For the full t] notation from Biiflbn vkk end of the Essay.
 
 144 STYLE AND THOUGHT. 
 
 outlive the choicest specimens upon canvas. Choice 
 sentences need no restoration ; they are safe from external 
 iufluence, and even from the malicious pen of the critic. 
 A gem of thought once set in words retains its lustre 
 undiminished, and descends as a sacred heir-loom from 
 generation to generation. Too much importance cannot be 
 given to the habit of writing. It is a powerful means of ex- 
 panding the mind, it braces the faculties, gives them strength 
 and quickness, and is conducive to the systematic arrange- 
 ment of our thoughts, views, and opinions. Original composi- 
 has been aptly called " the enemy to self-deception," on 
 account of the terrible disclosures it sometimes makes as to 
 the crudeness of our conceptions, the treachery of our 
 memory, the poverty of our knowledge, and our inability to 
 express clearly even the little we know. Indeed we cannot 
 hope to understand thoroughly the principles of any subject 
 unless we habituate ourselves to expressing our thoughts 
 upon that subject in writing. 
 
 This is an essay to prove the truth of Buftbn's 
 aphorism, "The style is the man."* Butfon here 
 asserts that the style, the manner in which a writer's 
 thoughts are presented, must essentially reveal the man : 
 that when we become thoroughly acquainted with a 
 writer's style, we get an insight into the man's nature — his 
 truest self ; that we can form from this some estimate of 
 the man's character, his attainments, his mode of thinking, 
 his disposition, and perhaps his motives. The tirst question 
 to consider, then, is what Buffbn means here by style. He 
 himself says, "Style supposes the union of all the intellectual 
 
 * Vide Forspeeuh.
 
 STYLE AND THOUGHT. 145 
 
 faculties: to inritp, mell is at once to tliiuk veil, to feel 
 rightly, and to express properly ; it is to have at the same 
 time mind, soul, and taste." We assume, of course, that a 
 man has something to say, for if he has nothing to say, 
 certainly he had better hold his tongue. And even when 
 he has something to say, it does not always follow that 
 other men will give any attention unless there be something 
 also in his mode of saying it. It is this which we have to 
 consider — the manner, the style, in which a thought is 
 expressed. And the style of an author depends upon many 
 things ; its laws are said by most Rhetoricans to be derived 
 from custom — national, recent, and reputable. No doubt 
 custom holds sway over the acceptance of new words, the 
 rejection of obsolete forms, and other changes in language ; 
 and the most acceptable style is generally the one which 
 reflects the sympathies of our own day ; still it is not good 
 style that makes reputable writers, — good writers make the 
 style reputable. It follows then that the real regulation of 
 style is the genius of the language, and a man can only 
 form a good style by earnest attention to this one thing 
 alone. After the imperative laws of accuracy and purity 
 in the selection of words has been complied with, the rest — 
 perspicuity, strength, grace, and all the excellencies of a 
 good author, must necessarily depend upon the man, and 
 the attention he has given to it. For it has been wisely 
 asserted that whatever be the characteristic of a good style, 
 it must have been attained at some time or other by earnest 
 labour and perseverance. An author must make style an 
 object ; it must be his own, and it must be natural and 
 simple ; but, to be his own, it must be formed by the study 
 of other men's ; and to be natural and simple, it must be 
 
 K
 
 146 STYLE AND THOUGHT. 
 
 gradually acquired by long devotion to composition as an 
 art. For one has little faith in inspirations and impulses, 
 that is, as the means of bringing a man's style to perfection, 
 though we know well their use in starting what labour 
 must elaborate. 
 
 In this way a man's style becomes himself — by the degree 
 of labour he has bestowed upon it. By this long and 
 patient service he comes to send out his compositions 
 marked and modified by whatever is his ; it cannot but be 
 marked by whatever belongs to him ; it will betray his 
 weakness, it will indicate his strength ; it flows from his 
 temperament if it be peculiar ; it is coloured by his genius, 
 if he has any. Passion aiid earnestness, vigour or timidity, 
 anything powerful or predominant in the man will make 
 themselves felt in his style. It is like his walk, his step, 
 his tone of voice, his manners, his dress, or anything else 
 which, as an outward, visible sign, embodies and reveals the 
 inward life.* 
 
 We can, therefore, say that an author's style is one of 
 the best criterions of his mind and his tenipei-ament — we 
 can judge of the quality of a thought by the manner in 
 which it is given. One critic might say, "it was a good 
 idea;" another might say, "it was well put;" but where is 
 the difference between the two ? Is there any ? Are not 
 the expressions simply two ways of saying the same thing ? 
 Is not the effect of the idea owing to the manner in which 
 it is puf? The thought and the style are, therefore, so 
 closely allied as to be inseparable : the style being the 
 representation, the sign of the thought, it must reveal the 
 
 Vide Binney's lecture on "Authorship" (Exeter Hall series).
 
 STYLE AND THOUGHT. 147 
 
     . . ■■■- ^ 
 
 degree in which a writer has comprehended his subject. If 
 he expresses himself in a vague and general manner, he has 
 but a vague and general idea of his subject. If on the 
 other hand he is clear and exact, he has in a corresponding 
 degree clearly and exactly realized his thought. These, 
 then, are the grounds upon which it is maintained that 
 Buffon was correct in saying, " The style is the man." 
 
 The principal objection to this contention is that it is not 
 the style which I'eveals the man, but the tliouglit which the 
 style represents ; that the style is simply the outward mark 
 of the inward feeling. At first sight there appears to be 
 much reason in this theory, but after consideration it must 
 give way, for how are we to know what a man's thoughts 
 are apart from his style % A writer always strives to 
 express himself as well as he can, — if he does not, we are 
 not bound to give him credit for knowing something he does 
 not express, — therefore, if the style be a true representation 
 of the thought, the style is the thought, and the thought is 
 the style : they cannot be separated. If a thought has not 
 been sufficiently understood, then the style must be obscure , 
 if on the other hand the thought has been perfectly conceived; 
 the style is clear and intelligible. What is the distinguishing- 
 feature of our great writers — in what does their excellence 
 consist? Is it not in their maimer of putting things quite 
 as much as the things themselves % The same ideas have 
 been expressed by different writers in as many different 
 ways, but why is it that one is read with so much more 
 pleasure and interest than another % Simply because the 
 idea, or the sentiment, has been felt, thought out, and under- 
 stood by the one in a much greater degree than the other. 
 Here is one writer who is content with presenting his
 
 148 fiTYLE AND THOUGHT. 
 
 thoughts in the barest possil>le form ; his style is dry and 
 unattractive, and we have no pleasure in reading it. Another 
 expresses himself in a very general manner ; his words are 
 uncertain ; his ideas seem loose and undecided, so that we 
 can scarcely conceive his meaning. A third surrounds his 
 thought with such a mass of verbiage that we have great 
 difficulty in finding the meaning at all. But a really good 
 writer presents his ideas in so clear a manner that we can 
 follow him with ease, and consequently with pleasure. He 
 is careful to use no term which will not be understood, 
 while at the same time he combines all the virtues of orna 
 ment without any of its excesses. Such care has been dis 
 played in the selection of words that they are alike pleasing 
 to the eye, and harmonious to the ear. The differences of 
 style simply reveal the degree in which the thought has 
 been realized ; in every case " the style is the man." 
 
 Another objection urged is that an author often borrows 
 his style from another, writes exactly in the same strain, 
 and imitates his master in every particular. Surely, it is 
 said, this writer cannot reveal his character in his style ? 
 But if one writer adopts the style of another it shews that 
 the style of the one attracts the other ; that the thoughts of 
 both run in the same groove. If therefore we know the 
 style of the one imitated, we can judge of the character of 
 the imitator. We shall thus not only get at the clue to h's 
 nature, we shall also prove him to be devoid of originality. 
 
 A further remark we often hear when an opinion is being 
 given upon the style of a writer is that *' the thought is 
 good, but the style is bad." From what has already been 
 said, it is evident that this is a mistake ; if the thought had 
 been good, the style would have been good. In .such cases
 
 STYLE AND THOUGHT. 149 
 
 the one who criticizes perhaps comprehends the thought 
 moi-e clearly than the writer himself. Then there is the 
 case of obscure style. This may result from over-condensa- 
 tion ; a writer may have become so familiar with his own 
 thoughts that he is not considerate enough in expressing 
 them, consequently they are obscure to the reader. Obscurity 
 in style, however, is oftener the result of obscurity in 
 thought, and a man can scarcely claim to have thought 
 more clearly than he speaks. 
 
 In order to illustrate the correctness of BufFon's assertion, 
 let us endeavour to show the main characteristics of some of 
 our great writers as revealed in their style. To commence 
 Avith Shakespeare, the greatest of all poets. He has been 
 justly called " the poet of nature." In his writings we have 
 a faithful mirror of manners and of life. He gives us 
 pictures of characters of almost every type, from the purest 
 virtue to the deepest villany. All this shews us that he 
 had a most intimate acquaintance with human nature, that 
 he was a keen observer of man and his surroundings, that 
 he understood the human character in all its phases, and in 
 such a manner as to have few equals, if any. Chaucer, too, 
 shews us that he had a wide acquaintance with every phase 
 of the society of his day, that he was highly humorous, and 
 so vigorous in his description as to have few rivals. Milton 
 reveals to us in his poetical productions the calm tranquility 
 of his character, and the purity of his life ; they shew us 
 that his mind was lofty and vigorous, though he was almost 
 devoid of passion and sympathy ; that his imagination was 
 rich and fertile, while his sentiments were of the sublimest 
 character. Spenser discloses in his " Fairy Queen " an 
 imagination of the widest dimensions ; while Burns shews
 
 150 STYLE AND THOUGHT. 
 
 us that he delighted in giving expression to feelings which 
 everyone has experienced, and in language which everyone 
 can understand. Style tells us that Cowper was amiable 
 and pious, though rendered wretched by mental disease ; 
 that Byron Avas given to habits of indulgence, but at the 
 same time he possessed a kind and generous heart. The 
 style of Addison indicates an elegant and an accomplished 
 mind ; that he was dignified and polished, and that he was 
 gifted with a delicate and lively fancy. The purity of the 
 pages of Sir Walter Scott is ample evidence of his good 
 manners, and religious principles, and shews his great regard 
 for the feelings of others. 
 
 If then, style and thought are inseparable, to study style 
 is to stimulate thought ; and perhaps we are apt to forget 
 the latter fact. We may think that simply the reading and 
 copying of the "masters of style" are sufficient, for we 
 know that it is much easier to imitate than to be original — 
 it saves the trouble of thinking out a subject. If we 
 thought and wrote more, we should have less to fear about 
 the style. Southey contends that a man with "a clear 
 head, a good heart, and an honest understanding, will 
 always write well. It is owing either to a muddled head, 
 an evil heart, or a sophisticated intellect, that men write 
 badly, and sin against their reason, or goodness, or 
 sincerity." A good thought, then, will find good expression, 
 the mind will be satisfied with nothing less ; a clear idea 
 will find utterance in clear words. If words fail to present 
 themselves to the mind, the idea has not been fully realized, 
 and proper words must be sought for. We have been told 
 that whatever we do in attempts at writing, to always do 
 our best, because the results depend upon this — results both
 
 STYLE AND THOUGHT. 151 
 
 as to solid advantage and to safe and allowable delight. 
 We must work on the substance of our thoughts — their 
 order and cohesion ; we must see that they are just, true, 
 full, select — accurately arranged, artistically so, to awaken 
 interest or secure impression. We must labour also at 
 something more than merely expressing them — expressing 
 them so as to make them intelligible. We are assured that 
 severe, painstaking, prolonged effort, thus directed, will 
 have its reward — a manifold reward. Time spent in testing 
 terms, in moulding sentences, in observing the shades and 
 colours of words, in finding out synonymous or parallel 
 expressions, in forming the ear to harmony and rhythm, in 
 compelling it to listen for the march and cadence, and to 
 become sensible to the niceties of measure and modulation ; 
 time thus spent will not only not be lost, but will be rich 
 in enjoyments of no common order. Then, always doing 
 our best, we shall soon learn to do things well ; our power 
 over words will increase ; habit will give facility and 
 command ; the style will be formed ; when we sit down to 
 write we shall easily find fitting phraseology : words will 
 obey the first call, and take their places without effort. 
 We must remember "that no man who writes for posterity 
 can afford to neglect the art of composition. The trimmer 
 bark, though less richly laden, will float farther down the 
 stream of time ; and when so many authors of real ability 
 and learning are competing for every niche in the temple of 
 fame, the coveted jjlace will assuredly he won by style.*" 
 We take these latter remarks most earnestly to heart, and 
 trust every reader will similarly apply them, 
 Uuiverdty College of Wules, November, 1S79. 
 
 * Vide Essays from the Times.
 
 POSTSCRIPT. 
 
 This article appeared in The Journalist* of February, 
 1880, and the following month "A Rejoinder" appeared 
 from the pen of a writer to that magazine, who says that 
 the remarks upon "Style and Thought" had come into 
 violent collision with his pre-conceived notions with regard 
 to the means for acquiring a good style. He maintains 
 that the aphorism, "The style is the man," can be only 
 partially true ; and the statement that "when we become 
 thoroughly acquainted with a man's style we are introduced 
 to his truest self," is open to serious question. A man 
 might give accurate and elegant expression to noble and 
 pure thoughts, whilst in heart and life he was the veriest 
 scoundrel. He thinks that the drift of the whole article is 
 that "if you wish to write English well, all you had to do is 
 to make yourself a great thinker, as great thoughts and noble 
 ideas cannot possibly be expressed in incorrect or weak 
 language." He says the best answer to this is the following 
 extract f : — 
 
 "Consider," says our Lord, "the lilies, how they grow : they toil not, they spin 
 not; and yet I say unto you that Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed like 
 one of these. If, then, God so clothe the grass, which is to-day in the field, and 
 to-morrow is cast into the oven, how much more will he clothe you." 
 
 He then quotes one of the tasteless modern paraphrases — 
 
 "Consider the flowers, how they gradually increase in size : they do no manner 
 of work, and yet I declare unto you, that nothing whatever, in his most splendid 
 habit, is dressed like them. If, then, God in his providence so adorn the 
 vegetable productions, which continue but for a little on the land, and are after- 
 wards put into the fire, how much more will he provide clothes for you?" 
 
 Here, he says, are the same sentiments expressed in different 
 language, and the obvious deduction from them would be, 
 
 '■ The Journalist — a London shorthand magazine, published 
 monthly. 
 tFrom Cambell's "Philosophy of Rhetoric," Vol. ii., pp. 137.
 
 POSTSCRIPT. 153 
 
 not that the one was a good thinker, and the other a poor 
 one, but that the one had a thorough command of terse, 
 epigrammatic English, whilst the otlier was encumbered with 
 a round-aboutness of expression and a dittuscness and infla- 
 tion wliich could only be remedied by an earnest, incessant 
 study of good authors, and a constant endeavour to find the 
 most appropriate words for not only the noblest but the most 
 trivial thoughts. He further maintains that there is no force 
 at all in the statement that the man who imitates another's 
 style would necessarily be devoid of originality. It was well 
 known that Junius formed his style largely on that of John- 
 son; that Franklin acquired his singularly clear and simple 
 style by reading the Spectator, and writing and re-writing some 
 of its best papers; that when Clarendon was writing his his- 
 tory he was constantly studying Livy and Tacitus, to acquire 
 the full, flowing style of the one, and the portraiture of the 
 other ; that Demosthenes copied Thucydides' History eight 
 times ; — and who would say that these had no originality 1 
 In the writer's opinion, " the best way to acquire a good 
 style is to make yourself thoroughly acquainted with the 
 grammatical forms of your language, and then, dictionary 
 in hand, give your days and nights to the study of the 
 language of the best authors." 
 
 The following is a summary of the reply which was 
 made to the foregoing remarks. The writer of the rejoinder 
 had drawn an absolute distinction between Thought and 
 Style, and contended that we could consider the one apart 
 from the other. But no such distinction could be drawn — 
 they were inseparable — inasmuch as the style was only the 
 representation of the thought, the style revealed exactly 
 the degree in which the writer had understood his subject. 
 Certainly a writer might give elegant expression to noble 
 thoughts, and be at the same time a scoundrel ; but such 
 characters could only form very miserable exceptions to the 
 general rule. Standard writers followed their best 
 impulses in all they wrote : their work was the outcome of 
 their inward, their truest nature — the vibrations of their 
 very souls. The quotations from " Campbell's Rhetoric " 
 were rather arguments in support of the aphorism ; but the 
 two passages were not " two ways of expressing the same 
 idea." " Consider the lilies of the field how they grow," 
 
 i3 
 
 t>
 
 154 rOSTSCKIPT 
 
 was not the same thing as " Consider the flowers how they 
 gradually increase in size." They approached each other in 
 meaning, but the author of the one had fully realized his 
 thought, the other only partially so ; the one expressed pre- 
 cisely what he meant, the other something like it. Then, to 
 have " a thorough command of terse and epigrannnatic 
 language," a man must be possessed with a mind capable of 
 grasping and appreciating terse and figurative ideas, whilst 
 ■'to be encumbered with a round-aboutness of expression" was 
 to be burdened with a sIoav roundabout method of thought. 
 The passages quoted were ample proof that the "author of 
 one was a good thinker, and the other a bad one." To illus- 
 trate this the following statement was made : — it would be 
 admitted that language was only the sign for ideas, or as 
 Emerson put it, "all language is fossil language." Language 
 had developed with man's intellect ; as man noticed things 
 
 around him he named them according to their most striking 
 attributes. But in time the attributes of one class of things 
 became applied to another class, and by this association of 
 terms, words had come to have a difFei-ent meaning to that 
 originally intended. Thus, great confusion and ambiguity 
 had arisen, and many words usually called synonymes were 
 not really so : a close examination would shew that in the 
 majority of cases there was a shade of difference in their 
 meaning. Now, the great difficulty, in English composition, 
 was to find out the word which expressed exactly — nothing 
 more and nothing less — what we meant. With most un- 
 practiced writers the word which presented itself most 
 readily was not the one we wanted, hence we had to find 
 another. Therefore, the contention was that the words by 
 which we expressed ourselves, revealed exactly the degree 
 of excellence we had attained in the thought. The writer 
 of the rejoinder must have misunderstood the statement that 
 the author who imitated another must be devoid of original- 
 ity, though he did not prove the statement to be false by 
 the examples he quoted. The eminent writers mentioned 
 did not imitate in the sense of the word intended, they 
 rather sought to make themselves thoroughly acquainted 
 with their favourite author's mode of thinking, or with his 
 style, which was thi; same thing. The meaning of the 
 original assertion was, that lavish and minute imitation
 
 rOSTSCRIPT. 155 
 
 practiced by some which left no margin for the exercise of 
 their own thoughts. The distinction between the two kinds 
 of imitation was exactly the same as that between two 
 painters visiting a gallery of the great masters — one with 
 canvass under his arm, brush in hand, and a determination 
 to 7)iake a copy; the other taking nothing but himself, to 
 study the manner in which the great artists represented 
 nature in all her varied beauty by means of her colours. 
 There was certainly no other way to acquire a good style 
 than by the "earnest and incessant study of good authors, 
 and this would surely make us good thinkers too. We 
 should strive to get at the meaning of the words conveyed, 
 and then noble thoughts would not be "expressed in weak 
 and ineffective language," There was often the danger to 
 dross up counnon place ideas in pompous terms, but it was 
 generally the least effective, besides being extremely silly, 
 and only exposing the writer to ridicule. If we carefully 
 thought out what we really wanted to say, and then said it 
 in plain language, we should do something far worthier — for 
 without simplicity, clearness, and precision, all ornaments, 
 however elegant, would only glimmer through the darkness. 
 
 University College of Walea, 
 April, 1880. 
 
 The following is a translation from Buffon, on the 
 subject of style in the Encyclopedie ; vide Dr. Ethe's article 
 in The University College of Wales Magazine, May, 1882: — 
 
 "Style is nothing else but the order and movement which we bring into 
 our thoughts ; if we put them into narrow fetters, if we condense them, 
 the style becomes firm, vigorous, and concise ; if we let them loose, if 
 we allow them to follow one another slowly, and to join only at the 
 favour and liberty of the words, however elegant these may be, the style 
 will turn out a diffuse, lax and languid one. But before we seek the 
 order in which we will present our thoughts, we must have formed 
 another more general and more regular order, into which we admit only 
 the first genviine views and the principal ideas ; only by marking out 
 their i)lace on the basis of this preliminary plan a subject can become 
 circumscribed, and we can learn its real extent. This preliuiinary ])lan 
 is not yet the style, but it is the foundation of the style ; it supports it, 
 directs it, regulates its movements, submits it to fixed laws. Without
 
 156 POSTSCMIPT. 
 
 that the best writer loses his way, liis pen moves along without a guide, 
 and puts down at random irregular strokes and discordant figures. 
 However brilliant the colours may be he uses, however numer(jus the 
 beauties he scatters throughout the details, the whole building will be 
 badly constructed, will be either too imjwessive, offensive to sight, or 
 not impressive enough, and in admiring the spirit of the author we will 
 easily suspect that he lacks genius ! It is the want of a plan, it is the 
 fault of not having reflected enough on his subject, that a highly gifted 
 man feels embarrassed and does not know where to commence to write. 
 He perceives a vast number of ideas at once, and as he has neither 
 compared nor subordinated them beforehand, nothing determines him 
 to give one the preference over the other ; he remains, therefore, 
 perplexed. But when, on the other hand, he has made a plan, when he 
 has once gathered and arranged all those thoughts which are essential to 
 his subject, he will easily become aware of the proper moment and the 
 right place, when and where to begin ; he will have a presentiment of 
 the point of maturity in the productions of genius, he will be forced 
 fairly and fully to develope it, and he will write with pleasure— ideas 
 will follow without difficulty one after the other, and his style will 
 become natural and easy. An ardent fire will grow out of this feeling 
 of pleasure, it will sijread everywhere, and imbue with life every 
 expression ; all will become more and more animated, all objects will 
 assume colour, and sentiment joined to knowledge will increase it. will 
 carry it further and further, will lead over from wliat has jiist been said 
 to what the author is abcnit to say, and the style will be at imce 
 interesting and luminous. To write well means indeed to think well, 
 to feel well, and to represent well ; it means to have at the same time 
 spirit, soul, and good taste. The style, in short, implies both the 
 combination and the practice of all intellectual faculties."
 
 THE DECLINE OF THE DRAMA.
 
 'Action is eloquence; and the eyes of the ignorant more learned than their earn. 
 
 Shakspere.
 
 THE DRAMA: ITS DECLINE AND 
 REFORMATION. 
 
 We strive to give expression to our thoughts in different 
 ways. Unfettered by formality, and prompted by impulse, 
 we reveal our sympathies through different channels. By 
 no means the least important of these is that of Action, for 
 we may think, and speak, and write, but, after all, our 
 actions reveal us most faithfully. Action is the highest 
 perfection of our nature, it is the noblest pursuit of living. 
 We influence those around us far more by our conduct than 
 by our words, — though our speech betokens the kind of 
 conduct to be expected of us. We also strive to imitate 
 the good actions of others, to shape our lives after the lives 
 from which those actions emanate. This desire is inherent 
 in our nature ; our whole life is occupied with it,: it is the 
 sport of infancy, the attraction of youth, and the aspiration 
 of manhood. It was this desire which gave rise to the 
 drama, that kind of poetry which seeks to imitate human 
 nature : to tell a story of it by means of action.* The 
 
 * "Watch your children play, and you will see that almost their 
 first conscious effort is to act and to imitate. It is an instinct, and 
 you can no more repress it than you can extinguish thought. When 
 this instinct of all is developed by cultivation in the few it becomes 
 a wonderful art, priceless to civilisation in the solace it yields, the 
 thought it generates, the refinement it inspires. .Some of its latest 
 achievements are not unworthy of their grandest predecessors. Some 
 of its youngest devotees ai'e at least as proud of its glories and as 
 anxious to preserve them as any who have gone before. Theirs is a
 
 160 THE DECLINE OF THE DRAMA. 
 
 promoters of the earlier, and the ruder kind of drama were 
 sensible of the fact that what is seen with the eyes makes a 
 deeper impression than what is heard with the ears. Action 
 is, therefore, the most important of the three dramatic 
 unities ; the term drama signifies this, — and however much 
 it may differ in variety, and whatever dispute there may be 
 with regard to the unities of time and place, all are agreed 
 as to the unity of action. 
 
 The Drama occupies a singular position amongst the arts. 
 On the one hand it is by far the most natural, while on the 
 other it is the most artificial. Music imitates nature in 
 sound ; painting seeks to picture her varied beauty by 
 means of her colours ; language represents her in words ; 
 while sculpture shews us her nobleness in form ; but in the 
 drama all these characteristics are united. All the appar- 
 atus of stage machinery, the employment of actors, and the 
 like, bring it more into contact with external life than any 
 other form of imitation. On the other hand, the drama is 
 more idealistic, and much more complicated than any other 
 art. Its business is to portray the human character, it has 
 to do with man's nature, with his sympathies and passions, 
 and it treats of them with much more vigour than any 
 other kind of poetry, its characters speaking in blank verse. 
 The great difilculty, however, has always been to preserve 
 the balance between these two great principles. This was 
 most successfully accomplished in the Elizabethan age, when 
 a series of great ideas filled the minds of the whole people, 
 
 glorious heritage ! You honour it. They have a noble, but difficult 
 and sometimes a disheartening task. You encourage it. And no 
 word of kindly interest or criticism dropped in the public ear from 
 friendly lips goes unregarded or is unfertile of good ; and all criticism 
 is welcome." — Henry Irving.
 
 THE DECLINE OF THE DRAMA. 161 
 
 when a true national feeling existed amongst them. At the 
 end of this period, however, a disruption between the two 
 sides commenced, and it became gradually divorced from 
 the mosb earnest feeling of the country, and since then it 
 has not been able to succeed. But before speaking of the 
 causes which have led to this gradual decline in the Drama, 
 it will be necessary to trace briefly its progress to the 
 height of its power in the Elizabethan age. 
 
 The ruder kind of drama was introduced into our country 
 mainly through the eflforts of the clergy. Their representa- 
 tions consisted chiefly of events taken from the New Testa- 
 ment, and in the history of the Church. They were called 
 " Miracle plays," and the clergy preferred this more effective 
 method of imparting scriptural lessons to preaching sermons. 
 But, with the philosophy of the mediaeval ages, a change was 
 brought about. This philosophy "dealt much in abstract 
 terms, and delighted in definitions and logical distinctions." 
 It was reflected in the " Moral plays " now introduced in 
 which personages representing abstract ideas, such as Mercy, 
 Truth, and Justice, were portrayed. In one sense they were 
 a great advance upon the "Miracles," as they sought to con- 
 vey sound moral lessons ; and also gave occasion to some 
 poetical and dramatic ingenuity in delineating such qualities, 
 and assigning proper speeches to each. On the other hand, 
 the scriptural personages being "refined away into mere 
 moral abstractions," we lost altogether the portrayal of real 
 character. The dulness of these plays, however, was not 
 long tolerated, the miscellaneous audiences which attended 
 them soon became tired of the serious subjects of the plays, 
 and demanded that some pleasant mirth should be inter- 
 mingled. The introduction of comic characters was the 
 
 L
 
 162 THE DECLINE OF THE DRAMA. 
 
 result, and in many of the plays of this period they are 
 thrust in at the most inopportune times. They appeared to 
 think that no piece was complete unless the clown took a 
 prominent part. About the same time historical personages 
 were introduced, and frequently satire was employed. It 
 had now been found that a human being, with a human 
 name, was much better calculated to awaken the sympathies 
 of an audience, to keep alive their attention, and to enforce 
 moral truths, than a mere impersonation of an idea of the 
 mind. 
 
 From this the genuine drama took its rise, and the progress 
 it made, together with the large ideas which it originated, 
 called forth many writers, — it attracted the very best men 
 of the age. Hence it is that the Elizabethan period is by 
 far the mightiest in the history of English Literature. 
 Amongst the earlier writers of this age were the dramatists, 
 Greene, Peele, and Marlowe ; and they prepared, in some 
 measure, the way for one who was to give to the drama its 
 highest character. It became more classical in form, and 
 took a prominent place in our national literature. The stage 
 was adorned with more variety of character and action, and 
 truer poetry. Above all the public ear became familiarised 
 with blank verse, and this was, perhaps, the greatest im- 
 provement, for even "the genius of Shakspere would have 
 been cramped and confined, had it been condemned to move 
 in fetters of rhyme." But to Shakspere belongs the glory 
 of having given the drama its model, its most natural form. 
 In him the people were introduced to such real excellence 
 that they were more disposed to wonder than to admire, to 
 adore than to criticise. His remarkable power of imitating 
 nature, his wonderful skill in portraying the human character,
 
 THE DECLINE OF THE DRAMA. 163 
 
 distinguishes him from the dramatists of his own age, or, 
 indeed of any age. His characters range through almost 
 every type of humanity, and furnish admirable subjects for 
 the highest forms of the dramatic art. Along this path he 
 pointed the future of the English Drama, and it could not 
 henceforth depart from that path without being untrue to 
 itself, and to its principles. He extended its empire to limits 
 as yet unrecognised, and invested it with a splendour hitherto 
 unknown. With a subservient pulpit and no press, it became 
 the chief censor, the great critic, and satirist of the realm. 
 The people were united by a great national feeling over the 
 large ideas of the Renaissance ; everyone who went to the 
 theatre was a participator in the movement ; their curiosity 
 was awakened, their ideas of life were elevated, and alto- 
 gether the drama exercised an influence upon the English 
 nation not often recognised. 
 
 Unfortunately, however, the drama did not go further 
 upon the path of progress. With the Reformation the 
 people cooled down over the great ideas we have men- 
 tioned, and the bond of union in the nation passed away 
 with them. Rivals to the drama sprung up in the shape of 
 "Court masks," and the theatrical public were tempted aside. 
 Writers for the stage began to shrink from the path laid 
 down by their champion ; they ceased to let their inward 
 impulse guide them, and began pandering to the tastes of 
 the people The most vulgar jokes, and over-strained fantasies, 
 were thrust upon the stage where Shakspere had placed 
 characters with real life and passions. The tone of the 
 drama became so low that the Puritans had no option in 
 opposing it. They were instrumental in having the repre- 
 sentation of stage plays prohibited on Sundays. The theatres
 
 164 THE DECLINE OF THE DRAMA. 
 
 were closed altogether during the plague of 1637, and the 
 Puritans would have kept them so had that been possible ; 
 in fact they would have denied the people all amusements. 
 These proceedings provoked a counter action in the minds 
 of the public, and led to a more shameful degeneracy in the 
 plays written for the stage. If the Puritans had sought to 
 purify the stage performances, they would have conferred a 
 lasting benefit on the nation, but their narrow views of life 
 gave rise to a spirit which has occupied the mind of the 
 middle classes of England from that day to the present. 
 
 The drama of the Restoration was still more immoral in 
 its character than the Elizabethan in its final stage. Charles II. 
 introduced the " Heroic plays," which were mostly founded 
 on French and Spanish Romances. The themes were chiefly 
 Love and Honour ; they abounded in fine language, 
 and were placed upon the stage in the most brilliant style ; 
 they were, however, altogether devoid of natural passion, 
 and propriety of character. The nation had become still 
 more divided in its opinion, and the drama was made to 
 reflect the sympathies of its patrons, the court, and those 
 inhabitants of the town who had court sympathies. These 
 opinions were very narrow, and the class of people who 
 held them were not distinguished by any earnestness of 
 thought, or purpose in life. Hence the drama became of 
 this character, all its power and wit were employed in the 
 interest of vice, and it is much to be deplored that the great 
 talents of Dryden were the most instrumental in extending 
 this depraved national taste. But in time the models of the 
 Heroic plays were worn out, and the French comedy took 
 their place. The genius of Garrick also added fresh attrac- 
 tions to the stage in the earlier part of the eighteenth cen-
 
 THE DECLINE OF THE DRAMA. 165 
 
 tury. The introduction of the Italian opera, however, at 
 the close of that century, almost absorbed what vitality re- 
 mained in the drama. Its tone and manners were still 
 further lowered by the religious re-action against it. It did 
 not represent the more earnest feeling in the country, and 
 on that ground it could not succeed. 
 
 The history of the drama in the present century has been 
 one of gradual decline. In the earlier part, the prose writings 
 of Scott, and the poetry of Byron satisfied, to a great extent, 
 the imaginative demands of the public, and the attention of 
 the cultivated classes was diverted from the drama. The 
 spread of cheap literature also furnished intellectual enter- 
 tainment for the people at home, and at a much cheaper rate 
 than by attendance at the theatre. Draaiatic compositions 
 no longer occupy the prominent place they held in the litera- 
 ture of former periods of our history ; in fact it has been 
 said that we have no modern drama at all. The love of 
 spectacle and scenic display has gradually usurped its place, 
 and the growth of this kind of entertainment has been the 
 result. The theatrical performances of to-day are a mixture 
 of almost every species of entertainment : a huddling 
 together of tragedy, comedy, farce, melodrama, and spectacle. 
 Consequently the performances are bad, and people are not 
 unreasonably dissatisfied with them. Occasionally an 
 attempt is made at Shakspere's plays, but, with the 
 exception of the first-class performances in London, he is 
 often utterly misrepresented. " What havoc they make of 
 him, to be sure!" as Gibber puts it, "he is defaced and 
 tortured in every single character ; Hamlet and Othello in 
 one single hour loose all their goodness, and their sincerity ; 
 Brutus and Cassius become noisy blunderers, with bold,
 
 166 THE DECLINE OF THE DRAMA. 
 
 unmeaning eyes, mistaken sentiments, and turgid 
 elocution." 
 
 It is noticeable that few dramas of our own day have 
 met with much success when placed upon the stage, 
 notwithstanding that we have some superior intellects 
 engaged in them. The reason, however, is not an 
 accidental one. Successful writing for the stage requires a 
 close connection with the theatre itself, in order that the 
 author may be able to adapt the language, the characters, 
 the scenery, and the general structure of the piece, to the 
 circumstances. The dramatists of the Elizabethan age, 
 including their leader, were either themselves players, or 
 maiatained a close connection with the stage ; hence their 
 dramas are thoroughly acting dramas, and much more real 
 than those of the modern school. At the present day, the 
 two fundamental principles — the natural and the artificial — 
 of the drama are too widely separated. Great writers will 
 not subject themselves to a schooling from the actors, nor 
 bend to a consideration of theatrical convenience. The 
 consequence is, that they have either abstained altogether 
 from dramatic composition, or written only what are termed 
 "Dramatic Poems," the effect of which, being removed 
 altogether from external circumstances, is quite incompar- 
 able with that produced by the true acting drama. We 
 have had of late many adaptations from the French, which 
 are, no doubt, masterpieces, so far as they portray French 
 life and manners, but they are ridiculous when placed 
 on an English stage ; the sentiments expressed in them are 
 too fantastical to appeal with any force to an English 
 audience. Nevertheless, the visit of the French company 
 to London, a short time ago, taught us a lesson in fine
 
 THE DECLINE OF THE DRAMA. 167 
 
 acting, and shewed us what could be done with a properly 
 organised, and a national drama. 
 
 The growth of the critical spirit in the country has also 
 materially lessened the interest which was once taken in the 
 drama. Men prefer writing novels, in which they can stand 
 aloof and talk about their characters — describe their actions 
 and criticize them, while the Dramatist must make his 
 characters speak and act for themselves. 
 
 The success of the drama has been further prevented by 
 the action of the middle class of our nation towards it. 
 From the days of Puritanism to the present, they have 
 kept aloof from it, and that solely on the plea of its evil 
 associations ; to give it their patronage would be inconsistent 
 with their moral principles, and antagonistic to proper 
 conduct in life. But, while it is admitted that the theatre 
 has its immoral tendencies, our middle classes are by no 
 means exonerated from blame in the matter. It is to a 
 great extent owing to their narrow-mindedness that the 
 drama has been allowed to degenerate so shamefully. If, 
 instead of forsaking the theatre altogether, they had insisted 
 upon having its purity maintained, the stage performances 
 of to-day would have been something different. But they 
 chose to enter "the prison of Puritanism, and had the key 
 turned upon the spirit of the Drama for two hundred 
 years." Happily, a change is now coming over them. 
 They are beginning to see that all things in this life cannot 
 be looked upon from one standpoint ; they must be viewed 
 from several at the same time. They are beginning to feel 
 that many things which go to ennoble the human character 
 have been sacrificed to their narrow-mindedness, and 
 amongst these they see the drama. A cry for its re-
 
 168 THE DECLINE OF THE DRAMA. 
 
 organisation is the result, and of late much progress has 
 been made in this direction. 
 
 But there is a great barrier in the way of this re-estab- 
 lishment of a national drama, for such it must become if it 
 is to succeed. We have no real national unity with regard 
 to manners and life, as in the Elizabethan age. There is 
 no real bond of thought, nor unity of feeling in the nation ; 
 party is divided against party, so that the drama at present 
 can only appeal to a fragment of the whole people ; it can 
 only reflect the sympathies of a few. If we can revive this 
 national unity, we can have a great national drama ; and 
 we have everything in England to bring about this result ; 
 all the elements are within our reach if we can only use 
 them. We have the splendid national drama of the 
 Elizabethan age, and a later drama which has no lack of 
 pieces, " conspicuous for their stage qualities, their vivacity 
 and talent, and interesting by their pictures of manners." 
 We have also not a few good actors, led by one who is, in 
 every sense of the word, worthy of that position — Mr. 
 Henry Irving.* He is imbued with a sense of the import- 
 
 * " The universal study of Shakspere iu our public schools is a 
 splendid sign of the departure of prejudice ; but it is acting chiefly 
 that can open to others, with any spark of Shakspere's mind, the 
 means of illuminating the world. Only the theatre can realise to us 
 in a life-like way what Shakspere was to his own time. And it is, 
 indeed, a noble destiny for the theatre to vindicate in these later 
 days the greatness which sometimes it has seemed to vulgarise. It 
 has been too much the custom to talk of Shakspere as nature's 
 child— as the lad who held horses for people who came to the play- 
 as a sort of chance phenomenon who wrote these plays by accident and 
 unrecognised. How supremely ridiculous ! How utterly irreconcil- 
 able wfth the grand dimensions of the man ! Imagine him rather, 
 as he must have been, the most notable courtier of the Court— the 
 most perfect gentleman who stood iu the Elizabethan throng— the 
 man in whose presence divines would falter and hesitate lest 
 their knowledge of the Book should seem poor by the side of
 
 THE DECLINE OF THE DRAMA. 1G9 
 
 ance of the drama to national life and and manners, and he 
 has done much towards awakening the interest which is 
 now being taken in it. But in the work of re-organiza- 
 tion, the theatre must be entirely separated from the great 
 number of amusements which have for a long time accom- 
 panied it ; it must lie cultivated alone as an art. It must 
 return to the path laid down for it hy its champion, and 
 become a true representation of the life and manners of the 
 time. It is a matter of great importance, as the progress of 
 a nation depends as much upon its recreations as upon its 
 laboui'S. The re-organisation of the drama is, therefore, a 
 work which ought to have the attention of every thoughtful 
 Englishman. 
 
 University College of Wales, 
 March, 1880. 
 
 his, and at whom even queenly royalty would look askance, with 
 an oppressive sense that here was one to whose onmipoteut and true 
 imagination the hearts of kings and queens and peoples had always 
 been an open page. The thought of such a man is an incomparable 
 inheritance for any nation, and such a man was the actor — Shakspere. 
 Such is our birthright and yours. Such the succession in which it is 
 ours to labour and yours to enjoy. For Shakspere belongs to tlie 
 stage for ever, and his glories must always inalienably belong to it. 
 If you uphold the theatre honestly, liberally, frankly, and with wise 
 discrimination, the stage will uphold in future, as it has in the past, 
 the literature, the manners, the morals, the fame, and the genius of 
 our country. There must have been something wrong, as there was 
 something poignant and lacerating, in prejudices which so long 
 partly divorced the conscience of Britain from its noblest pride, and 
 stamped with reproach, or at least depreciation, some of the brightest 
 and world-famous incidents of her history." — Henry Irving. 
 before the Ed hiJinrgh P/iilof^ophieaJ In.ififiifhn, November, 1S81, 
 
 J. GIBSON, "CAMBRIAN NEW.S PRINTING WORKS, ABERYSTWYTH.
 
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