 
2 Henry VI. iii. 3.—The lines beginning with the one which follows are not in the old play and are Shakespeare’s own:
Johnson’s note is: ‘This is one of the scenes which have been applauded by the criticks, and which will continue to be admired when prejudices shall cease, and bigotry give way to impartial examination. These are beauties that rise out of nature and of truth; the superficial reader cannot miss them, the profound can image nothing beyond them.’ We talk idly of Johnson’s pompous redundance. His sentences are balanced, and it is therefore supposed that the second part repeats the first, but the truth is that each part contains a new thought. It was his manner to throw successive ideas into this form. Those who are acquainted with his history and his awful mental struggles will find infinite pathos in this restrained comment. Midsummer Night’s Dream.—Shakespeare’s overlooking quality, as that of a god surveying human affairs, is shown in this play:
All this night’s storm from a drop of magic juice! Oberon has been watching Titania’s courtship of Bottom. She sleeps, and he touches her eyes with Dian’s bud:
Romeo and Juliet.—The love of Juliet is a thing altogether by itself, not to be classed, never anticipated by any other author, and not imitable. It is sensuous. Look at her soliloquy, ‘Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds,’ etc., and yet it is woven through and through with immortal threads of fidelity and contempt of death:
How great this girl is! If I were to meet her, how I should be awed! The Juliets I have seen on the stage fail here. They do not bend my knees in that adoration which is inspired by the sea and stars. The love of Romeo for Juliet and of Juliet for Romeo does not stimulate passion, but rather controls it. I never become hot in reading the play. What a solemnity there is in its movement! The lovers are not merely two human beings with no other meaning. The Eternal Powers are at work throughout. Romeo’s love for Rosaline is taken over from Brooke’s poem. Shakespeare adds the touch that it was not genuine. He makes Friar Laurence say:
The love for Rosaline is different altogether from the love for Juliet.
is artificial. Shakespeare also follows Brooke in Juliet’s momentary outburst against Romeo when she hears of Tybalt’s death, but the contradiction of the echo by the nurse is Shakespeare’s own:
Apart from the quarrel between the Montagus and Capulets, we feel that the love between Romeo and Juliet could have no other than a tragic end. This world of ours conspires against such passion. I Henry IV. v. 4—
The last three lines are not melancholy philosophising. As such they would be out of place coming from Hotspur. They are consolation and joy. Death will extinguish for us the memory of certain things suffered and done. That is a gain which is not outweighed by the loss of any pleasure life can give. Luders’ essay three parts of a century ago showed conclusively that Holinshed’s and Shakespeare’s Prince of Wales, as we see him in the play of Henry IV., wild and dissolute with ignoble companions, is a legend which is disproved by documentary history, but Shakespeare’s Prince is nevertheless dramatically true. Johnson says, ‘He is great without effort, and brave without tumult. The trifler is roused into a hero, and the hero again reposes in the trifler. The character is great, original, and just.’ Johnson’s criticism is true. There is no interruption or strain in the passage from one self to the other self: they are both in fact the same self. It is something of a shock that the King should cast off Falstaff, but if a man is appointed to command it is necessary that he should at once take up his proper position. I remember the promotion of a subordinate to a responsible post. His manner changed the next day. He had the courage to ring his bell and give orders to his senior under whom he had been serving. He became one of the most efficient administrators I ever knew. On the other hand, nearly at the same time another subordinate was promoted who was timid and continued his habits of familiarity with his colleagues. His department fell into disorder and he was dismissed. As You Like It.—Lady Anne Blunt in her admirable books, A Pilgrimage to Nejd and The Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates, notices that the true Arab sheykh of the desert, when a traveller seeks his hospitality, asks no questions until food and drink have been offered, and even then is in no hurry. So also the Duke:
Curiosity about personal matters is ignoble. Rosalind’s love for Orlando is born of pity. ‘If I be foiled, there is but one shamed that was never gracious; if killed, but one dead that is willing to be so: I shall do my friends no wrong, for I have none to lament me; the world no injury, for in it I have nothing; only in the world I fill up a place, which may be better supplied when I have made it empty.’ It is a proof of Orlando’s gentle breeding that he instantly yields to courtesy:
Orlando says to Jaques: ‘I will chide no breather in the world, but myself, against whom I know most faults.’ This is characteristic of Shakespeare, and is in the spirit of the Gospels. The difficulty in this play is not Oliver’s sudden love for Celia, although Shakespeare seems to have felt that it was a little too rapid, for Orlando asks Oliver, ‘Is’t possible that on so little acquaintance you should like her?’ It is rather Celia’s prompt response which takes us aback. It looks too much like ‘any woman to any man.’ It may be said in excuse that Celia had heard the piteous story of his conversion, how he had become ‘a wretched ragged man o’ergrown with hair,’ and what is more to the point, she had heard of Orlando’s noble kindness to him. It is odd that Shakespeare does not adopt from Lodge’s novel Oliver’s rescue of Celia from a band of ruffians. Johnson says, ‘To Celia much may be forgiven for the heroism of her friendship.’ She forsook not only her father—she had reason not to care much about him—but she forsook the court for Rosalind. Much Ado about Nothing.—Why should Don Pedro offer to take Claudio’s place in the wooing of Hero and why should Claudio consent? Borachio says, ‘Hear me call Margaret, Hero; hear Margaret call me Claudio.’ When Borachio recounts to Conrad what he had done, he makes no mention of his personation of Claudio—‘Know, that I have to-night wooed Margaret, the lady Hero’s gentlewoman, by the name of Hero; she leans me out at her mistress’s chamber-window, bids me a thousand times good night.’ Theobald remarks that if Claudio saw another man with the woman supposed to be Hero and heard her call him Claudio, Claudio would merely suppose that Hero was deceived. Theobald proposes to substitute ‘Borachio’ for ‘Claudio’ in the line just quoted. Borachio had just asked Don John to tell Don Pedro and Claudio that Hero loved him, Borachio. But if Theobald’s emendation be received, difficulties still remain. Margaret must have been persuaded to answer to the name of Hero. After Borachio’s arrest he tells us that Margaret wore Hero’s garments. But Shakespeare, deserting Spenser, from whom this mystification appears to be borrowed, gives no reason which induced Margaret to play this part. Where was Hero on that night? Borachio promises Don John that ‘he will so fashion the matter, that Hero shall be absent.’ Claudio asks Hero
She does not reply, as we should think she would, that she was not sleeping in that room, although Benedick asks Beatrice,
and Beatrice replies,
Claudio is despicable, and his marriage with Hero is a foul, black spot in the play. Observe that in the first scene he asks Don Pedro,
and Don Pedro, understanding the drift of the question, replies:
What a mean, damnable excuse he makes.
Beatrice with sure eye discerns the scoundrel. ‘Kill Claudio.’ Not Don Pedro, not even Don John, although she had heard Benedick denounce him as the author of the villainy. Beatrice and the Friar never doubt Hero’s innocence. The Friar declares that
What an amplitude there is in Beatrice! What a sweep it is to bring into what we already know of her such divine faith in her friend! This light-hearted girl suddenly becomes sublime. Hamlet.—Coleridge’s remark that the two former appearances of the Ghost increase its objectivity when it appears to Hamlet is subtle and true. Observe that the Ghost is visible to Hamlet, Marcellus, Bernardo and Horatio, but not to the Queen. There is in Coleridge an activity of intellect which is so fascinating that we do not stay to inquire whether the result is in accordance with the facts. He says that tÆdium vitÆ as in the case of Hamlet is due to ‘unchecked appetency of the ideal.’ Was the appetency of the ideal strong in Hamlet? The ideal exalts our interest in earthly things. ‘Now might I do it pat, now he is praying.’ Johnson says that this speech, in which Hamlet contrives damnation for the man he would punish, is too horrible to be read or to be uttered; whereupon Coleridge remarks that Hamlet’s postponement of revenge till it should bring damnation to soul as well as body ‘was merely the excuse Hamlet made to himself for not taking advantage of this particular and favourable moment for doing justice upon his guilty uncle, at the urgent instance of the spirit of his father.’ I doubt if this is a complete explanation. Would it strike the audience as the motive? Men of Hamlet’s mould not only speak but feel extravagantly. Incapacity for prompt action is accompanied with more intense emotion than that which is felt by him who acts at once. Hamlet meditates on revenge instead of executing it, and his desire, by brooding, becomes diabolic. Generalisations like those of Polonius are obtained from observation during youth and middle age. In old age the creation of generalisations ceases and we fall back on our acquired stock. They remain true, but the application fails. We must be increasingly careful in the use of these ancient abstractions, and more intent on the consideration of the instance before us. The temptation to drag it under what we already know is great and must be resisted. Proverbs and wise saws are more suitable to common life than to intricate relationships. They are inapplicable to deep passion and spiritual matters. Johnson notes that the Ghost’s visits are a failure so far as Hamlet’s resolution is concerned. Hamlet says,
but they remained thoughts. The play is to be the thing to decide him, but when it is over and he has the clearest proofs, he does not act, but consents to leave Denmark and returns by accident. Had he obeyed the Ghost’s promptings and killed the King at the end of the play in the third act, Polonius, Ophelia, the Queen, Laertes, and Hamlet himself might have been saved. Troilus and Cressida is an inexplicable play. It is a justification of those critics who obstinately, but without external evidence, refuse to believe that much which is attributed to Shakespeare really belongs to him. It is absolutely impossible that the man who put these words into the mouth of Achilles:
could have adapted from the Recuyell the shocking ignominy of the ninth scene in the fifth act in which Achilles calls on his myrmidons to slay Hector unarmed, and then triumphs in these lines:
Measure for Measure as a play is hateful to me, although there are passages in it as truly Shakespeare as anything to be found in all his works. The chief objection to it is that justice, to use Coleridge’s word, is ‘baffled.’ There are other objections almost as great. From beginning to end almost everybody is base, foolish, or uninteresting. The Duke’s temporary withdrawal is stupid and contemptible, considering that he is the governor of the state; the condemnation of Claudio is wildly unnatural; the substitution of Mariana loathsome; the treachery of Angelo in not reprieving Claudio inconceivable, notwithstanding what we already know of the deputy’s hypocrisy and villainy. The lowest depth of scoundrelism is reached when, face to face with Mariana and publicly at the city gate before the Duke and all the company assembled, he excuses himself from marrying her because
And yet he is let off scot-free, and Mariana marries him! Isabella’s apology,
might be sufficient for an outbreak of his lust but not for his lying, and Mariana’s is still worse:
Not out of such faults as Angelo’s are the best men moulded. The punishment inflicted on the poor wretch Lucio is horrible.
This is a foul line. I should like to discover documentary proof that it is not Shakespeare’s, but the gag of some actor desirous of pleasing court folk! The Promos and Cassandra from which Measure for Measure is taken is certainly worse, for Promos (Angelo) is made to marry Cassandra (Isabella) and after the marriage is to die, but Cassandra, ‘tyed in the greatest bondes of affection to her husband, becomes an earnest suter for his life.’ Henry VIII.—The scene in which Katherine appears before the court is perhaps the finest in the play. To what noble use is her Spanish pride turned! The last line of the following quotation from Katherine’s reply to Wolsey is infinite:
Othello is pure tragedy, for the judgment which falls on Othello and Desdemona, although it is disproportionate to the character or life of either, is necessary from the beginning. Brabantio was not wholly without justification in thinking the marriage unnatural, and Desdemona’s desertion of him without a word was unfeeling. The depth of the tragedy is increased by his death.
Iago feels the necessity of obtaining motives for his conduct. He tries to find them in the supposed infidelity of his wife with Othello and in his supersession by Cassio. Neither is sufficient, but he partly believes in them, and they partly serve their purpose. Coleridge says Othello was not jealous: he lacked the suspicion that is essential to jealousy. Perhaps so, but in that case we want a name for the passion which rushes to belief of that which it prays may be false. The very intensity of love, so far from inducing careful examination of slander against the divinity I worship, prevents reflection by anxiety; by terror lest the love should be disturbed. Iago’s evidence, thinks Coleridge, was so strong that Othello could not have done otherwise; but would he have acted in war on evidence equally weak? How mad Iago is with all his cunning! What a fool! Had he been anything but the maddest fool, he would have seen that in the end his plans must break down. Intellect? Yes, of a kind he had it pre-eminently, but intellect becomes folly when it is inhuman.
Shakespeare might have made Othello the more eager to plunge into the big wars, but Desdemona is so inwoven with him that the whole fabric goes to ruin when she is torn out. Othello ‘falls in a trance’ after his outburst at the beginning of the fourth act. He is a Moor. In the background also lies Brabantio’s prophecy. Venice cannot do without him, but he cannot hold a Venetian woman. King Lear.—There are passages in King Lear which are enough to make us wish we had never been born. They are almost an impeachment of the Ruler of the Universe, and yet—there is Cordelia. Whence did she come? She is as much His handiwork as Regan, and in all our conclusions about Him we must take her into account. Lear does not go mad. He is mad from the beginning, but his madness is in abeyance. Look at the style of his curses on Goneril. Coleridge’s criticism is exact: ‘Lear’s self-supportless leaning for all pleasure on another’s breast.’ If a man desires not to go mad or not to be soured into oil of vitriol, let him watch the doors of his heart; let him never solicit any expression of love. Cordelia’s ‘nothing, my lord,’ as Coleridge says, is partly irrepressible disgust at her sisters’ hypocrisy. There was also, as France admits, ‘a tardiness in nature’ in Cordelia. She was her father’s favourite, but what sort of a life must she have lived with such a father before the time at which the play opens? We ought not to be surprised that she refuses to be demonstrative. She reacts against his exaggeration. I cannot read the blinding of Gloucester. The only excuse that can be offered, not good for much, is that Shakespeare found the story in the Arcadia, and that in his day horrors on the stage were not so repulsive as they are to us. Cordelia’s death taken from Holinshed is almost as bad. It is not involved in the tragedy like the death of Ophelia or of Desdemona. All’s Well that Ends Well.—Johnson comments, ‘I cannot reconcile my heart to Bertram; a man noble without generosity, and young without truth; who married Helena as a coward, and leaves her as a profligate: when she is dead by his unkindness, sneaks home to a second marriage, is accused by a woman whom he has wronged, defends himself by falsehood, and is dismissed to happiness.’ This is just. Bertram is atrocious. With Helena before him he says,
Did he require a deposition on oath in presence of a magistrate? He deserved a scourging in the market place. Coleridge calls Helena one of Shakespeare’s loveliest women. I cannot agree. She secures her husband’s embraces under a false pretence. How a woman could consent to lie in the arms of a man who had cast her off, and who believed when he was enjoying her that she was a mistress whom he preferred is beyond my comprehension. It is so in Boccaccio, but that is no excuse. Devotion to a man who is indifferent or who hates, is tragically possible, but in its greatest intensity would hardly permit such humiliation. The play is bad altogether. What was the necessity for suggesting Bertram’s second marriage? There is nowhere any trace of Shakespeare’s depth. The difficulties of the text are singular, and seem to mark this drama as one different from the rest. Macbeth.—Johnson’s remark that the events are so great that they overpower the persons and prevent nice discrimination of character is partly true. Coleridge notices that Lady Macbeth was a person of high rank, living much alone. A darkly meditative mind left in solitude can conceive without being startled the most awful designs. The same imagination in Lady Macbeth which brooded over the plot against Duncan’s life drove her to delirium and suicide. Shakespeare transfers the most perilous stuff in him to Macbeth. The function smothered in surmise; the reflection on the emptiness of life—tale told by an idiot—Shakespeare empties it into this murderous traitor. He makes him the prey of that which is mixed in the composition of the best. The witches do not strike us as miraculous. They are not supernatural, but extensions of the natural. It is an apology for emendation that one of the most celebrated passages in the play is based on conjecture (confirmed by what follows) and on analogy.
‘No’—corrected by Rowe to ‘do.’ In Measure for Measure we have
Note the terrible, gasping brevity of the dialogue between Lady Macbeth and her husband after the murder:
Macbeth’s speech beginning just before he hears of Lady Macbeth’s death, and ending after he hears of it, should be interpreted and spoken as follows. He had just said he ‘will laugh a siege to scorn.’ Then a cry of women within.
He makes no inquiry about his wife, but goes on with his reverie, which does not specially refer to her.
The ‘petty pace,’ coming from Macbeth! The ‘out, out, brief candle,’ should be spoken in the same musing tone. Johnson says of a learned apology by Heath for a line in Macbeth which is defective in metre: ‘This is one of the effects of literature in minds not naturally perspicacious’—a criticism which might be extended to much Shakespearean comment. Cymbeline.—The wager is loathsome. If any man with whom we were acquainted had laid it, should we not scorn and brand him? It was a crime to mention Imogen’s name in such society as that which met at Philario’s house. The only excuse is Boccaccio, but what shall we say of Iachimo’s interview with Imogen, invented by Shakespeare! After his beastly experiment upon her, he excuses himself:
She begs him to prolong his visit! The apology is worse than the original insult. The royal behaviour, or what Shakespeare means us to take for royal behaviour, in the two youths is overdone and sometimes repulsive. Arviragus goes out of his way to put his love for Imogen higher than that for his supposed father, Belarius, who is present.
Yet the point of the scene is the nobility of blood in these youths! Lucius, who had protected Imogen, hopes she will plead for his life, and she turns on him:
In the fifth act Posthumus believes his wife to be guilty, and yet breaks out into strains like these:
Shakespeare surely ought to have made Posthumus revert to perfect faith. He ought to have borrowed something from his own Beatrice. Posthumus wishes Imogen saved, because, if her life had been spared, she might have repented. Iachimo is impossible, simple blackness, worse than Iago. He is unactable, for some motivation is necessary. Shakespeare’s genius is so immense that it overpowers us, and we must be on our guard lest it should twist our instinct for what is true and right. The errors of a fool are not dangerous, but those of a Shakespeare, Goethe, or Byron it is almost impossible to resist. Twelfth Night.—The play is two plays in one without much connection. The Viola play is improbable. Why did Shakespeare omit that part of the story which tells us that Silla (Viola) had seen the Duke when he was shipwrecked on Cyprus where she lived, and had fallen in love with him? In the play, hearing of the Duke, she discloses a design to make her ‘own occasion mellow.’ Malvolio shut up as mad—
Malvolio was a gentleman, but he was more. Shakespeare may go a little too far with the yellow stockings and cross-gartering, but the liability to deception by a supposed profession of love is a divine weakness, not inconsistent with true nobility of intellect and with sagacity. There is no reason to suppose he was often deceived in worldly matters. Maria is a bad sort of clever barmaid, and was not unwilling to marry the drunken Sir Toby. When I last saw Twelfth Night acted, the whole of the latter part of the fifth act was omitted, for the purpose, apparently, of strengthening the representation of Malvolio as a comic fool whose silly brain is turned by conceit. It was shocking, but the manager knew his audience. Julius CÆsar.—Casca is indignant that CÆsar should be offered the crown, but he despises the applause of the mob when CÆsar rejected it. ‘The rabblement hooted and clapped their chopped hands and threw up their sweaty night-caps, and uttered such a deal of stinking breath because CÆsar refused the crown that it had almost choked CÆsar; for he swounded and fell down at it; and for mine own part, I durst not laugh, for fear of opening my lips and receiving the bad air.’
I cannot think Dr. Johnson, Mason, and Delius are right in supposing the Genius to be the power which watches over us for our protection, and that the mortal instruments are the passions which rebel against it, and, as Johnson says, ‘excite him to a deed of honour and danger.’ The Genius and the mortal instruments are in council. The Genius is the president and the mortal instruments are subordinates. The insurrection is their resistance because they cannot at once be brought to do what the Genius directs. There is no hint in what goes before of ‘safety.’ The mortal instruments suggest
Blakeway agrees with this interpretation. In both Plutarch and Shakespeare, Brutus refuses to kill Antony. Brutus will go no further than justice demands. But this is not enough for success. Hence the ruin of the republican cause. Steevens says that the apparition at Sardis ‘could not be at once the shade of CÆsar and the evil genius of Brutus.’ But Shakespeare intended that it should be both. Brutus in the fifth scene of the fifth act thus replies to Volumnius:
It is an instance of Steevens’ prosaic temper that he could not see the fitness of the combination.
These verses are perhaps the noblest in our language. Nothing ever has gone or could go beyond them. Shakespeare here justifies the claim on his behalf to be placed alone and unreachable. Observe the repetition by Cassius almost word for word. Swift must have had this passage in his mind when in a letter to Pope, which I quote from memory, as I cannot lay my hand on it, he tells Pope that he will come over to England and see him if possible, but, if not, ‘we must part, as all human creatures have parted.’
These lines might easily be turned into commonplace, but what could be more pathetic or solemn? The true drama of Julius CÆsar is indicated by Plutarch. It is CÆsar’s triumph over innumerable difficulties, any one of which might have been fatal, the protection by his genius, the limitation of its power, the Dictatorship—‘Semideus,’ his death. Shakespeare gives no reason, nor does Plutarch, why Brutus should have plotted to kill CÆsar, excepting the fear of what might happen if he were to become absolute. Brutus is abstract.
This is Drayton’s imitation of what Antony says of Brutus, and it is one which not only does not spoil the original, but is itself original. Antony and Cleopatra.—It is not Antony’s passion for Cleopatra which ruins him. He has not the cohesion which obtains success. He is loose-bonded. CÆsar is his complete foil and contrast. CÆsar exists dramatically to explain Antony. Antony’s challenge to single combat and the speeches he makes to his servants are characteristic. The marriage to Octavia, more than his Egyptian slavery, shows his weakness. There is a line in Plutarch which I wish Shakespeare had used. ‘But it was in the nature of Antonius to show his best qualities in difficulties, and in his misfortune he was as like as may be to a good man.’ Scenes 6 and 7, Act ii., the interview with Pompey, are in Plutarch, but it is not evident why they are in the drama. They do not advance the action. Shakespeare preserves also Antony’s message to Octavius that if he was dissatisfied with the treatment of Thyreus he might hang or torture Antony’s freedman Hipparchus—a detestable piece of brutality which might well have been omitted. Cleopatra is quite apart from Shakespeare’s other women. She is a most complicated and difficult study. Shakespeare takes over from Plutarch her wandering disguised through the streets at night with Antony; the voyage down the Cydnus; the hanging of the salt fish on Antony’s hook; the flight at Actium; the fact that she was mistress of Julius CÆsar and CnÆus Pompey; the second betrayal of the fleet; her petition to Octavius for her son; and her attempt to cheat Octavius in the account of her treasures. In addition Shakespeare makes her ‘hop forty paces through the public street.’ What could have induced him to invent this story? She threatens Charmian with bloody teeth; lets Thyreus kiss her hand, arousing thereby Antony’s rage. Thyreus tells her that CÆsar knows she did not embrace Antony from love but from fear, and she replies:
This may be mockery, but after she has let Thyreus kiss her she goes on:
She reminds herself of this, fresh from Antony, who had just told her of Octavius’s offer to protect her if she would give up the ‘grizled head’ of her lover. After Antony’s death she finds
She tells Proculeius before he surprises her that she would gladly look CÆsar in the face, but she tries to stab herself, for,
She asks Dolabella what CÆsar means to do with her, and when she learns that she is to be taken to Rome she recurs to the horror of the triumph.
This was a motive for death, but it was not all. She reproves herself because she let Iras die first, because Antony will
and Antony is her last word. Charmian declares her to be ‘a lass unparallel’d,’ of ‘royal eyes.’ It is impossible to shut this woman up within the limits of what we call a character, but why should we attempt it? Why cannot we be content with what we have before us? Shakespeare never defined his people to himself. In Cleopatra we have a new combination of the simple, eternal elements, a combination subtle, and beyond analysis. What celestial lights begin to play over this passion as the drama goes on! Coriolanus.—We cannot help being sorry that Shakespeare should have gone out of his way to select such a subject. It leaves a disagreeable taste in the mouth. The aristocrat is overdone. No true aristocrat would talk such rant as Coriolanus talks in Act i. Sc. I. Shakespeare omits Plutarch’s account of the oppression of the plebeians, or only slightly alludes to it. Volumnia’s contempt for the people is worse than that of Coriolanus. To her they are not human, and she does not consider that common truthfulness is binding in her intercourse with them.
Reading such passages as these we understand Whitman when he says that although Shakespeare is ‘of astral genius,’ he is ‘entirely fit for feudalism . . . is incarnated, uncompromising feudalism,’ and contains much which is ‘ever offensive to democracy.’ Winter’s Tale.—Coleridge is perhaps super-subtle in his discrimination between the jealousy of Leontes and that of Othello, which Coleridge will not call jealousy. But the difference is not greater than that between the two men. The passion of Leontes is roused simply by Hermione’s giving her hand to Polixenes. This common courtesy is ‘paddling palms.’ There is something contemptible in his transports: not so in the case of Othello. Leontes cursing Hermione in the presence of his lords is unendurable. Leontes in his passion disbelieves the oracle.
But he is reversed, suddenly, completely, when he is told his son is dead.
Perdita is brought up by a shepherd and talks like a well-educated patrician’s daughter. ‘O Proserpina,’ etc. Polixenes says to Camillo:
Here again the emphasis on descent is exaggerated and we resent it. Leontes after the statue is unveiled—
Who can read this without choking? Like Exeter in Henry V.:
Could I have continued to live when that music sounded and she descended? I think not. I should have sought pardon and death.
Who can—I will not say express, but dream a tenderness deeper than that? Sixteen years she had waited, and then she embraces him! It is difficult to divine Shakespeare, the man, in his plays and poems, but in this passage and one or two others resembling it he seems to be revealed. Pericles.—The last act of Pericles, and especially the first scene, is Shakespeare at his highest.
What can equal in purifying, regenerative power the fact that one human being can be so much to another? No theology, morality, or philosophy can bring a man so near to God. Tempest.—Prospero’s pardon for those who had conspired against him proceeds from ‘our little life is rounded with a sleep.’ The Tempest is called a comedy, but it suggests a tragedy in Prospero’s return to Milan and the months or years he spent there till he died. For twelve years he had been on the island with Miranda, ‘a thrid of his own life,’ ‘that for which he lived,’ ‘the cherubin that did preserve him’ during his voyage, who raised in him
He hears her, smitten with Ferdinand almost in a moment, declare to him:
and she leaves her father and goes far away to Naples with her husband. Ariel, whom Prospero had freed from his miserable enchantment, had never ceased to thirst for liberty and returns to the winds. Dearly had Prospero loved his delicate Ariel.
Caliban he had tried to reclaim, had taught him speech and to name the big and lesser light, but all his pains were ‘lost, quite lost,’ and the ‘born devil’ rewarded them by an attempt on Miranda’s chastity. He is left behind, master of the island again, to take up his abode in the cell which Prospero and Miranda had inhabited, and with the added experience of Stephano’s drink, which he probably soon learned to imitate. Antonio, the usurping brother, is said to have been penitent, but his penitence was not profound. He offered no apology, and the first words he is recorded to have uttered after his guilt was discovered were a joke upon ‘the plain fish,’ Caliban. He was forgiven, and most likely once more became malignant. There is nothing to show us that the citizens of Milan were in much trouble when Prospero was deposed, or that they rejoiced when he was restored. They, doubtless, regretted Antonio, who
The lord of the spirits, of the elves who chased the ebbing Neptune, he who had given fire to the dread rattling thunder, broke his staff and drowned his book and went back to his lonely palace. Did he never long for his island, for Ariel’s music, for his daughter’s daily presence, replaced by infrequent letters with news of the Court, her children, and Ferdinand? He may have reflected that she was happy, but nevertheless every third thought was his grave. Merchant of Venice.—Jessica is hateful from the beginning; the disguise in boy’s clothes, the robbery of her father, and the exchange for a monkey of the jewel which belonged to her mother. I am afraid Shakespeare intended we should like her. But she is only a part of the perplexity of the play. That Shakespeare should have used the casket story is inexplicable. Not only is it, as Johnson says, ‘wildly improbable,’ it confuses Portia’s character: it is an irritating absurdity.
We have no proof that Antonio did this. He may have done it. He was the kind of person who might like popularity. If he was really guilty of ‘low simplicity,’ I sympathise with Shylock’s hatred of him. But if he was not, I understand it. Shylock was not bound to be generous. It would have been ridiculous in him, an alien in blood and religion, persecuted, spat upon. The interest of the play departs with Shylock. Shakespeare’s plays are organic, one character cannot be understood without the other; Hamlet without Ophelia; Romeo without Juliet. Each is in, by, and of the other; particularised by the other. I do not find this quality, at least in anything like the same degree, in Beaumont and Fletcher. Note the way in which Shakespeare’s characters—Macbeth, for example—unfold themselves by new circumstances, what unconjecturable development takes place. When a serious defect presents itself in a living friend it seems to obtrude itself, press upon us, and affect our judgment more than if we see it in a play of Shakespeare’s. In the play the background of counterbalancing virtue is not obscured and forgotten. In actual life we lose sight of it. |
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