O Love! thou teacher'—O Grief! thou tamer—and Time, thou healer of human hearts!—bring hither all your deep and serious revelations!—And ye too, rich fancies of unbruised, unbowed youth—ye visions of long perished hopes—shadows of unborn joys—gay colorings of the dawn of existence! whatever memory hath treasured up of bright and beautiful in nature or in art; all soft and delicate images—all lovely forms—divinest voices and entrancing melodies—gleams of sunnier skies and fairer climes,—Italian moonlights and airs that "breathe of the sweet south,"—now, if it be possible, revive to my imagination—live once more to my heart! Come, thronging around me, all inspirations that wait on passion, on power, on beauty; give me to tread, not bold, and yet unblamed, within the inmost sanctuary of Shakspeare's genius, in Juliet's moonlight bower, and Miranda's enchanted isle! It is not without emotion, that I attempt to touch on the character of Juliet. Such beautiful things have already been said of her—only to be exceeded in beauty by the subject that inspired them!—it is impossible to say any thing better; but it is possible to say something more. Such in fact is the simplicity, the truth, and the loveliness of Juliet's character, that we are not at first aware of its complexity, its depth, and its variety. There is in it an intensity of passion, a singleness of purpose, an entireness, a completeness of effect, which we feel as a whole; and to attempt to analyze the impression thus conveyed at once to soul and sense, is as if while hanging over a half-blown rose, and revelling in its intoxicating perfume, we should pull it asunder, leaflet by leaflet, the better to display its bloom and fragrance. Yet how otherwise should we disclose the wonders of its formation, or do justice to the skill of the divine hand that hath thus fashioned it in its beauty? Love, as a passion, forms the groundwork of the drama. Now, admitting the axiom of Rochefoucauld, that there is but one love, though a thousand different copies, yet the true sentiment itself has as many different aspects as the human soul of which it forms a part. It is not only modified by the individual character and temperament, but it is under the influence of climate and circumstance. The love that is calm in one moment, shall show itself vehement and tumultuous at another. The love that is wild and passionate in the south, is deep All Shakspeare's women, being essentially women, either love or have loved, or are capable of loving; but Juliet is love itself. The passion is her state of being, and out of it she has no existence. It is the soul within her soul; the pulse within her heart; the life-blood along her veins, "blending with every atom of her frame." The love that is so chaste and dignified in Portia—so airy-delicate and fearless in Miranda—so sweetly confiding in Perdita—so playfully fond in Rosalind—so constant in Imogen—so devoted in Desdemona—so fervent in Helen—so tender in Viola,—is each and all of these in Juliet. All these remind us of her; but she reminds us of nothing but her own sweet self; or if she does, it is of the Gismunda, or the Lisetta, or the Fiammetta of Boccaccio, to whom she is allied, not in the character or circumstances, but in the truly Italian spirit, the glowing, national complexion of the portrait. There was an Italian painter who said that the secret of all effect in color consisted in white upon black, and black upon white. How perfectly did Shakspeare understand this secret of effect! and how beautifully he has exemplified it in Juliet? So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows, As yonder lady o'er her fellows shows! Thus she and her lover are in contrast with all around them. They are all love, surrounded with all hate; all harmony, surrounded with all discord: all pure nature, in the midst of polished and artificial life. Juliet, like Portia, is the foster child of opulence and splendor; she dwells in a fair city—she has been nurtured in a palace—she clasps her robe with jewels—she braids her hair with rainbow-tinted pearls; but in herself she has no more connection with the trappings around her, than the lovely exotic, transplanted from some Eden-like climate, has with the carved and gilded conservatory which has reared and sheltered its luxuriant beauty. But in this vivid impression of contrast, there is nothing abrupt or harsh. A tissue of beautiful In the delineation of that sentiment which forms the groundwork of the drama, nothing in fact can equal the power of the picture, but its inexpressible sweetness and its perfect grace: the passion which has taken possession of Juliet's whole soul, has the force, the rapidity, the resistless violence of the torrent: but she is herself as "moving delicate," as fair, as soft, as flexible as the willow that bends over it, whose light leaves tremble even with the motion of the current which hurries beneath them. But at the same time that the pervading sentiment is never lost sight of, and is one and the same throughout, the individual part of the character in all its variety is developed, and marked with the nicest discrimination. For instance,—the simplicity ——Turned the tale by Ariosto told, Of fair Olympia, loved and left, of old! Hence that bashful doubt, dispelled almost as soon as felt— Ah, gentle Romeo! If thou dost love, pronounce it faithfully. That conscious shrinking from her own confession— Fain would I dwell on form; fain, fain deny What I have spoke! The ingenuous simplicity of her avowal Or if thou think'st I am too quickly won, I'll frown, and be perverse, and say thee nay, So thou wilt woo—but else, not for the world! In truth, fair Montague, I am too fond, And therefore thou may'st think my 'havior light, But trust me, gentleman, I'll prove more true Than those who have more cunning to be strange. And the proud yet timid delicacy, with which she throws herself for forbearance and pardon upon the tenderness of him she loves, even for the love she bears him— Therefore pardon me, And not impute this yielding to light love, Which the dark night hath so discovered. In the alternative, which she afterwards places before her lover with such a charming mixture of conscious delicacy and girlish simplicity, there is that jealousy of female honor which precept and education have infused into her mind, without one real doubt of his truth, or the slightest hesitation in her self-abandonment: for she does not even wait to hear his asseverations;— But if thou mean'st not well, I do beseech thee To cease thy suit, and leave me to my grief. ROMEO. So thrive my soul— JULIET. A thousand times, good night! But all these flutterings between native impulses and maiden fears become gradually absorbed, swept away, lost, and swallowed up in the depth and enthusiasm of confiding love. My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep; the more I give to you The more I have—for both are infinite! What a picture of the young heart, that sees no bound to its hopes, no end to its affections! For "what was to hinder the thrilling tide of pleasure which had just gushed from her heart, from flowing on without stint or measure, but experience, which she was yet without? What was to abate the transport of the first sweet sense of pleasure which her heart had just tasted, but indifference, to which she was yet a stranger? What was there to check the ardor of hope, of faith, of constancy, just rising in her breast, but disappointment, which she had never yet felt?" Lord Byron's HaidÉe is a copy of Juliet in the Oriental costume, but the development is epic, not dramatic. I remember no dramatic character, conveying the same impression of singleness of purpose, and devotion of heart and soul, except the Thekla of Schiller's Wallenstein; she is the German Juliet; far unequal, indeed, but conceived, nevertheless, in a kindred spirit. I know not if critics have ever compared them, or whether Schiller is supposed to have had the English, or rather the Italian, Juliet in his fancy when he portrayed Thekla; but there are some striking points of coincidence, while the national distinction in the character of the passion leaves to Thekla a strong cast of originality. The dazzle of the jewels which played round you Hid the beloved from me. We almost feel the reply of Thekla before she utters it,— Then you saw me Not with your heart, but with your eyes! The timidity of Thekla in her first scene, her trembling silence in the commencement, and the few words she addresses to her mother, remind us of the unobtrusive simplicity of Juliet's first appearance; but the impression is different; the one is the shrinking violet, the other the unexpanded rose-bud. Thekla and Max Piccolomini are, like Romeo and Juliet, divided by the hatred of their fathers. The death of Max, and the resolute despair of Thekla, are also points of resemblance; and Thekla's complete devotion, her frank yet dignified abandonment of all disguise, and her apology for her own unreserve, are quite in Juliet's style,— I ought to be less open, ought to hide My heart more from thee—so decorum dictates: But where in this place wouldst thou seek for truth If in my mouth thou didst not find it? The same confidence, innocence, and fervor of affection, distinguish both heroines; but the love of Juliet is more vehement, the love of Thekla is more calm, and reposes more on itself; the love of Juliet gives us the idea of infinitude, and that of Thekla of eternity: the love of Juliet flows on with an increasing tide, like the river pouring to the ocean; and the love of Thekla stands unalterable, and enduring as the rock. In the heart of Thekla love shelters as in a home; but in the heart of Juliet he reigns a crowned king,—"he rides on its pants triumphant!" As women, they would divide the loves and suffrages of mankind, but not as dramatic characters: the moment we come to look nearer, we acknowledge that it is indeed "rashness and ignorance to compare Schiller with Shakspeare." I have already remarked the quiet manner in which Juliet steals upon us in her first scene, as the serene, graceful girl, her feelings as yet unawakened, and her energies all unknown to herself, and unsuspected by others. Her silence and her filial deference are charming:— I'll look to like, if looking liking move; But no more deep will I endart mine eye, Than your consent shall give it strength to fly Much in the same unconscious way we are impressed with an idea of her excelling loveliness:— Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear! and which could make the dark vault of death "a feasting presence full of light." Without any elaborate description, we behold Juliet, as she is reflected in the heart of her lover, like a single bright star mirrored in the bosom of a deep, transparent well. The rapture with which he dwells on the "white wonder of her hand;" on her lips, That even in pure and vestal modesty Still blush, as thinking their own kisses sin. And then her eyes, "two of the fairest stars in all the heavens!" In his exclamation in the sepulchre, Ah, dear Juliet, why art thou yet so fair! there is life and death, beauty and horror, rapture and anguish combined. The Friar's description of her approach, O, so light a step Will ne'er wear out the everlasting flint! and then her father's similitude, Death lies on her, like an untimely frost Upon the sweetest flower of all the field;— all these mingle into a beautiful picture of youthful, airy, delicate grace, feminine sweetness, and patrician elegance. And our impression of Juliet's loveliness and sensibility is enhanced, when we find it overcoming in the bosom of Romeo a previous love for But when once he has beheld Juliet, and quaffed intoxicating draughts of hope and love from her soft glance, how all these airy fancies fade before the soul-absorbing reality! The lambent fire that played round his heart, burns to that heart's very core. We no longer find him adorning his lamentations in picked phrases, or making a confidant of his gay companions: he is no longer "for the numbers that Petrarch flowed in;" but all is consecrated, earnest, rapturous, in the feeling and the expression. Compare, for instance, the sparkling antithetical passages just quoted, with one or two of his passionate speeches to or of Juliet:— Heaven is here, Where Juliet lives! &c. Ah Juliet! if the measure of thy joy Be heaped like mine, and that thy skill be more To blazon it, then sweeten with thy breath This neighbour air, and let rich music's tongue Unfold the imagin'd happiness, that both Receive in either by this dear encounter. Come what sorrow may, It cannot countervail the exchange of joy That one short minute gives me in her sight. How different! and how finely the distinction is drawn! His first passion is indulged as a waking dream, a reverie of the fancy; it is depressing, indolent, fantastic; his second elevates him to the third heaven, or hurries him to despair. It rushes It may be remarked of Juliet as of Portia, that we not only trace the component qualities in each as they expand before us in the course of the action, but we seem to have known them previously, and mingle a consciousness of their past, with the interest of their present and their future. Thus, in the dialogue between Juliet and her parents, and in the scenes with the Nurse, we seem to have before us the whole of her previous education and habits: we see her, on the one hand, kept in severe subjection by her austere parents; and on the other, fondled and spoiled by a foolish old nurse—a situation perfectly accordant with the manners of the time. Then Lady Capulet comes sweeping by with her train of velvet, her black hood, her fan, But one, poor one!—one poor and loving child, But one thing to rejoice and solace in, And cruel death hath catched it from my sight! Capulet, as the jovial, testy old man, the self willed, violent, tyrannical father,—to whom his daughter is but a property, the appanage of his house, and the object of his pride,—is equal as a portrait: but both must yield to the Nurse, who is drawn with the most wonderful power and discrimination. In the prosaic homeliness of the outline, and the magical illusion of the coloring, she reminds us of some of the marvellous Dutch paintings, from which, with all their coarseness, we start back as from a reality. Her low humor, her shallow garrulity, mixed with the dotage and petulance of age—her subserviency, her secrecy, and her total want of elevated principle, or even common honesty—are brought before us like a living and palpable truth. Among these harsh and inferior spirits is Juliet placed; her haughty parents, and her plebeian The natural result of these extremes of subjection and independence, is exhibited in the character of Juliet, as it gradually opens upon us. We behold it in the mixture of self-will and timidity, of strength and weakness, of confidence and reserve, which are developed as the action of the play proceeds. We see it in the fond eagerness of the indulged girl, for whose impatience the "nimblest of the lightning-winged loves" had been too slow a messenger; in her petulance with her nurse; in those bursts of vehement feeling, which prepare us for the climax of passion at the catastrophe; in her NURSE. Shame come to Romeo! JULIET. Blistered be thy tongue, For such a wish! he was not born to shame. Then comes that revulsion of strong feeling, that burst of magnificent exultation in the virtue and honor of her lover:— Upon his brow Shame is ashamed to sit, For 'tis a throne where Honor may be crown'd Sole monarch of the universal earth! And this, by one of those quick transitions of feeling which belong to the character, is immediately succeeded by a gush of tenderness and self-reproach— Ah, poor my lord, what tongue shall smooth thy name, When I, thy three-hours' wife, have mangled it? With the same admirable truth of nature, Juliet is represented as at first bewildered by the fearful destiny that closes round her; reverse is new and terrible to one nursed in the lap of luxury, and whose energies are yet untried. Alack, alack, that heaven should practise stratagems Upon so soft a subject as myself. While a stay remains to her amid the evils that encompass her, she clings to it. She appeals to her father—to her mother— Good father, I beseech you on my knees, Hear me with patience but to speak one word! **** Ah, sweet my mother, cast me not away! Delay this marriage for a month,—a week! And, rejected by both, she throws herself upon her nurse in all the helplessness of anguish, of confiding affection, of habitual dependence— O God! O nurse! how shall this be prevented? Some comfort, nurse! The old woman, true to her vocation, and fearful lest her share in these events should be discovered, counsels her to forget Romeo and marry Paris; and the moment which unveils to Juliet the weakness and baseness of her confidante, is the moment which reveals her to herself. She does not break into upbraidings; it is no moment for anger; it is incredulous amazement, succeeded by the extremity of scorn and abhorrence, which take possession of her mind. She assumes at once and asserts all her own superiority, and rises to majesty in the strength of her despair. JULIET. Speakest thou from thy heart? NURSE. Aye, and from my soul too;—or else Beshrew them both! JULIET. Amen! This final severing of all the old familiar ties of her childhood— Go, counsellor! Thou and my bosom henceforth shall be twain! and the calm, concentrated force of her resolve, If all else fail,—myself have power to die; have a sublime pathos. It appears to me also an admirable touch of nature, considering the master-passion which, at this moment, rules in Juliet's soul, that she is as much shocked by the nurse's dispraise of her lover, as by her wicked, time-serving advice. This scene is the crisis in the character; and henceforth we see Juliet assume a new aspect. The fond, impatient, timid girl, puts on the wife and the woman: she has learned heroism from suffering, and subtlety from oppression. It is idle to criticize her dissembling submission to her father and mother; a higher duty has taken place of that which she owed to them; a more sacred tie has severed all others. Her parents are pictured as Go home,—be merry,—give consent To marry Paris; and she obeys him. Death and suffering in every horrid form she is ready to brave, without fear or doubt, "to live an unstained wife:" and the artifice to which she has recourse, which she is even instructed to use, in no respect impairs the beauty of the character; we regard it with pain and pity; but excuse it, as the natural and inevitable consequence of the situation in which she is placed. Nor should we forget, that the dissimulation, as well as the courage of Juliet, though they spring from passion, are justified by principle:— My husband is on earth, my faith in heaven; How shall my faith return again to earth, Unless that husband send it me from heaven? In her successive appeals to her father, her mother, her nurse, and the Friar, she seeks those remedies which would first suggest themselves to a gentle and virtuous nature, and grasps her dagger only as the last resource against dishonor and violated faith; God join'd my heart with Romeo's,—thou our hands. And ere this hand, by thee to Romeo seal'd, Shall be the label to another deed, Or my true heart with treacherous revolt Turn to another,—this shall slay them both! Thus, in the very tempest and whirlwind of passion and terror, preserving, to a certain degree, that moral and feminine dignity which harmonizes with our best feelings, and commands our unreproved sympathy. I reserve my remarks on the catastrophe, which demands separate consideration; and return to trace from the opening, another and distinguishing trait in Juliet's character. In the extreme vivacity of her imagination, and its influence upon the action, the language, the sentiments of the drama, Juliet resembles Portia; but with this striking difference. In Portia, the imaginative power, though developed in a high degree, is so equally blended with the other intellectual and moral faculties, that it does not give us the idea of excess. It is subject to her nobler reason; it adorns and heightens all her feelings; it does not overwhelm or mislead them. In Juliet, it is rather a part of her southern temperament, controlling and modifying the rest of her character; springing from her sensibility, hurried along by her passions, animating her joys, darkening her sorrows, exaggerating her terrors, and, in the end, overpowering her reason. With Juliet, imagination is, in the first instance, if not the source, the I have no joy of this contract to-night: It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden, Too like the lightning which doth cease to be Ere one can say it lightens. This bud of love, by summer's ripening breath, May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet. Again, O for a falconer's voice To lure this tassel-gentle back again! Bondage is hoarse, and may not speak aloud, Else would I tear the cave where Echo lies, And make her airy tongue more hoarse than mine With repetition of my Romeo's name. Here there are three images in the course of six Thou know'st the mask of night is on my face, contains but one figurative expression, the mask of night; and every one reading this speech with the context, must have felt the peculiar propriety of its simplicity, though perhaps without examining the cause of an omission which certainly is not fortuitous. The reason lies in the situation and in the feeling of the moment; where confusion, and anxiety, and earnest self-defence predominate, the excitability and play of the imagination would be checked and subdued for the time. In the soliloquy of the second act, where she is chiding at the nurse's delay:— O she is lame! Love's heralds should be thoughts, That ten times faster glide than the sun's beams, Driving back shadows over low'ring hills: Therefore do nimble-pinioned doves draw Love, And therefore hath the wind-swift Cupid wings! How beautiful! how the lines mount and float responsive to the sense! She goes on— Had she affections, and warm youthful blood, She'd be as swift in motion as a ball; My words should bandy her to my sweet love, And his to me! The famous soliloquy, "Gallop apace, ye fiery-footed steeds," teems with luxuriant imagery. The fond adjuration, "Come night! come Romeo! come It is the same shaping spirit of imagination which, in the scene with the Friar, heaps together all images of horror that ever hung upon a troubled dream. O bid me leap, rather than marry Paris, From off the battlements of yonder tower, Or walk in thievish ways; or bid me lurk Where serpents are—chain me with roaring bears, Or shut me nightly in a charnel-house O'ercovered quite with dead men's rattling bones; Or bid me go into a new made grave; Or hide me with a dead man in his shroud;— Things that to hear them told have made me tremble But she immediately adds,— And I will do it without fear or doubt, To live an unstained wife to my sweet love! In the scene where she drinks the sleeping potion, although her spirit does not quail, nor her determination falter for an instant, her vivid fancy conjures up one terrible apprehension after another, till gradually, and most naturally in such a mind once thrown off its poise, the horror rises to frenzy—her imagination realizes its own hideous creations, and she sees her cousin Tybalt's ghost. In particular passages this luxuriance of fancy may seem to wander into excess. For instance,— O serpent heart, hid with a flowery face! Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave? Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical! Dove-feather'd raven! wolfish ravening lamb, &c. Yet this highly figurative and antithetical exuberance of language is defended by Schlegel on strong and just grounds; and to me also it appears natural, however critics may argue against its taste or propriety. With regard to the termination of the play, which Such as, once heard, in gentle heart destroys All pain but pity. It is in truth a tale of love and sorrow, not of anguish and terror. We behold the catastrophe afar off with scarcely a wish to avert it. Romeo and Juliet must die; their destiny is fulfilled; they have quaffed off the cup of life, with all its infinite of joys and agonies, in one intoxicating draught. What have they to do more upon this earth? I do remember well where I should be, And there I am—Where is my Romeo? The profound slumber in which her senses have been steeped for so many hours has tranquillized her nerves, and stilled the fever in her blood; she wakes "like a sweet child who has been dreaming of something promised to it by its mother," and opens her eyes to ask for it— ... Where is my Romeo? she is answered at once,— Thy husband in thy bosom here lies dead. This is enough: she sees at once the whole horror of her situation—she sees it with a quiet and resolved despair—she utters no reproach against the Friar—makes no inquiries, no complaints, except that affecting remonstrance— O churl—drink all, and leave no friendly drop To help me after! All that is left to her is to die, and she dies. The poem, which opened with the enmity of the two families, closes with their reconciliation over the breathless remains of their children; and no violent, frightful, or discordant feeling is suffered to mingle with that soft impression of melancholy left within the heart, and which Schlegel compares to one long, endless sigh. "A youthful passion," says GoËthe, (alluding to one of his own early attachments,) "which is conceived and cherished without any certain object, may be compared to a shell thrown from a mortar by night: it rises calmly in a brilliant track, and seems to mix, and even to dwell for a moment, with the stars of heaven; but at length it falls—it bursts—consuming and destroying all around, even as itself expires." To conclude: love, considered under its poetical aspect, is the union of passion and imagination and accordingly, to one of these, or to both, all the qualities of Juliet's mind and heart (unfolding and varying as the action of the drama proceeds) may With all this immense capacity of affection and imagination, there is a deficiency of reflection and of moral energy arising from previous habit and education: and the action of the drama, while it serves to develope the character, appears but its natural and necessary result. "Le mystÈre de l'existence," said Madame de StaËl to her daughter, "c'est le rapport de nos erreurs avec nos peines." HELENA.In the character of Juliet we have seen the passionate and the imaginative blended in an equal degree, and in the highest conceivable degree as combined with delicate female nature. In Helena we have a modification of character altogether distinct; allied, indeed, to Juliet as a picture of fervent, enthusiastic, self-forgetting love, but differing wholly from her in other respects; for Helen is the union of strength of passion with strength of character. "To be tremblingly alive to gentle impressions, and yet be able to preserve, when the prosecution of a design requires it, an immovable heart amidst even the most imperious causes of subduing emotion, is perhaps not an impossible constitution of mind, but it is the utmost and rarest endowment of humanity." Helena, as a woman, is more passionate than imaginative; and, as a character, she bears the same relation to Juliet that Isabel bears to Portia. There is equal unity of purpose and effect, with much less of the glow of imagery and the external coloring of poetry in the sentiments, language, and details. It is passion developed under its most profound and serious aspect; as in Isabella, we have the serious and the thoughtful, not the brilliant side of intellect. Both Helena and Isabel are distinguished by high mental powers, tinged with a melancholy sweetness; but in Isabella the serious and energetic part of the character is founded in religious principle; in Helena it is founded in deep passion. There never was, perhaps, a more beautiful picture of a woman's love, cherished in secret, not self-consuming in silent languishment—not pining in thought—not passive and "desponding over its idol"—but patient and hopeful, strong in its own Whose beauty did astonish the survey Of richest eyes: whose words all ears took captive; Whose dear perfection, hearts that scorn'd to serve. Humbly called mistress. As her dignity is derived from mental power, without any alloy of pride, so her humility has a peculiar grace. If she feels and repines over her lowly birth, it is merely as an obstacle which separates It may be said that Bertram, arrogant, wayward, and heartless, does not justify this ardent and deep devotion. But Helena does not behold him with our eyes; but as he is "sanctified in her idolatrous fancy." Dr. Johnson says he cannot reconcile himself to a man who marries Helena like a coward, and leaves her like a profligate. This is much too severe; in the first place, there is no necessity that we should reconcile ourselves to him. In this consists a part of the wonderful beauty of the character of Helena—a part of its womanly truth, which Johnson, who accuses Bertram, and those who so plausibly defend him, did not understand. If it never happened in real life, that a woman, richly endued with heaven's best gifts, loved with all her heart, and soul, and strength, a man unequal to or unworthy of her, and to whose faults herself alone was blind—I would give up the point: but if it be in nature, why should it not be in Shakspeare? And although Helena tells herself that she loves in vain, a conviction stronger than reason tells her that she does not: her love is like a religion, pure, holy, and deep: the blessedness to which she has lifted her thoughts is forever before her; to despair would be a crime,—it would be to cast herself away and die. The faith of her affection, combining with the natural energy of her character, believing all things possible makes them so. It could say to the mountain of pride which stands between her and her hopes, "Be thou removed!" and it is removed. This is the solution of her behavior in the marriage scene, where Bertram, with obvious reluctance and disdain, accepts her hand, which the king, his feudal lord and guardian, forces on him. Her maidenly feeling is at first shocked, and she shrinks back— That you are well restor'd, my lord, I am glad: Let the rest go. But shall she weakly relinquish the golden opportunity, and dash the cup from her lips at the moment it is presented? Shall she cast away the treasure for which she has ventured both life and honor, when it is just within her grasp? Shall she, after compromising her feminine delicacy by the ... For time will bring on summer, When briars shall have leaves as well as thorns, And be as sweet as sharp. It is this fond faith which, hoping all things, enables her to endure all things:—which hallows and dignifies the surrender of her woman's pride, making it a sacrifice on which virtue and love throw a mingled incense. The scene in which the Countess extorts from Helen the confession of her love, must, as an illustration, be given here. It is perhaps, the finest in the whole play, and brings out all the striking points of Helen's character, to which I have already alluded. We must not fail to remark, that though the acknowledgment is wrung from her with an agony which seems to convulse her whole being, yet when once she has given it solemn utterance, she recovers her presence of mind, and asserts her native dignity. In her justification of her feelings and her conduct, there is neither sophistry, nor self-deception, nor presumption, but a noble simplicity, combined with the most impassioned earnestness; while the language naturally rises in its eloquent beauty, as the tide of feeling, now first let loose from the bursting heart, comes pouring forth in words. The whole scene is wonderfully beautiful. HELENA. What is your pleasure, madam? COUNTESS. You know, Helen, I am a mother to you. HELENA. Mine honorable mistress. COUNTESS Nay, a mother; Why not a mother? When I said a mother, Methought you saw a serpent: what's in mother, That you start at it? I say, I am your mother: That were enwombed mine: 'tis often seen, Adoption strives with nature; and choice breeds A native slip to us from foreign seeds. You ne'er oppress'd me with a mother's groan, Yet I express to you a mother's care;— God's mercy, maiden! does it curd thy blood, To say, I am thy mother? What's the matter That this distempered messenger of wet, The many-color'd Iris, rounds thine eye? Why?—that you are my daughter? HELENA. That I am not. COUNTESS. I say, I am your mother. HELENA. Pardon, madam: The Count Roussillon cannot be my brother: I am from humble, he from honor'd name; No note upon my parents, his all noble: My master, my dear lord he is: and I His servant live, and will his vassal die: He must not be my brother. COUNTESS. Nor I your mother? HELENA. You are my mother, madam; would you were (So that my lord, your son, were not my brother,) Indeed my mother, or, were you both our mothers, I care no more for, than I do for Heaven, But I, your daughter, he must be my brother? COUNTESS. Yes, Helen, you might be my daughter-in-law; God shield, you mean it not! daughter and mother So strive upon your pulse: what, pale again? My fear hath catch'd your fondness: now I see The mystery of your loneliness, and find Your salt tears' head. Now to all sense 'tis gross You love my son; invention is asham'd, Against the proclamation of thy passion, To say, thou dost not: therefore tell me true; But tell me, then, 'tis so:—for, look, thy cheeks Confess it, one to the other. Speak, is't so? If it be so, you have wound a goodly clue! If it be not, forswear't: howe'er, I charge thee, As heaven shall work in me for thy avail, To tell me truly. HELENA. Good madam, pardon me! COUNTESS. Do you love my son? HELENA. Your pardon, noble mistress! COUNTESS. Love you my son? HELENA. Do not you love him, madam? COUNTESS. Go not about; my love hath in't a bond, The state of your affection; for your passions Have to the full appeach'd. HELENA. Then I confess Here on my knee, before high heaven and you, That before you, and next unto high heaven, I love your son:— My friends were poor, but honest; so's my love Be not offended; for it hurts not him, That he is loved of me; I follow him not By any token of presumptuous suit; Nor would I have him till I do deserve him: Yet never know how that desert should be. I know I love in vain; strive against hope; Yet, in this captious and untenable sieve, I still pour in the waters of my love, And lack not to love still: thus, Indian-like, Religious in mine error, I adore The sun that looks upon his worshipper, But knows of him no more. My dearest madam, Let not your hate encounter with my love, For loving where you do: but, if yourself, Whose aged honor cites a virtuous youth, Did ever in so true a flame of liking, Wish chastely, and love dearly, that your Dian Was both herself and love; O then give pity To her, whose state is such, that cannot choose But lend and give, where she is sure to lose; That seeks not to find that her search implies, But, riddle-like, lives sweetly where she dies. This old Countess of Roussillon is a charming sketch. She is like one of Titian's old women, who Her fond, maternal love for Helena, whom she has brought up: her pride in her good qualities overpowering all her own prejudices of rank and birth, are most natural in such a mind; and her indignation against her son, however strongly expressed, never forgets the mother. What angel shall Bless this unworthy husband? he cannot thrive Unless her prayers, whom heaven delights to hear And loves to grant, reprieve him from the wrath Of greatest justice. Which of them both Is dearest to me—I have no skill in sense To make distinction. This is very skilfully, as well as delicately conceived. In rejecting those poetical and accidental advantages which Giletta possesses in the original It is also very natural that Helen, with the intuitive discernment of a pure and upright mind, and the penetration of a quick-witted woman, should be the first to detect the falsehood and cowardice of the boaster Parolles, who imposes on every one else. It has been remarked, that there is less of poetical imagery in this play than in many of the others. A certain solidity in Helen's character takes place of the ideal power; and with consistent truth of keeping, the same predominance of feeling over fancy, of the reflective over the imaginative faculty, is maintained through the whole dialogue. Yet the finest passages in the serious scenes are those appropriated to her; they are familiar and celebrated as quotations, but fully to understand their beauty and truth, they should be considered 'Tis pity That wishing well had not a body in't Which might be felt: that we the poorer born, Whose baser stars do shut us up in wishes, Might with effects of them follow our friends, And act what we must only think, which never Returns us thanks. Some of her general reflections have a sententious depth and a contemplative melancholy, which remind us of Isabella:— Our remedies oft in themselves do lie Which we ascribe to heaven; the fated sky Gives us free scope; only doth backward pull Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull. Impossible be strange events to those That weigh their pains in sense; and do suppose What hath been cannot be. He that of greatest works is finisher, Oft does them by the weakest minister; So holy writ in babes hath judgment shown, When judges have been babes. Oft expectation fails, and most oft there Where hope is coldest, and despair most sits. Her sentiments in the same manner are remarkable for the union of profound sense with the most passionate feeling; and when her language is figurative, which is seldom, the picture presented to us is invariably touched either with a serious, a lofty, or a melancholy beauty. For instance:— It were all one That I should love a bright particular star, And think to wed it—he's so far above me. And when she is brought to choose a husband from among the young lords at the court, her heart having already made its election, the strangeness of that very privilege for which she had ventured all, nearly overpowers her, and she says beautifully:— The blushes on my cheeks thus whisper me, "We blush that thou shouldst choose;—but be refused, Let the white death sit on that cheek for ever We'll ne'er come there again!" In her soliloquy after she has been forsaken by Bertram, the beauty lies in the intense feeling, the force and simplicity of the expressions. There is little imagery, and wherever it occurs, it is as bold as it is beautiful, and springs out of the energy of the sentiment, and the pathos of the situation. She has been reading his cruel letter. Till I have no wife I have nothing in France. 'Tis bitter! Nothing in France, until he has no wife! Thou shalt have none, Roussillon, none in France, Then hast thou all again. Poor lord! is't I That chase thee from thy country, and expose Those tender limbs of thine to the event Of the none-sparing war? And is it I That drive thee from the sportive court, where thou Wast shot at with fair eyes, to be the mark Of smoky muskets? O you leaden messengers, That ride upon the violent speed of fire, Fly with false aim! move the still-piercing air, That sings with piercing, do not touch my lord! Whoever shoots at him, I set him there; Whoever charges on his forward breast, I am the caitiff that do hold him to it; And though I kill him not, I am the cause His death was so effected; better 'twere I met the ravin lion when he roared With sharp constraint of hunger; better 'twere That all the miseries which nature owes, Were mine at once. No, no, although The air of paradise did fan the house, And angels officed all; I will be gone. Though I cannot go the length of those who have defended Bertram on almost every point, still I think the censure which Johnson has passed on the character is much too severe. Bertram is certainly not a pattern hero of romance, but full of faults such as we meet with every day in men of his age and class. He is a bold, ardent, self-willed youth It is not extraordinary that, in the first instance, his spirit should revolt at the idea of marrying his mother's "waiting gentlewoman," or that he should refuse her; yet when the king, his feudal lord, whose despotic authority was in this case legal and indisputable, threatens him with the extremity of his wrath and vengeance, that he should submit himself to a hard necessity, was too consistent with the manners of the time to be called cowardice. Such forced marriages were not uncommon even in our own country, when the right of wardship, now vested in the Lord Chancellor, was exercised with uncontrolled and often cruel despotism by the sovereign. There is an old ballad, in which the king bestows a maid of low degree on a noble of his court, and the undisguised scorn and reluctance of the knight and the pertinacity of the lady, are in point. He brought her down full forty pound Tyed up within a glove, "Fair maid, I'll give the same to thee, Go seek another love." "O I'll have none of your gold," she said, "Nor I'll have none of your fee; The king hath granted me." Sir William ran and fetched her then, Five hundred pounds in gold, Saying, "Fair maid, take this to thee, My fault will ne'er be told." "'Tis not the gold that shall me tempt," These words then answered she; "But your own bodye I must have, The king hath granted me." "Would I had drank the water clear, When I did drink the wine, Rather than my shepherd's brat Should be a ladye of mine!" Bertram's disgust at the tyranny which has made his freedom the payment of another's debt, which has united him to a woman whose merits are not towards him—whose secret love, and long-enduring faith, are yet unknown and untried—might well make his bride distasteful to him. He flies her on the very day of their marriage, most like a wilful, haughty, angry boy, but not like a profligate. On other points he is not so easily defended; and Shakspeare, we see, has not defended, but corrected him. The latter part of the play is more perplexing than pleasing. We do not, indeed, repine with Dr. Johnson, that Bertram, after all his misdemeanors, is "dismissed to happiness;" but, not PERDITA.In Viola and Perdita the distinguishing traits are the same—sentiment and elegance; thus we associate them together, though nothing can be more distinct to the fancy than the Doric grace of Perdita, compared to the romantic sweetness of Viola. They are created out of the same materials, and are equal to each other in the tenderness, delicacy, and poetical beauty of the conception. They are both more imaginative than passionate; but Perdita is the more imaginative of the two. She is the union of the pastoral and romantic with the classical and poetical, as if a dryad of the woods had turned shepherdess. The perfections with which the poet has so lavishly endowed her, sit upon her with a certain careless and picturesque grace, "as though they had fallen upon her unawares." Thus Belphoebe, in the Fairy Queen, issues from the flowering forest with hair and garments all besprinkled with the leaves and blossoms they had entangled in their flight; and so arrayed by chance and "heedless hap," takes all hearts with "stately The story of Florizel and Perdita is but an episode in the "Winter's Tale;" and the character of Perdita is properly kept subordinate to that of her mother, Hermione: yet the picture is perfectly finished in every part;—Juliet herself is not more firmly and distinctly drawn. But the coloring in Perdita is more silvery light and delicate; the pervading sentiment more touched with the ideal; compared with Juliet, she is like a Guido hung beside a Georgione, or one of Paesiello's airs heard after one of Mozart's. The qualities which impart to Perdita her distinct individuality, are the beautiful combination of the pastoral with the elegant—of simplicity with elevation—of spirit with sweetness. The exquisite delicacy of the picture is apparent. To understand and appreciate its effective truth and nature, we should place Perdita beside some of the nymphs of Arcadia, or the Chloris' and Sylvias of the Italian pastorals, who, however graceful in themselves, when opposed to Perdita, seem to melt away into mere poetical abstractions;—as, in Spenser, the fair but fictitious Florimel, which the subtle enchantress had moulded out of snow, "vermeil tinctured," and informed with an airy spirit, that knew "all wiles of woman's wits," fades and dissolves away, when placed next to the real Florimel, in her warm, breathing, human loveliness. Perdita does not appear till the fourth act, and FLORIZEL. These your unusual weeds to each part of you Do give a life—no shepherdess, but Flora Peering in April's front; this your sheep-shearing Is as the meeting of the petty gods, And you the queen on't. PERDITA. Sir, my gracious lord, To chide at your extremes it not becomes me; O pardon that I name them: your high self, The gracious mark o' the land, you have obscured With a swain's bearing; and me, poor lowly maid, Most goddess-like prank'd up:—but that our feasts In every mess have folly, and the feeders Digest it with a custom, I should blush To see you so attired; sworn, I think To show myself a glass. The impression of her perfect beauty and airy elegance of demeanor is conveyed in two exquisite passages: What you do Still betters what is done. When you speak, sweet, I'd have you do it ever. When you sing, I'd have you buy and sell so; so give alms, Pray so, and for the ordering your affairs To sing them too. When you do dance, I wish you A wave o' the sea, that you might ever do Nothing but that; move still, still so, and own No other function. I take thy hand; this hand As soft as dove's down, and as white as it; Or Ethiopian's tooth, or the fann'd snow, That's bolted by the northern blasts twice o'er. The artless manner in which her innate nobility of soul shines forth through her pastoral disguise, is thus brought before us at once:— This is the prettiest low-born lass that ever Ran on the green sward; nothing she does or seems, But smacks of something greater than herself; Too noble for this place. Her natural loftiness of spirit breaks out where she is menaced and reviled by the King, as one whom his son has degraded himself by merely looking on; she bears the royal frown without quailing; but the moment he is gone, the immediate recollection of herself, and of her humble state, of her hapless love, is full of beauty, tenderness, and nature:— Even here undone! I was much afeard: for once or twice, I was about to speak; and tell him plainly Hides not his visage from our cottage, but Looks on alike. Will't please, you Sir, be gone? I told you what would come of this. Beseech you, Of your own state take care; this dream of mine— Being now awake—I'll queen it no inch further, But milk my ewes, and weep. How often have I told you 'twould be thus How often said, my dignity would last But till 'twere known! FLORIZEL. It cannot fail, but by The violation of my faith; and then Let nature crush the sides o' the earth together And mar the seeds within! Lift up thy looks. **** Not for Bohemia, nor the pomp that may Be thereat glean'd! for all the sun sees, or The close earth wombs, or the profound seas hide In unknown fathoms, will I break my oath To thee, my fair beloved! Perdita has another characteristic, which lends to the poetical delicacy of the delineation a certain strength and moral elevation, which is peculiarly striking. It is that sense of truth and rectitude, that upright simplicity of mind, which disdains all crooked and indirect means, which would not stoop for an instant to dissemblance, and is mingled with a noble confidence in her love and in her lover. In this spirit is her answer to Camilla, who says, courtier like, Besides, you know Prosperity's the very bond of love; Whose fresh complexion, and whose heart together Affliction alters. To which she replies,— One of these is true; I think, affliction may subdue the cheek, But not take in the mind. In that elegant scene where she receives the guests at the sheep-shearing, and distributes the flowers, there is in the full flow of the poetry, a most beautiful and striking touch of individual character: but here it is impossible to mutilate the dialogue. Reverend sirs, For you there's rosemary and rue; these keep Seeming and savor all the winter long; Grace and remembrance be to you both, And welcome to our shearing! POLIXENES. Shepherdess, (A fair one are you,) well you fit our ages With flowers of winter. PERDITA. Sir, the year growing ancient, Nor yet on summer's death, nor on the birth Of trembling winter, the fairest flowers o' the season Are our carnations, and streaked gilliflowers, Which some call nature's bastards: of that kind Our rustic garden's barren; and I care not To get slips of them. POLIXENES. Wherefore, gentle maiden, Do you neglect them? PERDITA. For I have heard it said, There is an art, which in their piedness, shares With great creating nature. POLIXENES. Say there be; Yet nature is made better by no mean But nature makes that mean; so o'er that art Which, you say, adds to nature, is an art That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry A gentle scion to the wildest stock; And make conceive a bark of baser kind By bud of nobler race. This is an art Which does mend nature, change it rather; but The art itself is nature. PERDITA. So it is. POLIXENES. Then make your garden rich in gilliflowers, And do not call them bastards. PERDITA. I'll not put The dibble in earth to set one slip of them; No more than were I painted, I would wish This youth should say 'twere well. It has been well remarked of this passage, that Perdita does not attempt to answer the reasoning O Proserpina! For the flowers now, that, frighted, thou let'st fall From Dis's wagon! daffodils, That come before the swallow dares, and take The winds of March with beauty; violets dim, But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes, Or Cytherea's breath; pale primroses, That die unmarried, ere they can behold Bright Phoebus in his strength, a malady Most incident to maids; bold oxlips, and The crown imperial; lilies of all kinds, The flower-de-luce being one! O, these I lack, To make you garlands of; and my sweet friend To strew him o'er and o'er. FLORIZEL. What! like a corse? PERDITA. No, like a bank, for Love to lie and play on; Not like a corse: or if,—not to be buried, But quick, and in mine arms! This love of truth, this conscientiousness, which forms so distinct a feature in the character of Perdita, The heavens set spies upon us—will not have Our contract celebrated. After this scene, Perdita says very little. The description of her grief, while listening to the relation of her mother's death,— "One of the prettiest touches of all, was, when at the relation of the queen's death, with the manner how she came by it, how attentiveness wounded her daughter: till from one sign of dolor to another, she did, with an alas! I would fain say, bleed tears:"— her deportment too as she stands gazing on the statue of Hermione, fixed in wonder, admiration and sorrow, as if she too were marble O royal piece! There's magic in thy majesty, which has From thy admiring daughter ta'en the spirits, Standing like stone beside thee! are touches of character conveyed indirectly, and which serve to give a more finished effect to this beautiful picture. VIOLA.As the innate dignity of Perdita pierces through her rustic disguise, so the exquisite refinement of Viola triumphs over her masculine attire. Viola is, perhaps, in a degree less elevated and ideal than Perdita, but with a touch of sentiment more profound and heart-stirring; she is "deep-learned in the lore of love,"—at least theoretically,—and speaks as masterly on the subject as Perdita does of flowers. DUKE. How dost thou like this tune? VIOLA. It gives a very echo to the seat Where love is thron'd. And again, If I did love you in my master's flame, With such a suffering, such a deadly life— in your denial I would find no sense, I would not understand it. OLIVIA. Why, what would you do? VIOLA. Make me a willow cabin at your gate, And call upon my soul within the house; Write loyal cantons And sing them loud even in the dead of night. Holla your name to the reverberate hills, And make babbling gossip of the air Cry out, Olivia! O you should not rest Between the elements of air and earth, But you should pity me. OLIVIA. You might do much. The situation and the character of Viola have been censured for their want of consistency and probability; it is therefore worth while to examine how far this criticism is true. As for her situation in the drama, (of which she is properly the heroine,) it is shortly this. She is shipwrecked on the coast of Illyria: she is alone and without protection in a strange country. She wishes to enter into the service of the Countess Olivia; but she is assured that this is impossible; "for the lady having recently lost an only and beloved brother, has abjured the sight of men, has shut herself up in her palace, and will admit no kind of suit." In this perplexity Viola remembers to have heard her father speak with praise and admiration of Orsino, the Duke of If we carry our thoughts back to a romantic and chivalrous age, there is surely sufficient probability here for all the purposes of poetry. To pursue the thread of Viola's destiny;—she is engaged in the service of the Duke, whom she finds "fancy-sick" for the love of Olivia. We are left to infer, (for so it is hinted in the first scene,) that this Duke—who with his accomplishments, and his personal attractions, his taste for music, his chivalrous tenderness, and his unrequited love, is really a very fascinating and poetical personage, though a little passionate and fantastic—had already made some impression on Viola's imagination; and when she comes to play the confidante, and to be loaded with favors and kindness in her assumed character, that she should be touched by a passion made up of pity, admiration, gratitude, and tenderness, does not, I think, in any way detract from the genuine sweetness and delicacy of her character, for "she never told her love." Now all this, as the critic wisely observes, may not present a very just picture of life; and it may also fail to impart any moral lesson for the especial profit of well-bred young ladies; but is it not in truth and in nature? Did it ever fail to charm or Viola then is the chosen favorite of the enamoured Duke, and becomes his messenger to Olivia, and the interpreter of his sufferings to that inaccessible beauty. In her character of a youthful page, she attracts the favor of Olivia, and excites the jealousy of her lord. The situation is critical and delicate; but how exquisitely is the character of Viola fitted to her part, carrying her through the ordeal with all the inward and spiritual grace of modesty. What beautiful propriety in the distinction drawn between Rosalind and Viola! The wild sweetness, the frolic humor which sports free and unblamed amid the shades of Ardennes, would ill become Viola, whose playfulness is assumed as part of her disguise as a court-page, and is guarded by the strictest delicacy. She has not, like Rosalind, a saucy enjoyment in her own incognito; her disguise does not sit so easily upon her; her heart does not beat freely under it. As in the old ballad, where "Sweet William" is detected weeping in secret over her "man's array," And on her cheek is ready with a blush Modest as morning, when she coldly eyes The youthful Phoebus. She plays her part well, but never forgets nor allows us to forget, that she is playing a part. OLIVIA. Are you a comedian? VIOLA. No, my profound heart! and yet by the very fangs of malice I swear, I am not that I play! And thus she comments on it:— Disguise, I see thou art wickedness, Wherein the pregnant enemy does much; How easy is it for the proper false In women's waxen hearts to set their forms! Alas! our frailty is the cause, not we. The feminine cowardice of Viola, which will not allow her even to affect a courage becoming her attire,—her horror at the idea of drawing a sword, is very natural and characteristic; and produces a most humorous effect, even at the very moment it charms and interests us. Contrasted with the deep, silent, patient love of Viola for the Duke, we have the lady-like wilfulness of Olivia; and her sudden passion, or rather fancy, for the disguised page, takes so beautiful a coloring of poetry and sentiment, that we do not think her forward. Olivia is like a princess of romance, and has all the privileges of one; she is, like Portia, high born and high bred, mistress over her servants—but not like Portia, "queen o'er herself." She has never in her life been opposed; the first contradiction, therefore, rouses all the woman I have said too much unto a heart of stone, And laid mine honor too unchary out; There's something in me that reproves my fault; But such a headstrong potent fault it is, That it but mocks reproof! And in the midst of her self-abandonment, never allows us to contemn, even while we pity her:— What shall you ask of me that I'll deny. That honor, saved, may upon asking give? The distance of rank which separates the Countess from the youthful page—the real sex of Viola—the dignified elegance of Olivia's deportment, except where passion gets the better of her pride—her consistent coldness towards the Duke—the description of that "smooth, discreet, and stable bearing" with which she rules her household—her generous care for her steward Malvolio, in the midst of her own distress,—all these circumstances raise Olivia in our fancy, and render her caprice for the page a source of amusement and interest, not a subject of reproach. Twelfth Night is a genuine comedy;—a perpetual spring of the gayest and the sweetest fancies. In artificial society men and women are divided into castes and classes, and it is rarely that extremes in character or manners can approximate. To blend into one harmonious picture the utmost grace and refinement OPHELIA.A woman's affections, however strong, are sentiments, when they run smooth; and become passions only when opposed. In Juliet and Helena, love is depicted as a passion, properly so called; that is, a natural impulse, throbbing in the heart's blood, and mingling with the very sources of life;—a sentiment more or less modified by the imagination; a strong abiding principle and motive, excited by resistance, acting upon the will, animating all the other faculties, and again influenced by them. This is the most complex aspect of love, and in these two characters, it is depicted in colors at once the most various, the most intense, and the most brilliant. In Viola and Perdita, love, being less complex, appears more refined; more a sentiment than a passion—a compound of impulse and fancy, while the reflective powers and moral energies are more faintly developed. The same remark applies also to Julia and Silvia, in the Two Gentlemen of But there was yet another possible modification of the sentiment, as combined with female nature; and this Shakspeare has shown to us. He has portrayed two beings, in whom all intellectual and moral energy is in a manner latent, if existing; in whom love is an unconscious impulse, and imagination lends the external charm and hue, not the internal power; in whom the feminine character appears resolved into its very elementary principles—as modesty, grace, Ophelia—poor Ophelia! O far too soft, too good, too fair, to be cast among the briers of this working-day world, and fall and bleed upon the thorns of life! What shall be said of her? for eloquence is mute before her! Like a strain of sad sweet music which comes floating by us on the wings of night and silence, and which we rather feel than hear—like the exhalation of the violet dying even upon the sense it charms—like the snow-flake dissolved in air before it has caught a stain of earth—like the light surf severed from the billow, which a breath disperses—such is the character of Ophelia: so exquisitely delicate, it seems as if a touch would profane it; so sanctified in our thoughts by the last and worst of human woes, that we scarcely dare to consider it too deeply. The love of Ophelia, which she never once confesses, is like a secret which we have stolen from her, and which ought to die upon our hearts as upon her Beyond every character that Shakspeare has drawn, (Hamlet alone excepted,) that of Ophelia makes us forget the poet in his own creation. Whenever we bring her to mind, it is with the same exclusive sense of her real existence, without reference to the wondrous power which called her into life. The effect (and what an effect!) is produced by means so simple, by strokes so few, and so unobtrusive, that we take no thought of them. It is so purely natural and unsophisticated, yet so profound in its pathos, that, as Hazlitt observes, it takes us back to the old ballads; we forget that, in its perfect artlessness, it is the supreme and consummate triumph of art. The situation of Ophelia in the story, Again, in the father of Ophelia, the Lord Chamberlain Polonius—the shrewd, wary, subtle, pompous, garrulous old courtier—have we not the very man who would send his son into the world to see all, learn all it could teach of good and evil, but keep his only daughter as far as possible from every taint of that world he knew so well? So that when she is brought to the court, she seems in her loveliness and perfect purity, like a seraph that had wandered out of bounds, and yet breathed on earth the air of paradise. When her father and her brother find it necessary to warn her simplicity, When her brother warns her against Hamlet's importunities— she replies with a kind of half consciousness— No more but so? LAERTES. Think it no more. He concludes his admonition with that most beautiful passage, in which the soundest sense, the most excellent advice, is conveyed in a strain of the most exquisite poetry. The chariest maid is prodigal enough, If she unmask her beauty to the moon: Virtue itself 'scapes not calumnious strokes. The canker galls the infants of the spring Too oft before their buttons be disclos'd: And in the morn and liquid dew of youth, Contagious blastments are most imminent. She answers with the same modesty, yet with a kind of involuntary avowal, that his fears are not altogether without cause:— I shall the effect of this good lesson keep As watchman to my heart. But, good my brother, Do not, as some ungracious pastors do, Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven; Whilst, like the puff'd and reckless libertine, Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads, And recks not his own read. When her father, immediately afterwards, catechizes her on the same subject, he extorts from her, in short sentences, uttered with bashful reluctance, the confession of Hamlet's love for her, but not a word of her love for him. The whole scene is managed with inexpressible delicacy: it is one of those instances, common in Shakspeare, in which we are allowed to perceive what is POLONIUS. What is between you? give me up the truth! OPHELIA. He hath, my lord, of late, made many tenders Of his affection to me. POLONIUS. Affection! poh! you speak like a green girl, Unsifted in such perilous circumstances. Do you believe his tenders, as you call them? OPHELIA. I do not know, my lord, what I should think. POLONIUS. Marry, I'll teach you: think yourself a baby; That you have taken these tenders for true pay Which are not sterling. Tender yourself more dearly Or (not to crack the wind of the poor phrase, Wronging it thus) you'll tender me a fool. OPHELIA. My lord, he hath importun'd me with love In honorable fashion. POLONIUS. Ay, fashion you may call it; go to, go to. OPHELIA. And hath given countenance to his speech, my lord, With almost all the holy vows of heaven. POLONIUS. Ay, springes to catch woodcocks. This is for all: would not, in plain terms, from this time forth Have you so slander any moment's leisure As to give words or talk with the Lord Hamlet, Look to't, I charge you: come your ways. OPHELIA. I shall obey, my lord. Besides its intrinsic loveliness, the character of Ophelia has a relative beauty and delicacy when considered in relation to that of Hamlet, which is the delineation of a man of genius in contest with the powers of this world. The weakness of volition, the instability of purpose, the contemplative sensibility, the subtlety of thought, always shrinking from action, and always occupied in "thinking too precisely on the event," united to immense intellectual power, render him unspeakably interesting: and yet I doubt whether any woman, who would have been capable of understanding and appreciating such a man, would have passionately loved him. Let us for a moment imagine any one of Shakspeare's most beautiful and striking female characters in immediate connection with Hamlet. The gentle Desdemona would never have despatched her household cares in haste, to listen to his philosophical But it is not singular, that while no one entertains a doubt of Ophelia's love for Hamlet—though never once expressed by herself, or asserted by others, in the whole course of the drama—yet it is a subject of dispute whether Hamlet loves Ophelia, though she herself allows that he had importuned her with love, and "had given countenance to his suit with almost all the holy vows of heaven;" although in the letter which Polonius intercepted, Hamlet declares that he loves her "best, O most best!"—though he asserts himself, with the wildest vehemence, I lov'd Ophelia; forty thousand brothers Could not, with all their quantity of love, Make up my sum: —still I have heard the question canvassed; I have even heard it denied that Hamlet did love Ophelia. The author of the finest remarks I have yet seen on the play and character of Hamlet, leans to this opinion. As the observations I allude to are contained in a periodical publication, and may not be at hand for immediate reference, I shall indulge myself (and the reader no less) by quoting the opening paragraphs of this noble piece of criticism, upon the principle, and for the reason I have already stated in the introduction. "We take up a play, and ideas come rolling in upon us, like waves impelled by a strong wind. There is in the ebb and flow of Shakspeare's soul all the grandeur of a mighty operation of nature; and when we think or speak of him, it should be with humility where we do not understand, and a conviction that it is rather to the narrowness of our own mind than to any failing in the art of the great magician, that we ought to attribute any sense of weakness, which may assail us during the contemplation of his created worlds. "Shakspeare himself, had he even been as great a critic as a poet, could not have written a regular dissertation upon Hamlet. So ideal, and yet so real an existence, could have been shadowed out only in the colors of poetry. When a character deals solely or chiefly with this world and its events The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's eye, tongue, sword, Th' expectancy and rose of the fair state; The glass of fashion, and the mould of form, Th' observ'd of all observers. "But when we would penetrate into his spirit, meditate on those things on which he meditates, accompany him even unto the brink of eternity, fluctuate with him on the ghastly sea of despair, soar with him into the purest and serenest regions of human thought, feel with him the curse of beholding iniquity, and the troubled delight of thinking on innocence, and gentleness, and beauty; come with him from all the glorious dreams cherished by a noble spirit in the halls of wisdom and This is all most admirable, most eloquent, most true! but the critic subsequently declares, that "there is nothing in Ophelia which could make her the object of an engrossing passion to so majestic a spirit as Hamlet." Now, though it be with reluctance, and even considerable mistrust of myself, that I differ from a critic who can thus feel and write, I do not think so:—I do think, with submission, that the love of Hamlet for Ophelia is deep, is real, and is precisely When the heathen would represent their Jove as clothed in all his Olympian terrors, they mounted him on the back of an eagle, and armed him with the lightnings; but when in Holy Writ the Supreme Being is described as coming in his glory, He is upborne on the wings of cherubim, and his emblem is the dove. Even so our blessed religion, which has revealed deeper mysteries in the human soul than ever were dreamt of by philosophy till she went hand-in-hand with faith, has taught us to pay that worship to the symbols of purity and innocence, which in darker times was paid to the manifestations of power: and therefore do I think that the mighty intellect, the capacious, soaring, penetrating genius of Hamlet may be represented, without detracting from its grandeur, as reposing upon the tender virgin innocence of Ophelia, with all that deep delight with which a superior nature contemplates the goodness which is at once perfect in itself, and of itself unconscious. That Hamlet regards Ophelia with this kind of tenderness,—that he loves her with a love as intense as can belong to a nature in which there is, (I think,) much more of contemplation and sensibility than action or passion—is the feeling and conviction with which I have always read the play of Hamlet. As to whether the mind of Hamlet be, or be not, touched with madness—this is another point at issue among critics, philosophers, ay, and physicians. In the scene with Hamlet, HAMLET. I did love you once. OPHELIA. Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so. HAMLET. You should not have believed me: for virtue cannot so inocculate our old stock, but we shall relish of it. I loved you not. OPHELIA. I was the more deceived. Those who ever heard Mrs. Siddons read the play of Hamlet, cannot forget the world of meaning, of love, of sorrow, of despair, conveyed in these two simple phrases. Here, and in the soliloquy afterwards, where she says,— And I of ladies most deject and wretched, That sucked the honey of his music vows, are the only allusions to herself and her own feelings Of her subsequent madness, what can be said? What an affecting—what an astonishing picture of a mind utterly, hopelessly wrecked!—past hope—past cure! There is the frenzy of excited passion—there is the madness caused by intense and continued thought—there is the delirium of fevered nerves; but Ophelia's madness is distinct from these: it is not the suspension, but the utter destruction of the reasoning powers; it is the total imbecility which, as medical people well know, frequently follows some terrible shock to the spirits. Constance is frantic; Lear is mad; Ophelia is insane. Her sweet mind lies in fragments before us—a pitiful spectacle! Her wild, rambling fancies; her aimless, broken speeches; her quick transitions from gayety to sadness—each equally purposeless and causeless; her snatches of old ballads, such as perhaps her nurse sung her to sleep with in her infancy—are all so true to the life, that we forget to Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself, She turns to favor and to prettiness. That in her madness she should exchange her bashful silence for empty babbling, her sweet maidenly demeanor for the impatient restlessness that spurns at straws, and say and sing precisely what she never would or could have uttered had she been in possession of her reason, is so far from being an impropriety, that it is an additional stroke of nature. It is one of the symptoms of this species of insanity, as we are assured by physicians. I have myself known one instance in the case of a young Quaker girl, whose character resembled that of Ophelia, and whose malady arose from a similar cause. The whole action of this play sweeps past us like a torrent, which hurries along in its dark and resistless course all the personages of the drama towards a catastrophe that is not brought about by human will, but seems like an abyss ready dug to receive them, where the good and the wicked are whelmed together. "For it is the property of crime to extend its mischiefs over innocence, as it is of virtue to extend its blessings over many that deserve them not, while frequently the author of one or the other is not, as far as we can see, either punished or rewarded." MIRANDA.We might have deemed it impossible to go beyond Viola, Perdita, and Ophelia, as pictures of feminine beauty; to exceed the one in tender delicacy, the other in ideal grace, and the last in simplicity,—if Shakspeare had not done this; and he alone The character of Miranda resolves itself into the very elements of womanhood. She is beautiful, modest, and tender, and she is these only; they comprise her whole being, external and internal. She is so perfectly unsophisticated, so delicately refined, that she is all but ethereal. Let us imagine any other woman placed beside Miranda—even one of Shakspeare's own loveliest and sweetest creations—there is not one of them that could sustain the comparison for a moment; not one that would not appear somewhat coarse or artificial when brought into immediate contact with this pure child of nature, this "Eve of an enchanted Paradise." What, then, has Shakspeare done?—"O wondrous skill and sweet wit of the man!"—he has removed Miranda far from all comparison with her own sex; he has placed her between the demi-demon of earth and the delicate spirit of air. The next step is into the ideal and supernatural; and the only being who approaches Miranda, with whom she can be contrasted, is Ariel. Beside the subtle essence of this ethereal sprite, this creature of elemental light and air, that "ran upon the winds, rode the curl'd clouds, and in the colors of the rainbow lived," Miranda herself appears a palpable reality; a woman, "breathing thoughtful breath," a woman, walking the earth in her mortal loveliness, with a I have said that Miranda possesses merely the elementary attributes of womanhood, but each of these stand in her with a distinct and peculiar grace. She resembles nothing upon earth; but do we therefore compare her, in our own minds, with any of those fabled beings with which the fancy of ancient poets peopled the forest depths, the fountain or the ocean?—oread or dryad fleet, sea-maid, or naiad of the stream? We cannot think of them together. Miranda is a consistent, natural, human being. Our impression of her nymph-like beauty, her peerless grace, and purity of soul, has a distinct and individual character. Not only is she exquisitely lovely, being what she is, but we are made to feel that she could not possibly be otherwise than as she is portrayed. She has never beheld one of her own sex; she has never caught from society one imitated or artificial grace. The impulses which have come to her, in her enchanted solitude, are of heaven and nature, not of the world and its vanities. She has sprung up into beauty beneath the eye of her father, the princely magician; her companions have been the rocks and woods, the many-shaped, many-tinted clouds, and the silent stars; her playmates the ocean billows, that stooped their foamy crests, and ran rippling to kiss her feet. Ariel and his attendant sprites hovered over her head, ministered duteous to her every wish, and presented before her Be sure! the goddess on whom these airs attend! And again:— What is this maid? Is she the goddess who hath severed us, And brought us thus together? And Ferdinand exclaims, while gazing on her, My spirits as in a dream are all bound up! My father's loss, the weakness that I feel, The wreck of all my friends, or this man's threats, To whom I am subdued, are but light to me Might I but through my prison once a day Behold this maid: all corners else o' the earth Let liberty make use of, space enough Have I in such a prison. Contrasted with the impression of her refined and dignified beauty, and its effect on all beholders, is Miranda's own soft simplicity, her virgin innocence, her total ignorance of the conventional forms and language of society. It is most natural that in a being thus constituted, the first tears should spring from compassion, "suffering with those that she saw suffer:"— O the cry did knock Against my very heart. Poor souls! they perished. Had I been any god of power, I would Have sunk the sea within the earth, or e'er It should the good ship so have swallowed, And the freighting souls within her; and that her first sigh should be offered to a love at once fearless and submissive, delicate and fond. She has no taught scruples of honor like Juliet; no coy concealments like Viola; no assumed dignity standing in its own defence. Her bashfulness is less a quality than an instinct; it is like the self-folding of a flower, spontaneous and unconscious. I suppose there is nothing of the kind in poetry equal to the scene between Ferdinand and Miranda. In Ferdinand, who is a noble creature, we have all the chivalrous magnanimity with which man, in a high state of civilization, disguises his real superiority, and does humble homage to the being of whose destiny he disposes; while Miranda, the mere child of nature, is struck with wonder at her own new emotions. Only conscious of her MIRANDA. Alas, now! pray you, Work not so hard: I would the lightning had Burnt up those logs, that you are enjoined to pile! Pray set it down and rest you: when this burns, 'Twill weep for having weary'd you. My father Is hard at study; pray now, rest yourself: He's safe for these three hours. FERDINAND. O most dear mistress, The sun will set before I shall discharge What I must strive to do. MIRANDA. If you'll sit down, I'll bear your logs the while. Pray give me that, I'll carry it to the pile. FERDINAND. No, precious creature; I had rather crack my sinews, break my back, Than you should such dishonor undergo, While I sit lazy by. MIRANDA. It would become me As well as it does you; and I should do it And yours against. **** MIRANDA. You look wearily. FERDINAND. No, noble mistress; 'tis fresh morning with me When you are by at night. I do beseech you, (Chiefly that I might set it in my prayers,) What is your name? MIRANDA. Miranda. O my father I have broke your 'hest to say so! FERDINAND. Admir'd Miranda! Indeed the top of admiration; worth What's dearest to the world! Full many a lady I have eyed with best regard: and many a time The harmony of their tongues hath into bondage Brought my too diligent ear: for several virtues Have I liked several women; never any With so full soul, but some defect in her Did quarrel with the noblest grace she owed And put it to the foil. But you, O you, So perfect and so peerless, are created Of every creature's best! MIRANDA. I do not know One of my sex: no woman's face remember, Save, from my glass, mine own; nor have I seen Mere that I may call men, than you, good friend, And my dear father. How features are abroad (The jewel in my dower,) I would not wish Any companion in the world but you; Nor can imagination form a shape, Besides yourself, to like of—But I prattle Something too wildly, and my father's precepts Therein forget. FERDINAND. I am, in my condition A prince, Miranda—I do think a king— (I would, not so!) and would no more endure This wooden slavery, than I would suffer The flesh-fly blow my mouth. Hear my soul speak The very instant that I saw you, did My heart fly to your service; there resides, To make me slave to it; and for your sake, Am I this patient log-man. MIRANDA. Do you love me? FERDINAND. O heaven! O earth! bear witness to this sound And crown what I profess with kind event, If I speak true: if hollowly, invert What best is boded me, to mischief! I, Beyond all limit of what else i' the world, Do love, prize, honor you. MIRANDA. I am a fool, To weep at what I am glad of. FERDINAND. Wherefore weep you MIRANDA. At mine unworthiness, that dare not offer What I desire to give; and much less take, What I shall die to want—But this is trifling: And all the more it seeks to hide itself, The bigger bulk it shows. Hence, bashful cunning; And prompt me, plain and holy innocence! I am your wife, if you will marry me; If not I'll die your maid: to be your fellow You may deny me; but I'll be your servant Whether you will or no! FERDINAND. My mistress, dearest! And I thus humble ever. MIRANDA. My husband, then? FERDINAND. Ay, with a heart as willing, As bondage e'er of freedom. Here's my hand. MIRANDA. And mine with my heart in it. And now farewell Till half an hour hence. As Miranda, being what she is, could only have had a Ferdinand for a lover, and an Ariel for her attendant, so she could have had with propriety no other father than the majestic and gifted being, who fondly claims her as "a thread of his own life—nay, that for which he lives." Prospero, with his magical powers, his superhuman wisdom, his moral worth and grandeur, and his kingly dignity, The Bermuda Isles, in which Shakspeare has placed the scene of the Tempest, were discovered in his time: Sir George Somers and his companions having been wrecked there in a terrible storm, There is another circumstance connected with the Tempest, which is rather interesting. It was produced and acted for the first time upon the occasion of the nuptials of the Princess Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of James I. with Frederic, the elector palatine. It is hardly necessary to remind the reader of the fate of this amiable but most unhappy woman, whose life, almost from the period of her marriage, was one long tempestuous scene of trouble and adversity. The characters which I have here classed together, as principally distinguished by the predominance of passion and fancy, appear to me to rise, in the scale of ideality and simplicity, from Juliet to Miranda; the last being in comparison so refined, so elevated above all stain of earth, that I remember, when I was in Italy, standing "at evening on the top of Fiesole," and at my feet I beheld the city of Florence and the Val d'Arno, with its villas, its luxuriant gardens, groves, and olive grounds, all bathed in crimson light. A transparent vapor or exhalation, which in its tint was almost as rich as the pomegranate flower, moving with soft undulation, rolled through the valley, and the very earth seemed to pant with warm life beneath its rosy veil. A dark purple shade, the forerunner of night, was already stealing over the east; in the western sky still lingered the blaze of the sunset, while the faint perfume of trees, and flowers, and now and then a strain of music wafted upwards, completed the intoxication of the senses. But I looked from the earth to the sky, and immediately above this scene hung the soft crescent moon—alone, with all the bright heaven to herself; and as that sweet moon to the glowing landscape beneath it, such is the character of Miranda compared to that of Juliet. FOOTNOTES:There shall your master have a thousand loves— A guide, a goddess, and a sovereign; A counsellor, a traitress, and a dear, His humble ambition, proud humility, His jarring concord, and his discord dulcut, His faith, his sweet disaster, with a world Of pretty fond adoptious Christendoms That blinking Cupid gossips.—Act i Scene 1 The courtly poets of Elizabeth's time, who copied the Italian sonnetteers of the sixteenth century, are full of these quaint conceits. Perhaps 'tis pretty to force together Thoughts so all unlike each other; To mutter and mock a broken charm, To dally with wrong that does no harm! Perhaps 'tis tender, too, and pretty, At each wild word to feel within A sweet recoil of love and pity. And what if in a world of sin (O sorrow and shame should this be true!) Such giddiness of heart and brain Comes seldom save from rage and pain, So talks as it's most used to do? Coleridge. These lines seem to me to form the truest comment on Juliet's wild exclamations against Romeo. There is nothing so improbable in the story of Romeo and Juliet as to make us doubt the tradition that it is a real fact. "The Veronese," says Lord Byron, in one of his letters from Verona, "are tenacious to a degree of the truth of Juliet's story, insisting on the fact, giving the date 1303, and showing a tomb. It is a plain, open, and partly decayed sarcophagus, with withered leaves in it, in a wild and desolate conventual garden—once a cemetery, now ruined, to the very graves! The situation struck me as very appropriate to the legend, being blighted as their love." He might have added, that when Verona itself, with its amphitheatre and its Paladian structures, lies level with the earth, the very spot on which it stood will be consecrated by the memory of Juliet. When in Italy, I met a gentleman, who being then "dans le genre romantique," wore a fragment of Juliet's tomb set in a ring. |